Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice: Part 4

One Bite at a Time 

"How do you eat an elephant?"

One bite at a time.

(I guess a vegan alternative might be, "How do you climb Mount Everest?" "One step at a time.")

Anyone who has had to move house knows this. Anyone who has completed a Ph.D. knows this. Some jobs just seem too big and overwhelming.  The only way to tackle them is one small task at a time.

Because we can take one step. One bite. Then one more. Then one more.

Some of my clients have whole boxes of stuff they cannot deal with. Years of unanswered mail, unread magazines, containers of screws and push-pins and paperclips and weird things, piles of detritus all sit in boxes or bags dumped somewhere out of sight and then forgotten. Once boxed, they never get processed. This means they never leave the system. They sit in the space, blocking freer movement.

Image credits Creator:bmarinic

Like unprocessed traumas or relationships that ended with poor or unsatisfying closure, these piles of unprocessed possessions block up space that might otherwise be available for something we value more. They don't just take up physical space, they take up mental and emotional space too.  Every time we see that box or bag we are reminded of our inability to deal with whatever it is.

What I often observe in myself when I have to sit down with a pile of hard-to-process stuff is that I get overwhelmed. Even when I sit down with a clear head and resolve and a can-do attitude, the very first item I grab can land me in quick-sand.  

"Oh yes!" I think to myself. "There was a reason I never put this away."
It is waiting for an answer from someone.
I simply didn't know if it was important, and if so, where it should be stored.
I didn't know how to let it go.

There is something about the stuff that bogs me down and is keeping it all in limbo.

(Ugh. I get a stomach ache just thinking about this stuff.)

Because I get stuck, I quit, and the pile sits there and grows.  And I ignore it because pushing through those unanswerable questions is just too hard. It isn't any fun.  It rarely feels rewarding.

However, I don't experience overwhelm with a client's stuff. It feels good to sit with a client and ask clarifying questions that help them know what to do. It feels good perhaps because I am offering something I wished I could have had myself.  In fact, helping clients find solutions to their roadblocks often helps me have more insights into getting through my own.

One bite at a time. 

I am helping a client dig out from physical and emotional traumas and multiple deaths in her immediate family. She has been overwhelmed for many years and is finally getting the help she has always deserved. She had several boxes worth of swept-aside mail and paperwork when we started. 

One bite at a time, we got through all but one big box. Much of the mail has emotional ties that make it harder for her to process.  Letters of condolence. Hospital bills. A death certificate. 

We turn over a paper and under it is a picture of her brother who died, and we stop. She talks and she cries. She talks some more. I let her process the feelings as much as she needs. Only when she is ready do we pick up the next thing.

This client was so overwhelmed that we made a commitment to start each session with one hour of paperwork. She was freshest in the morning.  Plus there was a known stopping time.  We didn't have to finish all of the paperwork; we just had to stick at it for one hour. Then we'd close the box, tidy up any loose bits (follow-through) and move on to easier things.  You can bet this was WORK. You can bet that her sitting with all those feelings and my witnessing with compassion and patience all that grief was a spiritual practice.

It took several sessions, but we got through all of it.  ALL OF IT.  The box is empty now.

Her home is finally the safe, clean haven she has deserved for several years.  It took patience. It took persistence. And it took faith that it could be done.

My parents' house was full of stacks of things. Mom called them "horrible heaps". One of my jobs, when I was cleaning for my parents, was to straighten up those stacks.  I just thought it was a normal thing to have stacks of paperwork everywhere in the house. I was too young to wonder what these things were or if it was necessary to have them all over the place. They were things that grown-ups had. Everywhere. All the time.  

But I know now that not all grown-ups have piles of stuff everywhere.  Lots of grownups figure out how to deal with that part adulting and manage it well. And for those who struggle with it, there are folks like me, who need to earn a living too, and who love to help.

Because cleaning up and helping each other get through burdens and hard places is absolutely a spiritual practice.

For the other entries in this series, see below.

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 1

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 2

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 3

Living in a Magazine

Nobody lives in a magazine. I see this sort of entryway clutter lots of times. It is NORMAL, (if not our dream decor). The trick is not "to look like a magazine all the time." The trick is to develop systems that mean we know how to clean up such clutter in 15 minutes effectively without sweeping it all into a box in the closet.

Paperwork can be some of the most time-intensive aspects of clutter-clearing. It can feel the least satisfying because we might tidy a small space VISIBLY, yet we have cleared a lot energetically and emotionally. After conversation and creative thinking this young man now has strategies for all of the categories of things that were piled up on this table. He may not follow through on the strategies all the time, but he now knows how to tackle the clutter when it builds up again. 

His place will not look like a magazine ninety percent of the time because he LIVES here.  But he will have the ability to make it look good quickly now, should he want it to look good.

Then we tackled the main seating area, adorably just what I expect to find these days with tech bachelors. The angle below doesn't show the bulk of the items lying about on the coffee table, nor the two cardboard boxes that had not been fully unpacked from the move.

I asked his permission to try a different arrangement of the furniture. We moved the small bookshelf and the end tables and swapped the sofa with the two chairs. We put the larger end table under the printer and put the smaller end table between the two chairs. This changed the flow and also the "homey feeling" of the space. We left it as a trial. He is free to switch it around if it doesn't work for him. But he seemed to be really happy. EVERY. SINGLE. LOOSE. ITEM. was cleaned and put away. I showed him tricks about placement that keep the place looking good. We found homes for everything, tucked other things out of sight but kept them accessible, and finished unpacking the boxes from his move that had yet to be unpacked. He was very happy with the results.  His place will quickly look like the tech bachelor place it is again.  But should he want to clean it up for company---should he want it to look more photo-ready for GoodHousekeeping---he now knows what to do.

Project time: four hours.