What Needs to Stay, Go, and Grow
There’s something about the final stretch of the year that invites a holy pause. A deep breath. A quiet moment where you can look around your life, your home, your schedule, and your heart and ask, “Is this still serving me? Is this still aligned with who God is shaping me to be?”
Before the calendar flips to 2026, I want to invite you into a simple but powerful practice: a life inventory.
Not just decluttering your closets to prepare for what’s new… but decluttering your commitments, your habits, your rhythms, your expectations, your spaces, so you can carry only what’s healthy and holy into the next season.
Let’s walk through it together.
1. What Needs to Stay?
What’s Life-Giving? Not everything needs to be tossed. Some things simply need to be celebrated and strengthened.
Ask yourself:
- What routines helped me stay grounded this year?
- Which relationships added joy, peace, accountability, or purpose?
- What boundaries kept me healthy?
- What commitments still align with where God is leading me?
- What made me feel most like myself?
This is where you name the good. Keep what is fruitful. Keep what is feeding your soul, your spiritual life, your leadership, and your peace.
Make a “Favorites List” of favorite places in your home, favorite rhythms, favorite memories, and favorite habits. Anything that helped your family flourish…keep it.
If it produced fruit, God may be asking you to steward it deeper in 2026.
2. What Needs to Go?
Release What’s Heavy, Distracting, or Done. This is the part we usually resist, but it’s the part that sets us free.
You cannot step into a new year carrying old weight.
Ask yourself:
- What drains me every time I say yes?
- What habits are sabotaging my peace or my calling?
- What clutter, physical, emotional, and digital, is blocking clarity?
- What expectations am I carrying that God never asked me to carry?
- Where do I feel resentment or exhaustion instead of purpose?
Letting go is not failure. Letting go is obedience. It’s stewardship. It’s spiritual maturity. Go room by room and heart space by heart space. If it’s broken, outdated, unused, or unloved… let it go. Sometimes God can’t bring the new until you release the old.
Your “no more” becomes His “now I can.”
- What Needs to Grow?
- Identify What God Is Breathing On
Decluttering isn’t just subtraction; it’s making room for multiplication.
Now ask yourself:
- What area of my life is whispering, “There’s more here”?
- What dream have I been carrying but not nurturing?
- What habit, when strengthened, would elevate the entire year?
- What spiritual discipline is God inviting me to expand?
- Where am I seeing momentum, even if it’s small?
Growth isn’t always about hustle. It’s about alignment. Choose one area in your home and your life to intentionally upgrade in 2026. A space. A system. A rhythm. Growth is about stewardship. When you grow what God gave you, He trusts you with more.
- The Inventory Ritual
- A Simple, Repeatable Process
Grab a notebook or your favorite planner and create three columns:
STAY | GO | GROW
Then walk through each category of your life:
- Home
- Digital life
- Schedule
- Relationships
- Spiritual practices
- Habits
- Health + wellness
- Finances
- Work + calling
- Mental + emotional space
Look at every category honestly.
Not with shame.
Not with comparison.
With clarity and vision.
You’re not just cleaning up…you’re preparing the room.
3. Step Into 2026 Light, Clear, and Ready
You were not designed to carry everything.
You were designed to carry what matters.
Decluttering is not about perfection.
It’s about freedom.
Before 2026 arrives, take time to clear space for what God wants to grow in you.
Your future thrives when your present is ordered.
This is your invitation to step into the year ahead: lighter, clearer, more aligned, more intentional, and more you. When you declutter your life, you don’t just create margin; you create room for miracles.
Let’s set ourselves up for the best year we’ve ever had!
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