Tonight, I’m Cleanin’ Out My Closet

Try This: In a quiet moment, relax your body and your breath. Then, imagine yourself as a skeleton. Go down beneath the skin, muscle tissue, organs. Strip it all away and be bone.  

“The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.”  “But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.” ~ both quotes from Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

You’ve been stable in your mental health or addiction recovery for some time. You’re getting better at communicating with loved ones, setting boundaries, supporting yourself financially. You’re staying sober, keeping yourself from getting too bored, enjoying your work. But every morning you have a hard time finding your keys, your dishes are piling up in the sink, and most of your clothes are on the floor instead of in the closet. 

When you’re in an active addiction or mental health crisis, the place you live probably tends toward the messy end of the spectrum. You’re not focused on cleaning your house. You’re focused on stumbling through the day. Getting out of bed feels like an accomplishment. 

Once you start the recovery process, you may feel like you’re so focused on staying sober and keeping yourself healthy that your living space continues to fall by the wayside. That’s okay. But eventually, living amid constant clutter will wear you down–and might even contribute to relapse. 

Why? Because being unable to pull yourself out of clutter is a very similar state of mind to being unable to pull yourself out of addiction or a mental health crisis. It’s a “stuck” place–a place in which you feel like you have no control. 

And if you live in a state of clutter and chaos, that’s a clue that you still have work to do in your recovery. We’ll look at how decluttering relates to recovery–and how it can help you “live free” in sobriety.

1. Start by taking a look around the place you live. Does it look fairly neat, with most things put away? Or does it look messy, with books, papers, keys, toys, food, gadgets, knick-knacks, and other things scattered about, away from their “homes”? If it’s messy, is it because you’re out of room to store everything you have or because you’ve neglected to put things away when you’re done with them? Is it because you live with messy people?
2. Next, consider how your living space makes you feel. Do you feel a sense of pleasure, gratitude, and peace when you look around your home? Or do you feel anxious, tired, or overwhelmed? Do you enjoy your space or do your best to avoid looking at it too closely?
3. Third, think about what’s stopping you from cleaning and organizing your space. Do the people you live with contribute to the mess? Do you have very little free time? Do you feel like the clutter is so overwhelming that you don’t know where to begin? Let’s take these obstacles one at a time.
   • The mess isn’t all yours. In this case, call for a household meeting. Tell your family/roommates how the clutter is affecting you and ask if you can brainstorm solutions together. If they’re willing, schedule a decluttering weekend and have at it (see Marie Kondo’s book or any number of online tips for decluttering.) If your housemates are reluctant to participate, you have a couple of options: 1) declutter your own belongings; 2) set some boundaries/rules (especially if your housemates are your children!); and/or 3) create a space for yourself in your home that IS all yours, one that you can keep free of clutter and use to decompress and unwind. This could be your bedroom, an office, or even one corner of a shared room. Buy a partition and create a haven that is yours alone.
   • You don’t have time to declutter. This is an easy one. You do have time. You just have to be willing to use it for this purpose. And one good session of decluttering can create more time in the future because you won’t have to spend so much time looking for things. 
   • It’s too overwhelming. 1) Take it slow. Have very, very small goals, like one room, or one closet, or one counter. 2) Start with the easiest thing. Look around your home. Find 5 things that would be easy for you to donate or throw out. You wouldn’t miss them at all. Then, find 5 more. Etcetera. 3) Enlist help. Chances are good that someone you know LOVES to declutter and would jump at the chance to help you. If not, you can find decluttering services online.
4. Fourth, remind yourself of all the excellent ways decluttering benefits your mental health. It’s not untrue that a clear space reflects a clear head. If you feel muddled or cluttered in your thinking, organizing your living or work space might help pull you into clarity.

If decluttering remains a serious hurdle for you, explore the resistance you’re feeling. Write about it. Talk about it with a trusted friend. Bring it up with your therapist.

No matter how much you tell yourself that clutter doesn’t bother you, there’s a good chance that it causes anxiety in some small corner of your brain. Living in constant clutter suggests that, on some level, you have given up on yourself. Be patient with yourself, but don’t give up. You are worthy of a peaceful space, and you are capable of creating that for yourself.