Making Sense of Our Stuff

     When did we find ourselves with so much stuff? Some of us may have discovered this early on in our lives, while most of us found the accumulation process gathering speed once we owned a home, created a family or settled into a living situation for a long period of time. And for those of us who didn’t take stock and make decisions about these things, we found ourselves with overflowing closets, cupboards and a garage with no room left to use. Now a wall of things confronts us and we don’t know how to manage this stuff or where it should go.

     I see this continually with clients whose kids have grown and moved out or a relative that’s died, and they have to manage their own things as well as those of loved ones. They are torn between allegiance to the past, to the memories they shared with said people, with memories of their own things and as a result, can’t make a decision about what to keep and of what to let go. They feel bound to the past, bound to things and stuff and feel entangled by their belongings.

     Too often when I work with clients, they have adjusted themselves to their things. They can no longer close or open doors, get into closets. They have to walk around piles of things, they can’t find items they need and buy more, and in some cases, their things start to control them as they feel less in command of what they own and don’t know how to manage their items. I recently helped a client organize her garage and at one point I cleared a pile of things near the back door which hadn’t been opened in years. Her kids, upon seeing this were shocked to know they even had a back door. She is thrilled she can now get a cross breeze and have access to the backyard from this space. With so many things cluttering the room, the door had been completely negated. It was a great feeling when they had a new pathway of egress.

     Making decisions and choices about our belongings is key to this solution. Getting the flow to go outwardly is paramount since for most of us, things keep coming in and very little goes out. There is always the low hanging fruit of the obvious things that can go–broken, damaged, no longer functioning, outdated, can’t work with today’s systems, etc. along with plenty of cardboard, plastic and other recyclables.  Clients and I work to keep the most important, useful and cherished items and to let the rest go–especially things that can be used by others when they’re just gathering dust in a garage or other space.