Tackling Clutter to Improve Your Health

Funny, just today I hauled three contractor bags of clothing to Housing Works. Feels good to ask myself “will I ever wear that again?” and if “no” be able to donate it without any guilt or misgivings.

I’m pretty organized and would think I fall into the “more organized” than “less organized” group. I can live with a mess but somehow think more clearly when things are put away. I don’t think in the big picture about organizing or cleaning. When I see something needs to be pulled-together I can say to myself, “this week I will get at the medicine cabinet” and “clean top desk draw” or “go thru clothes”. I can’t imagine trying to tackle this all at once.

And I don’t keep things I don’t use. Who wants to pack up a 100 boxes of stuff you don’t use if you move and then unpack things you won’t use in your new home.

In a similar vein, there is a group called “FLYbabies” that developed from the CHAOS group (Cant Have Anyone Over Syndrome) and SHEs (Scattered Home Executives). It’s a matter of developing various “coping” skills or habits to help deal with what can appear to be overwhelming choices (as well as meanings) for that clutter. What does it mean to have more? It begins by doing just one thing every day. And just doing 15 minutes a day. (I like the acronym that has grown out of the FLY – Finally Loving Yourself.)

Oh – and memories do not necessarily need a talisman. For some, yes, for many, there are other methods to help evoke those memories. There may be photos of the objects into poster, or a collage that help to declutter. etc etc. Or, as the Hobbits did, give them as “mathems”; we might call it “regifting”, but the object is so precious, that you give it to a dear friend as yet another excuse to go visit that friend, and that dear object. (But, then your friend has to deal with the object!)

My brother and I were recently talking about paying bills. When he mentined he threw the bill away after paying it, my mind nearly shut down at the concept. Not keep every bill after it is paid? When was the last time I had to go back and look at one after paying it? [credit card bills with tax items excepted] Years ago. When we moved this fall, I shredded about 10 bags of unnecessarily saved documents.
We kid outselves that we need so many mementos and that our geegaws might be worth something someday. Look around at your heirs and ask yourself how long it will take them to get your treasures to the Goodwill store. I have great kids, but both are blessed with non-acquisitive natures. [Yes, a person can be non-acquisitive and a slob at the same time.] Neither of them will be interested in 99% of my stuff. What they seem to value is the time spent talking with me. Hmmmm.

I agree completely with Susan, above. The Flylady group is a real find: endlessly supportive but no-nonsense. At first it seems far too simple, that 15 minutes of work and then a break will build organization habits that provide a healthy and organized home and a calmer life. It works very well, but it’s not a dramatic, one-time fix, like having a reality show come into your home and purge all the mess. The group teaches simple, effective coping strategies for “progress, not perfection”, as they say. It also helps with encouraging family members to accept changes, and even gives excellent nutrition advice to address poor eating habits and “Body Clutter”.

The system can be used in any area of life. A fine (and free!) resource that helps people enhance their own homes and lives. At //www.flylady.net/

I don’t have clutter, mess, disorder but another problem related to this article whose premise is engaging- yes, it is a person problem. I live in a family home from 1929 and have four generations of stuff. It is easier to donate or toss my stuff than those other three generations. (A super shred is to divest the chattels of failed romances and marriages. Easy as pie- out with the old/ in with the new.)My mother was a young woman during the Great Depression and saved everything- I mean EVERYTHING- from pieces of string to strands of jewels. I feel great conflict in disposing of “their” stuff and am sure it is a deep psychological quandry. Oddly, my children come back for the toys they thought they distained and outgrew to pass on to their young children. Skip the silver- pass the Barbie and Legos. Stuff seems a form of nostalgia.

The worst case of clutter I ever saw was the mother of my daughter’s best friend. There were stacks of clutter and boxes on every surface. Every floor, every table, even the stairs were lined with stacks of stuff, piled six feet high in some cases. She even used her childrens’ rooms, piling boxes and pushing stuff under their beds. Much of these possessions were broken and unusable. There was barely a walkway thru the mess. And they had a pole barn out back that was stuffed to the brim.

The real horror was the kitchen. It was the most disgusting, pig-filthy excuse for a food preparation area I have ever seen. I don’t know how these people avoided chronic food poisoning, it was that bad.

I’m a clutterer, but I have that reference point. Whenever I look at a stack of paper on my kitchen table, I remind myself that things are basically clean, even if they are a little messy. If I ever get to the point that house was at, I’ll have a bonfire in the back yard and be done with it.

Nearly four years ago, my mother died and I took some of the furniture and nearly everythinhg smaller than that from her 3-bedroom apartment to my 1-bedroom apartment, which was not empty to begin with, even though I favor the Minimalist approach in decorating. As a friend of mine commented:”So now your house is a warehouse!”
All these years, I have been meticulously sifting through her files and looking at her possessions, incorporating into my household what I can and selling or donating the rest. For many things; bedlinen, towels, crockery, books, I am stocked for life. I think hard before buying anything, and usually decide against it.
Cleaning meant that I had to first lug all the boxes from one room to another before I could vacuum, and then back again to vacuum that one.
A year ago, the last cardboard box full of her papers disappeared from my balcony, which I can now use again as a balcony.
I guess it would not have taken this long to sort her archives if I had completed the work in one throw, but it’s so mind-numbing you cannot keep at it for very long.
It feels incredibly good now that everything is in place and my home is visually pleasing and functional again.
I have noticed that with time it has become easier to part with lots of things I first had wanted to keep. Maybe it was psychologically the right decision for then.

I think if you are normal, the shelf of mugs can be both mugs, and memories. You smile when you see them, but if there was a house fire, you would probably be able to create a rational list of things to save, you’d be able to find those things, and most likely, the mugs would not be on the list.

But if you are abnormal (as my father is), the mugs become only so much more than normal memories. He can’t part with one that is broken into pieces, and no longer serves the purpose of being a mug (not a little chip here, he saves shards, because they are associated with a memory). He can’t prioritize which things in his house are important (I doubt grabbing financial papers would occur to him if there was a fire…and he certainly wouldn’t be able to find them, but he would leave his burning home with his arms full of junk).

He won’t get rid of things associated with other peoples memories. Every time I go to his house, I find momentos from my childhood…not major momentos (not baby’s first shoe, blanket etc) that a parent might want to save, but random things…a recent example was photos of my high school tennis team. I was taking the photos, so I’m not in them…they aren’t photos of us playing tennis…my dad never went to one of my tennis matches…we’re talking 15 year old girls playing with a camera more than a decade before MySpace). I started to throw them away (in this particular case, I thought it was creepy that there were photos of younf girls around…other cases haven’t had the creep factor). He panicked, and started babbling about how you can’t throw away memories. I responded that those were my memories, not his, and I didn’t understand why he was concerned with saving them.

He wouldn’t let me throw them away. It took me about an hour to convince him to let me take them home as they are not his memories. He made me promise I would keep them. I threw them away before I even came in my own front door.

This isn’t a new phenonima for him (although I wonder if it is in some ways getting worse as he ages). A few years ago, my mother be very ill. My mothers movement also became more limited. I had to throw away two dumpsters full of cr@p to get the first floor in enough order that the hospital would discharge my mom. The second floor is still crammed with crap, but my mother just doesn’t go up there anymore.

But . . . Ms. Parker-Pope, aren’t you assuming that cleanliness=organization=a lack of clutter=a positive mental attitude? How is this assumption dissimilar from the one that states obesity=lack of willpower?

From TPP — I don’t see any connection at all. I think people with weight issues and people with clutter problems face challenges that have nothing to do with willpower. And it’s a far different point to say people are overweight because they lack willpower (a statement i don’t agree with) and people will feel better and have a more positive outlook if they can declutter (which I do agree with) One is blaming a person for their health problem and the other is identifying a positive outcome from addressing the underlying health issue.. But neither issue has a simple or easy solution.

I am an empty-nester who moved 3 times in the past 4 years (sold big house-renting-built not so big house) and so I have gone through the kernel of this problem many times. In unpacking my office last month I unwrapped the first drawing by my 28 year old daughter’s hands. It was framed and had hung proudly in the old homestead but had been packed neatly away these past 4 years. Do I a)hang it up b)re-wrap and store in basement or c)throw or give away?
After a lengthy cry and self-analysis I chose b…after all, she may just want to show it to her future child some day right? Oh and I am a hoarder married to a thrower awayer, otherwise we would would be swimming in memories.

I’m happy (I think) to see some attention paid to this problem. I can testify that it is far more common than the average healty person would think. The “hoarding” described in the article can and does manifest itself in many ways, being the visible symptom of some quite horrific underlying problems, and can have results far beyond simply loosing track of your basketball.

In my case, I believe it is one of the root causes in my being recently divorced. Yes, I’ve actually been displaced from a marriage of 27 years, by garbage.

Though the above oversimplifies my fate, I’d like to say that the problem being discussed here is deserving of the same kind of attention any other raging mental illness recieves, in that it can and quite often does take on life wrecking proportions that are easily ignored until it is too late.

Happy New Year, all! The comments thus far are such a richly nuanced expression of the multifarious reasons for saving, cherishing, and failing to edit (in a timely fashion )the ‘stuff’ and things of our lives! I now have what I call ‘the pile’ in my living room – the result of emptying two storage spaces. I have previously de-acquisitioned countless cubic yards of things that belonged to my beloved late Mother, Grandmother, Father, and Uncle.

Then there are my own things. I have learned to donate to charity, share with friends and judiciously recycle as ‘gifts’. I put a substantial amount out on the curb and it gets recycled in some of the most serendipitous ways. (Arty types pick up my late artist mother’s treasures that I appreciate but won’t be using in my own art.) Some things acquire a new life in the hands of the next ‘owner’/finders from the curbside. Other things simply get trashed and tossed.

And, with time ticking on and a new year begun, I’ve realized that it takes time to go back over each ‘thing’, each paper (even though they might be imbued with memories), and that simply living in the present is gift enough. It’s okay to ‘let go and let God’… help in this matter.

When I make space in my life for me, I can see what new life sprouts up! I’d rather see the new life than get lost in the clutter, literally!

May your life be filled with wide open spaces to breathe, and create, and simply BE!