“It’s too much—I feel like my brain is boiling,” I told my husband the other night as I stood in the bathroom, pulling out my contacts. “It’s like I can’t keep up. Or I need a better system.”

A decade ago, that feeling of “brain-melt” wasn’t unusual for me. My mind was rarely a quiet place. I wrestled with constant, ruminating thoughts and pretty severe anxiety. The inside of my head was like a junk drawer—overflowing with worries, to-do lists, worst-case scenarios, and usually a song stuck on repeat that I couldn’t shut off.

But a lot can change in ten years.

I’ve worked hard to break those patterns, and I’m grateful that the cycles of anxiety and depression that once defined my days have largely been replaced with healthy thought patterns. So when that restless, can’t-turn-it-off feeling shows up now, it gets my attention.

And this time? It was triggered by something incredibly mundane: a closet.

More specifically, the office/playroom closet. The one that stores necessities like scissors and tape, but also the catch-all for toys that don’t have a clear home or category.

To be fair, it wasn’t just the closet. It was the closet paired with the fact that it’s Spring Clean-Up Week in Minot.
If you’re new here, this is the time of year when the entire city collectively drags its excess to the curb—everything from broken appliances and half-finished projects to nearly new toys and vintage furniture– things that once felt necessary but no longer serve a purpose. They sit there waiting for one of two fates: the landfill, or a second chance at life in the back of someone else’s pickup.

I love this week.

I am, unapologetically, a curb-picker. I’ve affectionately dubbed this season “Trash Christmas,” and at one point even discovered that the internet knows me for it. Humbling? Yes. Accurate? Also, yes.

There’s something I genuinely love about rescuing items from the landfill and getting them into the hands of someone who can use them. It’s also when I tend to upgrade things in my own home. It’s weird. It’s wonderful. It’s very Minot.

But this year felt different.

Instead of excitement, I felt overwhelmed. Everywhere I looked—on the curbs, in my house, inside that closet—there was just… too much. Too much stuff. Too many decisions. Too many things without a place.

I found myself talking in circles, trying to explain it to my husband. We need better systems. We need more storage. We need less stuff. But we use most of it. The boys have toys they can’t even access because everything is so full. I’m the one managing most of it, and I can’t keep up with the house and my work at the same time.
Eventually, we landed on a simple plan: the next day, I would tackle two shelves in that closet. If we hadn’t used something in over a year, it could go—donate it, sell it, or set it out on the curb.

Simple enough.

And yet, that night, my brain refused to power down. I laid awake far too late, audiobook playing in my ears, trying to figure out why a closet had sent me into such a spiral.

Here’s where I landed:

It was never just about the closet.

It was the moment everything blurred together—work, home, schedules, relationships, responsibilities. There were no clear edges, no boundaries between one part of life and another. Everything felt like it was happening all at once, and the overflowing closet became a visible reminder of that internal clutter.

I needed to clear a proverbial shelf, as well as the physical shelves in the closet.

The encouraging part is this—Spring Clean-Up Week reminds us of something we often forget. There is no shortage of stuff. The piles lining our streets are proof of that. We don’t have to hold onto things out of fear that we might need them someday, because more is always coming.

The same can be true in other areas of life, too.

Sometimes the reset isn’t about finding a better storage system. It’s about creating clearer boundaries. Letting go of commitments that don’t fit anymore. Admitting that not everything needs to be kept, managed, or carried all at once.

The next day, I cleared those two shelves.

Nothing dramatic. No life-changing overhaul. But when I stepped back, I felt lighter. Not because the closet was perfect, but because it was no longer holding more than it needed to.

Maybe that’s the real gift of “Trash Christmas.”

It’s not just about what we find on the curb—it’s the reminder that we’re allowed to let things go.
For more reflections on life in North Dakota, join me @HeyMinot on your favorite social media platform, or amyallender.com.