Most of us live in denial about how cluttered our lives are from a material point of view. We collect ‘stuff’ that fills our living spaces and our lives. We accumulate so much of it that it becomes overwhelming, forcing us to live in denial of our hoarding tendencies.
I’m speaking from personal experience of course but I have taken stock, tried to rethink things, tried to be honest, stop lying to others and myself and deal with things that are junking up my life.
At a certain point it become essential, particularly if our storage cupboards are so bloated that we live in fear of them bursting open, a sea of trappings gushing forth into our living rooms, confronting us with what has by now become a personality disorder.
If it’s true to say we live in denial of our stockpiling junk, surely it reflects an inability to deal with things buried deeper beneath the surface because we live in denial of in our busy, distracted lives. It can be hard to look deeper inside yourself, but one thing I am sure of is that I needed to take action to clean up my life. I was at risk of loosing my husband and children underneath a pile of Tupperware containers that have been without lids for a decade or more. I was lying to them and to myself.
I can hear you saying, ‘But you never know, they might come in handy one day’. If you do find yourself uttering this phrase or similar about Tupperware containers with no lids, odd socks, broken toys or VHS tapes, it might be time to seek help. If you hear these apparently innocent words pass through the lips of your partner, you should consider an intervention.
‘Come on,’ I hear you say, ‘aren’t you being a little dramatic?’ If I hadn’t experienced the sense of freedom that comes from dealing with my various collectables I would agree with you, but since systematically going through and throwing out all the things in my life that were not in use I have a renewed vigor. I feel cleansed, purged of things that were holding me back. Only on reflection can I see what a problem my attachment to everything I have ever owned was, and how in denial I was that it was a problem in my life.
I’m not saying you have to be obsessive, chucking every sentimental piece of property into the garbage and de-personalizing your home. After all, our quirky little traits are what make us human. But if you have a box full of different kinds of toy ducks that you collected during your early adolescence, you might want to consider tossing them out.
By hanging onto these old things you might be hanging onto something in your past that you need to let go of in order to move forward. That was certainly the case for me. When I threw away the box of posters I had on my wall as a teenager, the brush I used to comb my cat with, my broken pottery masterpieces, etc. I felt free of the burden of it all, and able to embrace a new me.
But why do people lie about their hoarding tendencies? Where do I begin? The answer is you just begin. Just start to bring some honesty to the situation and slowly the denial will erode, and little by little, your lies will dissolve. Something that helped me take my first step was to allow myself to keep one or two small items from each phase in my life, but you must be careful that you don’t end up after a day of sorting with everything still in the cupboard, just in a different box.
Encouragement from those around you when taking on this life transformation is important, but more important still is that the responsibility for throwing things away rests solely with you. It was critical for me to learn to delineate between things with meaning and junk.
A diary from my first trip to Paris may be a meaningful possession. A collection of napkins gathered from every café I ever visited may not. A photo of my 9th grade boyfriend might be of sentimental value but a lock of his hair in a little box may not. In forcing yourself to make a decision, you are actually going through the psychological process of dealing with it, not maintaining your denial of the elephant in the living room closet.
Please believe me when I tell you what a wonderful experience it is to clean up your life. It makes you treasure what is truly important to you, your family and friends, and the things that are meaningful to your existence. These are the things you want to be surrounded by, not the things you may one day, possibly, ‘you never know’, ‘I’ll keep it just in case’…
About the author: This article was written by Melanie Dugan. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Greenhill.