Purging (Downsizing Continued)

2005-01-10T23:49:00.000-06:00

I'm a reality TV junkie when it comes to the "clean up your act/house" shows. I think my initial infatuation with them had a lot to do with the fact that these people were always orders of magnitude more cluttered that we are - and trust me (or just ask Bettina and Tom), that's saying a lot. Who wouldn't love watching something that let you rationalize things a little. See? It's not really all THAT bad. Um. Yeah. Hmm.

As with many things, I can be inspired to shift my perspective in a very brief moment, but it often takes time to cement that new vision, to become fully comfortable with it. And I have to say that I have been inspired by these shows, which is a good thing considering the state of our house at the moment. For those of you who don't know, we were "washed clean" so to speak by an errant washing machine hose one morning before Christmas as we slept in. I have come - not kicking and screaming, but rather more stunned than anything - hard up against the clutter, the dust, the grime, the disorganization, the piles of wrinkled, moldy ruin of beloved books and photographs, the roughened, flood-stained wood furnishings, the electronic appliance drownings, and the overwhelming task of figuring out what to do with it all.

I am so ready to be done with this dance marathon of packing and shifting things around. I have tried as I box things up to do an initial purge, to banish things I know I'm ready to get rid of. But after almost daily trips to Goodwill, and a dozen garbage bags in the driveway nagging me for the trash stickers I keep forgetting to buy, it doesn't seem like I've even made a dent.

So, what have I learned from Clean House and Clean Sweep? Haha. It would be easy to look around and think I'm fooling myself. But I really have learned a lot, and come a long way in my thinking, and the truth is that I started purging well before the flood. It just wasn't happening quite fast enough to satisfy the washing machine gods, I suppose.

For me there is an element of being overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of decluttering and purging our house that creates a lot of inertia. I sometimes call it laziness, but I know that, given a more manageable job of sorting and organizing, I do just fine. I also do fine with other people's stuff. OH. Yeah, that's another clue.

The real eye-opener of these clean-up shows is not the magic the organizers and designers work in taking junk heaps and turning them into functional spaces, though that is fun to see. No, the priceless part is learning to look at why we keep the things we keep, why we organize them the way we do - uh huh, even piles all over the place are organization of a sort - and how we can start getting those underlying needs met that are keeping us from letting go and putting our things in a kind of order we can live with.

There's a monumental reframing that happens to people as they come to grips with cleaning up. A reframing that helps people see how clinging to material goods has a high cost. It clutters our lives, our minds, our houses, creates chaos where we want peace and order, and it doesn't stop there - all of this is something we tend to pass on to our children, both in terms of material stuff and emotional baggage.

There is often also a reframing of the way people see their organizational skills. Many of us who are very visual try to have everything we need out where we can see it. Piles. Stacks. Eventually covering every surface. Things get buried. Chaos, right? Not if we can learn good ways to organize things visually.

Why do I keep things? Do you really want to know? Yeah, I was afraid you would. Snort.

1) Not wanting to throw away perfectly good stuff. Even more commonly, it's the intention that I don't want to throw it out, but there's someone I want to give it to, or I want to donate it, but because I don't do it when it's right there in front of me, it falls by the wayside.

2) Thinking we might still use it. I saved boy clothes for a girl. A girlie girl. Duh. She helped me wise up about that more quickly than I did with most other stuff though. Books I enjoyed once but will never read again.

3) Not wanting to hurt people's feelings. You know. Useless gifts. Hand-me-downs that don't fit. The clock that's in my underwear drawer. My siblings gave it to me as a wedding present 15 years ago.

4) Precious memories. Attaching value to objects rather than the memories they evoke. Aided and abetted by children who want to keep everything they've ever made.

5) Lack of diligence in sorting the small stuff - or any stuff - on a regular basis. Odds and ends, bits and pieces, accessories to things we no longer own.

6) Not sure where it goes or what to do with it if for some reason we do need to keep it. This is where the paper tiger attacks. And lounges around uninvited while we all try not to disturb it too much. Uh huh. You should see my desk.

7) Not having had "things" while I was growing up. What we did have really was dear. It was hard-earned and very much wanted, or we didn't have it, because there just wasn't money for anything else. It's a learned response to treat everything that way still.

8) Buying too much in the first place. For me, it's seeking more excitement, enjoyment, exploration, etc. than anything else. I seem to have a voracious appetite for books and other things that will engage my mind for a while. And I get a lot of joy out of finding things that will do the same for my kids.

9) Not having a realistic idea of how much stuff it's reasonable to keep in our space, setting a limit, and sticking to it by removing something before adding more.

Those are most of the biggies. And then there are the useful rules of thumb for the actual sorting process. Tricks to get started and cut the task down to a more manageable size quickly.

Clothes are easy - if it doesn't fit or doesn't look good on you, is stained or otherwise damaged, you hate it, or wouldn't ever choose to wear it if there's something else clean, or you haven't worn it in more than a year, get rid of it.

Memorabilia - if it's packed away or otherwise gathering dust and you're never going to put it on display, kiss it goodbye. Take a picture first if you feel the need. Do you really want that dusty old stuff giving your grandchildren asthma long after you're gone? And I have to say, it was a huge relief to give the job of getting rid of my mother-in-law's clutter to someone else. I don't need decorative plates from places she never went or old empty perfume bottles to remember her fondly, and I certainly don't want my children to have to deal with my clutter when I'm gone. I'm going to try to hold that thought as I continue purging my own stuff.

My books are easier to sort through than I imagined they would be. It's extraordinarily rare that I read a work of fiction more than once, so I've found I'm comfortable getting rid of those as soon as I've read them (which doesn't take long, usually). The rest has to fit into my bookshelf with a little room to add a new book here or there, and tossing everything that was too dated reference-wise, or just not something I'd found a need to go back to more than once was enough to make everything fit nicely.

I'm actually looking forward to tackling the kitchen, and I even did a bunch as I packed. There's a lot we just don't ever use, and I don't have any particular attachment to it.

I could probably go on for a while longer, but we're scheduled to have breakfast in bed to the tune of the tile demolitionists hammering away in my living room - if I can figure out which box I put the cereal in.

Downsizing

2005-01-10T22:41:00.000-06:00

Just copying something Bettina wrote over to here:

Nancy asked me about our recent downsizing attempt as we moved from a large, storage-space-abundant home to our current "micro-living" arrangement. I decided to post this here because I am sure that all of you have something useful to contribute and we can all benefit from the "group wisdom" and support.

First off I need to counter any congratulations for our current situation with the admission that we still have a 10x20ft storage unit filled with the "what do we do with this?!" stuff. That said, I will go through some of the things that we learned from the experience so far.

1. Kind of obvious but, start with the stuff that you have negative feelings about. The clutter, the clothes that reminds you that you were thinner/hipper/whatever, the stuff you curse at every day because of the dust it gathers or the bruises you have sustained as you trip over it.

2. Also obvious, start small and go slow. It takes a while to adjust to the loss of even stuff that drives you nuts. Self-empathy works much better than guilt.

3. Maybe less obvious, start with your own "stuff" not your spouse's or kid's. Once you have learned self-empathy you are much more empathetic to others. Try not to judge those less exuberant than you about this downsizing project. Use nvc to find strategies that get everyone's needs met.

4. Celebrate the journey and try to let go of your dream destination: a neat, tidy, perfect house. It is as imaginary (and toxic) as the dream of perfect parents or perfect children.

Hope this was useful to some of you.

The Benefits of Procrastination

2005-01-09T22:11:00.000-06:00

No, it's not nearly as profound as you might think. It's just that creating our blog was much more interesting than putting even more of our belongings in boxes and moving furniture around. So, now we have a place to post our stories where they'll hang around for us to use and enjoy instead of drifting away into oblivion.

Creative Village

Purging (Downsizing Continued)

Downsizing

The Benefits of Procrastination