A Decluttered Life

I am the baby of my very large family, the youngest of six brothers and sisters. It’s a great position to have if you can get it and it’s one I’ve always enjoyed. After all, my parents were older and wiser when they had me. No longer quite so strict (I didn’t have to deal with a mother who believed that Fig Newtons were as far down the cookie train as anyone should be willing to go as my brothers did), no longer forcing their kids to wait to learn things at the appropriate age (I got to learn to drive and light matches at the same time as my big sister, much to her chagrin), and no longer as cautious (a frequent refrain in my childhood was “Go spend the day outside and just make sure you’re back for dinner.” A safe directive when you live on 40-acres in the middle of nowhere). My parents had relaxed quite a bit by the time I came around and I reaped all the associated benefits.

However, the position of “baby of the family” does come with some very serious responsibilities as well. I am the last. There are/will be no more children after me. Anything that my parents love about raising children has to be enjoyed to its fullest extent with me. I grew up always aware that I was their last opportunity. So if my mother mentioned that she loved styling my hair just so or dressing me in certain clothes, then I had better let her ‘cause taking that away from her before she was ready would just be cruel. After all, there was no younger sibling to allow her to continue practicing on.

I don’t think this sense of responsibility or obligation is anything that my parents forced on me or even mentioned explicitly or implicitly. In fact, I’m really not sure where it came from. I just remember from some of my earliest childhood memories having this sense that I had to tread lightly on asserting my independence because my growing up and becoming an individual meant I was taking one more aspect of raising children away from my parents. Of course, there were some aspects they were happy to have me take over for myself. I’m sure potty training their last kid came as a great relief and I know that my finally getting my act together in school (no longer “failing to live up to my potential” as my teachers were so fond of saying) so that they no longer had to remind me to take the time at home to do my homework was an excellent day as well. But there were other things that I just instinctively knew would somehow hurt them to take for myself. And so I developed a policy of allowing them to hold onto those aspects instead. (This is how I ended up with a perm.) After all, it wasn’t such a great hardship for me and it did seem to make them happy. (And thinking back on it now, I think it’s something my siblings encouraged. After all, they could assert their independence at will. If my parents raised a fuss or made sad sounds over it my sisters or brothers could just point to me and say “but you still have Lauren, she’s your baby.” In fact, I remember my next oldest sister being extremely angry when I started staying up later than 9 pm, telling me that I was too young to stay up that late and I should still be in bed. I was in high school.)

And going hand-in-hand with this sense of obligation as to my personal independence was a sense of responsibility and obligation to physical objects as well. I quickly became known in the family as the sentimental one, the child that keeps things around and retained the trappings of childhood long past the traditional expiration date. I think that quality was fostered by my status in the family. If I was given an object or item from a family member and no longer wanted it there was no one below me on the food chain to pass it along to. Who would take it if I said goodbye? It would be donated to Good Will, lost to the family unit forever. I was the perfect recipient to receive hand-me-downs, but there was no one below me to continue the practice. I was and am the caboose. If something gets to me and I say no more, then it is leaving the Moser family train altogether. That’s it. Done. Finito.

From a very young age, therefore, I began to attach great sentimentality to all belongings. If a family member didn’t want something anymore I would become its keeper; storing the item faithfully away so that it was not lost to the great void of the world. All belongings were anthropomorphized and I would hear a voice in my head saying “You’ll hurt the bear’s/box’s/shirt’s feelings if you let it go. It’s been so good to this family and you saying you’re done means you don’t value its’ service. You’re saying you don’t care.” I’m not saying I was/am a hoarder by any means. I wasn’t and am not surrounded by mountains of cast offs from my family. But if I received a gift from someone, I had to keep it. Getting rid of the gift was like saying I didn’t love the person. And if I had a great memory attached to an object that a family member was getting rid of or felt they should have that memory attached to it then I would take the object for myself and protect that memory. This all meant that I never had to buy many belongings because my room was filled with things that had meaning, even if that meaning was not always mine.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to tell when to let go. There’s nothing wrong with saving the items that remind us of good times or putting cast offs to new use, but there does come a point at which you need to let it go. To say sayonara to something that served you well in the past, but serves no purpose today.

And this all links to another aspect of my character, which is organization. I love organizing. I love for things to have their spot and to be in that spot. I am someone who lists The Container Store as a happy place. All those wonderful bins, baskets and organizing paraphernalia lined up so neatly on shelves makes something inside me all warm and giddy. In fact, it’s been mentioned by quite a few people over the years that I might be just a little OCD about organizing. A favorite game of my college roommates was to shift the salt and pepper shakers on the dining table slightly out of place and wait to see how long I could stand it before shifting them back. (I usually lasted about 30 seconds.) And when I first moved to Oregon my mother would start each visit wandering around my house and casually moving knickknacks around while I would follow behind and move them back. I think this went on for her first three or four visits until my Dad finally noticed and told her to stop as she was clearly driving me nuts. (I think there was an implied “and isn’t she nuts enough” in there at the end. He may be right.)

And though it’s been subtle and almost completely unnoticed by me, these two aspects of my character have been at war for years. That sense of obligation toward people and objects which has caused me to save and retain so much has been slowly but surely butting up against the need for organization and keeping everything in its place. Because it’s a truth that should be universally acknowledged that at some point…you’re just going to run out of room. I managed to stave off that day for quite a while by putting my love of The Container Store to good use, signing up for Martha Stewart’s home emails, which regularly feature entire walls of bins and boxes (storage made art), for inspiration, and reorganizing on a regular basis. But there comes, of course, a tipping point. A point at which you can no longer tamp down the feelings of anxiety that say “Maybe, just maybe, you have too much stuff. Maybe, just maybe, this is the time to let some of it go.”

That point came for me a little over one month ago. It was a normal Friday afternoon and I was chatting with my coworkers about our weekend plans. My coworker Erin mentioned that she was working on her new project to declutter her house. As a hardcore fan of organizing, I quickly requested more information. She said that she had read this book on decluttering your house and she was starting the project this weekend with a purge of her clothes. The book is called “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” by Marie Kondo. It’s a book I had heard about before as it appeared on several bestseller lists in recent months and I had even read an interview with the author. I had planned to read it, but ultimately decided against it in the end as reviews showed it was an extremely polarizing book.  But on this Friday afternoon I changed my mind. Erin began describing Marie Kondo’s decluttering philosophy to me and it just clicked.

Keep only those things that speak to your heart. 

So simple and, yet, so profound. We surround ourselves with objects that bring us no joy. Objects that our rational brains tell us we should keep for one reason or another: it may be of use some day, it was useful once, it used to bring me joy, it still has so much wear left in it even though I don’t ever wear it, it once meant so much to me or someone I love. (Clearly, my rational brain has been in overdrive for years.) And (if you’re in the same place that I was) all these joyless objects that surround us cause stress and anxiety. For a long time my house has made me anxious. I didn’t feel at peace when I was at home. Instead, when I really stopped to analyze how I felt, I realized that I felt like I was surrounded by mountains of items that were growing and growing until they would one day topple over and crush me. (Let me reiterate here, I am not a hoarder. There are not literally mountains of belongings in my house. Except books. There are mountains of books. Dang it.)

And on that Friday afternoon, hearing that simple statement that I should only keep objects that “spark joy,” I knew I had to do something. And so, I went home and did two things: 1) I ordered Marie Kondo’s book from amazon; and 2) I began my purge, the first step in decluttering my home and my life. I have now read the book (and I’m currently reading her second book) and drunk the Kool Aid. I am a Konmari (her method of decluttering) convert. For the past month+ I have been going through my house and purging. I have taken 6 car loads of belongings to Good Will to donate and sent a full car load home with my parents of items (mostly bedding, towels and kitchen accessories) to pass along to other relatives.

Multiple all this by 6!

But of even more import than the physical changes this process is making in my home are the mental changes it’s making in me as a person. I’m learning how to let go. I’m learning how to release myself from that sense of obligation that told me to hold on tight, that I was the last stop and, as the caboose, I couldn’t let anything fall by the wayside. Instead, I am learning to thank these objects (yes, they are still anthropomorphized) for all they have done and all the joy they have brought and send them off with gratitude to their next stop in life. I am learning how surround myself with only those items that spark joy so that my home is a place of pure happiness and serenity, my oasis of calm from the chaos of the world.

I will always be the baby of my family. And I will never mind taking the process of growing (not “up” at this point as I’m now 29, but we never really stop growing) slowly in order to get my parents and family used to the idea. I will never fully outgrow the feelings of responsibility and obligation that come with my coveted position, but I am so happy to be taking this step of personal growth. Of melding those two aspects of my character that have been at odds for so long. Of learning to let go of that self-imposed sense of obligation to keep, store, and hold the objects related to memories fast. To enjoy my love of organization for the way it makes my life tidy, not out of the sense of necessity that it’s been in recent years as I have been forced to find new and creative ways to store and, yes, hide the joyless. To just let go.

Not everyone will understand and I know a lot of people will read this or listen to me speak on this subject with unbridled enthusiasm and think “whoa, she’s really lost it” and that’s ok. Not everyone feels this way. And not everyone needs this. But I know that others will hear and feel the click. And I hope that if you too become a Konmarian, that it does for you as much as it’s done for me. I feel sure that I am not just on a path to a decluttered house, but on a path to a decluttered me. And it feels really good.