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Help De-cluttering Your Mind And Your Home

Published in the Gloucester Daily Times, September 29, 2006

Laura Moore can tell you a thing or two about a cluttered lifestyle. Following more than 15 moves, three deaths in her immediate family and a failed marriage, she has plenty of it.

"Life transitions create clutter. Clutter can be in your relationship, in your home, in your career, and subsequently, you can create clutter in your life," Moore says. "It's totally OK to have a lot of stuff. It's when your stuff starts to make you feel bad that you've got clutter. It literally gets in our way physically and emotionally."

Moore defines clutter as things that "you no longer use or love in your current life. It does not fit into the integrity of your home or lifestyle. It may have once, but not now. Clutter makes you feel bad, eventually overwhelmed. It literally gets in your way emotionally or physically." She says her divorce — ending an unsound relationship — was a big part of eliminating the clutter from her own life.

"It's about choosing and selecting what's important to us," she says. "The clarity comes with clearing; start with the physical."

Moore shares her de-cluttering skills with others through her Cambridge-based business Clutter Clarity, through which she teaches classes and workshops, coaches people over the phone, and does on-site clutter clearing with her clients. She is offering a series of free salons (less work than a workshop) in Gloucester on Wednesday afternoons, offering guidance and tips to help others clear the cluttered air in their lives.

"It takes a refreshing look at something that's a burden in your lives," says Lisa Carlson, a real estate agent at Coldwell Banker in Gloucester and host of the salons.

Americans throw away 9 million hours a day looking for misplaced things, according to Moore's research through the American Demographics Society.

"What happened? Why now? Twenty-five years ago, women started to leave the home (and go to work)," she says, and as a result, women weren't keeping house every day. "It's a very different time now than it used to be."

This major change, along with today's big issues — natural disasters, high divorce rates, 9/11, the Internet — have ultimately caused build-up in our daily lives, Moore says.

"You can't change all these things, but you can control your clutter," she says. "If you're holding onto your past, you're holding on to your clutter. It's an attempt for security by holding on to what's familiar and old. But if you don't carve away your clutter, it will get to you."

The trick to getting started, Moore points out, is desire, not discipline. Being clutter-free is not just about getting organized, it's about making a lifestyle change. Making physical changes in your surroundings a freeing yourself from physical clutter will lead to emotional clutter clarity.

Carlson says those who attended the first salon really latched on to Moore's idea that getting rid of the physical build-up is only part of it.

"It's more than just coming up with a list of things and checking them off," Carlson said. "It's about finding clarity."

Now's the time to start getting that clutter out of your life, Moore says, as the holidays and the new year are approaching. In addition, many people move in the spring, and it's best to be clutter-free as you prepare to sell your home or pack your belongings.

"It's very critical to not wait until spring," says Moore. "Plus, we're sort of house-bound more in the winter."

Clutter-clearing tips

Once you've defined the clutter in your life, start getting rid of it.

 
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