I once witnessed a very poignant moment during a clutter clearing session when the woman I was working with took a much-needed break from sorting through her mounds of stuff. Her gaze caught upon her cat, sprawled out asleep as only cats can sprawl, with not a care in the world.

‘My cat owns nothing at all,’ she mused, ‘and look how peacefully she sleeps.’

She looked at the piles of clutter she still needed to sort through and saw how different her life was to the life of her cat, who has no possessions and never will have.

Our relationship to possessions

We are markedly different to animals in the relationship we have with possessions. There are some animals, such as squirrels and chipmunks, who store stashes of food, and chimpanzees, who may keep a special stick for fishing or a stone for cracking nuts. Some animals kept in captivity and domesticated pets may form an attachment to a toy or become protective of their food bowl. But these are exceptions. Ownership of personal possessions is generally unique to humans.

In children brought up in the West, attachment to special objects such as toys or blankets is usually apparent by the age of 12 months, and the word “mine” starts to appear in a child’s vocabulary around 21 months.

By the time we reach adulthood, five percent of Westerners have a problem with hoarding. That’s one in every 20 people who identify so strongly with the items they own that they don’t want to let them go. It’s become a huge problem and one that most social workers are not equipped to deal with.

I’ve worked with hoarders, and it’s a long, slow process that requires immense patience. It’s wonderful that there are professionals who are dedicated to working with people whose clutter has reached such debilitating levels, but I made the decision some time ago that I can make the greatest contribution by helping the other 95% of the population not to get to that stage. Once full-blown hoarding has set in, it’s very difficult to change.

And what’s one of the most important things I teach people? It’s how to change their standpoint, so that they see their stuff for what it truly is – just stuff. George Carlin captures this perspective so beautifully in his classic sketch about the importance of stuff.

Copyright © Clear Space Living Ltd 2014, updated 2022

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Your stuff is just stuff

Resource
Fast-Track Clutter Clearing online course