clutter.....

I've been reading Unclutterer blog (http://unclutterer.com) for a while now. It is interesting topic and I hate to admit how much I need help with this! and in their forums, i see lots of folks posting good ideas. But some of them seem to be "here is what I do...and it mostly works. But sometimes it doesn't..." We seem to be adding stuff to the process of dealing with our stuff, and not addressing the underlying issues.

This week hubby & I have done some serious "uncluttering" ourselves. (since i was sick in the spring, did not do spring cleaning...oy vey!) And it feels so good to have got rid of stuff and organized some of it. Yet i know unless we develop new habits and work thru the reasons that we got to this point, nothing has really changed. I have read lots on this topic. In fact in sorting junk this week, I came across books-- "Simplify Your Life" and "Clutter Free, Finally and Forever."--in piles of stuff. Oh the irony!

I had read both books--and a variety of others! So they didn't help ME much, did they? I have to think thru and deal with the issues that got us here. Neither his Mom nor my folks were good at dealing with stuff. Both had definite 'hoarder' tendencies. They contained most of the clutter, for a long time. But by the last few years, things were piling up. I think with our parents' generation, it goes back to the Depression/WW2 era growing up. They had so little, then were part of the post war boom economy. And the advent of TV and its advertising!

So we (baby boomer generation) grew up with parents who had grown up feeling deprived, and who did not want their children to know that deprivation. AND we had the growing onslaught of mass media and all the advertising that says to get more stuff!

A friend shared a quote from a book she is reading/preaching on. "Physical deprivation causes spiritual hunger." (from Compelled by Love by Heidi Baker) and we so often mistake spiritual hunger for physical, material, other kinds of hunger.

and Gerald May in Addiction and Grace talks about how basically EVERYTHING can become an addiction; as well as the "usual suspects" of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.... So having/acquiring stuff is a profound addiction!


oh-- good stuff...gonna go read and make some notes...

(To be continued...)