Behind the Ironic Column

The first step in fixing a problem is admitting there is one.  And the next step seems to be getting a book about how to fix it – or, in more advanced cases, writing a book or article about how to fix it.  Or, for those of us in desperate straits, collecting a pile of articles and books about how to fix it – encouraged by friends who keep pointing out things we should read or consider.

That’s sort of how I come to be reading a magazine article on clutter which I just lifted out of an unwieldy stack of books and article on related topics.  So the sources that would give me advice on the problem are themselves a facet of it.  (As a digression, I think this is true in more aspects of life than we want to think about – consider any work or personal relationship that’s requiring too much of your energy just in discussing what’s wrong with it).

The article is full of good tips – and if I weren’t spending so much time reducing clutter then I could have written it myself.  And if I weren’t sitting here drinking my coffee and reading that article, I could be attacking another stack of clutter aka “stuff.”   Not that I have anything against stuff – sometimes it feels necessary to have it.  And any of the good organizers/declutterers who write about these things will admit that the emotional attachment to things is what gets a lot of us in trouble.    The not-so-good ones take a more militaristic approach – just toss it and get it over with.  While that may get rid of today’s junk, it doesn’t stop us from immediately replacing it.  I don’t think one needs long-term talk therapy to discover the deepest darkest reasons for this attachment to material goods, but a little behavior therapy might help.  Most of us actually like the feeling of not having clutter – it’s just the agonizing process of getting to that state that we avoid.  So we need some small successes to encourage that emotional payoff. 

I used to be able to keep all but one room in my house relatively organized – not that there wasn’t a lot of stuff but that it was arranged and dusted and generally looked good in its surroundings.  The other room was a paper disaster but we could close the door.  Then I moved and things didn’t work out any more – too much stuff in too few places.  New kinds of stuff for the new place.  Then there was the obsessive job that required insane hours and work from home –  so neither the various hobbies or projects (the cause of some of the “stuff”) nor the routine household clutter was dealt with. And the new working-from-home concept generated both electronic and paper clutter of its own. 

It’s definitely true that there’s some critical mass which takes over and creeps into every room when you’re not paying attention.  Once it gains momentum it’s difficult to stop – without being crushed (either literally like all those newspaper stories of  people killed by piles of magazines or just figuratively by mass confusion).  But I have good, and relevant, experience here.  I grew up in the south and am more than familiar with kudzu and it’s propensity to overtake everything in it’s way.  And one of my favorite houses had a yard infiltrated by bamboo – a lovely plant but very much of a mind to take over.  So today, as soon as I finish my coffee, I’m going to work on cutting back the tendrils that sprang up overnight.

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