A Clutter Too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves
By TARA PARKER-POPE
After the holidays, many shoppers load up their carts with storage bins, shelving systems and color-coded containers, all in a resolute quest to get organized for the new year.
Getting organized is unquestionably good for both mind and body — reducing risks for falls, helping eliminate germs and making it easier to find things like medicine and exercise gear.
“If you can’t find your sneakers, you aren’t taking a walk,” said Dr. Pamela Peeke, assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and the author of “Fit to Live” (Rodale, 2007), which devotes a section to the link between health and organization. “How are you going to shoot a couple of hoops with your son if you can’t even find the basketball?”
But experts say the problem with all this is that many people are going about it in the wrong way.
Too often they approach clutter and disorganization as a space problem that can be solved by acquiring bins and organizers.
Measures like these “are based on the concept that this is a house problem,” said David F. Tolin, director of the anxiety disorders center at the Institute of Living in Hartford and an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at Yale.
“It isn’t a house problem,” he went on. “It’s a person problem. The person needs to fundamentally change their behavior.”
Excessive clutter and disorganization are often symptoms of a bigger health problem. People who have suffered an emotional trauma or a brain injury often find housecleaning an insurmountable task. Attention deficit disorder, depression, chronic pain and grief can prevent people from getting organized or lead to a buildup of clutter. At its most extreme, chronic disorganization is called hoarding, a condition many experts believe is a mental illness in its own right, although psychiatrists have yet to formally recognize it.
Compulsive hoarding is defined, in part, by clutter that so overtakes living, dining and sleeping spaces that it harms the person’s quality of life. A compulsive hoarder finds it impossible, even painful, to part with possessions. It’s not clear how many people suffer from compulsive hoarding, but estimates start at about 1.5 million Americans.
Dr. Tolin recently studied compulsive hoarders using brain-scan technology. While in the scanner, hoarders looked at various possessions and made decisions about whether to keep them or throw them away. The items were shredded in front of them, so they knew the decision was irreversible. When a hoarder was making decisions about throwing away items, the researchers saw increased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in decision-making and planning.
“That part of the brain seemed to be stressed to the max,” Dr. Tolin said. By comparison, people who didn’t hoard showed no extra brain activity.
While hoarders are a minority, many psychologists and organization experts say the rest of us can learn from them. The spectrum from cleanliness to messiness includes large numbers of people who are chronically disorganized and suffering either emotionally, physically or socially. Cognitive behavioral therapy may help: a recent study of hoarders showed that six months’ therapy resulted in a marked decline in clutter in the patient’s living space.
Although chronic disorganization is not a medical diagnosis, therapists and doctors sometimes call on professional organizers to help patients. One of them is Lynne Johnson, a professional organizer from Quincy, Mass., who is president of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization.
Ms. Johnson explains that some people look at a shelf stacked with coffee mugs and see only mugs. But people with serious disorganization problems might see each one as a unique item — a souvenir from Yellowstone or a treasured gift from Grandma.
Many clients have already accumulated numerous storage bins and other such items in a futile attempt to get organized. Usually the home space is adequate, she says, but the challenge is in teaching them how to group, sort, set priorities and discard.
Ms. Johnson says she often sees a link between her client’s efforts to get organized and weight loss. “I think someone decides, ‘I’m not going to live like this anymore. I’m not going to hold onto my stuff, I’m not going to hold onto my weight,’” she said. “I don’t know that one comes before the other. It’s part of that same life-change decision.”
On its Web site, www.nsgcd.org, the group offers a scale to help people gauge the seriousness of their clutter problem. It also includes a referral tool for finding a professional organizer. But since the hourly fees can range from $60 to $100 or more, it may be worth consulting a new book by Dr. Tolin, Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee, “Buried in Treasures” (Oxford, 2007), which offers self-assessments and advice for people with hoarding tendencies.
Dr. Peeke says she often instructs patients trying to lose weight to at least create one clean and uncluttered place in their home. She also suggests keeping a gym bag with workout clothes and sneakers in an uncluttered area to make it easier to exercise. She recalls one patient whose garage was “a solid cube of clutter.” The woman cleaned up her home and also lost about 50 pounds.
“It wasn’t, at the end of the day, about her weight,” Dr. Peeke said. “It was about uncluttering at multiple levels of her life.”
Clear the Clutter to Lose Weight
There’s a connection between straightening up our surroundings and losing weight. And it just might turn you into a neat freak.
By: Carole Carson AARP
I start every day by cleaning the kitchen sink. It’s my ritual. After I clean the debris away, I certainly think better, and I’m more organized and confident. I am ready to start the day.
The rest of my house may not be spotless but I try to keep it clean and, importantly, I have far less stuff today than I did before I lost weight.
Each month during my weight-loss period, I called a local charity for a pickup of extraneous stuff. And although it was sometimes difficult to put old-time “friends” in the bags, once those things were gone I never missed them.
Interestingly enough, participants in my fitness and weight-loss classes report a similar impulse to clean the clutter out of their lives. And it’s no mere coincidence.
A article in The New York Times, “A Clutter Too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves,” quotes Lynne Johnson, president of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, who says, “I think someone decides, ‘I’m not going to live my life like this anymore. I’m not going to hold onto my stuff, I’m not going to hold onto my weight.’”
She adds, “I don’t know that one comes before the other. It’s part of that same life-change decision.” One of Lynne’s clients, for example, cleaned out her home and lost 50 pounds.
People believe that clutter is the result of inadequate organization.
But the real problem is not inadequate storage or organization.
Rather, the problem resides in the way people view their material possessions. Each item is as valuable as the next one, so nothing can be discarded. Until the thinking process is changed, no matter how many systems are adopted or storage bins added the clutter problem won’t go away.
To me, clinging to possessions and struggling with one’s weight are closely linked. If you can clean out even one room in your home, you start to regain control and you see that your actions (exercising your right to part with your possessions) yield positive change — i.e., a cleaner, brighter, easier-to-manage space. You realize you have a choice about how you live, and that is empowering.
The exact same philosophies apply to your health, your body, your diet and your exercise regimens. If you’re ready to clear out the clutter in your life, you may discover that you are also ready to discard some of your extra weight. Or, like the students in my fitness class, you will begin by losing weight, and, as a by-product, you will start clearing out the surplus stuff that is holding you back. The decisions are all yours.
Photos: adarlingday.com, makemineamojito.com
