Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight Read Online Free PDF Page B

and gifts “just because.” You buy stuff for your kids on important holidays, gifts for good behavior, gifts for good grades, gifts when they’re sick, gifts because you feel guilty that you were impatient that time, and gifts because you want them to hug you.
    This adds up to a lot of stuff over the year. It all takes up space in your house.
I can always find room somewhere,
you sigh.
    You buy stuff to feel better. How often are you fully and completely free of unpleasant sensations? You’re well-rested and well-fed. You’re not sleepy, hungry, or thirsty. Your mind is occupied, and you’re not bored. You’re happy. You’re not annoyed with someone. You’re not feeling bummed-out or worried about a work deadline. Nothing itches. You’re thoroughly pleased and satisfied.
    Such moments are rare. Usually
something
is bothering you, even just alittle. If you’re like most people, the thing you can do to fix this problem—or at least distract yourself from it—is to buy something. Maybe you go to the vending machine for a pack of gum. Maybe you type in the first few letters of your favorite online retailer and the computer takes you the rest of the way there. Or you hop in the car and drive to the store, daydreaming the whole way.
    These purchases that fix a momentary unpleasantness create a river of stuff that flows into our homes.
I can always find room somewhere
, you think, but you know you can’t.
    You’re out of room.
    But your house isn’t overcluttered and out of room only because you bought and received too much stuff. It’s also because you held on to stuff when it was no longer doing you any good or serving any real purpose. A whole other set of factors may lead you to do that. Let’s take a look at them.
    Cluttered Mindset
    I’m not sure why we still make such a big deal about spring cleaning. Every February and March or so, reporters want to interview me for feature stories about new and improved ways you can clear out your house so it feels spring-fresh.
    At one point, people actually
did
spring cleaning. The ritual originated in Europe hundreds of years ago, when winter snows finally receded and people could open up their stale, cramped, smoky hovels. The reason the concept of spring cleaning doesn’t sit well with me is that:
    Few people actually do it. They might open their windows (until it gets too hot and they turn on the air conditioner) and do some dusting. But few people make large-scale efforts to haul out clutter.
    It reinforces the idea that cleaning/decluttering is a once-a-year event, when it should be an ongoing process.
    Think about it. Over the course of an average week, do you bring more objects into your home than you take out? Society’s attitudes about “clearing out” tend to be fairly indifferent and fleeting. For all the rituals we have in which buying things is expected—holidays, anniversaries, graduations—we don’t really have customary times throughout the year when we take stuff out of our house. On the other hand, people’s feelings about
keeping
their stuff are often numerous and powerful.
    As a decluttering expert, the work I do sometimes overlaps with the efforts of researchers who study hoarding. As I’ll explain in the next chapter, there are differences between people who are merely
heavily cluttered
and those who are
hoarders
. But they’re not always far apart when it comes to specific attitudes. If you have too much stuff around your house, the factors that follow may help explain why.
    You feel like it’s your job to take care of these objects. “Many individuals, whether they meet the criteria for hoarding disorder or not, keep objects from their childhood. Why do we hang on to mementos that may not be useful or monetarily valuable?” asks Kiara Timpano, PhD, a hoarding researcher at the University of Miami. “People have all sorts of reasons