It Turns Out I'm in a Relationship...With My Stuff

Psst… don’t tell anyone, but I’ve discovered I’m in a relationship. A pretty serious one going back for years, and it’s not my wife!

Although now that my eyes are open, I’m pretty sure she’s in one too…..

Going through these de-cluttering books and actually beginning the process of de-cluttering our house has been an interesting experience so far.

I expected to get rid of a lot of stuff and to reorganize a little bit. I thought it might take a little bit of time and that there might be a few hard decisions to be made here and there… and I wasn’t wrong. But I was only partly right.

I am beginning to understand that there is a complex and complicated relationship that most people (including myself) have with stuff. For it to be so common, it must be innate within us. But intentional or otherwise, our stuff defines us. I’m not saying that it should, just that if you have never intentionally gone through your stuff, you probably have not realized that.

You might have thought, “This shirt makes me feel good.” Or “That mug really brings back memories of our trip that summer.” You probably have a box of mementos somewhere reminding you of days past. Tickets stubs, pictures, graduation announcements, bracelets from old flames, etc.

And we all have stuff like that. We all think stuff like that. What was a revelation to me was that most of us have some type of emotional attachment to pretty much everything that we own.

Seriously, every single item that we own.

Don’t believe me? Right now, get up and go choose an item in your line of sight and try to throw it away or put it in a donation box. I’ll wait. Go try it right now.

…….

Okay, most of you probably just sat there and thought, “Look, I’m not getting up for this stupid thought exercise. I’ll just sit here and think about an object I can see.”

That works too.

In either case, it probably went one of two ways. Some of you thought about that statement about an emotional attachment to everything we own and said “Oh my gosh! I think that’s true!” Then you mentally went through different objects in the house and began to see a connection.

The rest of you probably thought “I may care about some things, but most things are just there. We need them so we have them. I don’t really care about them. I could get rid of them and it would be no big deal other than now we are missing something we need.”

To which I would reply, “You are absolutely right.”

Just needing something, is a connection. And when that item is no longer needed, you will then find the emotional side of that, whether you believe it or not. For some of us this is easier and for others it is harder, but we will all experience it to some degree.

And this de-cluttering process (along with a lot of years of living) are how I know this and why I say it. But it is not something I would have believed. I belonged to the second group.

But I have quickly learned that de-cluttering is an emotional process as much or more than a mere physical process. After a day of de-cluttering I have found myself both physically AND emotionally exhausted. It takes energy, drive and resolve to take this challenge on. I take good physical care of myself so the physical is not a problem. But the emotional side . . . that is where I (and even more my wife) find the challenge is.

There is an emotional connection to all of our stuff and it can make de-cluttering difficult (not un-doable, just difficult).

If you want to know what I am talking about, you can get a taste for this yourself easily enough. Let’s go back to my earlier example.

Go to your junk drawer or cabinet. You know. Every house has one. The place where you put a lost sock, a random screw that turned up, half-used batteries, extra ketchup packets from the drive-thru, ticket stubs for memory books, left-over unopened chopsticks, a few pieces of different games that got left out and need to be put away, etc, etc, etc.

Got it?

Good, now go and clean it out.

It’s a perfect exercise because the drawer or cupboard is probably not be very big, so the task is doable on the spur of the moment. There are a variety of items so you probably have the chance to see that different items have different connections. But the key here is that it will probably take a little bit of time. Probably more than you expect, which is why you have the drawer in the first place.

It can be time consuming to put some items away that you know where they go, so it is easier to dump them in the drawer “for now”. But there are a lot of items in these drawers that you just don’t know what to do with.

That’s why instead of the “junk drawer” this space could also be called “The Drawer of Delayed Decisions”

Cleaning out this drawer you will probably get 80% of it done quickly and easily. It’s that last 20% that is going to trip you up and prove my point.

“That concert was REALLY fun. I don’t want to get rid of these used tickets. They remind me of it and besides, I was going to put these in an album one day.”

“Those batteries had a little life left in them. One day I’m going to put them in something and use them up. I just keep forgetting and I don’t want to waste them. But nothing needs them right now.”

“That was my favorite spatula and it just needs the handle cleaned up and some epoxy and I think I can make it usable again. I plan to do that someday soon.”

“I have no idea where those screws came from that have been there for 5 years now. But I just know that the moment I toss those out, we will find out where they belong and be sorry.”

“That bag of potpourri was given to us for Christmas by our neighbors last year. We will definitely use that on some holiday eve soon. We just need to stop forgetting it is here. We don’t want to throw it away and be ungrateful to our neighbors or waste it.”

Any of this sound familiar?

Wading through those thoughts and memories can take time and energy and you will probably find these last items are not so quick or easy to finish.

And this is just a junk drawer.

Imagine the whole house. Imagine a single box of old photos. Imagine the wedding dress. Imagine the baby toys and clothes that will not be used again.

And those are just the things you KNOW will be emotional. Wait until you realize that you are having a hard time parting with an extra plate, or shirt with a hole in it, or pants that do not fit anymore. That’s when you realize that getting rid of ANYTHING can be hard . . . because there is an emotional connection.

We are through 4 of the 6 books now. We have cleaned out our room, our blankets, our wardrobe, and a few other little areas. I can now confidently say that there is indeed an emotional attachment to stuff. All of it.

I will write more about this in future blogs, because in my opinion (and that of many of the authors) this is the challenge behind getting rid of the clutter.

It is the fear of needing the item later. It is the fear of losing the memory the item is connected to. It is the fear of losing the relationship to the person who gave us the item. It is the emotions that so many items bring up inside of us that prevent us from letting them go.

I am learning that saying “I’m going to de-clutter and get rid of some stuff.” is one thing. But navigating the emotional minefield of doing it is another.

It can be done. And for most of us, it could and should be done. We need it. All that emotional baggage attached to all that excess stuff is weighing us down whether we realize it or not.

But I think that simply becoming aware that we have this kind of relationship with our stuff is a key step to being prepared to part with it.

And as always, if you need help hauling all of your unwanted or unneeded stuff away, Freedom Junk Removal would love to help you be Free from you Junk.