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.

Christmas 2018

Dearest friends, family, readers, and companions along the way,                                    
(Apart from the commercial, this might be an appropriate soundtrack to this year's Christmas letter: Tender Tennessee Christmas)

I am writing this from Sam's father's house near Cookeville, Tennessee.  This will be our third Christmas in Tennessee since Sam and I rediscovered each other in 2015.  His family is remarkably kind and drama-free. There are no drunk uncles, no long-standing feuds, no members treated like they are less lovable than the others, and all the bodies are well-hidden---at least in this branch. 

It has rained over 6 inches in the last week, and everything is soggy. Green moss shines thick on many tree-trunks along the roadways. The temperature is hovering in the upper 30s and low 40s (around 5 Celsius), much cooler than past Christmases here. We did have sun yesterday! But we are back to grey and rainy today.

Not unlike last year, I had five days of profound laryngitis, though it came the second week of December rather than over Christmas, thank goodness.  Just like last year, it was funny to watch people around me start pantomiming, whispering, and just stop talking in response to my whispering and pantomiming. I will call that deep empathy, and the desire to connect through mirroring, rather than anything reflecting the overall intelligence of my friends. We humans are endlessly entertaining.

Sam continues to work at Penguin Random House in the permissions department, though they moved his office from the lower West Village up to 55th and Broadway. The walk is longer than it used to be and nowhere near as pleasant, so he is more inclined to take the subway.  Nevertheless, we are grateful he has steady, secure work with a boss he respects.

Alison had nine exciting months at Mood Designer Fabrics, leaving before they began shooting the next season of Project Runway.  She enjoyed many of her co-workers and much about the job.  But the long hours and less-than-admirable employment practices of the owners saw her departing in late July. She misses the steady (low) pay but doesn't miss the fatigue and inability to do much besides sleep and work.

She (me) has turned her attention to her organization and clutter clearing business and is seeing a steady influx of work.  She (I, me) find this work deeply satisfying.  It feels pastoral and useful and seems to give the clients a real lift. Most of my work is in my hometown, a two-hour train ride from NYC, so I have been staying for two or three weeks at a time with friends and family in order to fit in as many jobs as I can line up.  I'm hoping to build my clientele in New York City, but so far my network is far too small there, and folks generally hire people they've heard great things about.

So if you live in New York City or have friends there and want to give my business a boost, please recommend my services!  New York City clients will get the first hour free in exchange for a positive review.  I need to get off the ground in NYC in particular.  The business is called Moore Magic Organizing, and the website can be found at MagicOrganizing.com. 

I also have clients in Pittsburgh and Kitchener, Ontario. If you live in one of those places and are curious to try my services, be sure to get on my list. I currently will be in Southern Ontario in mid-February and need more clients for that trip.  Just mention my new-customer offer and get the first hour for only $15.  

Since pretty much all my energy goes to earning enough to stop sinking deeper in debt, I don't have a lot else to talk about.  I'm not writing, sewing, singing, supply preaching, or anything else except for performing the occasional wedding.  I still love to do weddings, but folks will have to find me via word of mouth. The annual advertising costs are too much compared to what I can earn doing them. 

I long to write, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs finds me solidly in the lower four levels. I will just have to trust that one day I will again have time for writing that is not work-related. I do believe in a society where every member can have a lifestyle that includes time and energy enough for the enjoyment and expression of art.  I would love to be going to museums, seeing shows, and writing my novel, but that would require more time, energy, and money than I possibly have.  I feel mad about that sometimes. But the mad doesn't fix anything. So I get over it and move on.

As I age, I find I am growing increasingly sentimental. I have been enjoying spending time on ancestry.com, researching connections, looking for family resemblances in old photos, and discovering different places and homesteads where ancestors once lived. Family ties, history, and genealogy are freshly meaningful.  Time with children, grandchildren, and siblings feels much more important than, say, world travel (which I also love). All the signs point to me getting older. Hmm. 

The clock in the picture above represents a successful Philadelphia Chocolate company in Sam's heritage. If you dig hard, sometimes you can find old bottles embossed with their brand too. Croft and Allen Swiss Milk Cocoa was a going concern in the early 1900s, but the company lost everything in the Great Depression.  (Well, that makes a better story.) Actually, it was "badly mismanaged by an Uncle" and went bankrupt before the Depression. (Think Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life.) Oh dear. Such is life.

I think about these ancestors---the lives they lived which were just as real as ours---their hardships and their triumphs, their great failings and the disasters they survived. I think about the many sacrifices some of them made so that we could have a chance at a decent life too.  I think about the ways that, despite their best efforts and expectations, their lives didn't necessarily go the way they had hoped. (Just like ours?)

But life goes on, and the wise ones continue to point us to the things that have real value: not wild financial success, expensive belongings, or political power; but a wealth of family and friends,  a rich supply of love, courage, and compassion, and the strength of personal integrity and authenticity. This wisdom is found in all the spiritual teachings in all the world: Use things, not people. Love people, not things. 

Underneath it all, the Creator of everything good and wise has never stopped speaking and never changed the message. May we continue to seek genuine peace on earth. We can absolutely make a difference in that quest because I can work on me and you can work on you.  The biggest change we can make in the world is changing our own hearts and leading by example.

With gratitude for all the amazing, creative, compassionate, funny, wise, and courageous people there are in our lives.  

That means you.  

With deepest love to our family, old and new, 

Sam and Alison Moore

Previous Christmas letters can be found here:
https://alisonlongstaffmoore.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-silent-christmas.html
and here:
https://cliffsidechapel.com/Christmas2015.htm