Excerpts from Clutter's Last Stand
by Don Aslett
On committing Junkicide:
Junkicide is a slow, painful
strangulation and dying of the senses. Although our brains are still intact,
we’ve simply replaced thinking with things. We’ve crowded out creativity
with accumulation. We’ve frozen flexibility with frofusion. We’ve snapped up so
mucy free stuff and bought so many things to keep, store, clean, polish, and
protect that we don’t have any freedom.
As a personal demobilizer, clutter rates right in there with
crippling diseases, being bedridden, unable to drive, or trapped in a prison
cell. Our junk ties us down -- away from adventure, affection, and
accomplishment -- and we can’t go when and where we want to.
The Nine Warning Signs of Junkitis:
1. UNUSUAL DISCHARGE (from closets
and shelves)
2. THICKENING OR LUMPS (under rugs, behind drapes, under
beds)
3. NOTICEABLE SWELLING (of drawers, closets, files, pockets,
waistlines) 4. OBVIOUS CHANGE OF COLOR (in your face, when you learn you’ve just
missed a garage sale)
5. CHANGE IN PARKING REGULARITY (you start parking the
car in the driveway because the garage is full of junk.
6. A SORE ON YOUR
SHIN THAT DOES NOT HEAL (you keep breaking it open stumbling over junk)
7.
UNREASONABLE TENDERNESS (toward shiny automobiles, souvenirs, and silverware
sets)
8. NAGGING COUGH OR HOARSENESS (from talking about your possessions,
and from yeooing at the kids for damaging things)
9. NUMBNESS (to the people
you know and places you go)
On 'The Economy of Clutter':
The well-known 80/20 rule of
business says: If all of a given category of items are sorted in order of value,
80 percent of the value will come from only 20 percent of the items. Think about
that in terms of [the] clutter [in your life]...
Clutter makes every job take longer [because you’ve got to sift through what
you’ve got to get at what you want]...
Clutter makes cleaning take longer
[because there’s more to clean around, under, and on top of]...
Storing it
costs [whether in your own home or with a storage company]: Storage space rents
for 10 cents to 13 cents a square foot (or as much as $10 a square foot, if
you’re using house space for storage) [ as of 1984]. Clutter also serves as an
enticement for burglary and fodder for accidents, and it makes nice fuel for
fires.
On 'Getting off the Excess Express':
How many hours of life,
mind, and emotion we waste wanting and wishing for things we don’t need: 99
percent of the time possessing it wouldn’t make us happy....
One day I had the sudden realization: If I stopped buying things right this
moment, there is no way I could ever use all I have now...
On ‘Judging Junk’:
Empty tin cans are clutter to 99 percent
of us, but not to the person who uses than for constructive projects, or earns
money by recycling them. Parties can be total junk, ruin your life -- or thay
can add a sparkle to it. It depends, of course, on the party and its effect on
you. You have to judge that.
Anything that crowds the life out of you is junk. Anything that builds,
edifies, enriches our spirit -- that makes us truly happy, regardless of how
worthless it may be in cash terms -- isn’t junk. something worth $100,000 can be
pure clutter to you if it causes discomfort and anxiety or insulates you from
love or a relationship.
One of the biggest reasons we keep junk is that we hate to admit
mistakes. Often we acquire a thing, a job, a habit that we absolutely hate the
minute after we get it. But we don’t get around to taking it back (or quitting,
or stopping) though it a constant pain to maintain, to own, to be around. In
general it makes life miserable but we keep it -- why? Because we don’t want to
admit we were wrong or greedy for a moment or made a bad judgement.
...When you pause with the decision in mind or in hand -- shall it
go or shall it stay with me -- when logic and even emotion can’t manage to help
you reach a decision, ask yourself, “What will my life be like without this?”
Don’t think about it (the thing) -- think about you, your life,
your freedom.
on How to Get Rid of It:
Start with 3 large heavy-duty
garbage bags and one box. Label them:
1. JUNK
2 CHARITY
3. SORT
4.
EMOTIONAL WITHDRAWAL (the box)
Dragging the bags and box behind you,
systemically attack every room in the house [or apt]. Assign every junk
suspect... to one of the bags or the box.
[Editor's summary: Take the
contents of JUNK to the trash, the contents of CHARITY to friends, relatives, or
a thrift store, and keep the SORT bag to resort a month later. Store WITHDRAWAL
for 6 months to a year in a place where you can still get stuff from it if you
want, and then give the box away without looking at the contents. If you haven’t
needed the contents within that year, you won’t likely need it in the next, or
the next, or the next...]
What is Clutterers Anonymous? Clutterers Anonymous (CLA) is a fellowship of
men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other
that they may solve their common problem with clutter and help each other to
recover.
Clutterers Anonymous (CLA) : http://www.clutterersanonymous.net