Meet Client “Marvelous M.”

Once upon a time, in a home not that far away, lived a relative of mine in a very full house. It got so full, her young grandchildren could no longer visit. This made M very sad. But luckily, she had a relative who loved to organize and declutter – me. So, together we decided to create a safer and more pleasant environment. It took us eight years but this is the story of the ebb and flow of decluttering and acquiring, of making decisions and then unmaking them, and ultimately of fresh perspectives and a house that is pleasant, cheerful and only mildly cluttered. See if you recognize yourself in the tale of Client Marvelous M. and how we learned to beat back her monster.

Chapter 1: FULL HOUSE

When we began, not only was the house full but it was chaotic. The purpose of each room (except the kitchen and bathrooms, of course) wasn’t clear— people weren’t even sure who slept where! And full? There seemed to be no limit to the amount of things M thought the house could hold. 

The first thing we did was assign everyone their own bedroom. After that, I took a good look around. 

The pantry was packed with flats of canned soup and Chinese condiments bought on sale. The freezer threatened not to shut. The front closet was overstuffed with coats, mitts and hats. The fridge was full, as

well as all of the closets, cupboards, extra cupboards, dead-end passage-ways and lesser used rooms. 

You get the picture. 

Decluttering is something we should do about every ten years. Our lives change as we live and we need different possessions for different phases of our lives. But like many people, Client M had never really got rid of the items she no longer used or needed. 

She also had hobbies that required lots of materials like scrapbooking, sewing, and knitting. She loved clothes, shoes, books and bargain hunting. She struggled with her budget. She started a small business and collected inventory that needed to be kept track of. She liked to shop and buy gifts for people but they would become lost before she could give them away. She complained her house was too small.

It was a frustrating place to live, let alone to have family visit which she desperately wanted. So we began to declutter.

Chapter 2: WE BEGIN TO DECLUTTER

M was highly motivated to clear her home. We started in the living room by moving everything out because she wanted to refinish her hardwood floor.

I wasn’t a Professional Organizer at the time so we went about it haphazardly – working on whatever we felt like on the day.

In between applications of stain and varnish, we sorted through VHS tapes and CDs. M let go of more than a few when she knew they were going to a good cause—like the local group home for youth. She had more than one TV and we figured out where to put them. We decided what chairs were comfortable and which would fit best with her new colour scheme. We decided where things could go: the sewing room here, the office there, and took books and papers and sewing supplies to the different parts of the house. We let go of things, but not nearly enough.

With the floor now beautiful, we moved back only the furniture and other items she wanted. We bought artwork for the freshly painted walls. It looked fantastic. The living room was an island of calm in a rolling sea of abundance. Family came to visit. For a little while.

Chapter 3: CLUTTER FIGHTS BACK!

The living room was a great start. It gave us a burst of energy and clarity that lasted for a while. But as we moved onto the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the study, the kitchen, etc., we lost momentum. More than one thing slowed us down.

BELIEFS

Our beliefs can get in the way. For example; when we were working on the kitchen, we would find bottles and bottles of cleaning supplies. Not wanting to waste them, she would insist on finding a home for them in the pantry, or the laundry room. It was impossible to keep it all and yet we did. Waste not, want not. She just wasn’t ready to let go.

DECISION FATIGUE 

You can only make so many decisions for so long and then the brain just quits. I remember we once came across a couple of sets of Christmas dishes. She only needed one set, and she recognized that, but she had both because she found it impossible to choose between them. It took a good amount of back and forth before she found a reason to keep one rather than the other. That type of decision making, over and over, for days and days, and months at a time is exhausting. 

EMOTIONS

Then there were emotions involved. It was difficult to confront the fact that all the projects she’d wanted to do would never get done. With some, it wasn’t too hard to let go but others were tougher. When we would come across a box of wool, she could not decide what, if any, to let go. She had plans for that wool, plans she had had for ten years or more and saw no reason to give up either her wool or her plans. But we really didn’t have a place for it, so we shoved it into the basement. We put everything she didn’t want to deal with in the garage or the basement.

CONTRADICTIONS

She wanted her walls bare and her surfaces clear, but that too was problematic. Like many folks, anytime we put things in drawers or cabinets or under the bed the items became “lost.” She would forget what she already had or where we’d put it and go out and get more. 

And then there were her books. She owns hundreds of them. We bought second hand shelving and lined her rooms with it. We unboxed her books and began to fill up the shelves: fiction upstairs, books on writing in the study, others wherever the shelves would fit. But before we could finish, she had us take all of it down because she found that filling up the walls with stuff—even her beloved books – made her feel claustrophobic. But she couldn’t let go. About seventy five per cent of the books were boxed up and put in the garage. 

SHOPPING

Shopping was a fun thing to do and a stress reliever for M. She found tremendous value in the hunt for quality clothing at the charity shops and often came home with a lot more than just too many clothes. 

Sometimes it felt like as soon as I took items out the back door, even more would come in the front. 

And then, disaster.

We discovered that half of the walls at the back of the house were rotted from top to bottom. Both floors. Badly installed windows and patio door allowed water to seep in. Half of the back of the house had to be removed for remediation and rebuilding.

You could say half of the back of the house fell off.

Chapter 4: DOUBLE DOWN AND DECORATE

We’d been decluttering. Items were moving out of the house but we had to clear two rooms (one upstairs and one down) for the rebuilding. Emptying out what felt like endless boxes of papers and notebooks, some decades old, seemed to erase any sense of progress we had made.

We had to move all the items out of that room and put them somewhere else. Like casting stones into an overfull pond, not only were there ripples, the water rose up and over the banks. She started drowning under her stuff.

While in the midst of the chaos of construction, we took on a small decorating project. We decided to decorate the ground floor powder room. M and I closed in some ducting that had been visible on the ceiling. We put up wallpaper and painted the top half of the walls and the ceiling black. She sewed a window shade from a beautiful fabric she loved. New tile, new artwork and a new light fixture transformed the tiny room.

Room by room, we transformed her living spaces. I was in the Residential Interiors Design program at the U of A and thrilled to take on the project. Rooms cleared out as she learned about herself and what she really wanted from her home. 

But we didn’t organize. I have to admit it. I didn’t know anything about organizing back then, nor why it was important. 

As we cleared each room of the items that didn’t belong there, we simply shunted them to other parts of the house. We told ourselves we’d deal with them when we got there. 

Did I mention our approach was haphazard? I didn’t make any sort of a plan. I let the whims of client M determine what we did and when we did it. That approach, unfortunately, merely contributed to the chaos, confusion and overwhelm that comes with a whole house project like this. 

Two places in particular filled up with deferred and difficult decisions: the basement and the garage. The basement became filled to the rafters with only a narrow partial path. I went to bed many nights worried about what a tinderbox it was. And while the garage was full, at least I had stopped to organize it as I’d realised it was becoming a storage room. I’d put up shelving and created proper pathways to contain the excess as it gathered.

And then the basement flooded.

And yes, there was mold.

Chapter 5. THE EPIPHANY: LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR ALL THIS STUFF!

As I’d mentioned, the basement was literally filled to the ceiling and had lost its passageways. The flood had been fairly minor, but even so, with the space nearly inaccessible, we couldn’t know how bad it really was. We had to empty the basement we had filled.

Her fabric was a loss. Some of it was moldy, all of it smelt like mold. It was hard for M, but as she tells it, as box after box after box was brought up, she realized there was far too much of it. She’d never get to do all the things she’d wanted to with it— “not even if I live until to be a thousand years old” she said. And she realized there were more important things she wanted to do with her remaining years.

Once she realized she had no use for almost every single possession in that basement, she began to be impatient for it to be gone. She let go of 90% of what was down there. It took about six weeks of hard work as she took on the task of looking at every item and deciding whether it should stay or go. She was amazing.

The basement was remediated and restocked with open shelving. The storage area was set up just like her own pre-paid store, as Lisa Woodruff recommends.*

Her perception of her possessions changed. They became clutter and it annoyed her. She began to crave clear and uncluttered spaces. Her possessions lost their power over her. Her beliefs began to change. She knew there was no way she could ever use up all the lotions she’d collected, nor the multiple sets of dishes. She realized that having too many options was mind-numbing. M’s clothing started to go out the door for donation in black garbage bags because she discovered deciding on what sweater to wear was easier if she had to choose among five instead of twenty.* She stopped shopping. A lot of things left the house. We’re still collecting and sorting. Things are still leaving the house all because M chose to tell herself a different story about her stuff. 

Chapter 6: LESSONS LEARNED

Despite what the Minimalism movement might have you believe, organizing is more than just decluttering and finding homes for what’s left. It is actually quite complex. The best organizational approach depends completely on how you interact with your environment. To get yourself organized, (and have a chance of staying that way) you need to really understand yourself and how you think and interact with the world around you. 

So, I went and got an education. 

I received training in coaching to be able to help people like M learn about herself so she can organize her environment for the way she actually thinks and operates. I didn’t have that knowledge when we did this project. Now, through coaching, I know I can ask the right questions to figure out what we need, follow a shorter timeline and how to set it up so that it works for the client.

The huge disruption that decorating caused is not for every client who needs or wants to get organized but it is quite motivating to some like Client M. Also, decorating is not the point of organizing. In fact; whether the two words should even be breathed in the same sentence is up for debate. 

Function must be first, of course, but decorating is like the icing on the cake—no, it’s more like the rosettes and swirls. But those are important, too, right? They bring us joy. The Joy of Home.

Resources

Carolyn I. Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D., Randy O. Frost, Ph.D.,  “What Is Hoarding vs. ADHD Clutter? Defining Characteristics and Strategies to Help” [Video Replay & Podcast #417] Link here.

Lisa Woodruff, “Your Organized Home: Functional Organization for Your Life Phase Right Now”  [Video Replay & Podcast #463]  Link here

John Lehrer, How We Decide, (2009) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Photos used with permission.