Other People’s Clutter
Having a loved one who struggles with serious clutter problems can be devastating. If you have to live or work with such a person, it can be frustrating to have another person’s stuff encroaching on your space. And even if you don’t live with the person, it can be sad if they refuse to host your visits or if you simply don’t feel comfortable around all that clutter. You might even see how a cluttered environment makes them feel confused, frustrated, and disorganized.
Naturally, you’ll want to reach out to help, but getting people out of their clutter can be fraught with difficulty. The person you want to help could feel insulted or pressured and push you away. Even if your help is accepted gladly, you may find the process maddening. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, after all, and you may find that the person simply has too many “treasures” where you see only trash. Even if you meet with some degree of success after everything is said and done, the clutter may simply accumulate again; all your hard work could be for nothing. There are many reasons why helping others clear clutter is a delicate situation and one that should be approached carefully and in stages.
Gaining Perspective
A sense of perspective will be needed both for you and the person you are offering help. First, take a look at the problem as if you were looking at it from the outside. If the person is close to you, like a child, spouse, or roommate, consider your own reactions objectively. This way, your own frustrations can be solved independently. Since you already know how the clutter is affecting your own emotions, take a look at how it may be affecting your loved one. Is he or she unhappy because of the clutter? Are there problems finding lost objects or using the available space in the home as it is intended? Is the situation a fire or health hazard, or could it be problematic for small children who might visit?
Remember that giving your loved one a sense of perspective could be very difficult; that person may have spent years habituating to the clutter. What may be shocking and uncomfortable to you could be familiar to them.
You may need to reach out for some help from mutual friends to help your loved one understand that the clutter is affecting more than one person. Keep in mind that your intervention should above all be gentle. Ask curious questions and be dedicated to helping your loved one solve the problems he or she sees. Try asking, “Help me understand. What is the most challenging thing about clearing clutter for you?” Remember that giving up possessions can make people anxious, and the person might lash out if it appears you are using a threatening or accusatory tone. Try to collaborate and problem solve while politely ignoring any excuses that don’t make sense.
Use “I” messages to make the problem about you and not your loved one. Here’s a sample “I” message format. “I feel _______ when [your clutter affects me in the following ways]: ________. Please help me by ________.” For example, “I feel anxious when we are late because you can’t find your car keys. Please help me by clearing the clutter on the countertop and finding a permanent place for your car keys.” Or, “I feel sad when I can’t visit you during the holidays because your beds are too covered with clutter to have guests. Please help me by clearing space for me to sleep.” Or, “I feel angry when I bring your grandchildren to the house and there are dangerous things on the floor that could harm them. Please help me by clearing the clutter and childproofing your home so we can feel safe enough to visit.”
Teaching others to simplify,
harmonize, and reflect
It may help to show the first chapter of this book to your loved one before you get started so that he or she knows what you’re doing. Somebody who has always lived a cluttered life may have no idea what the constant cycle of housekeeping looks like. Don’t get frustrated if the solution seems obvious to you. Your loved one may have never seen the process of clearing clutter in action in a way that was positive and fully within his or her control.
Step 1. Teaching others to simplify
Of course, the first simplification phase is going to be the most challenging. As a result, try to take baby steps and go slowly, allowing your loved one to have as much control over the process as possible. Be there to help by being the brawn for lifting and the brains for prompting. Be the driver of the car that will take things immediately to the dump and to a charity drop-off point. Help guide your loved one by asking questions like “Do you have a purpose for this object right now, today?,” “Do you have a permanent place for this object right now?,” “Have you used this object in the last six months?,” and “Who else could use this more than you?” If you run across something the person is “saving” for somebody else, ask who it is for and when it will be given, and arrange for it to move as quickly as possible from the home.
If you run into opposition when trying to throw away something broken or something you think is clearly garbage, have compassion: your loved one is probably feeling a lot of anxiety right now. You can ask him or her to rate their anxiety at getting rid of the object on a scale of one to ten. Guide him or her to walk around the house and select something with a much lower anxiety rating to throw away. Remember that this process of gradual exposure to anxiety will have to be repeated many different times on many different occasions.
Don’t let your loved one get burned out on the first cycle of simplifying. After successfully facing a mild to moderate level of anxiety by getting rid of something, back off and let the person take some time to harmonize and reflect before starting the simplification process again. By moving through the cycle, your loved one can begin to trust that the emotions that come up will resolve themselves.
Step 2. Teaching others to harmonize
Encourage your loved one to focus on other things after the first simplification cycle is complete. Perhaps there are intellectual, creative, or spiritual projects that have been left undone. These distractions will help to balance out a life that may have been previously focused on material clutter. This is also a good time to get mutual friends on board with the clutter clearing plan and encourage them to give experiences instead of stuff to your loved one for holidays and other occasions.
If housecleaning is something new to your loved one, be explicit with instructions on how cleaning the home should be accomplished. When I was learning how to clean my home after clearing clutter, my best friend put together a schedule of which rooms to clean on which days (like the one in chapter Two,) and I am forever indebted to her for making it. Customize a weekly schedule for your loved one’s home and demonstrate what cleaning each room looks like. Your loved one might not realize, for example, that washing windows and dusting baseboards are a regular part of cleaning a room. Whenever possible, demonstrate with concrete examples and do the work together. Housework can be such an isolated task these days; it really is more enjoyable in cultures where several households join together to laugh and chat as they go about their chores.
Step 3. Teaching others to reflect
Set aside a time to reflect about the clearing process so you aren’t just asking these questions in a nagging sort of way. Your loved one won’t want to talk about clearing clutter all the time, after all. And during the process, it may be difficult to find some perspective in the swirling anxiety being experienced. Ask questions like: “What part of the simplification process was easiest for you?,” “What was most challenging?,” “What could make this easier in the future?,” and “Do you have any ideas for how we can streamline any household chores and make them easier to do on a regular basis?” Collaborate together and set up another date to get started on the next simplification cycle and start the process all over again. After a time, you can certainly allow the process to guide itself. At first, however, think of it like teaching somebody to ride a bike. Allow the person to brace and lean on you for balance as long as you can take it and as long as he or she wants the help.
Shared Living
Anger can rise more quickly to the surface if you’re teaching how to clear clutter to someone in your own home. If your loved one is not living up to your expectations, it can be tempting to apply pressure or give ultimatums you’re not actually ready to carry out. Hold on tightly to your compassion and try to work with your loved ones to help them better themselves. As long as they are improving, catch them doing well and give encouragement.
Spouse
A spouse who seems to enjoy clutter can be the pits for someone who enjoys a more minimalist lifestyle. There will be some degree of going above and beyond the call of duty when cleaning up after your spouse, and perhaps allowing your spouse to do more for you in some other area of life. However, the two of you can still collaborate on ways to make life easier. You can also set some boundaries. Perhaps an area of the house or a part of the bedroom can be your space, and in those areas you can keep things clutter-free. Overall, you’re going to have to use a lot of “I” messages with a cluttered spouse, if my experience is anything to go by.
Kids
Children’s lives are getting more and more cluttered. Not only are their bedrooms cluttered with more toys than they need or use, their schedules can be cluttered with programmed activities too. Children may have no natural sense of order, so you will have to be very explicit when teaching them about clearing clutter. Try using photographs to show what an area looks like before and after clearing clutter. Teach your kids how to identify cluttered surroundings. When bringing a new toy home, ask your child to choose a permanent place for it, and whether there’s a toy he or she could give away to make room for the new one. You may want to consider enforcing a “one in, one out” rule, and schedule regular opportunities for charitable giving. I like to have my kids clear out clutter on Thanksgiving to make room for the upcoming holiday gifts that are sure to come; it’s also as a way to practice being thankful for what we have, need, and use.
The gift of boredom
If your children are struggling with an excess of programmed activities, consider scaling down on extracurricular sports and other classes. Kids who only play in organized teams or activities run by adults may not learn some of the problem-solving skills between peers that can be very useful later in life. Allow your children to bicker and solve their own problems, and teach them the skills they can use to ask questions and find solutions rather than always only enforcing your own solution.
If your children are bored, enlist them to help with housecleaning. Ask if they want to take a nap. Encourage creative thinking: tell them that something to do is right around the corner. If you sound like a broken record when they’re bored, they are less likely to find reason to persist in trying to make you entertain them. Encourage them to spend time outside in nature finding new and interesting things to see and do.
Clearing-Clutter Tip: Simplify your kids’ toy displays. Having too many toys out all at once gives the illusion of choice, but makes it less likely that they will play with any one thing for some time.
Place most of the toys in storage, and rotate a few displayed beautifully. Do the same with books so that only a few books are well read and then rotated out.
Roommates
Aside from finding a new one, a roommate who lives with a lot of clutter can be a tough problem to solve. You’ll need to set more firm boundaries than you would with a spouse, and you’ll need to do less teaching than you would with a child. Use “I” messages to zero in on the things that really bug you about your roommate’s clutter. And of course, make plans to find a different living situation if you and your roommate are truly incompatible.
Elders
Some people only develop clutter habits in their old age, due to new anxiety thresholds built over a lifetime or mobility issues. It may be hard for an elderly person to accept that he or she can’t manage the sort of housekeeping done in the past. Encourage the elderly loved one to visualize what he or she would like the golden years of retirement to look like. The new vision of the future can’t look like life used to look in the days when work or family were more important. Work together on making the vision come true, and help your elderly loved one make decisions about downsizing his or her living space and acquiring help if necessary. You may be able to access local resources in your community that can provide volunteers for the elderly who need light housekeeping help.
Office Clutter
Physical office clutter can severely add to mental clutter. To see how that works, imagine you receive a memo about a report you need to give your boss on Monday. If you leave that memo in your line of sight, every time you pass it, a little voice in your head will say, “Don’t forget to do that report!” If you have dozens of such reminders posted on the walls, stuffed in bins, or lying around, those piles of paper will all be chattering at you at once. Instead, as soon as a paper hits your hand, you should file it, add the information to your calendar, or do the work, if it is practical. And don’t keep old calendars, as it’s said that old calendars invite the negativity of the past year back into your life. Burn or recycle them to start anew.
Clearing-Clutter Tip: If you need to keep paper files of daily work, all you need is a total of forty-three files. That’s thirty-one files for the days of the month and twelve files for the months of the year.
In your current working month, after you organize the work for each day, you just need to pull the new day’s file at the end of each work day.
Don’t forget to put work in files that are labeled a few days prior to the deadline, so that you have time to do the work.
Remember that your office space is never quite your space completely. Even if you don’t mind a little clutter, your coworkers may, and keep in mind that when you move on to a new career, somebody will come in to replace you. If all of your duties and organization systems are in your head, there’s no way for anyone to pick up where you left off. All the information you’re keeping in your head also becomes mental clutter for you. Do your company and yourself a favor by keeping well-labeled and managed systems for how your job is done.
Clearing-Clutter Tip: When filing, always place the new contribution toward the back of the file, instead of switching between the back and the front or stuffing it in the middle. That way, you’ll have a consistent and chronological order to your files.
Liquidizing an Estate
When somebody with a lot of clutter dies, the clearing problem is passed on to the next of kin, tasked with the burden of liquidizing the estate. If the deceased named an executor or an executrix, this person will be the primary person selling things and portioning out money to any named inheritors. Choosing an executor for your estate is a very important task. You may wish to choose somebody who is not extremely close to you, because the grieving person could feel terribly overwhelmed with that task right after your death. I’ve also seen many situations in which a hoarder was given the job of executor for an estate. Sadly, that dragged out the process of clearing the estate’s clutter because the hoarder was unable to let go of the deceased’s belongings, even if it technically did not belong to him.
If you have been tasked with liquidizing an estate, it is important to go through the duty as faithfully as possible. Even if you are reeling with emotions after the death of someone you know, the job of clearing the clutter and converting the assets into cash is clear. It may seem cruel to go through the task without emotion, but it is necessary. Your firm but gentle hand on the tiller, so to speak, will be appreciated once the turmoil of fresh grief is over.
Serious Problems,
Help, and Resources
This book would not be complete without addressing the very serious problem of pathological hoarding. Clutter collecting is on a continuum, and there’s no set point at which clutter becomes hoarding. However, you should recognize whether your clutter problem goes beyond the issues a mere book can cure. If your clutter is causing neglected areas of your home to suffer structural damage such as mold or termites, you have more than clutter. If pets or people are suffering health problems because of mold or when a pet can become inaccessible in the clutter, you have a serious problem on your hands. If there is an uncontrolled pest problem, waste is unable to be cleaned up, or you are in danger of losing your home because of bad housekeeping. You will need to reach out for help.
If you can afford the services of a professional organizer, they may be able to manage your problem before it causes any further harm to your life. If you can access health care, reach out to your primary doctor and ask for a referral to a therapist who can help you with your hoarding problem. If all else fails, you may need to call the police and ask for a referral to a safe shelter if you believe your immediate safety is in danger due to the conditions in your home.
Helping an Overwhelmed Loved One
If you see a loved one suffering from hoarding to the degree described above, it is important to intervene and try to help. If you are unable to help, or if he or she is not willing to accept help, you can access local resources for assistance. If a person is a danger to themselves or others through hoarding or is gravely disabled to the point where he or she cannot control clutter at a safe level, you may have to call the proper authorities to help. You may be reluctant, but it’s not your job to dig someone out from their cluttered world. If called, the police may summon a county- or state-designated mental health practitioner who can help with hospitalization for psychiatric problems if necessary. Like me, you may not be qualified to diagnose such things, so you’ll have to delegate when situations become too hard to handle on your own.