Friday, January 25, 2008
The Cost of Clutter
An excerpt from Peter Walsh's "It's All Too Much"
"What's (clutter) costing you emotionally?"
"We often hold on to stuff we don't need because we feel emotionally attached to it... Our possessions can remind us of a time past or someone we've lost. A set of china is a family heirloom that one's grandmother loved. This bassinet is a souvenir of an age one's kids will never be again. These cheerleader pom-poms are a memento from 'the best time' of one's life. But it's time to look at the other emotions that come with living in an overstuffed home. No one should feel stressed out when they open the door to their own home. No one has to. Your home is within your control. It should be the place where you escape all negative forces in the world. Your home should be the antidote to stress, not the cause."
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If you are stressed and suffering in a house full of clutter, Walsh's words probably hit close to home. His point is one that we don't often consider when we tuck away one special memento after another. If we fill our homes full with items from the past, some that we won't see for many years, what kind of present are we living? It's easy to place a value (both emotional and financial) on our possessions, but what about the value of the space that we lose to these items?
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I have three kids - 1, 2 & 10. Between trying to get the older one to practices, school etc... and trying to get through the little ones being...well, little I let the "stuff" build up in my house.
At some point a couple weeks ago I felt like I couldn't even breathe. I was stressed out trying to manage all of my crap and it was literally killing me.
I could never find anything. I was panicked about what I could be forgetting and I wasn't living my life. I had project that I wanted to get to but never could because I either couldn't find them or I didn't have time because I was wading through everything. I lived in fear that someone would knock on my front door and then I would have to let them stumble through all of my stuff and then over the 4 foot baby gate and they would think I was crazy.
I had piles of stuff in my basement (and all over the house) of things I was intending to get to or sort through but it just never sort of happened. I spent my time moving my stuff from place to place but never making any progress. I had planned to have a yard sale with visions of clearing $1000 but that was unrealistic and even more so when the month became November and the cold weather set in.
So one day I got up and got rid of it. Really. I have, to date, made 4 trips to our local dump (we have a trash to treasure there - some went into the trash but some was reclaimed by people who can use it), 10 huge trash cans full was picked up on our curb and 2 loads have gone to Goodwill.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have those piles like you see on the TV of people who hoard for years and years but it doesn't take long for things to get out of hand. For me it took 2 1/2 years - while my little kids were babies.
I am not done -but I am better. I can find things and I can actually breathe in my own house. Life is soooo much better.
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