Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

De-Clutter Isn’t Big Enough

This week, in my de-clutter workshop, one participant shook her head. “De-clutter isn’t really the right word for what we’re doing here. It is so much bigger, it’s about looking back at our whole lives and asking ourselves what has meaning to us, what our values are… de-clutter doesn’t really capture it,” she said.

Wow, do I agree with that! Sometimes I fantasize about parlaying what I’ve learned in the last twenty years into some kind of teaching career. But I don’t even know what department I’d want to be in. Would it fall into psychology, design, economics, ethics, environmentalism, theology? I want to ask the big questions: Why do humans hoard? What is the evolutionary purpose of beauty? Do we need to rethink our economic model? Because we definitely need to stop making so much stuff. Where are the thousands of pounds of stuff I’ve helped my clients throw out? What about the thousands of pounds of stuff we schlepped to the thrift store? Did people buy it? Is it in another country? Did it just get thrown out in the end? Why don’t we know that we are enough?

To my kids, my job seems like manual labor. And, in a way, it is, and I like that part of it. But on another level, it’s very intimate, very psychological, and very, very interesting. One thing I know: No client has ever told me that what they really value in life is stuff. So why do they have so much? Why and how did they acquire what they acquired?

I think there has to be another way. A way where we all have enough, and are enough, and we don’t kill the earth, and Amazon doesn’t treat workers like so many sneakers to be run through and disposed of. I can help you let go of your clutter, but what I really want is to not only help you figure what you can let go of, but also to realize that, just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, you already have everything you need.