Owning It

Oprah has one.




A declutter guru, that is. And if Oprah has one, then they must be all the rage.



It isn’t too far off to assume that if your physical space is a hot mess, so is your brain. And if you can declutter your thoughts, rooms, closets and freezer space, good things will come. And one doesn’t need a celebrity self-help healer of all things empowering to tell us what we already know.


Accumulation of crap breeds crappy feelings of failure, self-loathing and inadequacy.
It’s just like everything else in life; organizing, color-coding, filing, zoning and purging loads of said crap is way easier said than done.


Now for those of you who know me, you know I can hoard a thing or two. And according to Oprah’s go-to-guru of all things clutter, Peter Walsh, I am one of the worst kinds of “road blocking my way to happiness” accumulators. That’s right, I’m a Knowledge Clutterer.


What’s a Knowledge Clutterer you might ask? Beats me. Until I looked it up, I had no idea, and evidently we are the type of people that need to get over ourselves already.


Something is telling me Mr. Walsh and I would not be fast friends.


Those of us who are resisting the digital age of organization and stark vast wastelands of nothingness except a Plexiglas screen are really just egomaniacs who need to relax and trust in Wikipedia, Sparks Notes and e-readers. By “stockpiling” books and literary periodicals, aka having your own library, a knowledge clutterer believes “that if she owns the book, then she owns the knowledge, even if she never reads the book or takes it off the shelf,” Mr. Walsh informs us.


This is where I inform Mr. Walsh, your damn straight I own my knowledge. It took me years and years to get it, and yes, I OWN it, literally and figuratively, so I can put it on a shelf if I want to.
Other poor per perpetrators of intellectual hoarding and pretentiousness are book club members; enthusiasts of coffee table tomes on interior design; and worst of all, recent college grads wanting to show off their feminist poetry collections.


Y’all, I’m serious. You can’t make this stuff up.


Now, to make matters worse, I am also a Sentimental Clutterer-slash-Family Historian.


Me, along we all those besotted parents and ‘women of a certain age’ who have experienced loss tend to hoard all things family-centric. These items are, but not limited to, family heirlooms, grade school projects, school yearbooks, pre-school art and art projects of all kinds. Now, if you, like me can’t seem to unload grandmas’ Peruvian 1950’s cordial glasses or your kid’s 4th grade giant squid made out of paper-mache and a 7up bottle that took first prize, then it’s about time you start, according to Mr. Walsh, establishing a hierarchy of value.


This means the objects that mean the most stay, but only if they can fit in one box. I guess these means my grandfather’s samurai sword he brought back from fighting in the south Pacific during World War II must go, along with my Mama’s turn of the century glass china cabinet. Looks like grandpa’s tax return from 1982 may be the only thing left in the hierarchy to fit in the box after all.


I’m also, it seems, a behind Closed Doors (as in don’t open that closet, you may lose consciousness if something falls on your head) Clutterer, as well.


The only Clutterer I am not is a Bargain Shopper/Coupon Hoarding Clutterer. I have my Aunt Pam to thank for that one. All you have to do is stop by my house and I’ll feed you pot stickers with a side of Rotel, that she picked up as part of a year’s supply at Costco last September. This was after spotting a yellow sign that simply read: 29 cents.


Now, unlike Mr. Walsh, I’ll admit I am not a certified clutter expert. I’m not really an expert on anything for that matter, but I will tell you I feel a little foolish when I take all the declutter guru’s advice and ask my hoarded objects tough questions.


Take my plastic spatula shaped like Mickey, for example. How does it make me feel? Does it bring me happiness? I’ll tell you how it makes me feel, tired. And no, it doesn’t bring me happiness. But when the kids wake up at the crack of dawn to stare at me while I try and sleep I might need the dang thing to flip a pancake or two, seeing as my other three spatulas are either in the dishwasher dirty, stuck in a flower pot outside somewhere, or just plain missing.


But I know, I know… I could use more clear space in my home as well as in my head. I am sure it would help spur on creativity and ease problem solving like all the experts tell me. I would love to banish boxes, unload unwanted magazines, and dump a bunch of crap and call it a day. I really, really would.


I just need to find time, not a value system.


For now, I have zero problems deferring (yes, I have a load a wet wash that’s been hanging out a full day waiting to get in the dryer and a stack of dirty dishes in the sink.) I also don’t care that I’m a rebel, as in you can’t make me do anything I don’t really want to (as I step over a pile of wet towels to read one of my real books) and if I’m a perfectionist (seeing as how I can’t clean all the bathrooms why clean only one) so be it.


I’ve lived with cramped space in my head, sandy floors and tooth paste crusted sinks for 43 years, along with a library full of books and have gotten along just fine.
In fact, more than fine.


And I have no problem owning that.