April 2008

Spring house cleansing

Decluttering your way to a green home

Hey, clean your room! But do it responsibly.

So why is a column on green building taking on the topic of decluttering? The reason is that most people who renovate or remodel want more or better space. If you’re like many Americans, what we think we lack in space, we have made up for with stuff.

Our lives are filled with many things that we certainly don’t need, and things that only sometimes bring us much increased joy, comfort, and convenience. So a very green way to gain more and better space is to reduce your stuff and work with the space you already have. Stuff tends to expand to fill the available space.
Just as building more roads invites more traffic (i.e. the Intercounty Connector), expanding your space can simply result in more stuff being purchased to fill the new space with a commitment to keep it cleaned and maintained for years to come.

If you’re dreaming of a renovation project that might cost thousands, just think what a fraction of that could do toward greatly improving your existing space. You’ll save money and prevent a whole host of building materials from going to the landfill and avoid new ones from being manufactured.

However, I won’t just tell you about how to quickly get rid of your junk. That wouldn’t be too green of me. I will share resources on how to declutter in a holistic way. In much the way as you’d go about designing or implementing a green renovation, you have to address more than the physical aspects in order to achieve a truly satisfying result.

Before we proceed, I must make a preemptive disclaimer: Unfortunately, I cannot give this advice from the personal experience of someone who has accomplished spectacular feats of decluttering, but from a perspective of one who has been struggling with it for years.

I’ve moved too many times over the last 10 years and I’m afraid to count the number of boxes that came with me each time and were never opened. My only saving grace is that I didn’t purchase or go into debt for much of the stuff, though I’ve paid with time and energy to cart it around over the years.

Sometimes one person’s trash is another one’s, well, trash really. Sure, I made a trivet out of ONE of the old tiles that I was keeping, and made legs for a salvaged coffee table top out of “nice” wood blocks. But I’ve got far more “potential” stored up in my shed and basement than I care to think about.
Starting to declutter

So I turned to a local professional to get some advice. Pam Holland, of Takoma Park, has been running “Mindful Decluttering” for three years. She offers group workshops as well and personal coaching services, and her clients range from stay-at-home moms to executive directors to those working in home offices or trying to work part-time at home. (Note: — some decluttering fees can be recorded as business expenses.)

Decluttering often takes place in two phases. The first phase is an initial cleanse, which, depending on the space, could require a couple of hours or a couple of weeks. After that is the maintenance phase, in which periodic follow-up sessions can include reviews of the previous work, reinforcement of the vision, and gentle guidance in creating systems that keep clutter from reappearing.

Mind over matter

There are some deep psychological issues surrounding our relationship to stuff and our possessions—status, emotions, memories, attachments. This is something Madison Avenue knows all too well and uses to its advantage in marketing strategies designed to get you to feel inadequate and dissatisfied so you’ll buy “the latest and greatest.”

The “mindfulness” comes with Pam’s holistic and gentle approach. It involves not just treating symptoms, but empowering you to confront your particular issues around stuff. Sessions typically start with a guided meditation or centering exercise that allows people to be in touch with their vision for a space. And also getting in touch with feelings about the space.

Pam says, “There are energetic threads tying us to things in our lives. By releasing things, we make space— not just physically, but make space for people and ideas in our lives. Space for new energy.” After setting a tone, the more concrete work of the session begins with identifying personal patterns and habits, receiving non-judgmental support, encouragement, and motivation to implement the changes you want to see.

Clutter Challenges

Pam says some of the biggest challenges people face are not having enough time and procrastinating, as well as dealing with the onslaught of paper that afflicts us in the information age. (And she’ll be leading a workshop on those topics in the fall. Also, “clutter magnets’ are found all around the home. Flat surfaces tend to collect all matter of paper, and in order to banish those paper piles, you’ll need clearly designated places for them to go.

Clutter lurks in many places – attics, basements, storage areas – basically any of the places where you put stuff when people come to visit. Like the Hotel California, once the stuff checks in, it may never leave.

Simple strategies

Here are a couple of simple strategies you can try to use right away.

Stop incoming paper at source—This will help you and the environment. To reduce junk mail, visit www.donotmail.org (a campaign similar to the Do Not Call list). To reduce your magazines, subscribe less — especially to ones you’re not reading, and decide how long you’re going to keep the ones you do get. Donate old or unwanted magazines to retirement homes.

Utilize the in/out ratio, especially for any of your “challenge items.” For instance, if you tend to accumulate books or shoes, set a rule that the next time you bring one in, you have to send one out. Or better yet, for every one you bring in, you need to send two out.

I made a feeble first attempt with the in/out ratio, but I need to work on my math. I picked up three cabinets a neighbor was giving away, but then only put out one cabinet of my own from my “found furniture” category. I hope to make some pretty good progress in the next several months, and gain more enjoyment of the spaces I don’t use very much. And I hope you will, too.

Sat Jiwan Iklé-Khalsa has lived in Takoma Park and Silver Spring for six years and is an environmental activist and a green building/renovation consultant. Some of his recent projects include a green home renovation (photos at www.flickr.com/photos/satjiwan); Save Our Sky, a corn stove cooperative; and the Takoma Park Green Building Group.

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