Taking a shirt I haven’t worn in two years and throwing it into a garbage bag does not help my anxiety.
I don’t have anxiety. But I don’t know that. Maybe I do. Who knows. Not me. Not my mom.
Cleaning has always been something I’ve done for fun in my free time. Not the sweep-the-bathroom-floor-dust-the-piano-mop-the-kitchen kind of cleaning, but the “other” kind. The one for perfectionists, unfortunately. I got into the whole container-organization, minimalism, Marie Kondo tidiness when I was twelve. No kidding. I never could get to the point where I was an actual minimalist, or picture perfect declutterer, but the more I got rid of things, the closer I got to that reality.
But that reality is not my reality five years later. Now I sob as I lie on my back on the carpet and do the usual verbal complaint sequence that goes a lot like, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CLEAN ANYMORE! I have NOTHING to get rid of but I know I have something! There are still things and I know it but I CAN’T do it! My clutter is stressing me out so bad but I’m so bad at giving things away and something must be wrong with me because I always get so anxious about the fact that I own stuff! I don’t know what to declutter anymore!” As you can see, it’s redundant and doesn’t get a lot done.
Back when I was little—er, it seemed that I could never run out of things to declutter. When I was done refolding all my clothes, I could easily move on to my paper clutter collection. Done categorizing paper into file folders? Well, mom’s makeup drawer could use a bit of a reorientation. It was so nice to clear stuff off of flat surfaces too. Back then my family had a lot of cabinets that were on the shorter end, so every one of those surfaces had stuff on top that were just begging to be swept off. I would do exactly that and make those surfaces my new pride and joy.
If decluttering spaces and organizing drawers was addictive, it was only a gateway drug. A gateway drug to purging [items]. Twelve year old me (maybe thirteen at this point due to how all that voluntary labor must have aged me) had realized that decluttering only made things look pretty on the outside.
*Just to clarify and clear possible confusion, I later learned that “purging” was not the best to type into Google searches and should be paired with “items” to get the results a thirteen-year-old declutterer wants.
Minimalism was so cool! I wasn’t crazy about how it was associated with owning monotone colored clothes or white furniture, but I loved how it focused on life apart from being a consumer. To supplement this concept, I discovered Marie Kondo and quoted her like a diehard fangirl. My book searches in the library were also geared to accommodate my very normal tween girl fandom.
Now that I have supplied you with the fascinating history of my past, you can see how I’ve always been into this cleaning stuff. Before it was cool, to note.
Anyways—years later I stress about how I still have stuff that I need to declutter. Not that it has interfered with my life, but in a way it has, as I stress about it on a weekly basis. It’s irony when I say that I value the things I see around me that resemble my privileged life, while also getting angry and screaming. You would think that someone who has lived half a decade with decluttering knowledge would have it down by now. But it’s been even more difficult since I value clothing more than I have as a child, since I have realized I have Generation Z FOMO, and since the need to keep an item is dependent on my mood (which changes all the time now).
I have stuff. Too much stuff for my brain to handle nowadays, and the fact that I’m anxious and sentimental about it makes it harder to get rid of it. It’s not really a crisis, but it feels like that and makes me angry when I feel trapped in all the stuff I can’t simply get rid of yet. Is my identity more rooted in the things I own than ever before? Fifteen-year-old me’s small search to learn about the foundations of hoarding presented this as a possibility.
*Hoarders tend to have a hard time letting go of things, since they have become a representation of their identity.
I know the problem—my stuff is stressing me out—which means that now this problem can be solved. But why am I paralyzed to take steps towards it?
Decluttering is a process of desensitization, which is what makes it so hard. It’s best to move in little steps to get yourself ready for the big jumps in the journey. I’ve been doing this process for what it feels like forever now.
And I guess the only thing to do is to keep trying.
*Thanks for reading if you stayed this far. I started typing just a few minutes ago (11 am) and now it’s 12:05 am. Oops