After the whole NFL playoff debacle Sunday, I wanted to investigate the reason people feel a need to have favorite sports teams, musicians--even authors. While I was plugging search terms into Google, I came across the website for Psychology Today (a magazine). I opened it and started plugging search terms on their home page. My attempts with fanaticism and sports got me nowhere. So I tried obsession. This was the second hit it pulled up: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/two-minute-shrink/201011/decluttering-is-it-therapy. It jumped out at me. I hope you take the time to read it. It isn't long; it's really a blog entry of a doctor. It really made me think so I decided to change this topic to, well, the title above. It opened my eyes to how this Great Clean-Out was therapeutic for me and I didn't consciously realize it!
Now I'm not a big fan of the "desensitization" therapy. I understand the concept. If someone has pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying), for instance, the idea is to get them on a plane. The therapist goes along to help the person through the ordeal. Now I can understand this if the person is, say, an executive of a Fortune 500 company who doesn't want to lose his job because he won't fly to Japan. But if the person is a Midwestern soccer-mom, whose idea of a vacation is to go sunbathing at Lake Michigan, well, I don't see the point of making her fly. I mean, really! I have arachnophobia. If someone suggested I spend time each day with spiders to get over my fear, I'd laugh and kick them in the n-ah, butt. Probably I wouldn't even laugh.
I started decluttering to help my mother--mostly. She's 79 years old now and she worries about leaving her kids with a houseful of junk. And the idea of moving is appalling with the sheer volume of stuff in this house. But when I started, I started upstairs. With my closet. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I went through my mom's closet first, but not thoroughly. We sorted her clothes and a few items on her shelves. But the real labor-intensive cleaning was my closet. Oh, I was sidetracked sometimes. Like going through the bookshelves looking for a Bible. And one day, when I was helping my mom put clean sheets on her bed, I cleaned out two small bins that were on her closet shelf.
The big question is, have I stopped collecting "stuff"? Not completely. Today I was sorting through a box of odds and ends that has been packed and stored since I moved out of my condo in October of '98. Yep. 1998. Would you believe that I took one of those small bins I had just cleaned out of my mom's closet and put some things in it that I thought I might use someday? Oh, there's all sorts of logic to it. I had to keep some cookie cutters so I had them when I have grandchildren some day. Really? If I have grandchildren some day, wouldn't I be more likely to buy those pre-shaped cookie dough packages? I could say "Isn't this cool? Your mom used these cookie cutters when she was a kid." Except I really couldn't say that. I doubt if Brittany would remember making cookies that we cut out by hand. I only have a vague memory of making cookies from scratch that had to be rolled out and cut. I'm much more of a "drop the dough on the cookie sheet with a spoon" kind of baker.
Does this mean I'm hopeless? No! I will go through that bin again and put those cookie cutters in the give-away! I'll pull out those pink-and-white kitchen towels that have never been used, also, and give them away! Maybe I'll get rid of the metal basket with the cat on the handle! Ummmm, maybe not the metal cat basket. I don't want to get too carried away! After all, I wouldn't want to get obsessive about not having any clutter. That would be boring!
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