I’ve had quite the interesting experience with this of late and even over the past couple of years and became so excited about the topic when I thought of it this morning, that I felt compelled to write about it. I guess most people think of clutter as in junk lying around the house. And that is definitely part of it.
On the odd occasion I don’t mind to watch those hoarding TV shows and I NEVER watch them with judgement. I find it fascinating the reasons why these people hoard because to me, the reasons are quite often identical to those with weight issues and other addictions. And it is an addiction. It’s a mask for something else going on. But for most of us, we’re not really hoarders in the true sense. We just accumulate ‘stuff’ over time and don’t seem to have the time to deal with it. I was one of those people!
I left home at 21 and moved interstate. And not just interstate – I moved quite literally to the other side of the country! I moved from Adelaide, (the capital of South Australia for those of you reading this outside of Oz), to Perth, the capital of Western Australia. Now I moved over there on a whim – as most 20-somethings do – and chased a guy. I packed a suitcase and little else and thought I would just see how things go. Well, they went okay – I ended up staying 5 years but I still left a lot of my ‘stuff’ back home at my Mum’s place in Adelaide. Since then I’ve moved a great many more times – to Melbourne, back to Adelaide and back to Melbourne yet again. During that time I got married and moved in with my husband his ‘stuff’. And believe me, he had WAY more than me! Then our ‘stuff’ seemed to spread to his Mum’s place, a storage unit, a country property we owned as well as our own home. Now we lived this way for the better part of 10 years. We, in effect, were buying and selling real estate in order to fund our dream home. And we bought that just over 3 years’ ago.
Our marriage ended and I suppose that was probably the catalyst for us going through all of our ‘stuff’. That and his Mother going into a nursing home too. But for most of us, I am thinking it’s probably the same. It takes some kind of cataclysmic event to actually prompt us to start going through our ‘stuff’ and organizing it. Now remember, we had ‘stuff’ in 5 locations – my Mum’s, his Mum’s, our country property, our home and a storage unit. It eventually took us just over a year to extract all of our ‘stuff’ that wasn’t at our main place of residence and sort through it all. Now let me tell you, it certainly wasn’t easy and like I just said – with us both working full-time jobs, it took well over a year to complete.
Part of the process was painful – looking at memories. But a great deal of it was incredibly liberating! Opening boxes that weren’t labelled was like Christmas! Seeing belongings that I had packed away well and truly over 10 years before and re-discovering them was beyond exciting. There’s also equally something deeply spiritually fulfilling in choosing to either give things away or take them to the tip. It just felt so good. We sorted everything into what was his, what was mine, what was rubbish, what we could sell on E-Bay, what we could each use, what we could donate to local charities. It was fantastic!
For the first time in over 20 years, I can now safely say that every belonging I own is now located where I live. And I know exactly what I have and where I can locate it. I don’t have a garage or ‘junk room’ full of boxes and stuff that I don’t even know what is in there. My house and garages are now clutter-free and I can look around my home knowing what is there and where to put my finger on things.
It is incredibly freeing not to mention the kick you get from making a bit of a buck and donating to charity too. As with most things in life, it’s tough to get started on any large task – I’m just really illustrating clutter here as a metaphor for any large task in your life that you’ve been putting off. Generally once you get into it, you find a rhythm and the momentum builds and then your energy shifts. For me initially, I just felt an enormous pressure to do this under duress and wondered how long it was going to take, why I had to do it now and whinge, whinge, whinge like a child. But once I got into it and found things that I forgot I had, I was motivated to keep going. Now looking around my house and garages I still derive an enormous sense of satisfaction, pleasure and gratitude knowing that it was a huge task but the clarity it gives me now was so worth the journey.
Like most challenges in life right? So if you have clutter around you or some major projects and/or tasks that you have been allowing to stack up, pile up, lie around, I am guessing it is impacting you in other ways. Impairing your sense of clarity? Feeding your procrastination? Forging more excuses? Just get started today. Baby steps. Pull out just one box from your garage and open it. Then make 4 piles – one for belongings that can integrate into your home today, one pile to sell on E-Bay, the 3rd to giveaway to charity and the fourth to take to the tip. Just start with that one box. And let me know how you felt after completing that. It won’t take you that long but I could almost guarantee that the feeling you get from doing that will be immense. And remember also from a Law of Attraction perspective, the Universe abhors a vacuum, so the space you create in your life, can be filled by something else – something that you really want. What that is only you can determine. Have fun!!
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