All That Can Be Contained: A Book Reflection

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(This is Part 3 of a group of book reflections about the same book. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.)

As you may recall from the previous posts in this series, I've recently listened to the audiobook version of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (read by the author).

One of the central tenants of White’s book is something she calls the Container Principle.

The Container Principle is both incredibly simple and obvious, and deeply profound. I suppose most fundamental principles are, whether they were discovered by a monk in a remote mountain cave or a mother of three with a clutter problem.

The Container Principle states that any given container (be it a drawer, a cupboard or your whole house) has two fundamental aspects – two things that make it a “container”. The first is, obviously, that it holds things. The second is that it limits what can be held. It contains, in multiple senses of the word.

We have a tendency to forget about that second aspect. We keep trying to put more into our containers than they can hold, but you can’t really do that. If you try to put more into a container than it will hold, you will put the container and everything in it under stress, which could lead to damage. Or it will overflow, and everything will spill out, and then gets out of control.

White’s definition of clutter (and I am very much paraphrasing at this point, as it has been several weeks since I listened to her book and I can’t remember the exact way she phrased it) is something that is out of place, out of control and causing stress. If it has a place to be, but it’s not in that place, then it is clutter in this place where it isn’t meant to be. If there isn’t a place for it to be, then it’s just clutter.

If it doesn’t belong, it’s clutter. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Things that are spilling over the confines of their container are, in a very real sense, out of place and out of control. When your threshold for this kind of clutter maxes out, you find yourself under stress. It’s very likely that the “things” that the container is supposed to hold are also under stress (you can’t squish too much into a given space before something gets squished), and the container might very well be under stress as well.

When the stuff you're trying to fit in the container gets beyond what the container can hold, then the best and most sensible thing you can do to make sure things are properly cared for and don’t get damaged is to scale back so that you only have what will fit in the container.

Take it all out and evaluate it – as a whole, and in relation to everything else you wanted to put in that container. Don’t just look at each thing on its own and say “I want this”, look at each thing in relation to all the other things and say “I want this more than that”. Prioritise the most important, the best, your favourites – these go into the container first.

When the container is full, everything else that isn’t already in the container doesn’t fit. It wasn’t a priority, or it would already be in the container, and therefore it doesn’t have a place. It doesn’t belong in the container. So, if it doesn’t belong, it’s clutter.

If you want to avoid putting the system under stress, you have to be able to accept that you can’t keep everything all the time. If this thing that doesn’t fit isn’t more important, more loved or more useful than the things that are already in the container, then it has to go. And quickly – don’t leave it to become a burden.

Whenever you think of adding anything new to that container, you have to consider it on a “one-in-one-out” basis. Is it more important, useful or loved than something that is already in the container? If not, don’t bring it into your life. If it is, then the less important/loved/useful thing has to go.

You might think the obvious solution is to get a bigger container, but space isn’t infinite. A bigger container for this means there’s less space for something else. If you dedicate a second drawer to hold what doesn’t fit into one drawer, then you have less drawer space for what would otherwise have gone in the second drawer – you’ve moved the problem, you haven’t solved it.

White was talking about drawers and cupboards, but many things in our lives are containers.

Time is a container. Your mental or physical capacity is a container.

Any given container can only hold so much. You can only do so much in a day. You can only make so many decisions. You can only keep on top of so many tasks.

It’s harder to see these containers and their capacity (and certainly a lot harder for other people to see them and respect their limitations), but it’s actually quite easy to tell when they’ve been overstuffed and can’t hold what you are trying to contain: they are under stress, over flowing and getting out of control.

If you get to the end of your work day and you feel you have to stay back and keep working because you could not do everything you “had” to do today, then there is too much in your work day. It spills over and puts the system under stress. There are only so many hours in the day, so if you spend more time at work, there’s less time to spend doing all the things you “have” to do at home. You have a smaller container to try to fit your domestic tasks into. And so that spills over and takes time away from unwinding so you can get some rest…

So of course you feel like your days are overflowing and you have so many things you couldn’t get done today. You’re trying to fit too much into your day, and there are limits to what your container can hold.

If you find you are doing this every day, then there’s a bigger container issue at play. You’re trying to fit too much into something else. Perhaps your job has too many tasks to complete? If it’s more than you can do in the time you have available, then it’s too much work to fit into your job. If the “job” is supposed to fit all of this work into it, but it doesn’t, then perhaps that job doesn’t fit into your capacity – it doesn’t fit into your life.

We don’t like to think about this – we don’t like to admit it. We think we should be able to fit these things in, so we refuse to accept we can’t. We think we need to keep cramming stuff into the container until the container finally grows enough to accommodate all of it.

But that’s not how containers work. There are limits to what they can hold. If you keep pushing them beyond their limits, something is getting damaged, even if nothing obviously breaks.

So we need to look at everything we’re trying to fit into that container. We need to see everything in terms of whether it is more deserving of a place in that container than something else. We have to prioritise what is most important, most useful, most loved. And when the container is full, we have to be willing to say “there is no place for this – it wasn’t a priority and it doesn’t fit.”

And then we have to find a solution to that which doesn’t involve us continually trying to cram it in. Something that leaves us with enough space in our lives that we can actually enjoy what we have, rather than stressing about what is overflowing.

We also have to look at every new thing in relation to what is already in the container, and be honest about whether it’s more valuable to us than something that is already in there. Then we have to let something else go.

And that’s the hardest thing, I think. We’re so used to pretending we can do it all; we struggle with admitting we can’t and telling people that this is beyond what we can do. Also, we know everyone is in the same boat – everyone is stressed out trying to fit it all in and do all of the things. For some unfathomable reason we see that as a reason for why we should keep struggling, instead of realising we’re all making a mistake.

What if…

What if we gave each other permission to only do what we can – to stop trying to cram in more than our containers can hold? What if we gave ourselves permission to do this, and extended this kindness to everyone around us?

My Home is not the Tip: A Book Reflection

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 (This is Part 2 of a group of book reflections about the same book. Part 1 is here, part 3 is here.)

As you may recall from the previous post, I've recently listened to the audiobook version of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (read by the author).

Like Part 1, this is more about a revelation inspired while/by listening to White's book, rather than necessarily something she said in the book itself - although she did touch on it closely enough that I feel it's legitimately something from the book.

At one point, White was discussing the fact that we (well, some of us) feel guilty about throwing things in the bin if there's any chance it could be put to use somehow. Perhaps we can turn that frayed T-Shirt into a craft project and give it a second life. Perhaps someone who is desperately poor will be desperate enough to want because it's better than the crap they currently have.

She didn't go all out and say this, but it was strongly implied: poor people don't deserve your trash just because they're poor. What she did say is something well worth saying: don't give something to charity that you wouldn't be willing to give to a friend.

If you ever do feel the compulsion to try to give something you regard as unworthy of your own friends and family to a poor person because "surely some one truly poor will be truly grateful", image that instead of saying "poor person" or "someone in need" you said "peasant." Because that's sort of where that mentality evolved from: the peasants should take whatever we give them and be grateful. Let's not be that person.

But the main reason most of us feel a need to hold onto something that's not completely in rags is the fact that we don't want to be wasteful. We want to try to find a way to keep it out of the rubbish tip by finding a way to reuse or recycle it. Surely?

That's a real problem I struggle with. I want to reduce the amount I throw in the bin by being less wasteful, so I hold onto something that could potentially turn into something else. But...

Many years ago I read an article (I wish I could remember the author - or even the source) written by a young mother, who had started using a mantra: "I am not the kitchen bin". She didn't want to waste the food her kids weren't finishing, or the scraps she had cut off the food she was preparing for a meal, so she'd eat them. She was gaining weight and her health was suffering, and one day she realised that if she was putting something into her own body to keep it out of the bin, then she was the bin. She had to get over her guilt about waste and respect her own body and boundaries instead.

"I am not the kitchen bin."

I've often thought of that over the years, as I've found myself eating food after I was full just because there wasn't enough to put aside as left overs and it seemed a waste to throw it out. Or as I ate something I had actually ruined and wasn't enjoying at all, simply because I'd made a batch of it and didn't want to be wasteful.

But I'm not the kitchen bin, and I'm not doing myself any favours by putting something in my face that I should be putting in the bin.

As I was listening to White talk about rubbish and the guilt we sometimes feel about throwing out something that could, potentially, maybe, some how, by some stretch of the imagination, be "still good", I suddenly realised:

"My house is not the rubbish tip."

If I'm not doing something with this rubbish, but just holding onto it in the hope that I find something to do with it later, I'm using my own house to store landfill. This is not, in any tangible way, less wasteful that sending it to the actual landfill (where at least they might do something to reduce its size, as the professional rubbish people are always looking for ways to handle rubbish volumes better). It's just sharing the rubbish between the tip and my house.

You "reduce" rubbish before it comes into your house. You look at anything you're thinking of buying for its potential rubbishness and you either come up with a better idea then and there, or you accept that you're going to be throwing something away.

This is something I really have to focus on: not keeping things I should throw away (because I don't like throwing things away), but rather making better choices at the start of the process so I don't get stuck with choices I don't like when that item has reached the end of its life.

I am not the kitchen bin, and my house is not the tip.

Ten-Year-Old Me Never Visits: A Book Reflection

(This is Part 1 of a group of reflections prompted by this book. Part 2 is here, part 3 is here.)

If you’ve read any of my “book reflections” before, you’ll know they’re a bit of a cross between me talking about a book I’ve read and me just rabbiting on about myself. This one is probably going to be more rabbiting on about myself than usual.

I’ve recent read yet another decluttering book (actually, I listened to the audiobook): Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (who also read the audiobook).

If you read back over the posts I’ve written about books over the years, you’ll probably find quite a few books about decluttering, cleaning, tidying, organising… You may find yourself wondering if I’m some sort of neat freak whose house is unspeakably tidy, or if I’m a complete slob who reads decluttering books for inspiration but actually never properly gets her house in order, which is why I keep reading decluttering books.

Well, mostly it’s the latter, but I also just like reading decluttering and cleaning books. Like Romance novels, I find them a nice light “holiday” read – something comforting and familiar for when I don’t want to have to think too deeply about a plot or meaningful information.

I have to say White’s book is up there among the better ones I’ve read. She isn’t – how shall I put this? – noticeably insane. Rather, she’s someone who has noticed that decluttering is actually a lot like cleaning – it’s a constant process that never ends because you keep gathering new clutter, and eventually you’re going to have to declutter again. She’s also a recovering slob and a bower bird, so she writes from the perspective of knowing how stuff creeps up on you and how hard it is to declutter your “dreams”.

As I was listening to her read her book, I found myself often saying, “uhunh – you got that right” and “yeah, I hear that.” Unlike Marie Kondo, who was apparently raised by Home Beautiful magazines and has always had a compulsive aversion to untidy spaces, Dana has more of a relation to stuff that matches my own, so I could relate to what she said a little more. She also has a really good reading voice. You can tell she’s been a podcaster for a few years.

I often listen to these books while I’m sorting through a cupboard or doing housework, and there was a point during the middle of listening to this when I realised some of the things I’ve been holding onto for years as “favourite things” or “beloved treasures” weren’t actually for me at all. Well, they were, but they weren’t…

I realised I have been holding onto a lot of stuff in case 10-Year-Old Me comes to visit. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this, but this time it really hit home.

My mother was a single parent. Most of her friends who had kids around my age moved Down South almost before I was born, and her other friends either had grown children who had left home or didn’t have any kids. When she would go visiting her friends from university or Church, I would get dragged in tow because there wasn’t anyone to babysit, and I’d end up going through whatever “treasures” were at the homes of her friends. Looking at their nick-knacks, photos of holidays, boxes of old comics and random books…

These were the things people dumped on me to keep me occupied while they had proper conversations in the next room, and I loved them. I loved looking at the weird ceramic thingies people had collected over the years, I loved pouring through old holiday brochures from the 70s – and I especially loved getting to go through someone’s old comic book collection or the toys their kids played with 10 years ago.

Essentially, I loved this clutter that other people had kept, and so part of me was keeping the same kind of clutter – not because “Adult Sharon” still looked at it or paid any attention to it at all, but because I instinctively knew that if 10-Year-Old Me dropped by, she’d love looking through this stuff.

And I guess I have sort of been keeping it for the next kid. The grandkids I’m never going to have because I never wanted children. The nephews and nieces I’m never going to have because I have no siblings and the only cousins who have kids aren’t close and aren’t visiting. The “friends’ kids” who aren’t going to visit because the only friends I have with children usually leave them with the other parent when we hang out – and we usually go out to socialise, we don’t visit each other’s houses.

I’ve been keeping photographs that no one is going to care about except me – and I stopped caring about half of them years ago. I’ve been keeping books, toys and trinkets for “some kid” to play with, but the only way any child is going to play with them is if these things leave the house. And I’ve been keeping things that I don’t particularly want and no one else is going to want either (because they’re old and ratty or damaged), because if I manage to go back in time and meet up with my younger self, that kid loved playing with them – but no child is ever going to play with them again, and neither am I.

So much of what I’ve held onto has been for a version of me that doesn’t exist. If not 10-Year-Old Me who loved looking at old junk kept in boxes, then 20-Year-Old Me who collected stuff out of some weird idea that the collection itself meant something – that one day I’d have some sort of tourist attraction consisting of my ridiculous number of DC Superhero posters and DVDs or my massive collection of Tarzan movies. I have movies I’ve never watched and books I’ve never read, but carried with me from place to place and spent vast sums of money accumulating, because they fit in with some collection that meant something to me… once.

But quite frankly, I’m never going to open a “Museum of Pop Culture Hero Crap”. And no one else is, either. This was someone else’s passion that they were trying to turn into a project. I’m holding onto it for them, but the truth is they don’t exist anymore. I know, because I replaced them.

And while a part of me knew that I was no longer interested in these things, some part of me has still been keeping it for the next kid. But there isn’t going to be a next kid. I’m holding onto it for a ghost and a phantom.

And let’s not forget the unrequited dreams – all the things I was going to be. The person who made toys out of scrap material, who whittled, who played dozens of musical instruments, who took up all sorts of hobbies for which I have some of the stuff. I still don’t want to admit I’m never going to do that thing or be that person… but…

Ghosts and phantoms. I’m holding on their stuff. But maybe I’m finally reaching the point where I don’t want to.