I linked to an article about “garbage houses” in my other weblog, and had a comment (I love those!) from Anita Rowland mentioning alt.recovery.clutter. so much mess.
there’s a lot of family stuff in this subject: grandmother on father’s side was a clutter person to the Nth degree, mother is a purger, as was her mother. clutter and collection were always high-drama topics in our family.
I’ve a tendency towards collecting objects and paper, myself. 10 moves in 10 years has reduced that tendency to some extent – as C’s mother said once, “two moves [I think it was two] is as good as a fire.” the old stuff that I have is, for the most part, stuff I’m absolutely sure I want: photos and journals, mostly. but even six months of being settled in a house that actually has room for clutter…well, I had to carve a path into my “office” today – which I don’t use much as an office, since my computer’s in the front room.
my goal was to make it a private space for reading, meditation, and maybe morning exercise…unfortunately, I’ve been piling all of the I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-this-stuff stuff into it instead. after freaking out on the garbage houses story, I decided it was time to start tackling that space again. not done yet, but a lot of trash has been thrown out, recycling tossed, and all the Christmas decorations are put away in a single box. I’m setting up my old desk, which was worthless as a computer desk (too narrow keyboard shelf), as an arts & crafts desk, with all my beading supplies and other random crafty things.
there’s something about cleanliness and clutter – when you’re depressed, it’s hard to deal with all of the things that pile up, and the more that piles up, the more you get this vague sense that you’ve missed something important, which creates anxiety, which feeds depression, which feeds the disaster….
I’m feeling much better now.