Everyone has their own favorite thing about Sundays: maybe it’s the sleeping in, the quiet, the slow brewing of a fresh cup of coffee and actually getting to sit and enjoy it.

I have my own giddy moment - it happens every week, probably around 11 am, and it might sound weird but, it’s a moment that fills me up with such joy: it’s when I take out the trash.

Let me explain.

I have this ritual: I go around the apartment to collect all of my trash bins (which in of itself is funny when you think about it and consider that in one apartment I have one, two, three, four trash bins, and they all make sense, to me) and bring them all into the kitchen, where I consolidate them into the main trash bin before I toss it outside.

I always laugh to myself as I do this, because the majority of the time, none of them really need to be emptied, they’re not even close to being full.

Any given bin might just have one random dryer sheet from the laundry, or two wrappers from the protein bar I scarfed down in between my afternoon meetings, or three makeup-stained Q-tips from when I sneezed and messed up doing my eyeliner.

So you might be hearing about this habit of mine and thinking to yourself, “Dude, why bother emptying them right now? You’ve got at least 14 more weeks of protein bar wrappers you can fit in there.” 

You would be right: those bins, they can take more. They’re not overflowing with that mound of trash over the brim where if I tried to toss another tissue inside it would just roll off and fall on the floor.

And to add even more rationale to your point, no matter how much trash is already in a bin, we all know that there is ALWAYS room to fit in one more wrapper. Maybe you just need to give it a good stomp or throw an elbow to push it all down, but you can always make it fit.

So then there’s two questions that remain: 1.) Why bother? And 2.) Why in the world would you be so giddy about it? 

I know it sounds crazy, but there’s something about emptying those bins and seeing the bottom staring back at me: I see more than just an empty bin. I see a bin with all of this space, all this room to take in whatever may come my way over this next week.

In that moment when all the bins are empty, this feeling comes over me of being so ready, so prepared.

Because the truth is, I had no idea what's going to happen this week. Maybe it'll be business as usual, or who knows, maybe I’ll have one of those days like when you come back from IKEA and fill up that whole sucker in one sitting with all the cardboard and instructions and random extra pieces you hopefully won’t wish you kept someday. 

I don't know when I’m going to need every last square inch of that bin, but if that day happens this week, I want to be ready.

And that’s the joy in it for me: that I too, get to be that empty bin that’s not held back by anything from last week.

I don't want to be the one overflowing and lashing out on the people closest to me because I’m already past my emotional or mental capacity for dealing with difficult situations. 

I don’t want to be the one overreacting to something that’s really not a big deal. 

And I don’t want to pack all my stuff down deep inside me, either. I don’t want to pretend like everything is fine when it’s actually really heavy.

I want to be the one who accepts that trash is a normal byproduct of living, and I want to be the one who has the capacity to deal with it as it comes up. 

Because, there’s a boldness in an empty bin -- it says, “Bring it on, world, I’m ready, what do you got for me? Let’s go.”

So the next time you’re throwing away your trash, take a moment and think about it. It’s not just about what you’re taking out, it’s about what you’re making space for. And who will you choose to be, in that new space?

Happy Sunday.