Clutter

Some years ago I was at a man's house on an inconsequential matter. He lived in a rural setting, on what looked to be an acre of land. He showed me a series of sheds running down one side of his lot to the very end. The sheds resembled rather dilapidated chicken coops and stretch in my memory for miles.

According to this man they were so full of the various items he had collected over the years that he was contemplating building a whole new row of sheds next to the first row of sheds. The items in the sheds were various tools, vehicles (and parts thereof), and so forth, mostly broken, that my acquaintance had acquired. In a word, junk.

This person should have counted himself fortunate to possess an acre of land. Was he planting a garden to grow food to eat? No. Was he planting flowers for their beauty and scent? No. Was he planting a lawn to make his home look better? No. He was using his yard to collect junk.

The sad thing is that this is not (in my experience) an isolated case. Rather to the contrary, I have many anecdotes about people I know who live surrounded by clutter. It seems to almost be the norm, a terrible side effect of rampant consumerism. A kind of materialistic entropy that must in time be the way of all new purchases, however worthy.

Worst of all, I am myself susceptible to this dread disease. Over the years I have lived more often than not surrounded by horrible clutter. Sometimes I have acted to stem the tide, but mostly I have been its instigator. Over the years my sins in this regard accumulated until finally I was faced with a truly daunting task: removing the clutter that was obscuring my life.

Depression

The process of clearing my surroundings of clutter has produced some pretty profound emotional states. Even before I started, my surroundings had an impact on how I felt and acted. The most obvious example is my home office, which occupies a bedroom of non-trivial size in a modern suburban home.

For some years my office had gradually claimed more and more space. At one point it was part of the reason for moving to a larger house. The office had partially eaten a smaller house until there was no room left to live in the old house. Since the move, the office had continued to consume ever larger quantities of magazines, computer equipment, books, and assorted items hard to categorize except as junk. As a result it was bloated and corpulent, overflowing its boundaries and threatening the rest of the house.

The result was that I was unable to work in my office. The entire time I would be in it I would want to get out. I felt guilty being there without cleaning it up, and it was inefficient in a dozen different ways. Yet I could never seem to find the time or energy to do address the sizable task of really clearing it out. I could never bring myself to throwing anything out.

Now don't misunderstand, I was very good at periodic organizations aimed at compressing the junk into smaller cubbyholes in my office. I could always pack in another few items by combining two boxes or just finding some previously unused horizontal space for a new stack of important papers. What I could not do to save my life was throw anything out.

So I found myself facing the dismantling of my office with more than a little trepidation. Some years of increasing guilt and discomfort, knowing all the time that I was one day going to have to face the mess I was making pretty much shut me down for a while. I was literally depressed at the very thought of working on the space.

Some of you may scoff at my terminology. Depression is a very serious and devastating illness. I was probably only "under the weather," or "feeling a little down." Poppycock. I would go into the room to work, sink into a chair, stare at the piles and shelves, and find myself unable to move.

I would look at items and calculate what they cost, remember why I bought them, and realize that I had never actually used them. I would contemplate piles of magazines I always meant to read, but never quite had the time for. The boxes of old computer parts that were kept against future need even though they are only useful in the third world these days due to the rapid obsolescence of computer technology.

I had a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood. I had a great home office, with a lovely window and lots of space. Was I using my home office to earn a living? No. Was I using it as a place to practice a hobby? No. Was it a comfortable place to sit and contemplate or talk? No. It was a horrible mess and I sat in it staring at the mess while it depressed the Hell out of me.

Ecstasy

But I'm much better now. I've been over the office four or five separate times and there are empty spaces on my shelves silently awaiting my slightest whim. An entire shelving unit is gone. There is enough space in the room for a foursome of bridge. The file drawer in my desk is empty. I'm working in my office this very minute and I feel like a new man.

It took a while to get here. I ground through several passes over this room just on stubbornness and caffeine. It was very difficult at first, I didn't want to throw anything out. I was still set in the "store it as long as I can" mentality. As time went on, however, I found myself throwing out things I had kept in a previous pass. The scales gradually dropped from my eyes and I saw the garbage as garbage and how little really good stuff there was in the pile.

Gradually I became addicted to the thrill of throwing things away. I was disappointed each week if I couldn't leave enough extra trash bags by the curb to annoy the refuse collectors. I began to laugh maniacally and mutter about "rooting out evil" as I tossed items into the garbage with gleeful abandon.

And finally, around the third or fourth pass, I began to see the room behind the clutter. I started seeing the floor beneath the piles. Soon the shelves had blank spaces and then I was finally able to consolidate them and remove an entire shelving unit! Finally the piles on the floor were completely gone and my filing cabinets were decimated. The room started feeling sparse and uncluttered and I knew that I was really on my way.

Just as I claim a certain very real depression centered on the clutter, so I also claim a quite palpable lifting of spirits from the removal thereof. The things that we own also own us, just like all the religions warn. Well, if I'm going to be owned by my possessions, I would rather not be owned by junk!

I feel like each useless piece of detritus that I get rid of gives me back some brain cells that were stuck remembering just what that was and where I put it. I feel like my subconscious is freed somehow, a little bit of anxiety removed and the world a little clearer. Perhaps when I am living in clutter the subconscious is not busy remembering, but rather editing what I perceive so that I can wander though the wasteland of my surroundings oblivious to the clutter and thereby escape insanity.

But I'm much better now. I'm more energetic and procrastinate less. I'm more efficient working in my office or the newly cleaned garage. I'm more comfortable entertaining now that the formal areas of the house are also clear. In short, I'm happier the less junk there is lying around the house.

Notes

• Separation of personality from owned objects
• Support Group
• Can it be replaced?
• Rooting out Evil
• Things own you
• When last used
• Unopened boxes
• Throw things in piles and then look at the piles