Birgit Medele - Clear your Clutter - Manifest your dreams

Security is never in stuff. It is found in having the confidence to handle any experience that life might throw our way. The storms will come, but we are steering our boat.

We long for soul mates, for the community that understands where we are coming from and knows what we are all about. Identifying with a nation, region or religion meets the innate desire to belong; to be part of a greater good. By supporting a football team, worshipping a certain type of music, joining a party, parish or community, we move into the equivalent of an emotional home. As a fan we can live and express feelings of individuality and union at the same time. Granny collects tea pots; a colleague has amassed hundreds of vinyl records; friends are enthusiastic about apps, model airplanes or vintage cartoons. Stacks of ancient theatre programmes or school exercise books reassure us, “I did that – that’s me.” We pick and choose beliefs, clothes and shades of terracotta and perform a series of passionate identifications with artefacts; selecting them from the cultural market garden, hoping they will form a harmonious, thousand-petalled display that, the picture of our soul. Ultimately we are accumulating an essence. An art collection as an outlet for creativity; the movie compilation as the manifested desire to do some acting one day or a stint in comedy circles. Model planes symbolise speed, getting somewhere fast; aspirations of reaching goals, of freedom...

Go on a safari into your very own jungle of things. What image(s) are you attached to? Which essence are you hoarding? How could you get closer without having to put up one shelf after another? Endless rows of books might stand for (please delete as appropriate), “I’m well read / widely travelled / open minded / educated / eclectic / enlightened / cool / classy / different / intelligent / witty / imaginative / spiritual / special / an art lover / lateral thinker / reformer / revolutionary / a good dad / in the know / committed to personal development and/or saving the planet...” What is the headline above your shelves, spelt out in invisible ink?

We want to be respected and loved and use objects to communicate this. “Look at this stuff, that’s how unique I am! Please love me for what I’m wearing / driving / listening to...” Of course we know deep down that others do not like us for our collections of handbags or sophisticated living room interiors. If we make people laugh, we can do without the ultimate leather-bound twelve volume jokes collection. And if we have not been abundantly blessed with a sense of humour and/or the gift of the gab, even the most elaborate compilation will not be able to help change that. We communicate through our being, what we are outshines everything we hoard, say or do.

Cross-cultural living is a challenge because we have to keep more than one identity alive. One client said, “We live two lives, a contemporary Western and a traditional Indian one. I have to store the Christmas decorations as well as Saris and Dwali paraphernalia.”

When thinking about status it gets interesting as soon as we start sidestepping beloved clichés like the red open-top sports car. Status symbols are chameleons and adopt the most varied of formats. They are tools to communicate an image and we all use them to broadcast our own personal messages. For some it is about brands, for others it is about avoiding them. They go to great lengths to only ever use local, organic or recycled goods in order to distance themselves from the shallow consumerism of a throwaway society. The big relief: trying to impress others never works anyway, so we might as well call it a day and stop sweating the small stuff.

We are not what we have, we are what we are. We are our story, a mosaic of experience puzzle pieces laid out in a magnificent, brilliantly unique pattern. How about expanding a collection that we started years ago? Key items might still be missing: a dream holiday, an encounter or a class that we always fancied having a go at. How about stockpiling memorable moments instead of things? The most intriguing compilation of all does not require dusting and we can even take it with us in the end – our collection of experiences.

Recipes are a mysterious phenomenon. They must be in the Top Ten of all time favourite hoards as it seems to be impossible to resist the urge to amass those randomly torn out pages and stacks of stained books. Collected even by those who dislike the idea of getting serious about chopping and do not know their pot from their pan. Recipes are symbols for committing to a way of life where wholesome home cooked meals are placed on tables featuring freshly cut flowers and happy people gathered around, laughing and singing. The exercise bike is another example of an aspirational item. It has been sitting there for ages, getting in the way and taking up a ridiculous amount of space. However, far more than merely a dust-collecting annoyance it is about our ambitions to keep fit; to dedicate ourselves to a healthy lifestyle and to do the right thing. We cannot bring ourselves to part with it because that would be the outward signal of giving up. Besides, we do not like getting things wrong or wasting anything as this would equal hurting the planet. (And praise for our good deeds, if you wouldn’t mind!) We are special flowers; we prefer to bloom while someone else is watching. Speaking of flowers, one client emailed me:

“Here is a variation on the old ‚can‘t throw it away until it‘s completely worn out‘ predicament. I like gardening. I‘m not particularly good at it but I like it. The problem is that I can never cut anything back or dig it up until the very last flower has died. This means that during the summer some plants take over and smother smaller plants because I can‘t bear to cut them back! Also, at the end of the year when you want to get ready for the winter – prune back, move things around, etc; I‘m always too late to do it because the last flowers don‘t die until the frost gets them, by which time you can‘t cut back and move because things would die. This means that it never gets done. No more! Last Autumn I had a week off and everything got cut back, regardless. So I was able to get the garden organised and ready for winter. It‘s made such a difference. And this summer nothing is being allowed to outgrow its allotted space. Strange, I‘ve never made the connection between all this and clutter hoarding, but it‘s definitely there.” 1

Irreversible decisions, indeed any ‘cut offs’, are tricky as they feature a remote possibility of getting it wrong. There is no undo button for giving away unwanted presents and inherited china and we go to great lengths to avoid feeling guilty. At the end of a flight one of my clients took left-over airline bags with mini-toothpaste, socks and plastic cutlery because they would have been trashed otherwise. We burden ourselves with useless stuff because we cannot bear the ‘waste’. Right underneath the layers of dust are layers of guilt. “That was so expensive.” Unfortunately that dreadful impulse buy is not reversed simply by hanging onto it. Why do we kid ourselves with DIY-definitions of what constitutes ‘dear’ instead of calling the true treasures precious and never stopping to count down lifespan reverentially in days?

Other gluey arguments: “I wanted to look into / do / finish that one day.” When? “My grandmother wore this ring.” We are not violating memories of late loved ones if we do not cling indefinitely to every item they left behind. Letting their things peacefully move on helps us do the same. A client stored her late mother’s piano and electric organ in her tiny living room even though she never intended to play them. The room was so full of memories that the door no longer opened. She did not have access to the heart of her flat; years without friends sitting on the sofa because she could not bear the thought of “Throwing my mother away”. Our loved ones do not expect us to bury ourselves with them out of grief and feelings of obligation. They want us to be happy.