It's All Too Much Page 2

  What’s really important

  Jared and Lisa couldn’t just throw away their excess. For them, none of it was garbage because everything seemed important. Lisa had family photographs she wanted to arrange in albums for Cooper to pass down to his kids. Jared’s office was full of materials he wanted for his company: employee records and business articles that he thought he’d get around to reading. How could they let go of any of it? This was all stuff that they would certainly need one day. “Fine,” I said, “you have too much stuff, but you believe that all of it is critical to you. I understand. Instead of talking about the whole house, let’s talk about the rooms one by one.” They followed me into the family room. “What’s the purpose of this room?” I asked Lisa.

  “It’s the family room. It’s where I scrapbook and, well, Cooper’s supposed to play in here, but he’s always in the kitchen or the hall.”

  “I see. So what you’re telling me is that hoarding photos for Cooper’s future is more important to you than giving him room to play today?” I didn’t wait for Lisa to answer. Jared was starting to gloat. He’d been down on Lisa’s scrapbooking from the start, but I wasn’t about to let him off easy. I went straight to the office.

  “You’re up, Jared.”

  “This is the office. I store my business papers here, pay bills, and we all use the computer.”

  “No you don’t!” Lisa burst out. “You pay your bills standing up in the kitchen. When I’m trying to make dinner.” She turned to me. “We almost had our electricity shut off because Jared lost the bill behind the stove.”

  I turned to Jared, “Is this true?” Jared nodded. “Because of the clutter in your office, some bills aren’t getting paid. But you’re still giving your paper shredding and business papers priority over paying bills and getting rid of the tension that it is causing between the two of you?”

  “That’s exactly what he’s doing,” Lisa said, shooting an apologetic look at Jared. “And I’m supposed to work from home. In that office? What a joke!” We went through every room of the house like this. I learned that Jared had every tablecloth his grandmother had owned stuffed in moldy cardboard boxes in the garage. He knew they were ruined, but he couldn’t let them go. And Lisa was using the messy office as an excuse. She really wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back to work or to take care of Cooper full-time. Their house reflected all of these conflicts. But there was no way to resolve them until they could see what the real cost of keeping these “prized possessions” was to their family. They had to face some tough questions, answer them honestly, and decide on specific actions to change their situation.

  Imagine the Life You Want

  Once I understood the physical space and emotions behind Jared and Lisa’s clutter, I told them that I wanted them to do an exercise that is fundamental to helping people declutter and get organized.

  As I do with all my clients, I first asked Jared and Lisa to imagine their ideal lives. This is a question that always catches people off guard. They expect me to ask for an inventory of what they own, or a list of their collectibles, or even details of their home lives when they were children. My starting point, however, has nothing to do with “the stuff.” I know it sounds strange, but if you start by focusing on the clutter, you will never get organized. Getting truly organized is rarely about “the stuff.”

  To get Jared and Lisa started, I gave them a little help. You’re healthy, happy, and successful. Maybe you have a second child. Perhaps your family lives nearby—or all the way across the world. Your choice. You wake up in the morning feeling bright, energized, and ready to face the day. You know what you want—a rewarding career, a supportive community, minimal stress, a loving family, time to relax, and time to pursue your interests—and you’ve found a way to have it all.

  “Yeah, right,” Jared said.

  Now I asked them to think about the lives they were actually living. Did the stuff they owned contribute to the lives they were hoping to achieve, or was it getting in the way of that vision? Jared said, “I want to be organized, efficient, and smart in how I use my time.” Moments earlier I had watched him spend fifteen minutes trying to find his checkbook. He told me that he misplaced it several times a week. And Lisa had to admit that she couldn’t really imagine launching her new work-from-home plan in a house that looked like this. This is the bottom line: If your stuff and the way it is organized is getting you to your goals…fantastic. But if it’s impeding your vision for the life you want, then why is it in your home? Why is it in your life? Why do you cling to it? For me, this is the only starting point in dealing with clutter. These questions are the ultimate reality check when it comes to what you own and what you have in your home. The first step to getting organized is to work from the vision of the life you want to live. Everything flows from this.

  In the eighteenth century, an English architect named William Morris wrote that you should not have anything in your home that is not beautiful or functional. A tough task. Your home is a metaphor for your life—it represents who you are and what you value. When your house is a wreck, your life starts to crumble. For Jared, who spent fifteen minutes twice a day looking for misplaced items, the cost of that activity alone was more than a week lost every year. That’s not efficiency—that’s lost opportunity!

  You can’t feel at peace when you’re tripping over boxes of golf balls or struggling to find last month’s electric bill. You can’t have a happy family when you can’t even see the dining table. For Jared and Lisa, the damage went beyond the overstuffed closets and overflowing desk drawers. They let stuff mess up their lives, their relationships, their priorities, their hopes, and, yes, their dreams—everything that should have been most important to them. Clutter had stopped them from living the lives they wished they had.

  To a greater or lesser degree, I have seen this happen to hundreds of people. The stuff takes over. At some point there is a shift and suddenly life, love, family, and friends all take second place to the clutter. Think about the words we use when we talk about clutter. “There was so much stuff in that room I felt like I was suffocating,” or “You should see that garage, you can hardly breathe in there with all those boxes,” or “He is really buried under all that paperwork.” We use these words for a specific reason—they aren’t exaggerations. Clutter is insidious, a slow but steady tide. It enters your home little by little, usually over years. Clutter sucks life away. It leaves you depressed, overwhelmed, lacking motivation, and unable to breathe. Clutter prevents you from enjoying the most precious, intimate moments in life. Clutter robs you of far more than the space it occupies—it steals your life!

  I told Lisa and Jared that if they wanted to change, they had to admit that lots of their “important stuff” wasn’t as important as the space it was consuming. There was an absolute limit to what they should own and that limit was set by the space they had. Period. Their stuff exceeded the space they had to contain it reasonably, so it had started taking up the space they needed to live. Put another way, if they wanted to achieve the lives they envisioned for themselves, Lisa and Jared had to start redefining their relationship to their stuff. It may seem obvious, but—hard as some people try—you can’t own everything! “Listen,” I said to Lisa and Jared, “it’s you or your stuff—make the choice!”

  We started in the family room. Jared, Lisa, and I talked about their vision for the room. More than anything, they wanted a comfortable place to gather as a family. They wanted to have empty space for Cooper’s play dates. They wanted a pleasant space to watch TV several nights a week. Lisa finally understood that she didn’t need all the scrapbooking stuff she’d so assiduously acquired and organized when she actually spent more of her leisure time watching TV in a room cluttered with unused hobbies. So she made decisions about what to keep based on the space that she wanted to devote to the hobby. She agreed that half the bookshelves should be hers and half should be for Cooper’s toys. She also agreed that she wouldn’t keep any scrapbooking materials that di
dn’t fit on her side of the bookshelves in closed bins. Jared proposed that she give up on scrapbooking any of their vacation photos. She gave him a gentle punch, but he didn’t give in: “They’re boring and you know it.” Once we knew the vision, purpose, and goals for the room, we went through the whole mess, bin by bin, with Jared alternately teasing Lisa mercilessly and helping her through the toughest decisions. With a clear vision in mind, we had criteria for deciding what stayed and what was no longer needed. Anything that contributed to their vision for that space stayed. Everything else went.

  The sweet spot

  Jared, Lisa, and I spent two days clearing the clutter from their home. We went through every room, figuring out what they wanted from each space and whether its contents served that purpose. We made some tough decisions. Lisa threw away piles of Cooper’s first crayon drawings, picking her favorite three to frame for his room. Jared donated his unused Rollerblades to make room for his new paper shredder. Jared and Lisa made the hard choices while constantly asking themselves, “Does this item enhance the life we want to live?” By the end, Lisa voluntarily threw away or donated every item of clothing she hadn’t worn in the last year. “When I’m through I want extra room in my closet. Just for fresh air.” When it was all said and done, Lisa said, “It feels like Christmas!” and Jared had to admit, “It’s like I just graduated from school. No tests hanging over my head. Nothing is due. I feel free.”

  We’ve all had a taste of that relief and joy. If you’ve ever played tennis or another racket sport, think about when you hit the ball on the sweet spot. You’re laboring to hit the ball, using all your might, but when the point of connection is perfect, everything suddenly feels smooth and easy. Or think of the feeling you have when you’ve just mailed in your taxes. Or when you totally clear your desk before going on vacation. You can walk out of your office, turn off the light, and just know that everything is in its place, right where it’s supposed to be. You’re doing your job and doing it well. When you succeed in decluttering it will be because you’ve made good life choices. And when you’re living by those choices, you’ll experience the joy, the lightness, and the freedom that come with natural order. That sense of achievement can be yours every day, and I’m going to help you accomplish it, step by step, just like I did with Jared and Lisa.

  Jared and Lisa had a million self-help books and endless file boxes and organizing “solutions.” What I did for them isn’t a quick fix; it’s an ongoing process that has changed their lives in almost every way. This book doesn’t waste time telling people how to stick pretty labels on color-coded boxes the way so many organizing experts do. For me, it’s not first and foremost about “the stuff”—that’s way too superficial! It’s about changing your relationship to your stuff. It’s about keeping things that make sense for your life—your real life, not a fantasy of what was or what could be. Stuff is secondary to who you are, and that needs to be reflected in your home and in your life. When you solve the stuff problem, clarity follows. Jared and Lisa did it, and so can you.

  In this book we start at the beginning, as I did with Jared and Lisa. I’m going to help you clearly define the life you want to be living. I’ll lead you through your house, as I do with all my clients, to help you assess the state of your home without any sugarcoating. What is the room? What’s its purpose? What is this item? Does it contribute positively to the life you want? What is the emotion that ties you to this item that stops you from letting it go? What power does this item wield over you? I’ll guide you through the process of understanding your priorities and fixing your relationship with your stuff. You’ll learn how and why your use of space doesn’t match your priorities. That’s the first step.

  But it doesn’t stop there. Once you have confronted the physical and emotional hurdles that cause clutter, we’ll work to overcome the feeling that “it’s all too much.” I’m going to lead you, step-by-step, through the program that helped Jared and Lisa and hundreds of others conquer their clutter. You’ll figure out where your problems lie. You’ll examine what the clutter is doing to your life. You’ll decide what you’d like your home to be like. You’ll answer, as a household, a series of essential questions that I pose to all my clients. As a family, you’ll decide what purpose each room serves and how it should be filled. Work, play, eating, entertainment, and rest are assigned dedicated, functional spaces that give each of those activities a new clarity. Together we’ll break down your house, room by room, cabinet by dresser, and get rid of the extra stuff that is keeping you from living your ideal life. You’ll learn to ask yourself, “Do I even remember what’s inside these boxes? Do I need it? Do I honor and respect it?” I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who still have their baby’s umbilical cord or the first diaper their child soiled (I kid you not!). Is this the best way to preserve the memory of a child’s first days?

  Maybe your problem isn’t extreme—you’re not drowning in clutter, but you’ve run out of space in your house and want to find ways to bring order and purpose back into your home. That’s great! You’ll rethink your home organization and discover new space and clarity. And the good news is, the smaller your problem, the less time it will take to solve.

  If you’re on the other end of the spectrum—a lifelong hoarder—the process will take longer. You’ll have to purge, then purge again. If it’s taken you ten years or more to accumulate your mess, it’s impossible to make it disappear overnight. Letting go is a learning process. You might need to start slowly, and it may take time to discover that not having things makes your life better, not worse.

  Ultimately, the job is done. Tabletops are cleared. Closets are skeleton-free. Bookshelves recover from near collapse. From boxes of memorabilia you’ll have handpicked the most important, symbolic pieces, given them places of honor in your home, and thrown away, donated, or sold the rest. The dining room table that’s been a junk mail storage bin for ten years is reinstated as a family gathering place. The bedroom is no longer overflowing with laundry and toys. It’s a peaceful place where love and sleep come easily. And when everything is finally in order, I will show you how to maintain this level of order for a clutter-free lifetime.

  A year after I helped Jared and Lisa clean up their home, I got an invitation to a party they were hosting. When I walked through the front door, I saw a home that any family could be proud of. Surfaces were clear. There were no piles anywhere. Even when I peeked into the family room, I saw that Lisa had one desk and the space above it was devoted to her scrapbooking. The rest of the room was a comfortable space that was clearly Cooper’s hangout. Every room served a purpose. Everything had its place. Best of all, the house reflected who Jared and Lisa were: a happy, productive, successful family and you could see that on their faces. As Lisa offered me a drink, I said, “Tell me it’s this clean every day!” She smiled and admitted, “We knew you were coming. We cleaned up a little. But it only took an hour.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s success.

  I hope and expect this book to generate discussions between you and your partner and family members that are honest and heartfelt. Change will be necessary and it will be a tough process at times. Compromise is essential, but the end result is worth it. When you’ve finished my program, you will come away with clear priorities and practical new skills for safeguarding them. You will be able to look around your home and see only things that you truly want and need to have in your living space. A home is the beginning of every day. Changing it changes your life.

  Part One

  The Clutter Problem

  1

  This Is Not

  My Beautiful House

  THIS BOOK CAME into your hands for a reason. I don’t mean that in a spiritual way. It came into your hands because you or someone who cares about you believes your life would improve if you could just free yourself from the overwhelming amount of stuff in your home. But there’s a reason stuff is overwhelming: Everything we own has a memory and an emotion attached to it. We often associa
te a person, a specific event, or memorable moment with the things we own. If you could just glance at a room and know which things you absolutely need and what you’ll never use again, there wouldn’t be a problem, but it just isn’t that easy. Most of the time all you can see when you look at clutter is one gigantic, insurmountable mess. You need to retrain your eyes and to reframe how you look at your things. You need to learn how to see what is in a room and how to judge its value.

  It’s All Too Much is a systematic program that I developed from my years as a clutter expert, from going into hundreds of homes and seeing firsthand the challenges that we all face in living the fast-paced, hectic lives that have become the norm for so many of us. So trust me, this will work. Take a deep breath. Hold on tight. Let’s get started.

  Clutter Junkies—is this You?

  Do you have a clutter problem? How bad is it? Take this quiz to find out.

  CLUTTER QUIZ

  Could you have a party without cleaning up first?

  Guests could eat off the floor. Bring ’em in!

  Maybe tomorrow. The living room’s a mess, but I can hide it away in a few hours.

  Um, I don’t have parties here. Can we go bowling instead?

  Do your clothes fit in your closet?

  Of course. They’re hung in order by color and season.

  They fit, I guess, but I have no idea what’s on the top shelf.