Conquer the Clutter- Strategies to Identify, Manage, and Overcome Hoarding

Conquer the Clutter: Strategies to Identify, Manage, and Overcome Hoarding by Elaine Birchall, Suzanne Cronkwright offers hope to anyone affected by hoarding. Real-life vignettes, combined with easy-to-use assessment and intervention tools, support those who hoard―and those who care about them. Written by Elaine Birchall, a social worker dedicated to helping people declutter and achieve long-term control over their belongings, the book

• provides an overview of hoarding, defining what it is―and is not
• explains the difference between clutter and hoarding
• describes different types of hoarding in detail, including impulse shopping, “closet” hoarding, and animal hoarding
• debunks myths about hoarding and hoarders
• explores the effects that hoarding has on relationships, on work, and on physical and financial health
• presents a practical, step-by-step plan of action for decluttering
• contains dedicated advice from individuals who have successfully overcome their hoarding disorder

Watch Elain summarising her book and simple strategies for conquering clutter

Contents
How to Navigate the Book
Prologue
Introduction
Part I. Understanding Hoarding and What It Takes to Clear Your Path
Chapter 1. Overview of Hoarding
Chapter 2. Environmental and Self-Assessment
Chapter 3. Goals
Chapter 4. Take Back Your Life
Chapter 5. Procrastination
Part II. Moving Forward: Inspiration from Those Who Have Gone before You
Chapter 6. The Impact of Hoarding on Families: Her Pills Haven’t Worked Yet
Chapter 7. The Impact of Grief: Drowning in Loss
Chapter 8. Impulse Shopping: Can’t Buy Happiness
Chapter 9. The Sandwich Generation: Overwhelming Obligation
Chapter 10. A Life Stored, Not Lived: Secondary Diogenes Syndrome in Seniors
Chapter 11. Professional at Work, Powerless at Home: Secret Lives
Chapter 12. Disabled in Dire Straits
Chapter 13. Home Is Where the Heart Is: Disconnecting from Your Environment
Chapter 14. Collateral Damage: Adult Children of Hoarders, Seniors Living with Hoarders, and Neighbors
Chapter 15. The Last Word
Part III. Getting There: Resources, Tips, and Tools
Chapter 16. Resources
Appendix. Case Review from Birchall Consulting and Associates, Inc.
References
Index

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What Your Clutter Is Trying to Tell You- Uncover the Message in the Mess and Reclaim Your Life by Kerri Richardson

What does your clutter say about you? It all depends on where you hide your hoard, says an intriguing new book by Kerri Richardson. This new book suggests how gaining control of mess can help to reclaim life. It also suggests that wardrobe clutter often means you’re holding on to a fantasy self, whilst attic clutter suggests that you feel like your betraying your loved ones!

What is clutter

Let’s start with what is clutter. If you use it on regular basis and it makes you smile when you see it, it’s not clutter. For example, your mementoes have been sitting in a box for the last five years, they can’t mean much to you. Re-evaluate their worth and either say goodbye or make them a daily part of your life.

YOUR WARDROBE

Emotional issue: nostalgia
What this means: Wardrobe clutter often means you’re holding on to a fantasy self — one that was more youthful, thinner, or happier. Maybe your old dresses remind you of a time when you felt as if anything was possible. Struggling to get rid of them is more about your desire to feel that way again than actually wanting to wear those dresses.

When you look at your skinny jeans, they may remind you of your ideal weight, or times when you and your friends would go out and have fun.

The real question is, how can you have the same fulfilment in your current life that those old clothes represent?

What to do about it: See if you can find five items you haven’t worn for six months. Now ask yourself why you keep each piece of clothing. Is it a just-in-case item? Do you still love it? Maybe you can throw out the jeans but plan a girls’ night out, or a romantic dinner with your partner, to recapture the feelings stirred up by the clothes.

YOUR DESK

Emotional issue: procrastination
What this means: Piles of paper and bills may be an excuse to avoid moving on. Every time you ignore the piles, you’re holding off dealing with difficult issues. If anything about starting a new project feels scary or overwhelming, not dealing with the clutter is a great way to stall. The pressure of the expectations alone is enough to keep the clutter on your desk.

The simplest solution is to stop letting the clutter build in the first place — that way you have no excuses.

What to do about it: Sort your mail as soon as you get it. Put the junk mail straight into the recycling bin. Once you’ve identified the mail that’s useful, open envelopes and recycle any unnecessary papers. Keep only those things that you need to follow up on. Once your surfaces are clear, your path ahead will feel much clearer, too.

YOUR CAR

Emotional issue: no boundaries
What this means: Letting clutter pile up in your car means that no space is left for yourself, however personal — you’re letting things and people encroach on every area of your life. Clutter in the car is often the first sign of feeling overwhelmed because this should be your own space, not a dumping ground. Ask yourself: are you keeping your calendar full so you can tell yourself you’re too busy to make changes in your life?

Maybe occupying your time in this way protects you from taking some risks. If you feel compelled to say yes to everyone who asks a favour, ask yourself why. Learning to sit with the discomfort that may come with disappointing people is crucial to your happiness.

What to do about it: Practise setting boundaries by saying ‘no’ in lower-risk relationships; a co-worker rather than a family member, or a stranger instead of your boss. Working on boundary clutter leads to cleaner relationships, less stress, and deeper connections with the people in your life.

YOUR GARAGE

Emotional issue: avoidance
What this means: Leaving boxes of possessions and unfinished projects to stack up means you’re lacking the mental energy to face difficult tasks. Avoiding it lets you pretend it’s not there — but it won’t go away. Items in your garage quickly become part of the background scenery, so this area can almost always feel like a non-priority.

However, each time you leave or return home, the mess before you saps your energy. Maybe you still have unpacked boxes from when you moved. Chances are you don’t need what’s in there, but you can’t imagine how you’re ever going to do it all, so you freeze.

What to do about it: Use the Pomodoro Technique. This time-management approach uses a timer to break work down into manageable chunks. Remove all distractions and set a timer for 25 minutes. Work consistently until the timer rings. Take a five-minute break. After four Pomodoro rounds, take a longer break. Remember, if you haven’t looked in the boxes since you moved home, you don’t need what’s in there.

Stop letting the clutter build in the first place.

YOUR ATTIC

Emotional issue: guilt
What this means: Family heirlooms, old cards and unwanted gifts are no longer of use — but you feel by getting rid of them, you’re betraying your loved ones. Your attic can contain the most ties to the past — but when you keep things out of guilt, you’re keeping a lot of emotional baggage. Family heirlooms often have a lot of obligations, memories, joy, sadness and regret attached to them. Your grandmother’s locket, photo albums, your mother’s best crockery — items like these, even when not cherished, can still be nearly impossible to pass on. I guarantee Grandma is not looking down and thinking: ‘I’m so glad she still has that locket even though she doesn’t like it.’

Keep it if you cherish it, but if you don’t love items enough to use or display them, they’re clutter.

What to do about it: If something makes you smile when you see it, it’s not cluttered. If your mementoes have been sitting in a box for the last five years, they can’t mean much to you. Re-evaluate their worth and either say goodbye or make them a daily part of your life.

Smart people are messy
It will be difficult to actually convince your mum, but research confirms that if you’re messy it might mean that you’re actually smart. Researchers at the University of Minnesota conducted a study that explained that if you are not tidy, it simply means that your brain is occupied with more important matters. As if that was not enough, the conclusion of the scientists is that a somewhat messy environment inspires greater creativity.

What Your Clutter Is Trying To Tell You: Uncover The Message In The Mess And Reclaim Your Life by Kerri Richardson, published by Hay House at £10.99

If you like clutter and want to feel good about it read the summary of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder-How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place By Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

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Dr. Sherry Bourg Carter, in an article for Psychology Today writes, “Clutter can play a significant role in how we feel about our homes, our workplaces and ourselves. Messy homes and workplaces leave us feeling anxious, helpless and overwhelmed.” Even more, than the stress that comes from not being able to immediately find things when it’s needed, clutter creates stress by just being there. Dr. Carter also notes that clutter causes distraction and that’s the last thing we need in your home or workplace.

Clutter and the state of your mind
“People waste up to three hours a week finding things that are lost in the clutter on their desk.” says Joseph Ferrari, a psychologist at DePaul University in Chicago. His research into clutter suggests that people with lots of clutter in their homes or workplaces are less likely to get things done, and are more likely to be stressed and unhappy than people with less clutter. A neuroscientist at Princeton University (Sabine Kastner) suggests that when an object in our field of view is surrounded by clutter, the brain receives weaker signals from whatever people are trying to look at. Kastner suggests that people who are highly distractable need to reduce clutter but for people with a strong attention system clutter might be beneficial because it stimulates that system.

Martha Steward strategy for clutter clearing of your wardrobe

If you have to decide what things you’re going to keep in your wardrobe and what things you’re going to throw away or give away Martha Steward has a clutter clearing strategy.

Ask yourself four questions:
1) How long have I had it?
2) Does it still function?
3) Is it a duplicate of something that I already own?
4) When was the last time I wore it or used it?

These questions can be applied to anything you’re not sure if to keep or get rid of. But which question is the most useful for the process of clutter clearing? It looks like the mathematicians by Brian Christian and Griffith, authors of the book ‘Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions‘ have the answer based on their mathematical model on how to optimise the memory of a computer. Since a wardrobe’s capacity is just like the computer’s memory because of limited space, and you need to try and get in there the things that you’re most likely to need so that you can get to them as quickly as possible. So Martha’s fourth question, “when was the last time I wore it or used it?” is the most useful.

Some clutter can be good

Many inventions happened because of clutter. Penicillin comes to mind. Alexander Fleming was notoriously messy, leaving petri dishes lying around and mould growing in one of them and that’s how he discovered/invented penicillin. Read about the advantages of clutter and mess

When too much clutter is not good – hoarding disorder

3.4 million people in the UK suffer from hoarding disorder to some degree. In the United State (According to Scientific American) there are between 5 million and 14 million hoarders. A lot of people like their stuff and are attached to it. Attachment is an addiction and hoarding is now a recognised medical disorder (previously it was classed as a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD).  In August 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised hoarding as a psychiatric disorder in its own right. Hoarding disorder is characterised as having an extreme number of items and having a great difficulty throwing possessions away, as well as storing them in a disorganised manner so it causes significant distress or affects the quality of life. The list of items that people hoard is endless from clothes to newspapers to photos to printouts of emails to till receipts and even grass cuttings. While some hang on to pretty much everything they have, others collect specific items. “Hoarders fear making the wrong decision about what to keep and what to throw out, so they keep everything,” says Dr Whomsley, who was one of the authors of the British Psychological Society guidelines on hoarding compiled in 2013. “It is a psychological condition and not a lifestyle choice,” he adds. “It can be associated with other mental health conditions such as depression and social anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or OCD.” Hoarders quite often have perfectionist tendencies as well as be prone to procrastination and have difficulties in planning and organising. “The most common time for it to come to a head is when people are middle-aged or older and living alone.” Hoarding is usually triggered by traumatic events such as a divorce or bereavement. “One theory is that having experienced loss in the past, a person is primed to resist any further losses, hence their reluctance to part with things,” suggests Dr Whomsley.

Treatment for hoarding disorder includes de-cluttering and psychological therapies as well as individual and group cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Research published in the Journal Clinical Psychological Psychotherapy in 2017, by Deakin University in Australia, found a third of hoarders who attended a 12-week CBT programme developed to reduce hoarding, experienced an improvement in hoarding symptoms. “Clearing out someone’s cluttered house is rarely effective on its own”, says Dr Whomsley. “That won’t solve the problem because they will just fill it up again, and there’s nearly always an underlying psychological cause that needs addressing,” suggests Dr Whomsley. There are many organisations that help with hoarding disorder such as helpforhoarders.co.uk

Clutter and dementia
Research from the University of Calfornia suggests that well-organised people may be less likely to develop dementia because conscientious people have greater mental reserves and the brain’s ability to form new connections. Lack of deep sleep is also associated with dangers of developing dementia because during deep sleep the brain clears all kinds of debris and toxins that can clog it.

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