When I got back from a 3-week trip to visit friends and family, I envisioned coming home and relaxing. Instead, as I rolled my bulging suitcase inside, I realized I didn’t have anywhere to put it. My living room looked like a landfill. There were loads of clean laundry scattered across my couch, and my floor was covered with miscellaneous debris including an empty storage bin, a pair of shoes, a backpack, a pull-up bar, and a partially unrolled yoga mat. (Side note: I haven’t practiced yoga in over seven years.)
My instinct kicked in and I immediately set to work . . . turning on my computer so I could vegetate on YouTube videos and pretend the mess didn’t exist.
I opened my browser to check for video recommendations. “This site can’t be reached.” I tried another site. Same message.
After going through my usual troubleshooting routine, I eventually gave up and called my Internet provider’s customer service department. It turned out the wind had knocked some cables loose while I was out of town. A technician was on his way–in about four hours.
By the time the worker got to my place, I had folded and put away all of my clothes; cleaned my living room; unpacked my suitcase and put everything away; and even washed, dried, and folded a load of laundry.
By the time the workers (now two of them) had left and my service was back up, I had also cleaned my kitchen and bedroom and rearranged my bedroom furniture.
I was so proud of myself.
Within about two weeks, my place was, once again, a disaster area.
I’ve probably had these jolts of inspiration to clean over a thousand times in my life. Sometimes they last for 15 minutes, sometimes a few hours, sometimes over multiple weekends. But without fail, like the zombies in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, my stuff begins to crawl out of its hiding places and close in around me.
Why does this keep happening?
I feel like I’ve tried everything, from Marie Kondo’s “spark joy” philosophy to “Swedish death cleaning” (yes, that’s a thing) to intentionally renting a smaller apartment in the hope that it would force me to downsize everything else. Nothing worked for me.
But after my most recent, temporary success and subsequent regression, I realized I needed to try a new approach. Instead of trying to fix the symptom by cleaning up my messes, I decided to try to figure out how the messes got there in the first place.
Over the course of a couple of weeks, as I stumbled upon belongings that were out of place or just sitting there collecting dust, I started building a list. Here’s a small sample:
- Three magazine pages my mom tore out and gave me to take home (they now live in a pile of papers on the seat of my office chair)
- Two large “inboxes” stuffed with more papers
- A to-do list containing over 70 unfinished tasks, half of which I highlighted to indicate they’re “high priority”
- Dirty dishes, including a fancy Japanese kitchen knife with hardened cheese along the blade
- Clean dishes that had been sitting in the dishwasher for a week
- Several bottles containing solid clumps of expired spices
- Two beers from 2004 that I’ve been saving to share with a friend who lives 400 miles away, even though I tried another bottle of the stuff years ago and it was disgusting
- A motion-sensitive light that no longer senses motion
- Over 100 unwatched video recordings and unread transcripts from my virtual Spanish lessons
- Thousands of digital photos I only see when my phone gives me the occasional, “remember this day from 3 years ago” notification
- A four-month-old reimbursement check that says “VOID AFTER 90 DAYS”
- A box containing a model based on the 1980 film, “the Empire Strikes Back,” that is almost as old as the movie itself, unwrapped, yet never assembled
- A post-it note stuck to the floor with a shoe print on it and a strand of my hair stuck to the sticky part
Filled with new self-knowledge and shame, my next step was to descend my skyscraper-high list of itemized clutter and, for each entry, ask myself one, simple question: “Why is this here?”
Through this review, I detected a number of themes. These were my top 5:
Theme #1: Distracted before done
Examples: unfinished books, open tabs in my browser, multi-step activities with wait time in between (e.g. laundry, meal preparation/dishes)
I often think of the Pixar movie, “Up.” There’s a recurring theme where a dog will be engrossed in some activity, a squirrel appears, the dog shouts, “squirrel!” and he immediately forgets what he was doing. I probably have over 100 “squirrel” experiences (metaphorically speaking) every day. I might set something down to respond to a text message and then get engrossed in the conversation. I might throw a load of laundry in the dryer, watch a movie while I wait, and then fall asleep during the movie. Every new squirrel leaves new, unfinished business.
Theme #2: Out of sight, out of mind
Examples: Papers in my physical inboxes, messages I’ve moved from my email inbox to other folders; digital notes, photos, and recordings; food in drawers/cabinets
In the first chapter of Marie Kondo’s “the life-changing magic of tidying up,” she has a section entitled, “Storage experts are hoarders.” I am far from a storage expert, but I get the sentiment. I have “homes” for different categories of stuff, but the more removed those homes are from my field of vision, the more packed they get and the more overwhelming it becomes to go through them. This is why I have multiple inboxes for papers, my online storage now costs me a monthly fee, and my vegetables keep going bad before I finish them.
Theme #3: Too much work
Examples: E-waste, sensitive documents, and other complicated disposables; old laptops, “miscellaneous” items
I don’t want to throw e-waste in the trash, but I also don’t want to lug it halfway across town (with no car) to properly dispose of it. Old laptops require work to transfer the data, wipe the hard drive, and then find a place to donate or dispose of the laptop. Then there are all the “miscellaneous” items for which I can’t find a memorable place to store them, so I just put them wherever I can find space.
(I had an excuse for my sensitive documents—I don’t want to throw them in the recycling bin whole, but if I shred them they’re no longer recyclable. However, I just read that shredded paper is generally compostable, so problem solved!)
Theme #4: Negative associations
Examples: to-do items I don’t want to do, weeds in the yard that trigger my allergies, a reimbursement check that should have been for more money
These are items I keep running into but don’t want to deal with because they involve an action that makes me uncomfortable. The longer I put them off, the more uncomfortable I get and the worse the situation gets: the to-do list gets longer, the weeds get taller and more menacing, the check expires.
Theme #5: Inflated value
Examples: random power cords, mementos, that Star Wars model
“What if I need this later?” “This is irreplaceable.” “Maybe I can sell this.” I keep so many things because I believe I’ll regret it if I get rid of them. Instead, I end up dedicating closets, the underside of my bed, my garage, and other regions to rows and stacks of boxes. Many of these boxes have moved with me from residence to residence for decades. I end up paying more money to live in a large enough space so I can store all of this stuff and still have room for the things I actually need.
The beginning of the end
I’ve now identified some of the major causes of my clutter problem. I still have a lot of work to do, but I’m much more optimistic that I can break the cycle of making messes and cleaning them up. I can now begin to find a permanent solution.
Do you also struggle to conquer your clutter? If so, before you go through another weekend cleaning spree or buy another self-help book, take some time to evaluate your situation. What habits and thought processes got you to this point?
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