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DeCluttering: Inspiration, Success Stories, Tips
Meh:
As long as you have the main items that you utilize or that really add to your enjoyment in life then the rest is superfluous. So good job!
Plus, for better or worse clutter will spring up in a few months again anyways, just in case you are worried about getting rid of too much or the wrong items, stuff is guaranteed to amass just like that big raft of floating plastic refuse in the middle of the ocean.
--- Quote from: Hopalong on May 01, 2011, 11:54:33 AM ---I don't know if it's directly related to cluttering but a large part of the pain of it was the loneliness I feel in dealing with the debris of a former home and former family, doing that alone. It's the feeling of being a kid in the middle of a rubbish heap with a teaspoon and a sense of dire consequences hovering.
--- End quote ---
Emotional ties and overwhelm.
I think there is also a fear of the future tied up in stuff from the past.
Once you get rid of the old stuff it really does mean you have to 100% go into (be) in a new stage of life.
It's like different stages have their grieving. And to let go of the stuff is part of the grieving process.
Or maybe getting rid of stuff is like emotional surgery, you know it's going to be painful but it's for your own good?
Maybe you can't wait for it to not be painful, maybe it's painful and you still do it anyways BECAUSE you will be reaching a greater GOAL.
Ouch, Ouch, Ouch, Out, Out, Out it goes?
Maybe you can give some of your stuff to a church instead of the Goodwill, maybe that would feel more personal?
Twoapenny:
Hops, I completely understand what you say about the loneliness of dealing with things. I still feel that very keenly. There is no-one else intimately involved in my life. I have friends, I have neighbours, I have acquantainces - but there is no-one that I regularly spend time with, who would drop everything and come running if I needed them to. I've lost count of the times I've sat crying on my own, physically aching for someone to hold me.
I've often wondered how much of it is some part of me wanting to have a mummy who would have done anything for me? Who'd have fought my corner, stood up for me, whipped anyone who tried to hurt me. I often wonder whether my expectations of other people are realistic; I have to ask myself if I'm asking for a reasonable amount of help from a friend or looking for a mummy figure. It still takes me a while to work it out each time. Which, by the way, isn't meant to imply that you were asking too much of your friends; I think your request was a tiny one and it's pretty crap that none of them helped and that your paid helper turned up late??!! It's hard to pick yourself up from something like that (I've been there numerous times and I've taken, I suppose, the easy way out, I tend to pay people rather than asking for favours any more. I just find it easier, emotionally; someone saying no to a paid task doesn't offend or upset me the way that someone saying no to a request for help does).
I've also found the opposite; I know people who are always happy and eager to help, but they are equally incredibly intrusive and bossy and I don't feel comfortable involving them in stuff. It's hard finding the 'normal' ones in the middle, especially when you have things that need to be done by a certain time and you can't just leave them till whenever.
I feel less lonely now than I have at other times but I think that's because I'm dealing with less now. If we had to do something massive - like moving house, for example - I'd find that a really lonely and difficult place to be in again.
But I'm glad that you've got some of it out the way and I'm sorry there isn't a time machine yet that could have whisked me over there to help you out with it all xx
Hopalong:
CB, you are my mental Martha Stewart (except a spiritual version and without the smugness...). Naaah. That's not good enough. I'll mentally make it up to you for the terrible comparison -- if I were a woman of means I'd buy a ticket when you were ready to tackle that garage and come and help you sort, load (all the lightweight stuff anyway) and plow through it and lighten your burden. Just...OWNING it is such a hassle. (Comes a point when one just wants to say SCREW all this decision-making! ENOUGH with the endless responsibility!)
I know you will be as lightened by that as I am by your inspiring and gentle stories of making serenity and beauty in the cozy scale of your new digs. Thank you. It is a comfort and joy every time I read your vision of making sanctuary. Your voice, and your vision of this way of being, and your repeated reminders (don't stop!) that I will feel a new freedom when I move one day...are incredibly supportive. Thank you.
TT, likewise to you, for that heap remaining in your mother's kitchen. Wow. You describe that paralysis so well--it really has hit you hard there. I'd like to come with you too and just keep a kind and comforting patter going so you simply CAN'T feel fear about letting go of the dead stuff...it's just what you, and everyone, have done for me here. It's that sisterly patter I fantasize about, like an ongoing be-here-now and you're-not-alone-with-this kind of friendly dialogue. In the delight of having support and company, I would NOT stay stuck. (So I'm going to just work on taking that feeling from here into 3-D.) And kudos, by the way, on getting it neatly corralled into just one room of her house.
That's huge. And when you're ready to take the three famous boxes in there (Store, Discard, Donate) -- it'll be easier going. I believe that for you.
Boat, you are utterly right:
--- Quote ---Once you get rid of the old stuff it really does mean you have to 100% go into (be) in a new stage of life.
--- End quote ---
You are exactly right. It IS fear. That's all it is. And everything it is. I busy myself being afraid of the future and that does mean I'm not living well in the present. Thanks for putting it so clearly and precisely. That really helps and I'm going to sit with what you said.
PR, yes...it is about community. I have thought a lot about my asking for help and my response to it not coming as I'd wished. One thing that really struck me, was that in different ways, each friend somehow conveyed to me that I really do matter to them (even without becoming my fantasy sister). Except for one, and in thinking about my relationship to her, which I have even overvalued, I think...I realized we've bonded over each having an Nmother, and in ways I don't like to contemplate (but have contemplated in the last week) -- we each have Ntraits ourselves. Hers, I see, is what lets her be really okay with doing just what she wants and nothing more. No matter what; regardless of anybody's pain. (And she hates yard sales.) I reflected a lot on my pattern of doing most of the reaching out, and all that...really got some awareness about how maybe some old tapes about my mother may be involved in my yearning for her empathy to be more evident. Wow, how the old tapes muddy the new. (Doesn't make me care for her less but it has adjusted my expectations which, overall, I think is a very good thing.)
Tupp...again, bam! You nailed it:
--- Quote ---I have to ask myself if I'm asking for a reasonable amount of help from a friend or looking for a mummy figure. It still takes me a while to work it out each time.
--- End quote ---
I think any individual need of mine might have been reasonable, but you've spotted a question I am wrestling with about why those feelings can get so primal for me, regarding waves of neediness I feel now and then with female friends. (A male friend lets me down? I may feel exasperated, but usually not abandoned -- unless it was a romantic loss...but that's been a while.) That really helped, thank you. That you spot it so openly, helps me look at it more sharply too.
Hope I didn't miss anybody...and please keep posting here any time about clutter and stuff and related overwhelment!
It's really pretty remarkable how much insight into what's running in deeper currents inside, what unfinished business there is...really, what opportunities for growth there are, inside these issues about STUFF.
That's the gift inside the problem, and with all your help, I've excavated more of it than I expected to. Almost as good as the hundred bucks (after paying my pal and subtracting the wasted newspaper ads from getting rained out twice) from the sale!
thank you again, for all these amazing insights and especially, especially, for the empathy.
I know this will come up again (and again) -- the stuff and organization issue is a theme of my life, and maybe working it through here will be a spark for a whole lot of positives. And of course when the sale and necessary move do happen, it'll be happening on a much bigger scale. (How this is also a gift in that a small yard sale is like practice...for that bigger transition.)
love and thanks,
Hops
Hopalong:
I don't know if I should start a separate thread on paperwork, versus THINGS clutter. But I think in my life it's all related. The paperwork has a MUST-do urgency that getting rid of objects doesn't have (because of financial consequences to unmanaged paperwork).
But thinking of what Tupp said above, and what CB said about community...wanted to share this.
I have an MSW friend (professional hospice SW) to whom I described the agony of ADD and how wonderful it is to now know, and have an Rx, but how still hard it is to undo 60 years of bad habits and fear and low self-esteem around it, in order to DEAL WITH the budget, math-stuff of finances, ongoing orderly behavior that's necessary to have things begin to work or feel hopeful.
She has the same problem (not financial, she's had an inheritance and is okay) -- but with FILING. A huge mental block. Has piles of things that have gone unfiled for years (though the rest of her place is pretty orderly). Anyway, she said to me exactly what you said, Tupp...and we have made a time-barter. Just pure company. Not even "help" -- just offering each other presence.
So, a few days ago, she plopped on the floor of my office with some cushions and read her book for two hours, and just having a caring friend THERE...I plowed through 2/3 of it. The starting, and enough company for a little momentum, was a miracle. Not done by a long shot (and avoiding now) -- but this is so concrete. COMPANY is part of the help I need.
So next weekend, I'm going to take some lap-work, and go spend 2 hours supporting her while she tackles her filing mountain. And so forth.
It's wonderful. I have proposed this sort of organizing-help-barter several times to others, but she's the first one to get it, and to take me up on it. I'm really delighted.
And I will not quit asking for help, bartering for help, doing whatever I have to do to get the help I need to get these ADD-barnacled problems dealt with, for the rest of my life.
love,
Hops
lighter:
I wish I lived close enough to time barter with you, Hops.
In the yard.
The filing and general editing of household items.
I have no problem staying focused on other people's projects.......
it's what I did all day today, hanging art, editing, furniture placement, etc. for a friend who just moved.
I wish I could focus like that for myself.
Lighter
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