DeCluttering: Inspiration, Success Stories, Tips

[sKePTiKal]

ooooooh. WELL DONE Hops.

I still piles to go through... and distribute.

[teartracks]

Hops,

Whew!   

tt

[Twoapenny]

Hops I am so happy to read that you did this and it is finally OUT OF THE WAY!!!!!!!!

I know you say there is more to do but you must be feeling relieved that this big obstacle is finally shifting!  I know when we've done house moves before the sheer amount of work that needs doing - by a certain date and time - is just so overwhelming.  Like you, I always wanted someone else to come help me - not necessarily because I couldn't do it by myself but just because it's nice to feel like someone gives a s**t, you know?  Everything is quicker if someone comes and helps, and it's really nice to stop and have a cup of tea with someone when you take a break instead of standing there on your own.

I'm glad you've got rid of some of that stuff and hope that the rest of it is easier to clear out now.  Still wish I were a neighbour of yours who could have come and given you a hand xx

[Hopalong]

Tupp, thank you. I wish you'd been here too.

I don't know if it's directly related to de-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.

When my D was here she was very focused on the stuff, but at that time I had a major freelance job on top of my FT job and absolutely couldn't attend to it, which frustrated her. It was at the top of her agenda but I had two choices: go through boxes with my D or earn extra money I desperately needed (in part to support her).

So it wasn't until now, 9 months after she left, that I was able to get any of it underway. There really is much, much more to do before a sale and move, and most days/weeks, I just get to work and home to collapse. I am not handling it all.

The stuff itself is the dismantling of a comfort zone, too. Like a tapestry that used to keep me warm. At the same time I am much more comfortable with the notion of having to create a new space, and also the future pleasures of doing that...

Yet I am horrified at the idea I may have to do that alone, too. I literally can't. I am fairly crushed about the lack of help from friends. That has triggered some worse feelings, concerns that I am deluded about my PHamily. (In individual instances that's certainly not the case, but with one key friend, I think some fog cleared from my eyes. I love her but think she really is about PHair weather.)

I will get back to general anxieties on another thread because I do want this one to be talking about clutter, stuff, simplicity, clearing out issues.

The more I get rid of, the better my fantasies of a new space feel. (And the smaller.)

Anybody else get the sense that knick-knacks or unused but familiar objects become like favorite sweats?

(Kind of shabby and certainly not aesthetically pleasant but in a sleep way, feel good?)

xo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Hops - maybe this will help. I've not quite thought of this - this way - in it's distilled form, before today:

I matter more to me, than I how I "don't matter" to MomBro. So, Hops should matter more to Hops... and provide for the needs you have... than worrying about, adding up, how much is still left to do. It'll happen. Just not today. That's perfectly OK. It's a process... that you're going through; not a simple task that can be broken down into steps... and just like there's no "right" way to do it... you're not going to get it "perfect" at the first pass, either. THAT'S OK, too.

I agree that something's missing in today's definition of community. That's one of the really striking things about being here - where "old" traditions are maintained - I'm able to connect to those from time to time and it just blows me away that total strangers are so kind, caring, and generous. I really, really want to be this way, too.

[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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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

[sKePTiKal]

Hopsy,

"the community of women"... the mere presence of another is the actual gesture of caring about what you want to accomplish... is enough to release you to do it. Maybe the Shakers were on to something?

[Hopalong]

I enjoyed this article today....
Commenters helped, too.

http://unclutterer.com/2011/07/29/ask-unclutterer-how-do-you-move-past-a-fear-of-regret-when-purging-clutter/

hugs
Hops

[Meh]

Decluttering I think one must do it regularly because I swear it multiplies like gremlins.

Plus the more poor I am the more I want to hoard because I don't know where the next one is going to come from if ever.

I don't really have a hoarding problem I just notice a change in my behavior/ thinking that I must utilize whatever resource or collect anything that is available to me in CASE I MIGHT need it in the future....when it is no longer available.

I like being organized though it removes some stress. Like when an important piece of paper is needed. How nice it is when it's not sandwiched in a book in a bag inside another bag under the bed.

If I get really stressed out or depressed I can visually see a difference in my environment. Maybe it's because my brain goes temporarily haywire and I can't organize or too much anxiety makes it so I don't concentrate or who knows.

There is a whole mind body spirit aspect to the clutter effect.

I wonder how to you feel about your space/habitation dwelling place in general do you like it?

[sKePTiKal]

Hops... bingo!

I didn't read the article, just the title in the link... and all of a sudden "I got it". The struggle hubs has, with letting go his "collections" or stacks of magazines... perhaps some of my mom's issues (though I find myself second-guessing that, on the next breath).... all summed up in the word "regret".

This is a word, whose meaning is almost all emotional and really hard to define, as a consequence. The words that make up the meaning don't do it justice... don't evoke the emotional flavor; the smell and taste of the feeling. A very, very human word, huh? I like to think I don't have any regrets... but that's really just a brave front I put on in the face of some things I lived through, did, was... and can't change now.

[Hopalong]

Thanks, Boat and PR...glad this thread can come alive now and then as the issue comes up for folks.

Boat, my dear. Poverty is terrifying and there is nothing at all strange about difficulty letting go of things when you have a realistic apprehension you'll never have the choice again in future to have a useful object. I think when you have barely anything, each thing has more attachment power.

And I get annoyed by "abundance" teaching sometimes, because...it ain't necessarily so. That said, in your shoes I hope you'll keep what delights you. And let it go, and find anew.

One thing I'm very aware of about you is how profoundly you resonate to beauty. So, my belief is that when you do have a space of your own, however modest...it will be lovely. And "beauty visitors" will always flow in and out of your life. You have learned to, or have been forced to, hold them lightly, let them visit rather than anchor. the functional pieces will be sometimes frustratingly absent, but I know you will always have beauty.

PR, absolutely. I believe regret is real and a lovely evocative and useful word. It's emotional honesty, to use it. I think people confuse regret and shame, in this culture. It's like -- oh we're so into driving forward and doing positive thinking, if we admit feeling regret that means at some point we made an ERROR. Or experienced an unfair or unnecessary LOSS of something we loved.

Well, jeez.
Grief is real, but it's not the same as regret.

I think regret is about mistakes, lost possibility...and perhaps about unfairness too, which is a loss of innocence.

We can go all Frank Sinatra and think our regrets are "too few to mention" -- but, sometimes that might be true (I should be paid as well as he, and be a "lounge poet"). More likely, I think recognizing regret is healing...kind of liberates you, after you've accepted the feeling...to let it go and move into the future.

Wordy to not much purpose, but clutter and stuff, letting them go is like letting go of regret.

(Her article was about not being able to let go of stuff because of the FEAR of feeling regret in the first place. Maybe she has shame or deep unprocessed grief attached to the stuff. Regret is not as painful as those two.)

Either way, feeling it, is what releases it. Avoidance (my major) don't help.

BTW, my friend and I are still swapping moral-support time. What a magnificent discovery. I am so grateful for finding someone with the same need... when I was at her place last weekend, she found her will. I was a little startled to recognize she's even more disorganized about paperwork than I am. (I think because she has money, it's less panic-producing for her...but it still makes her unhappy. So I'm excited I can help her back.)

Tomorrow, two Amazons from my church come to pick up some furniture from my house, to haul it off to the big church yard sale. I am excited about that too!

Boat -- want to describe a thing or two, that have come into your life, and that you want to release? (No worries if not.)

PR -- you're the decluttered one with the functioning aesthetic, and Hubby is the packrat. That's hard. Any "thing" that's weighing on you?

love,
Hops