I love pretty things. Pink things. Floral things. Things to put other things in. You get the picture. So when I stumbled across this beautiful pink metal suitcase whilst shopping in our local department store, I knew that I had to have it. Little did I know then, that it was going to teach me a valuable lesson!

At £85, this was not a purchase I was going to make lightly. Of course I already knew that it was the most ridiculous thing to buy for myself. Who needs a bright pink, floral (metal!) suitcase? I even did what the finance gurus tell us to do – I went home to sleep on it. But the pretty pink suitcase kept on interrupting my thoughts and I found myself justifying it over and over. “I deserve it”, “I’ve been working so hard”, “I’ll never find anything like it again”, “I’m a professional organiser, right? I’ll find something to store in it”.

About a week later, I was walking through the same store with my little boy. Imagine my delight when he saw the pink suitcase too! “Mummy! Look at that pink flowery suitcase! It’s a perfect Mummy-thing!  You love it, right? Let’s buy it!” Ta-da! Justification overload. The pink suitcase was mine and we took it home, both of us beaming at our awesome purchase.

Fast forward 12 months, and the poor, dusty pink suitcase has been sitting in my guest room, still waiting for its life purpose to be revealed. It made me so sad; I thought we were a match made in heaven. I honestly tried so hard to make it work. I tried storing gift wrap in it, but it was too clunky. I tried storing photos that needed organising in it, but it was too big. I even used it as a decorative item in our bedroom, but it was too pink (and too painful in the middle of the night when I tripped over it on my way to the bathroom).

The lesson!

So last weekend, I took a deep breath and put the neglected pink suitcase on a Facebook selling group, and it sold straight away. Of course it did – so many other women fell under the charm of the pretty pink suitcase. And you know what? When the time came to say goodbye, I wasn’t even a little bit sad. I love the extra corner of space in our guest room; the guest room that I can now enter without a pang of guilt for spending so much money on something so frivolous. It might have lost me money, but the pretty pink suitcase left me with a valuable life lesson:

If I see something I love, I can admire it and move on – I don’t have to buy it.

I don’t need to own an item to appreciate it.

Even better, I am now scouring my home for other “pink suitcases”; those items that we don’t need, that are cluttering our physical space and thoughts. I thank them for their beauty, for the lessons learned from them, and move on.

What “pink suitcases” can you get rid of, and what lessons have they taught you?