Those beat-up sneakers walked you through a whole year you thought you wouldn’t survive. Retire them with respect.

Objects absorb the periods they were present for. A pair of shoes that got you through a hard stretch is not sentimental nonsense, it is a physical record of days you got through, and looking at them hands some of that evidence back to you. Hard years leave very little proof behind, which is part of why they are so difficult to believe in afterward.

If something you own carries a stretch like that, do not lose it in a tidy-up. Put it somewhere rather than in a bin. And be a little generous with yourself about what you walked through in them.