What Causes Your Clutter? Results
Doing yesterday’s Tackle It Tuesday rounds and looking at other blogs, I found one who mentioned that Oprah recently had Peter Walsh on. I followed the link to Oprah’s site, hoping to find maybe an online video of the site (like ABC does with Lost and Grey’s) - and instead I think the Harpo crew secretly sneaked into my house.
They had a couple on there whose house looked nice on the outside, but on the inside it looked just like mine. Let me show you a pic of their house:
Anyone who has been to my house would know… that’s pretty much what my library looks like. Except it’s not lime green. Man I wish I had seen that show!! I wish Oprah had video archives online!
But anyhoo…
So on the show page there’s links to other Oprah sections, one of which is called “Clutter Buddies” - and there’s a clutter quiz that you can take. I took it, and it told me…
The Cause of Your Clutter: Psychological Obstacles
I haven’t found one case in all my years as a professional organizer where clutter has been caused by sloppiness, laziness, or incompetence. Thinking this way inaccurately puts the blame on you, and is clearly not the best mind-set for achieving organizing success. The actual causes of clutter occur on three levels.
You are experiencing Level 3: Psychological Obstacles.
Hidden internal forces may be pulling you towards disorganization; no matter how much you crave control! You may be subconsciously sabotaging your organizing systems and holding yourself back. If you see yourself in the categories below, try one of the solutions to get started.
It then goes on to list all of the different sub-types of “Psychological Obstacles”, too long to post here (link below).
I do agree that my clutter is psychological, but I didn’t really identify with the different sub-types that Julie offered. I dunno. I might be the “Thriving on Distraction” person. God knows I’m distracted enough! But many of the “Technical Problems” apply to me as well, especially too much stuff and inconvenient storage.
One of the things I’m gonna blow lots of money on when we get our tax return is organizing cubes/caddies/bins etc.
There are three “types” of clutter people, according to Julie at Oprah’s:
Technical Problems
External Realities
Psychological Obstacles
Which one are you?
There are message boards there and it seems like this “Clutter Buddy” thing might be a full-time “tackle it tuesday” kind of group. Hrmm. That could be useful, I’ll check it out.
What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!
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