The Joyful Housewife

How do I even blog under these conditions?!

It is time to begin my Clutter Kick for the year of 2010. I decided on Clutter Kicking instead of Clutter Busting, because it sounds fresh and new to me, and I need that feeling to get going.

Like many others, I’ve searched for answers in the past, but haven’t yet been able to implement them in my life. For instance, the FlyLady method asks you to “shine your sink every night” and I have NEVER been able to accomplish that. Perhaps if I come a this from different angles, I’ll finally be able to do that. Also, I’ve gone onto various websites devoted to organizing and they tend to make my throat squeeze up and give me anxiety. That isn’t helpful in getting my house in order! There is something deeper within me that I need to address.

So, for the rest of 2010, I’m going to explore Clutter Kicking ideas from Flylady.com, Clutterers Anonymous, Messies Anonymous, and where ever else I find useful ideas.

Today, I’m reading and pondering the ideas found in the first two brochures from my CLA kit that I received months ago.

The first idea that CLA presents is that the “dis-ease” of excessive cluttering is threefold - physical, emotional, and spiritual. Instead of giving organizing advice, they focus on providing support for facing the underlying causes of the self-destructive behaviors of cluttering. Like in AA meetings, when you go to CLA meetings, each person introduces him or herself with the phrase,

“Hi, my name is ____________________ and I’m a clutterer.”

Here are the Three Components of Cluttering, paraphrased from CLA’s Welcome brochure:

• Physical: The behaviors that result in the stacks, piles, and objects that fill our homes, cars, and workplaces.
• Emotional: The fog we create in our heads - resentments, unfinished thoughts, emotional baggage, daydreams, worries about the future, regrets about the past. With our minds in a constant spin, we lose today because our time is spent living in yesterday and tomorrow.
• Spirtitual: The deep emptiness we feel inside - that we compulsively try to fill by clinging to useless objects, nonproductive ideas, meaningless activities, and unstatisfying relationships.

Those who join a CLA group make a Responsibility Pledge:

I pledge to stretch out my hand and heart to those seeking help from our compulsion. Together we will ensure that CLA is here for us and all those who follow in our footsteps. And for this I am responsible.

© Paul Foreman, http://www.mindmapinspiration.com/

I like that! I know that when my family pulled together to help my mother this past Christmas and over the summer, I felt a deep empathy for those who are going through this without help or understanding. I am not a hoarder, but my clutter interferes with my happiness and serenety - and my ability to have people over! Whenever I make an improvement, I want to share my experience with others who might find it helpful.

So here I am! I’ll be sharing my successes and explorations in de-cluttering for the rest of 2010 and beyond.

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It’s been abut six months since I received my Clutterer’s Anonymous Starter Kit and I finally opened it up yesterday read through the materials, and put each page in a separate sheet protector in a new binder. I ordered the kit for $15 because there are no face-to-face meetings here in Denver and I thought I might start one myself. Hoarding has been in the news a lot lately, and we’ve been struggling with it personally, in my family. I’m trying to decide whether I have enough time to try to start a CLA group here in Denver before my husband and I move for his job. I’d like to spread the network of support. I think fellowship for people with similar problems has the potential to be very helpful.

After I went through the material, I called my mom and had a circuitous, roller-coaster-of-emotion conversation, that began and ended well. She is exhausted from our recent trip out there (in which we sorted through unbelievable amounts of stuff) and she is quite depressed. (I also suffer from bouts of depression and am suffering from my own mishap this week, in which I accidentally took my sleeping pill for two days instead of one of my antidepressants! Doh!)

The issue that made our phone conversation so difficult yesterday was as follows: Mom was able to accept the label of hoarder for a time, but now it makes her feel very bad. Strangely enough, it was she who first labeled herself as a hoarder! I remember speaking to her on the phone a couple of years ago when she pointed me towards a Compulsive Hoarding website and some articles.  But, it is difficult to find a balance between giving a problem a name so that you can treat it, and giving it a label which is counter productive. I think with all of the current publicity about hoarding, she doesn’t want to be seen, even in her own eyes, as being like those people on tv.

Don’t be mislead by my somber tone! I’m very excited about the possibility of starting a new CLA group in Denver and I am quite grateful for the time that we have been able to spend together working on mom’s storage units and talking about our hopes for her future. It’s just that the issue of dealing with hoarding, or with a recovering hoarder, is complicated for a family and it is a constant struggle for everyone in the family to reach common ground on this issue. There is no one right way to do it, and what is acceptable one day is not going to work on another day.

So I’m trying to move more in the direction of talking about chronic disorganization and excessive cluttering. Cluttering which is out of one’s control and has a negative affect on one’s life, possibly interfering with use of certain areas of the home. CLA is a 12 step program, modeled after AA, and is not for everyone. My mom does not find it helpful. I might give it a try though.

Oh, and as for the title of this post - I truly believe that Life is not a race!!! It may have taken me a long time to finish my education, to get married, to have kids (haven’t actually done that yet), to start a “career” (nor have I actually done that), to open the CLA packet, but what is the hurry? Life is the process, not the product. I like who I am and where I am right now. I don’t need to have “accomplished” more than I have, or to have reached any milestones quicker than I have.

This is especially true with getting control of chronic disorganization or compulsive hoarding. Some family members just want to throw out a lot of mom’s stuff without sorting through it, but if we race through the process, we won’t have lasting results. There needs to be an inner change as well as an outer one.

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I found this video on Unclutterer.com and found it amusing. I’m trying to learn to distinguish what is really worth saving and what isn’t. And I don’t even really mean what is, or might be, worth money. I’m just starting to feel less attachment to things that I would normally hang onto - and I like that!

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