Fearless Cleaning: Dealing with the Pile

It starts casually: an envelope, perhaps, is set aside on a tabletop, to open tomorrow. Then, you are walking around with a sweater given to you by your Aunt Grace. You are trying to decide whether it would be ok to send it to the Goodwill, because you never wear it, but you feel badly because Aunt Grace is very nice, and quite old, and lives alone. You place it on top of the envelope thinking, “I will decide what to do with that sweater when I open that envelope - I will deal with both of those things tomorrow, I will set aside some special time for that.”

Tomorrow you are walking past with a nice wool sock, looking for its partner, which you have lost. Giving up on the search, you start to head upstairs to return it to the sock drawer, but decide, instead, to place it next to Aunt Grace’s sweater, which can look after it for the time being. Three days later you return from a walk, carrying a book that you picked up from the Little Free Library down the street. You don’t want to commit to adding it to your bookshelf, not until you read the first chapter, so you place it with the envelope, the sock and the sweater, which have now become a pile of things that you need to get to.

At this point, the pile gains momentum. If you live with other people, it will grow quite quickly, as it becomes identified as “a place to deposit random stuff”. If you live alone, it will grow less quickly, but steadily, until it creeps beyond its bounds and starts to cover other objects on the table. Finally, when physics dictates that nothing more can be added (because things start to fall onto the floor), one of two things will happen:

• you deal with the pile (it has now been three months since you put the envelope down) or

• you abandon it and start another pile, somewhere else, in the same fashion

For some, sneakier, people, the pile is a closet, or a drawer. And others don’t discriminate, creating piles willy nilly wherever convenient: the car, the top of the fridge, the cabinet in the bathroom, a backpack: everything is an opportunity to contain or display random objects that you can’t decide what to do with.

Here is a pile developing RIGHT NOW on the sofa in my studio:

And here is a closet turning into a pile:

There are many people, I would wager, accused of beings hoarders, who are in fact pile-makers. When their entire home becomes a pile, it will look quite similar to a hoarder’s home, but with an important difference: the pile-maker would like to get rid of his or her piles - the hoarder wishes them to stay. So why doesn’t the pile-maker simply toss the piles out? Because they know that those pile consist of:

• 10% mail that needs to be opened, just in case any of it is bills

• 32% things that can be thrown away (but you don’t know which 32%)

• 28% things that should be given away

• 12% things that ABSOLUTELY MUST BE KEPT

• 8% foodstuffs and dirty socks that are starting to smell

• and 10% you have no idea whatsoever

And to figure all of that out is going to be a big pain in the ass.

If you live in a home that has become a pile, it is not going to get any better unless and until you deal with it. The good news is that you are currently dwelling in the absolute most entropic, low-energy nadir of the effort gradient: all you need to do from here is pick up an object, deal with it, and repeat. Momentum will be gained. It will take a while, so make yourself comfortable. I recommend categorizing - perhaps white plastic bags for garbage, black plastic bags for the thrift store, and marked boxes for things that will be kept (storage, bathroom, return to friend/family member). Put on a lengthy podcast, some good music, a pot of tea… Invite a friend!

Once everything is in a box or bag, bring the garbage to the dump, or heave it into a dumpster or trash can. Load the give-away bags into a car and bring to Goodwill as soon as possible (preferably now). And take each of the categorized boxes and either put the objects away in their proper homes or - if an object has no home, create a home for it (see the Purge/Organize/Clean and Junk Drawer articles).

Once all of that work is finished, the real work begins. This will take a fraction of the physical effort, but all the strength of will that you can muster. First, explain to yourself that you are now a person who puts things away. You will resist this new identity, so you must be firm. Apply the OHIO method (Only Handle It Once!) to break the habit of putting things down in temporary landing spots. When you have something to put down, put it down in its proper home. Be patient with yourself - there will be lapses, but the trick is to address them as quickly as possible.

Here is how I addressed the closet this morning:

To declutter this closet I removed items to send to Goodwill, sent snow pants to attic, put away a few items in other places, hung a bag up on a hook, tided the balls and sports equipment, and added a few coats to the rack and pushed them all neatly to the side. This took less than 15-minutes.

And here I am, right now, getting up and addressing the pile right next to me in the studio:

That took me six minutes (video was 10x speed) - I had been avoiding it for several days.

If you need an excuse to deal with your piles, call it “Spring Cleaning”. Then work on the habit of putting things away. The goal is for tidiness to become so habitual that you no longer need to make an effort. I have not quite yet attained that, but in the meantime I am motivated by withering, superior looks such as these:

I think I need to explain to her that eating poops from the backyard does not count as “cleaning”.