Are You a Clutterer?

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AL: What degree of clutter is still OK?

Nagel: There’s everything from the minimalist whose desk is absolutely spic and span with nothing on it, all the way to the hoarder, the other extreme. But it’s not really about neatness. The issue is function.

Clutterers can be functional. When I explain being organized to my classes, there are four things we look at:

1. You can find everything you need, when you need it.
2. You can get everything done when it’s due.
3. Your space functions well for you. Neatness and attractiveness are secondary. A lot of people think the important thing is being neat, but that’s not the case.
4. Your stuff serves you, not the other way around.

You can be organized but not neat, and you can be neat but not organized. They’re not one and the same.

AL: What’s the difference between a clutterer and a hoarder?

Nagel: A clutterer is somebody who has a lot of clutter. The hoarder’s life is run by the clutter. They don’t function well because of it. It’s like the distinction between someone who drinks a lot and an alcoholic.

For example, hoarders can’t find anything—all the time. They can’t find their keys, they don’t pay their bills on time because they haven’t opened their mail, or they can’t even find their mail. They can’t find what they need when they need it on an ongoing basis. Their beds, chairs and couches are used to hold things, not people. They may use their kitchen appliances to store things. Or have so many objects in front them that they may not be accessible. They’re completely embarrassed to have people over and often don’t allow even family members to visit.

In extreme cases, the clutter can become a safety hazard. For example, one woman’s kitchen caught on fire because she had clothing in there amid the clutter, and the wind blew her clothing onto the burner.

AL: When does clutter become hazardous?

Nagel: One, when it creates stress in your life. If you have a lot of stress, your body can release the stress hormone cortisol, which can affect your physical well-being.

Clutter is a safety hazard when people trip over it or slip on it and injure themselves. What if your hallway has clutter on the floor and you have to go to the bathroom at night, or you have a houseguest who’s unfamiliar with the home and falls? Or as in my previous example, when clutter can lead to a fire.

Then there’s the hazard of allergies and respiratory ailments because there’s so much dust and you can’t get to it. Clutter can also house things like silverfish and roaches.

If clutter is that extreme, these people are hoarders, not clutterers. Hoarding is part of a deep-rooted obsessive-compulsive disorder, and usually they won’t change without professional help.

I had one client whose house was so inundated with things that she couldn’t use any of her kitchen appliances because she had shelves in front of them holding things. You had to walk on sheets and around canned goods that were everywhere on the floor. Her husband, who loved her dearly and couldn’t function in that environment, built an apartment on the second floor and moved there.

AL: What causes clutter?

Nagel: There are many causes, starting with a belief in scarcity. Lynn Twist writes about this in The Soul of Money. Before we even get out of bed in the morning, we’re thinking I don’t have enough time, money, or whatever. This is the culture in which we live. We view our lives from the perspective of not having enough, or more is better.  Having what we need is no longer sufficient.

When you come from a place of scarcity, you hold onto things longer. You also purchase more things because you tell yourself you have to have them, rather than because you really need them. For example, the fashion industry has us believing we can’t wear what we wore last year, so we get new clothes, but we don’t get rid of the old.

Clutter is also caused by a lack of organization systems or by systems that do not function well for that individual. Those are two distinct things:  Lack of a system and not having the system function well for you.

We hold onto things because we think they may be valuable someday, collectibles like Beanie Babies.

Discount volume purchases add to our clutter, things like 30-roll packs of toilet paper.

Some of us leave things out as visual reminders, and that turns into clutter. You leave something by the front door so you won’t forget to return it to the store. You leave out the soap powder as a reminder to do the laundry. And then the soap powder and the things by the door remain there for years. Or you buy a pair of pants and they’re too long so you leave them on the chair to be hemmed, and six months later they’re still on the chair—under all the other things you’ve left out in the meantime.

Although it’s getting better now, the computer age has created more paper clutter, not less. Many of us used to print every joke and we had piles of these things. Now we’re doing more online and printing less, but many people print articles, recipes and coupons that often turn into clutter.

AL: Do we have a bigger clutter problem in Hawaii because many people inherit parents’ and grandparents’ homes, with all their accumulated generations of stuff?

Nagel: I wouldn’t say Hawaii has more multigenerational clutter than the Mainland, because people on the Mainland also inherit things or keep things they sort through when their parents die, and they absorb these things into their own homes.

It’s a bigger problem in Hawaii because we don’t have much storage space. We have smaller homes with no attics or basements. If you drive around a community with open lanais or covered carports, you’ll see things stacked up. I would estimate that 25 percent of two-car garages are used exclusively to store things, and there’s no room for cars. That’s why there are so many self-storage places being built everywhere.

There’s also a cultural aspect in Hawaii. So many people in Asian cultures have been taught that you don’t make waves, so it’s very hard to say “no thank you” when someone gives you something. There’s a different set of behaviors than you might experience in other cultures.

On the Mainland, people are able to say more readily, “That’s really pretty, but why don’t you give it to somebody else because it’s just going to sit in my drawer.”

I teach people how to say, “no thank you.” It’s about acknowledging the giver and getting them to see that their relationship is more about friendship and love than about the thing they’re giving.

So if your auntie comes to visit and she has a bracelet she’s inherited and wants to pass it along to you, and you don’t wear bracelets, you could say, “You’re my favorite auntie, and the bracelet is not going to be a good memory for me because I’m not going to wear it and I’ll feel bad. May I pass it along to my sister-in-law who loves bracelets, or donate it somewhere special in your name?” It is becoming more acceptable to do this in our culture than at any time in the past.

In my decluttering classes, the homework assignment is to donate one thing, throw away one thing, and give away one thing every week. The giveaway piece has a caveat: They can’t give it away unless they offer it in a way that the receiver can say, “Yes, I’d love it,” or just as comfortably, “No thank you.”