Learning to Live the Light Life

I'm a third generation hoarder.

When I was growing up, I was surrounded by stuff -- my grandmother's stuff, my mother's stuff, and my stuff. If you've ever watched the show "Hoarders," that's pretty much what my brother and I grew up in. Cleaning my room was not something that could be done in one afternoon. There were times it could literally take a week to do because I had so many toys, papers, books, and garbage that needed to be organized or disposed of. Letting go of it was a near impossibility.

One of my favorite movies, being a child of the 80's, is Labyrinth. I remember the part where the young protagonist Sarah wakes up in the junk yard and runs across the "Junk Lady," a hunched-over, old lady Muppet, stooped over and carrying a huge pile of items on her back. The items were precious to her despite having no real value, yet she kept them anyway and kept gathering more as she pawed through the heaps of refuse. She tried to convince Sarah that her own room and the things that she treasured from her childhood were really the most important things in the world, and starts to pile them up on Sarah's back. Ultimately, Sarah fights through her confusion and remembers her quest to save her baby brother from the Goblin King. She exclaims, "It's all junk!" then trashes the room and fights her way out and away from the Junk Lady.

That part always stuck out to me because I recognized myself in both the Junk Lady and Sarah. The metaphor of that scene is obvious. 

For many years, I was not brave enough -- like Sarah -- to discard my hoard and start focusing on what was important to me. That appears to have been because my hoard was always in my vision. You can't see the clear space opportunity if there are things piled on top of it.

Clutter has an all-encompassing meaning to me. I define clutter not just as physical objects, but also our mental and emotional objects as well.  It's all tied together. Hoarders don't hoard because they like living in squalor. We do it because there is more to our stuff than just what is seen. The mounds of newspapers from years ago are visual reflections of our minds and hearts, burying the pain.

Most people aren't hoarders of course, but most of us do suffer with having clutter -- physical, mental, and emotional. You may have the cleanest home, yet still be burdened by an unending avalanche of thoughts and feelings making you feel stooped and tired like the Junk Lady under her burden. We think if we hold onto our mementos, our memories, our experiences, our worries, our vices, and our checklists, that we're protecting the things that are most important to us.

Essentially, our identities. Our legacies. Our families. Our security. Our little scraps of happiness that have gone past that keeps us going in times of stress.

At the same time, we know that isn't the case. Clutter is suffering. We're sapped of energy carrying our heavy burdens of junk around. We get sick easily. We withdraw more and more trying to deal with it. We overeat junk food just to get some energy to keep going. We pack "junk in the trunk" in the form of body fat. 

Something is wrong, but we don't know what else to do and frequently have our vision obscured.

On October 27, 2008, the ceiling came down on my hoard when my mother committed suicide. She died alone in her hoard of mental, physical, and emotional junk -- cut off completely from what was important to her.

As you can well imagine, that incident put my life in a spotlight so bright that it could have outshone the sun. I was headed down that same path, and I know that's the last thing my mom wanted for me.  All that stuff we shared in our relationship and our home had to go.  I vowed that I would not let her death be senseless. I would MAKE sense of it. I would clean out the darkness cluttering up my brain, my home, my body, and my life and let the light in.

I resolved that I would lighten up and create a lighter life.

In the three years since my mother's death, I have:

• Gotten rid of my physical hoard bit by bit.
• Gone back to school, put myself through it, and graduated as top of my class.
• Learned to eat and exercise healthfully every day.
•  Built my own successful home business.
• Found and married the man of my dreams.
• Learned to relax.
• Found time for my passions.
• Paid down all my debts.
• Become a chronically happy person.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't like I had this major traumatic incident and suddenly I had resolve to clean every day and my issues didn't matter anymore. Being in a state of grief, I really only had the energy to do one thing at a time. That's the first lesson we have to learn. It's O.K. to start right where we are. We don't need anything else. We don't need to start a massive cleaning and therapy project. We don't need to be perfect and keep things perfect.

Now is fine. You are fine. This very minute.

I want you to get up from the computer and find one object that is out of place.  Pick up only ONE thing and decide what you want to do with it. Don't attempt to clean the whole room at once. Journeys begin with one step, and this is a journey, not a cleaning project. Look at your chosen object and decide whether it's something you love and care for or use frequently. If it is, find a permanent home for it and put it there.

If it is not something you love or use, then think about if someone else can use it. If you can, then see about calling up that person up and asking them if they'd like it and set up a time to go visit them. Or find an empty box and put it in your car. Put the object there to be taken to donation. You can keep this box in your car for putting more objects in later to be taken to the donation site when it's full.

If this item is unusable, broken, worn out, or something you really don't want to be bothered with, then throw it out.

Once that is done, relax. You have taken that crucial first step. That was all that is needed. Tomorrow, pick up one more object and do the same thing. If you want to do more, you can. You can pick a whole little space. One cupboard. One table. One shelf. It doesn't matter. The point is not to overdo it.

In other words, keep it light.