Clutter
Index
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My storyHi. I'm Katisha, and I'm a clutterer.When I was six, I still hadn't formed the habit of brushing my teeth nightly. When I was ten, I tried to con my RE (religious education) teacher into telling me I didn't have to clean my birds' cage out on the Sabbath because it was work (why didn't I clean it the day before? I forgot.) He said he thought God would understand. When I was thirteen, I shared my bed with about twenty books. Sound pretty normal? How about this: One year in the '90s, I had a series of really bad colds. When I ran out of hankies and tissues, I started wiping my phlegm on the walls. I'm sorry if that disgusts you, but it's true. That's a problem. Oh, and I hoarded sweet wrappers, with the vague intention of mak i ng a mural of them (what?) I still had them until last year, when I cleaned out my old bedroom in my parents' house. I kept all the paper bags my comics came in from 1999-2001, with the intention of using them as lunch bags, until AFTER I MOVED OUT OF COLLEGE. Also because I was too scared to throw them out. The clinical name for this would be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, if you didn't know. Last year, at twenty, I'd been a Pagan for seven years, and still wasn't keeping the holidays, not for want of trying. Who forgets when YULE is? I've done that. [You may be thinking all this is bizarre. It is. If you don't think so, your strangeness-meter may be broken, or else you could have the same problem I had.] I found out about clutter from a link on a frugality FAQ (because I identified with keeping things 'just in case'.) I can't remember when I started reading alt.recovery.clutter, but my first post was on July 8th, 2001. I made a goal of not moving my clutter with me when I moved out of college. I ditched a whole lot. There were things from 1998 in there. I mean school newsletters! Whole heavy boxes I'd shifted three or four times a year, full of paper junk to be sorted. I got through them all. This year I haven't failed any subjects yet, and I formed the habit of brushing my teeth. Really.
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What is clutter?"Clutter is anything we don't need, want, or use that takes our time, energy or space, and destroys our serenity." - The Twelve Steps of Clutterers Anonymous.
What does that mean?The thing you tripped over in the night because it hadn't been put away is clutter. The Boxes of Stuff that you haven't looked at in years, taking up storage space, is clutter. The assignments hanging over your head with the threat of academic failure if you don't do them are clutter. The dust on the top of the door is clutter. The dental/medical/veterinary appointment you should have made and kept months ago is clutter.
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| My room circa '96, right after I'd cleaned it. Note the hot spots on the bed and around the bookshelf/bedside table. | |
Housework? Pooh. That's not a real issue. You just *do* it.Or you don't. Just like you can just make up your mind to be happy (unless you have depression) and you can just stay awake (unless you have narcolepsy) a nd you can just not believe in superstitious rituals (unless you have obsessive compulsive disorder.) In fact, clutter problems are often connected to OCD, ADD/ADHD, and clinical depression. And whether or not there's a medical reason, who would CHOOSE to live like this? Clutter can lose you your home, children, risk your life and those of your family and pets, deny you the use of your furniture and space, lose your job and keep you from getting one in the first place, and keep you isolated, depressed and ashamed. That is a real problem.You may notice that the photos on this page have unnatural colours. That's deliberate. When you're living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) or suffer from clutter, or from something that causes clutter, your thinking can be distorted, and the whole situation can have a nightmarish quality.
What do you do about it?Declutter. Put thing away before you trip on it. Attack the Boxes of Stuff fifteen minutes at a time, at least once a week, until they're gone. Br eak the assignments into managable pieces, and do them (you guessed it) fifteen minutes at a time. Set up routines to handle the dusty house, and one day a week against procrastination like the medical appointments. I'm not there yet.
Flylady's mission in life is to spread the peace she found from routines. She uses the Yahoo!groups list server to send email reminders and testimonials to her subscribers. It's an intense system. Detractors call Flylady domineering, and her system cult-like. I think she completely fails to meet the criteria for a cult, and offers a lot of stability and order, in shiny pink packaging.
Here are some more resources I go to:
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