A Place for My Stuff

Gifts that Don't Add to the Piles

Like many people, I maintain the life-long tradition of giving and receiving Xmas and birthday gifts with my immediate family.  When we all lived in the same house, the physical size of a gift wasn't an issue.  But now that we're all adults living in different parts of the country, well, you can't exactly wrap a mountain bike and check it in as airplane luggage.  For that matter, you can't receive a gift like that and expect to fit it in the overhead compartment on your return flight home.  So for practical reasons, we've been forced to go with presents that you can either order on-line, or pack in a suitcase.

Even if you're not traveling though, it's worth considering gifts like this that basically won't ever become clutter, particularly if the receiver already has too much stuff as it is.  Not surprisingly, Don Aslett gives a list of examples in his book For Packrats Only.  Granted you can give cash as a gift if all else fails, but personally I try not to give money as a gift.  That's because 1) I like to try to give gifts that are more personal, 2) don't want to give the impression that I can never think of anything else to get for a person, and 3) don't always want the person to know exactly how much I spent on him or her. 

In browsing through some of my older blog entries here, I found my suggestions on how to (and how not to) address somebody else's clutter problem.  One suggestion I gave was "Give stuff that won't add to their piles. [...] Heck, I should write a separate blog post of examples."  So, two years later, here it is.

• Edible Arrangements.  Flowers are always an option too, but as George Carlin pointed out, they're the only things we buy and bring home only to watch them die, and yet we're somehow OK with this.  Also, if you're getting a gift for a man, Edible Arrangements seem to pose much less of a threat to some people's masculinity.  Besides, you can't eat flowers.  Actually, I suppose you technically could eat flowers, but I'm willing to bet they won't taste as well nor feel as good in one's stomach.
• Anything else that's edible.  The idea here of course is that you're giving a person something that'ss not going to take up space in their house forever.
• AAA Membership.  I actually got this idea from Don Aslett.  For anybody who drives and lives in the US, this is well worth having in my opinion.  It's not only insurance to get a free tow if you break down, but a surprising amount of places give discounts to AAA members.  I've used this myself at hotels and the like, and it pays for itself.
• Scratch tickets.  They're easy to find, and you can decide how much you want to buy.  At best, the person wins money.  At worst, the person doesn't win but probably has no problem throwing the losing tickets away.
• Restaurant gift certificates. If your gift receiver likes a particular restaurant, then obviously you should try to go for that.  I've also noticed that around the holiday season, restaurants usually have deals on them (e.g., buy a $30 gift certificate for only $25).  One particular site I would highly recommend for this is Restaurant.com, which lets you search for restaurants by ZIP code, buy gift certificates, and print them at home.  Most of the restaurants there are obscure local ones trying to get customers, so you won't find too many big names there.  You can however end up getting things like "$25 off any order of $50 or more" for just a few bucks, if you take advantage of the occasional discounts.
• Event tickets (concerts, sports, movies, etc.).  I suppose there's the chance that they might buy some tacky merchandise at these events, but again, this is a gift you can fit in an envelope.

I know I probably should have written this list a month a two ago, before Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yuletide, etc. all came to pass.  Then again, gift-giving events such as birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Mothers' Day, and Fathers' Day all come up too.

Underinclusion: a source of clutter piles?

Most of my blog is about my stuff, the fact that I reached a point where I had way too much stuff than I was happy with, and thus the process of sifting through and getting rid of stuff.  Of course, getting rid of it is only half of the battle.  (And no, "knowing" is not the other half of the battle; that's only with G.I. Joe.)  The other half, for me anyway, is learning to cut off a lot of the clutter problems at the source.  This means recognizing key sources and behaviors that bring crap into the house.

Recently the book Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders: Practical Management came to my attention.  I haven't read it, but the authors of Stuff are featured in a chapter they wrote, titled "HOARDING: CLINICAL ASPECTS AND TREATMENT STRATEGIES".  Here's an excerpt that I could really, really relate to.  It sounds like the kind of thing I do at home without ever really realizing it.  The boldfacing is mine:

Another information-processing deficit that may be related to compulsive hoarding is categorizing and organizing information. [...] obsessionals have more complex concepts. They define category boundaries so narrowly that few items fit within them, a feature labeled underinclusion, and thus many categories are required to classify personal possessions. This has several implications for compulsive hoarders. First, each possession may be seen as belonging to its own category (i.e., so unique that nothing else is like it and nothing can substitute for it).

Such a view makes it difficult to discard anything. Second, because each possession is unique and complex, it is impossible to decide that a class of objects (e.g., old newspapers) is unimportant and can be discarded without closely examining each one. All important aspects of each possession must be examined before discarding. Third, because each possession is unique, it cannot be categorized with similar objects, and thus there is no way to organize possessions. 

An example of this phenomenon can be seen in the arrangement of a hoarder's books. The hoarder begins to read a book but must stop to do something else. The book cannot be returned to the shelf because it is now in a different category--books being actively read. It is placed on the coffee table. Next, a cookbook is consulted for dinner and it too cannot be returned to the shelf because it is being used. It is deposited on the back of the couch. The dictionary used next cannot be reshelved, lest the person forget the word he looked up. This process is repeated until there are books everywhere, none of which can be returned to its shelf because they are all different in their own category. Their new position in the room has meaning because each position represents a different category, and an idiosyncratic sort of organization exists, but the ultimate result is clutter and chaos. 

The finite amount of space available means that possessions must be piled on top of one another until there are large mounds of unrelated objects. From this chaos, a sort of temporal organization emerges. The hoarder may have a sense of where things are placed based on when they entered the pile. Hoarders trying to sort through a pile often pick up a possession and, not being sure what to do with it say, "I'll set it here for now' placing it somewhere nearby. This is repeated until the piles are so large and numerous that they begin merging (or collapsing) into one large pile.  With each new attempt to organize and discard, everything in the pile is examined and moved to the new pile or repositioned in the old pile. The end result is that the pile has been "churned" but no real progress has been made.

 

Add 1 part Chocolatini mix to 4 DVD case covers

"Add 1 part Chocolatini mix to 4 DVD case covers..." to the trash bin, please!

Some time ago we got a gift certificate to Macy's or Marshall's or one of these places we typically never shop.  You'll notice that in stores like these, they usually have a strange selection of edible and drinkable stuff near the kitchenware. Lo and behold, I found some chocolate martini mix.  She doesn't like these, but I do.  We bought it.  Then we realized that the kit is really just assuming that you're making one enormous 2-liter batch.  So, it didn't end up being used.

It was in my car for a long time, maybe because we were transporting to a party or a person who WOULD use it, but that didn't happen.  I even tried doing some math on how much I'd have to use to make one or two, and stuck it on a post-it note, but given the two different-sized mixing packages in there, that wasn't really making sense either.

Thus after having this damn thing for over a year, it was clear that it was time to get rid of it.

Another search in my home recently turned up yet another collection of DVD case covers.  I'm not referring to DVD cases, nor the DVD case sleeves.  I mean those cardboard pieces that slide over the top of some DVD cases, so that they look more attractive in the store, but in order to watch the DVD you have to slide the case out from them every time.  Or sometimes you'll get a movie trilogy, and even though each movie is in its own case, there's one big case to hold them all in, which means you're screwed if your DVD racks are of the horizontal slot variety.

This is the third or fourth time I've thrown a collection of these away.  I keep thinking I have them all in one place, but they keep on mysteriously turning up every year or so.  Strange, but clutter.

"How to Let Go of Things You Don't Use" (and why many minimalists are schmucks)

 

"If you think there's a solution,
then you're part of the problem."

- George Carlin (intro to "Braindroppings")

 

"Minimalism" has seemingly become a movement of sorts.  I mentioned it briefly a while back.  A lot of it seems to be centered around challenges like "How to live with just 100 things".

Personally, I thought the idea was too extreme for my tastes, and I still take that stand.  I'm not saying this because I'm a packrat; I'm saying this because I have absolutely no desire to get to such an extreme state.  Certainly I've been striving for the general underlying idea of "living with less", since I've been getting rid of a lot of stuff.  But as I've said countless times before, that's not as simple as just tossing everything you have, or getting a bigger place.  And having somebody else throw out your stuff isn't the answer either. I sometimes wonder just how many of these packrat-to-minimalist "success" story people end up regressing after a month or two.

As I've learned over these past one or years of blogging, the process for me hasn't merely been a matter of physically moving the stuff out from my home and into the dumpster.  If that was all there was to it, there wouldn't be a blog!  I've been learning more about myself, through my stuff.  It's been enlightening to me to see why I had certain things I didn't really use or need, what rationalizations I was using to keep them, the challenge of how to become a more productive judge of my own stuff, and retraining myself mentally to no longer keep bringing in more stuff that just adds to the pile.

Getting back to minimalists, I think the lady in this clip has some great points, and relevant to clutter.  Also as she points out, there's a lot of pretentious BS in the minimalist community.  There's sometimes a "more minimalist than thou" attitude.  Not to mention the attached notions of spirituality to it, which I certainly don't care for.  She also accurately points out that there's a reason why the process is slow, not done in one sitting.

 

EDIT APRIL 2012: I revisited this post, as the topic came up recently.  To reiterate yet another line I've said may times: I am materialistic, and see absolutely nothing wrong with that, in and of itself.  But I realized that the point where I want to be is to have a MANAGEABLE  amount of posessions, so that I can actually enjoy them.  You can't enjoy the those those 50 delightful things if they're buried in a sea of 5,000 things.  So ironically, my materialism is driving me to get rid of physical objects.

Next Clutter Targets, December 2011

It's frustrating when you look around a cluttered home and just don't have any idea where to begin, or what to do just next.  This is especially true when looking at clutter areas that didn't exist just a few months ago.  So I took a look around and tried to come up with some ideas of what to attack next.  You may very well see photos and stories about these in the upcoming weeks.

• Bin of stuff in front of my bureau.  These things usually start when you move an open box or other container into a room for some reason or another, then find yourself adding to it.  And adding to it.  And never remembering what's actually at the bottom.  I've already scraped my leg on it a few times walking by it.  Enough is enough.
• Then of course there's the top of the Bureau.  Like Aslett said, any horizontally flat, open space has the potential of becoming a clutter magnet.  Indeed.
• Clearing off the computer desk.  See above.
• Swapping out all of the summer and winter clothes.  Why go through the hassle when you can just reach into the box marked "winter clothes" and grab one of those sweaters on the go?  Well, because you still have those every-day access bureau draws filled with your shorts that you can't wear in December.  Time to swap this out BEFORE spring comes.
• Speaking of clothes, it's time to thin out the wardrobe. I did this before, but once-in-a-lifetime isn't going to do it.
• Clearing the floor in the room where I have the computer. Currently, this is my biggest "stuff" room, so it's no easy task. But I think splitting it into 4 or more floor areas can make it manageable.
• Fully unpacking and moving the suitcases from my vacation in November.  Honestly, my wife is partially to blame for this too.
• Packing up and mailing a big present, that I promised to a celebrity I met.  I'd rather not say what the present is, or who it's going to, but both are big.

Stay tuned.

Other Clutter-fighting Blogs

I've recently joined an on-line group that brought a few other clutter-related blogs to my attention.

Why would you read more blogs on the same topic?  Well same reason as you might do that with anything else: different writing styles, different approaches, etc.  I haven't really delved into these as much as I'd like to yet, and I'm sure I'll be mentioning them in the future.  But they deserve their own mention here.

The first of theses is OrganizationQuest.com.  It started about a month before APlaceForMyStuff.com.  Frankly, her domain name says it all:
http://www.organizationquest.com/organization_quest/

Then we have another aptly named blog, Confessions of a Closet Hoarder:
http://confessionsofaclosethoarder.blogspot.com/
You'll find links on the left for "hoarding" and "dehoarding" catagories.

There's also a newer one called "I Won't Be Buried".  The blogger's approach for this first month is pretty simple: get rid of one unneeded item per day.  Or at least it SOUNDS simple to non-hoarders, but to those of us with true clutter battles, we know difficult it can be.  She does a great job here expressing the sorts of rationalizations and underlying thought processes that people like me have used to compulsivlely keep things, and how she successfully turns that around:
http://iwontbeburied.livejournal.com/

Oh yeah, and unlike my blog, these people have their comments working!

Andy Warhol's Time Capsules

It seems that artist Andy Warhol had a lot of clutter.  So much so, that he turned a lot of it into time capsules.  I guess they're trying to catalog and sift through these to this day.

Here's a quote from one of the many artciles on the topic:

Warhol started his Time Capsules in 1974 after relocating his studio. He recognized that cardboard boxes used in the move were an efficient method for dealing with all of his “stuff.” Warhol selected items from the daily flood of correspondence, magazines, newspapers, gifts, photographs, business records, and material that passed through his hands to put in an open cardboard box by his desk. Once the box was full he sealed it with tape, marked it with a date and/or title, and put it in his archive. En masse, this material provides a unique view into Warhol’s private world, as well as a broad cultural backdrop illustrating the social and artistic scene during his lifetime. From the early ’70s, until his death in 1987, Warhol created 612 finished Time Capsules.

http://edu.warhol.org/aract_timecap.html
http://edu.warhol.org/app_aw_tc.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3666842/Lifting-the-lid-on-Warhols-Time-Capsules.html
http://www.carnegiemuseums.org/cmag/bk_issue/1996/janfeb/warhol.html

Part of me wishes that I had thought of the idea first: stow away some clutter in a box, seal it, and leave it not to be opened for years to come.  But Andy Warhol is probably one of the few people who could get away with this. I doubt one of my boxes of stuff would go for thousands of dollars post-mortem.  Still, it's a creative and tempting idea!  I'd probably put a lot of crap in but throw in the occasional treasure, which is all people would need to have the motivation to hope to find more treasures among the clutter (kind of like how scratch tickets work).  But of course in the mean time it would involve having to find a place to keep all of those boxes.  I'd also have to consider that I'd be leaving friends and family with huge boxes of crap to have to deal with.  I think I'll stick to the blog.

NPR interview with the authors of "Stuff"

Back in May 2010, the authors of the Stuff book did an interview for NPR's "Fresh Air".  It runs just under 18 minutes.  You can hear it here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126386317

You'll hear some of the same points I've made over the years, but lots of other insightful things too.

Clutter and Sympathetic Magic

You've seen "voodoo dolls" in the movies before.  The witch or warlock gets a hold of some personal item from the victim, such as a lock of hair.  An effigy is made with items like this.  Then anything you inflict on the effigy, happens to the victim in real life.  In some other movies you'll see witches utilizing a piece of somebody's clothing for a spell, as a means to the same end.  This phenomenon is called "sympathetic magic".

As the Stuff book mentions in chapter 2, a nineteenth century anthropologist named Sir James Frazer categorized this into two forms: sympathy and contagion.  Objects are in sympathy if they share similarity, or have contagion if were at one time touching or near each other.

If you think these sort of beliefs only happen in the movies or are only employed by a small minority of superstitious people, guess again.  The whole phenomenon actually has some biologically hard-wired psychology behind it.  People still have an instinctual sense of it.

Want to see a good modern example of this?  Go to a rock concert, and see how people in the audience react if one of the musicians on stage throws out a guitar pick or a drumstick into the audience.  I have been at shows where one audience member will literally beat another audience member until they're bleeding, just to get ownership over a drumstick.  Likewise, see what happens when a foul ball gets knocked into the stands at a baseball game.  Obviously it's not the baseball or drumstick itself that is of immense value.  You can buy these things in stores, brand new.  What makes it special is the "contagion": knowing that your beloved rockstar or athlete used it.  Have the person scribble their name on the object with a pen, and it's even more valuable.

If you haven't guessed by now, this does relate to hoarding on some level.  Compared to non-hoarders, hoarders tend to have a lot more objects with these sort of sympathetic connections.  It's not the only reason for hoarding, but it can still play a roll behind why hoarders end up holding on to so much more stuff.  I know this was certainly the case for me.  That's how I've been able to post entire stories accompanying the photos of stuff you've seen me throwing away!

As the book further explains, "Another way contagion may influence hoarding has to do not with the desire to be connected to someone or something else, but rather with the fear of being disconnected from a part of oneself." In really, really extreme cases, this can lead to some of the really, really gross stuff I mentioned in my previous post.  But I think some of that underlying psychology is still there with the paper stuff too.

People who hoard their shit. Literally. (Lee County)

Yes, this is an incredibly disgusting topic.  Yes, it really happens.  No, I myself don't do this.

As I've said in the past, when you have a problem that others have (whether it's hoarding, being fat, having some disease, etc.) and you start researching ways on getting rid of it, you invariably end up seeing cases of people who have the same problem but at a level WAY worse than you have it.  In some ways, it's comforting to realize that you could be much worse-off.  But of course on the other hand, you shouldn't be using this as an excuse to never exert the effort to improve your condition.

Having said all that, this is a topic that really deserves its own blog entry.  Here's a recent news story:

"...dispatchers received a call in regard to a foul smell coming from a house in the 17000 block of Malaga Road. Incident reports say the rear doors were found unsecured and responders had to enter the home using air packs so they could breath [sic]. Code enforcement officers were called due to extreme hoarding conditions, and found the house full of animal and human feces."
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/nov/21/no-headline---policebeat_hoarding/

It's possible that the people responsible were not actually hoarding their own feces in jars.  Maybe their plumbing brown down one day and they just didn't want to fix it, for fear of having to clear stuff away or to let somebody else into the house.  That sort of thing is not unheard of.  I even let myself become a victim to it in my last apartment, regarding my broken garbage disposal.  But otherwise, it wouldn't be the first time in history that people were intentionally keeping their own fecal matter.

As the Stuff book says, "We have observed a number of instances in which people hoard used tampons, nail clippings, even urine and feces -- critical parts of themselves, from their point of view."  What makes extremists like this save bodily fluids?  There are some ideas.  More on that later.