I Spent Years Buying All Beige Crap and It Just Made My Life Louder.

I used to shop constantly. Clothes, decor, makeup, gifts, always something. I was trying to fix a feeling I couldn’t really explain at the time, and I couldn’t find an explanation anywhere, because the thing creating the feeling was also selling me a million things it claimed were the solution.

My feed was the source of the discontent. I’d see her, the woman who seemed to have it all together. The cool lamp. The organic linen sheets. The full wardrobe. The all beige everything. So I’d buy something to try to keep up, to try to feel that feeling. And for about three days I’d feel like I was getting closer to whatever it was I was missing. Until I wasn’t. Then I’d be scrolling and it would start all over again.

I was performing an identity. I wasn’t building a home that could support me. I wasn’t even building a life that could regulate me. I was curating a feeling and using stuff to hold it together. Every purchase was a costume. Every room was a set. And underneath all of it was a woman who had no idea what she actually wanted or even really liked, because she’d never been given the quiet to find out.

The answer wasn’t more crap. It was less. Less phone. Less feed. Less comparison. Less stuff. More of my real and messy life. The one that was already there, already enough, just buried under everything I’d bought trying to fix it. A home that finally feels like it belongs to the woman who actually lives in it. That’s what letting go gave me.

1. The home decor I bought to convince myself, and everyone else, that I had it all together.

The algorithm and Pinterest handed me an identity before I had the real chance to find my own. I wasn't decorating a home. I was decorating for a feeling I was desperate to have. Every throw pillow, every tray styled with things nobody touches, every carefully chosen neutral was me trying to perform a version of my life that felt stable and intentional and enough. When I finally let it go I realized none of it was ever mine. It was hers, whoever she was on my feed and I'd been living in her home, not my own.

I still buy something beige every once in a while. My bed is beige and I love it. This was never about becoming anti stuff or anti neutrals. It was about my whole home no longer performing an aesthetic that was never mine to begin with.

2. The clothes from the smaller or bigger version of me.

I kept them because they were motivation for the body I’d have someday or just in case I needed them one day. They weren’t either of those things. They were making me hate a body that would feel so much better in something that actually belonged to her right now, not someday. Every time I opened my closet and saw those jeans I couldn’t button and the dress that was two sizes too big, I started the day already behind. Already failing. Already overwhelmed. Getting dressed shouldn’t cost that much. What I didn’t realize was that I didn’t actually hate my body. I’d just never dressed the one I had. I was living in the gap between who I was and who I was planning to become. Wearing the wrong size, saving the good stuff for when I lost the weight, performing a version of myself that didn’t exist yet while the woman who actually existed went unloved.

When I finally let those clothes go and started dressing the body I was actually in, I stopped fighting myself every morning. I started fully showing up to my actual life.

3. The gifts I was keeping out of guilt.

This one took me the longest because it felt like letting go of the gift meant letting go of the person. It doesn’t. What I was actually holding onto wasn’t love, it was a people pleasing wound that started when I was young. I kept things because I was afraid of what it meant about me if I didn’t. Scared that someone would notice it was gone and ask. But keeping something out of obligation is self abandonment.

I eventually just lost the attachment as I saw what letting go gave me back. Stuff is stuff. I let it go and didn’t lose a single memory or person with it.

4. The dead hobbies.

The yoga mat I used for a few months. The expensive watercolor set. The running belt. Each one was a version of myself I tried on because my feed told me that woman had something I didn’t. She was more disciplined, more creative, more intentional. So I bought the stuff and waited to become her. She never showed up. And every time I walked past that stuff I felt the quiet shame of it, the proof that I couldn’t keep up with who I thought I was supposed to be.

Letting it go was finally getting honest about who I actually am and made space for what I actually enjoy doing.

5. The toys my son doesn’t play with.

I held onto toys that were barely touched because I thought we should have them. That more meant better play. It didn’t. I was the adult and I was allowing guilt to run my home. The toys he actually loved were getting buried within the toy rotation that promised deeper play. When I finally cleared all the excess, he played more independently and longer. Real, focused, imaginative playing. Not because I added anything. Because I removed everything that was in the way.

Kids don’t need more stuff. They need room to be kids.

6. The stuff I put in bins when we moved and never unpacked.

I told myself I’d deal with it later. Later never came. That bin sat in the corner of a closet. Out of sight was not out of my nervous system. I felt it every time I walked past it. It was a weight I was unknowingly carrying every single day. Eventually I opened it. Most of what was in there I didn’t even remember owning. I let it go and felt the room change instantly.

That closet told me everything I needed to know about what letting go actually feels like.

I didn’t wake up one day and clear out my entire home in a single sweep. I had to create boundaries to keep inventory from piling back up and I let go of one thing at a time until my home started to feel like ours for the first time.

And when it did, something else shut up too. The comparison. The scrolling. The low grade feeling that I was always one purchase away from having it together. It didn’t need to be fixed with a bunch of new stuff. It needed to be cleared out.

That’s what I want for you. Not a perfect home. Not a minimalist home if you don’t want to be a minimalist. Just a home that finally feels like it belongs to the woman who actually lives in it, and the quiet that comes with it. This is what I write about every week. Subscribe below and come find that quiet with us.

❤️Micaela