What Is Clutter?
By all indications, clutter is a prevalent early-twenty-first-century American malaise. It ranks with heart disease and chronic depression as a debilitating condition so wide-spread it characterizes the population. Clutter is bemoaned in private conversations from coast to coast. Cures for clutter are broadcast from every form of media. The freak show of extreme clutter fascinates us, managing to stimulate in us feelings of both shame and righteousness. It isn’t pretty.
However, I submit to you that clutter is an opportunity. It is the raw material for transformation. In the process of de-cluttering your living space, you can transform your life. As an alchemist would transmute lead into gold, you can transmute your superfluous material possessions into inner peace. I won’t beat around the bush here. It’s magic.
Let me assure you that I’m not crazy. I don’t believe in magic. I just practice it. You will, too, once you see how well it works.
Imagine ordinary clutter. Imagine shelves stacked deep and high with ageing books, the pages browning and disintegrating sweetly. Imagine racks of erstwhile fashion, the fabrics adapting imperceptibly over months and years to fit the hangers’ jaunty angles. Imagine hefty, antique tables where your long-dead great-grandparents smoked and ate and fought. Imagine priceless vases procured, as the family story goes, in Shanghai during the Opium Wars. Imagine crates of china dishes individually wrapped, their dainty, secret eglantines and gilded edges carefully protected from the ravages of time. So, too, imagine gifts of art and ties and dreadfully specific household appliances. Imagine sheet sets decorated in motifs that would make your now-middle-aged son tear his remaining hair in an agony of sadness and frustration. Imagine children’s toys so broken they classify as hazards. Imagine lamps with fraying cords, pottery with chips, encyclopedias full of quaint misinformation, designer bags with mildew on the silk, empty boxes, rubber bands that have stiffened into runes, rusted twist-ties….and a Valentine card -- that once was pink but now has yellowed -- from your ex.
Imagine this clutter. And allow yourself to feel the emotions it engenders in you. My guess is that your emotions will span such a wide range – from pride and hope to shame and disgust – that you will turn away. Your response is perfectly understandable. Clutter is confusing.
But it is also the raw material of transformation! My job as your de-clutterer is to coax you to over-ride your confusion, to act on faith, and to stay present. In the process of letting go of superfluous material possessions, you will develop the skill of letting go of superfluous intangible possessions that have been obscuring and preventing your inner peace.
You may respond, “But I don’t have faith! I don’t have the courage to let go.” I can appreciate your feeling of panic. However, I wonder if you are stronger than you think. I wonder if your faith is buried within you, like the still glowing embers of a fire banked with ashes and dirt. Faith, like embers, can be buried for a long time. Faith, like embers, can be re-ignited with a gentle breath.
