Making Peace with the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You-and What to Do About It
293
Making Peace with the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You-and What to Do About It
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Overview
A guide to understanding why your possessions keep overwhelming you and what to do about it, written by a professional organizer and psychotherapist.
Do you spend much of your time struggling against the growing ranks of papers, books, clothes, housewares, mementos, and other possessions that seem to multiply when you're not looking? Do these inanimate objects, the hallmarks of busy modern life, conspire to fill up every inch of your space, no matter how hard you try to get rid of some of them and organize the rest? Do you feel frustrated, thwarted, and powerless in the face of this ever-renewing mountain of stuff?
Help is on the way. Cindy Glovinsky, practicing psychotherapist and personal organizer, is uniquely qualified to explain this nagging, even debilitating problem -- and to provide solutions that really work. Writing in a supportive, nonjudmental tone, Glovinsky uses humorous examples, questionnaires, and exercises to shed light on the real reasons why we feel so overwhelmed by papers and possessions and offers individualized suggestions tailored to specific organizing problems.
Whether you're drowning in clutter or just looking for a new way to deal with the perennial challenge of organizing and managing material things, this fresh and reassuring approach is sure to help. Making Peace with the Things in Your Life will help you cut down on your clutter and cut down on your stress!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429974332 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2002 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 293 |
| Sales rank: | 71,293 |
| File size: | 327 KB |
About the Author
Cindy Glovinsky, M.S.W., A.C.S.W., is a licensed psychotherapist and personal organizer. The program director of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, she has presented at the National Association of Professional Organizers conference. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
PEOPLE AND THINGS
Silver tea sets. Rock collections. Electric sanders. Stock certificates, marriage licenses, college diplomas, hundred-dollar bills. Blankies, hunting rifles, VCRs, computers, grandfather clocks. Boats. BMWs, Lamborginis, SUVs. The complete works of William Shakespeare. Stradivarius violins. The Mona Lisa. The Pyramids. Toothpicks, hooks and eyes, bottle caps, twist ties, cotton balls, brass fasteners, paper clips, dominos, buttons, knives, forks, and spoons.
None of us owns a single, solitary Thing permanently. Each of our Things flows through our fingers temporarily, on its way to somewhere else. Some Things are passed down from generation to generation; others are used for an instant and thrown away, recycled to form new Things, or allowed to dissolve into earth or ocean or air. Some Things become symbols of Things unseen, worshipped in temples constructed solely for their preservation or burned to ashes with incantations against them, others live humbler, more mundane lives: a pot, a stove, a coat, a hat, solid and comfortable, always there for us when we need them, beloved old friends.
Each of us has our own unique style of approaching the Things in our lives. Ruthie Bagger loves to shop for bargains, stockpiling shoes and Tupperware, candles and boxes of greeting cards. Jason Stickshift goes into a rage if anyone touches his car. Griselda Backglance still keeps all of Herbie's Things exactly as he left them even though her husband has been dead for nearly twenty years. Harry Openhand never lets a guest leave his house without a gift. Millie Squalor tosses her clothes carelessly into a heap; Nancy Neatfreak hangs up each garment carefully as she takes it off. Little Marty Gemini screams, "Don't touch MY blocks!" when anyone approaches his tower; Little Mickey Gemini carries his blocks one by one to give to each person around the room.
A lot goes into determining how you and your Things get along. As with most areas of human experience, this is a combination of nature and nurture. Nature consists of genetically programmed "brain wiring," i.e., how much of different types of chemicals you have in your brain and how they're distributed and used. Certain types of brain wiring may predispose you to dysfunctional Thing habits: from hoarding unnecessary Things, to heedless tossing rather than careful placing, to random piling rather than logical systematizing, to fearfully holding on to your Things instead of joyfully sharing them.
Nurture includes the influences not only of childhood caregivers but of family, friends, co-workers, culture, community, nation, and world throughout your life. Little Marty's parents may teach him to share or not to share. Millie's husband may accept her messiness or take issue with it. Ruthie's buying behavior may or may not be encouraged by aggressive, manipulative advertising.
As with people, a dysfunctional relationship with Things is a preoccupied relationship. We are preoccupied with the need to acquire, the need to organize, and the need to hang on to Things, putting off living until we have perfected our control over the material world, which always seems to elude us. Some folks are frustrated by never acquiring the one Thing that will satisfy them, others by their inability to get rid of Things they no longer use. Many feel overwhelmed by piles of Things that seem to breed like rabbits. Others spend hours perfecting already adequate systems, arranging and rearranging, filing and refiling, never feeling organized enough.
The good news is that no matter what your brain is like and no matter what has happened to you, you do not have to remain at war with your Things. Every one of us has the ability to develop healthy Thing-management skills. This means learning to say no to yourself about excess Things, to let go of those Things you can no longer use or enjoy, and to effectively organize and maintain the Things you keep, so that instead of taxing your energy they serve your needs and beautify your life.
To achieve this, all you need is the willingness to take an honest look at yourself.
THINGS AS AN ISSUE
For some of us, Things have become an Issue. An issue is a conflict that is always with you, a little black cloud that hangs over you day and night, no matter where you go, blocking out the sun. You can never quite enjoy yourself as long as an issue continues to hover. An issue prevents you from becoming who you truly are. An issue fills you with shame, often coupled with secrecy. An issue about Things means that you feel that some aspect of your behavior in relation to Things is OUT OF CONTROL.
There are many ways that your behavior may be out of control with Things. Psychotherapists' favorite diagnosis and treatment manual, currently known as the DSM-IV-TR, contains a number of psychiatric disorders with symptoms relating to Things, including, among others:
• Developmental Coordination Disorder (Dropping Things)
• Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Losing Things)
• Kleptomania (Stealing Things)
• Intermittent Explosive Disorder (Smashing Things)
• Schizophrenia (Seeing Things that aren't there)
• Phobias (Avoiding Things)
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (Overorganizing Things)
• Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (Hoarding Things)
• Pica (Eating nonedible Things)
• Anorexia (Not eating edible Things)
• Pathological Gambling (Risking Things)
• Fetishism (Having sex with Things)
• Pyromania (Setting Things on fire)
• Autism (Staring at Things for a very long time)
Of course, you don't have to qualify for any of these diagnoses to have a Thing issue. The most common issue with Things isn't listed in the DSM-IV at all. This is the issue of clutter. When clutter is perpetual, long-lasting, and resistant to change, organizers call this "chronic disorganization," a term first used by Judith Kolberg, founder of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. When you're chronically disorganized, you feel that you are in constant danger of being buried alive by your Things.
Although millions of people struggle with clutter and chronic disorganization, many have never quite realized that Things are an issue for them, something that they could work on in therapy, in self-help groups, or on their own, using the same techniques that have helped them resolve all sorts of more "legitimate" issues. Their response to the problem has been to read books on how to organize closets or set up filing systems, which is about as effective as trying to lose weight by simply reading books on nutrition. Such information may be helpful, but any progress you make in managing your Things this way will be short-lived unless you're also willing to look inside. This means giving up the habit of avoiding the issue.
There once was a princess named Esmeralda who was pursued by a dragon. The faster Esmeralda ran from the dragon, the bigger it grew. After chasing her all over the county, the dragon, gargantuan by this time, chased Esmeralda into a cave. Standing with her lovely face pressed against the dank wall of the cave, Esmeralda screamed for a knight to come rescue her, to no avail. Finally, Esmeralda had an idea. She turned and faced the dragon and looked straight into its eyes. The dragon began to shrink. She leaned forward, and it grew smaller still. She stuck her head right into its mouth, and the dragon disappeared! Many of us have long been pursued by a Thing-dragon composed of papers, books, clothes, and all of the other paraphernalia that human beings can collect. The more we've tried to avoid the piles, the bigger they've grown.
Thus, the first step in resolving the Thing issue is to recognize that, for you, it IS an issue. For someone else — even someone much messier than you are — it may not be, but it's an issue for you because it BOTHERS you. Something about your Things bothers you, and you need to stop avoiding the issue, look right into the dragon's eyes, and begin to make the issue disappear.
CHAPTER 2
HOW YOU LOOK AT THINGS
Recognizing that a particular aspect of your life is an issue constitutes an "aha!"— a revolution in the way you look at it. If change is to come out of this "aha," you must rethink your assumptions about the issue.
Many of the difficulties that we have with Things arise from a perspective that demonizes chaos and idealizes order. This sets us up for failure and, worse yet, shame about failure. It also keeps us living in an impossible future, while the present passes us by unlived. Once you've recognized that organizing possessions is an issue for you, your next job is to reexamine your assumptions about the meaning of chaos and order and their consequences for your life.
THINGS AND CHAOS
Do you think of chaos as evil? Does your clutter remind you of the giant squid in Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with enormous suckered arms reaching to drag you down to the ocean floor? Titles of organizing books such as How to Conquer Clutter, Clutter's Last Stand, and Taming the Paper Tiger reflect the view that clutter is something big and scary that can only be subdued by violent action. Yet chaos theorists tell us that chaos, of which clutter is one form, is a legitimate part of our universe. Chaos is everywhere, and so is order, and the two interweave in a perpetual, ever-changing dance.
Stand at a window watching snowflakes on a blustery day. Whirling and swirling, blowing and drifting, skeetering off edges of balconies like white ghosts, all seemingly at random. As you begin to look more closely, however, you begin to discern elements of order within the chaos. One of these is self-similarity: all of the snowflakes are white, crystal shaped, cold. Another is the pattern of descent. Order is always there, somewhere within the chaos, if we look for it.
While order and chaos may exist simultaneously, there is also an ebb and flow between them. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, science historian Thomas Kuhn maintains that periods of intellectual chaos, when existing theories don't seem to fit together, generally precede a paradigm shift, the birth of a new organizing principle, as in the Copernican revolution. The same idea applies on a personal level. You may, like most people, have periods in your life when nothing seems to make sense. During such phases clutter seems to want to accumulate and may even feel good to you. Then all at once, there it is — the "aha!" the lightbulb that sends you off in an entirely different direction, and you begin to reorganize your Things.
At other times you may feel like a robot, locked into dead habits while somewhere within you a tide of rebellion begins to swell. Then one morning instead of making your bed the minute your feet hit the floor as you have for the past 275 days, you don't. Instead, you leave the covers strewn gloriously every which way and it feels FANTASTIC. A whole era of spontaneous, creative living follows. You dig out the novel that you started writing in college or take up karate or join a community group and forget about everything else.
Meanwhile, rather than filing papers, you throw them joyfully over your shoulder. Instead of buying a plain gray suit, you buy a multicolored outfit and toss it over your favorite armchair. Instead of eating your meals at six, twelve, and six, you dine on snacks every hour. Eventually, as the cockroaches begin to creep out from beneath the piles and your friends start to look at you strangely, this wonderful new way of life begins to break down. You feel more and more overwhelmed by the stresses of chaos until suddenly a new "aha!" comes forth and you're ready to reorganize your life around a different center. Out of chaos comes order, out of order, chaos. And the dance goes on.
Human emotional and spiritual growth is largely about learning to tolerate and even celebrate chaos. Chaos means growth, change, freedom, color, creativity, play, joy. This is no less true of clutter than any other kind of chaos. There are times when it may, in fact, be healthy for people to clutter. Writers and artists often feel that they need a nest of clutter around them to do their most creative work. Adolescents make outrageous messes out of their belongings and their bodies so as to reorganize themselves into adults. A life devoid of chaos is a life devoid of growth and fun. Children who grow up in rigidly structured environments may become adults with little or no imagination.
Paradoxically, before you can begin to organize a messy space, you need to take a step back and appreciate the chaos you've created. What does your chaos show about you that's positive? Flexibility? Spontaneity? Imagination? Only when you've looked at your space in this way can you begin to transform beautiful chaos into beautiful order.
THINGS AND ORDER
The human brain is wired to respond positively to order. When an infant first recognizes the ordered pattern of a human face, he or she lights up with a smile of recognition. In Open Your Eyes, interior designer Alexandra Stoddard defines order as "a condition of lyrical, comprehensible arrangements among the separate elements of a group." Order feels good to us partly because it's easier for our brains to deal with than chaos. Order is perceptually more efficient than chaos. It allows us to take in a whole group of similar things together instead of one by one by one. Consequently, our brains don't have to work so hard, and we feel both energized and soothed.
Neuropsychologists have found that certain parts of the brain "light up" when confronted with certain "archetypal" patterns, especially the circle, the triangle, and the cross. These patterns, which serve as central symbols in the world's religions, may underlie standard organizing processes such as sorting apples into barrels, lining up corners of papers to form one leg of a cross, or arranging bottles in a triangular hierarchy from smallest to largest.
Infant psychiatrist Daniel Stern, in Diary of a Baby, observes how even a six-week-old infant staring at a patch of sunshine on a wall responds to contours: "At this age, Joey is also drawn to areas enclosed in a clearly marked frame. The edges of the square sunpatch catch his eyes at the line where lighter and darker wall meet." In organizing, we create edges between Things that were previously mushed together. Such boundaries keep us safe, containing floods and fires and preventing Cheerios from spilling out all over the table.
When we transform chaos into order, we feel a sense of relief. This makes organizing a wonderful anti-depressant. Have you ever been a patient in an understaffed hospital? As the hours drag by, covers become rumpled, flowers droop every which way, straws drip from plastic cups onto the table, and chaos prevails. In such surroundings, you could care less if someone drags you away with the rest of the trash. Eventually a Candystriper comes in, smoothes your covers, plumps up your pillows, rearranges flowers, throws the cups in the wastebasket, and suddenly you sit up in bed and ask for a glass of orange juice. There can be something almost magical about the process of organizing.
Organizing is about birth: when you organize, you bring something new into being that was not there before. You may begin, for example, with a bunch of books and a bookshelf. If you just put the books on the shelves, that is all you still have. But if you arrange them in a way that makes them easy to find, you give birth to something new: a library.
While order can sometimes feel wonderful, it may not always. Stoddard notes that too much symmetry in a room "when things are too matchy-matchy" may seem cold and uninviting. At times, order even feels tyrannical. On a societal level, obsessive compulsive tyrants such as Hitler and Mussolini have given order a bad name. You may have lived with your own petty Hitler and thus learned to equate order with oppression. But even if this isn't the case, it's natural to feel constrained by order when you're at a certain point in the ebb and flow of your life, when too much order has gone on for too long and you're ready to move in the direction of revitalizing chaos. For most people, the key word is balance.
THINGS AND CHAOS/ORDER
Let's take a stroll through three different gardens. The first is a Louis XlV-type garden, like the one at the palace of Versailles. Tree branches have been clipped with manicure scissors to form perfect spheres. Plants are arranged in clever, ornate designs, not a single leaf out of place. Such a garden may be impressive, but standing in it, you're afraid to move.
This is a garden created by the kind of person who would always have to let you know about the spot on your pants.
The second garden is nondescript, overgrown with weeds and brambles. In this garden, you're also afraid to move, not for fear of messing something up but for fear of becoming entangled in a briar patch and never getting free.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Making Peace With The Things In Your Life"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Cindy Glovinsky, M.S.W, A.C.S.W.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
PART I RETHINKING THINGS,
CHAPTER 1. People and Things,
CHAPTER 2. How You Look at Things,
PART II YOU AND YOUR THINGS: TAKING INVENTORY,
CHAPTER 3. Where Your Things Come From,
CHAPTER 4. What You Do with Things While You Have Them,
CHAPTER 5. How Your Things Leave You — or Don't Leave You,
CHAPTER 6. Things and Feelings,
PART III WHY THINGS KEEP OVERWHELMING YOU,
CHAPTER 7. Things and Your Situation,
CHAPTER 8. Things and the Brain,
CHAPTER 9. The Four Brain-Based Troubles with Things,
CHAPTER 10. Your Things and Their Things,
PART IV WHAT TO DO ABOUT THINGS,
CHAPTER 11. Taking a Look at Things,
CHAPTER 12. Getting Started with Things,
CHAPTER 13. Moving Things Along,
CHAPTER 14. When Things Get Stuck,
CHAPTER 15. Peace with Your Things,
Notes,
Appendix,
Sources,
Further Reading,