If you're not familiar with Hoarders (and it's TLC equivalent, Hoarding: Buried Alive) it's a television show intended to examine (humiliate) a person who has accumulated so much in their home that they are nearly unable to function.
All in Musings
When Your Stuff Gets in the Way
Has this ever happened to you? You realize it's been a while since you looked at pictures of your grandmother. It bothers you that since she died you cannot remember her face as clearly as you used to. You long to see her face.
For a year I was the book buyer for the interior design section of an evil super-sized bookstore on the upper east side of Manhattan. The buyers at the home office figured this store should have this special section for students of the New York Interior Design School situated near by.
After all, how can a professional giver of advice on all things streamlined and utilitarian have these dusty things hanging about in her own closets and under bed storage?
As a (somewhat) reformed pack rat I know I should only be telling people to live with what they need and what they absolutely love. Everything else should go. That's a major rule, a principle, something to live by, no exceptions!
What motivates you to make change? Seeing an achievable goal is what does it for me. I spend ten minutes looking at Design Sponge or a House Tour on Apartment Therapy and suddenly I am looking around wondering how I can make something in my home look like a corner of a featured home.
If I am considered tidy during the weekdays it is only because it is a basic requirement for functioning. In other words, a lack of order causes problems for us and slows us down as a family so we spend extra energy keeping things neat so we can find it the next day.
Sometimes there are messes that reside in the long procrastinated to-do list in our minds. We seem to never find a way to get to these things but we think of them at least once every day.
Since I moved out on my own, 20 years ago, I established and maintained certain principles about how I would live my life. One rule of order was order itself wherever I lived.
It might not seem likely that a person who claims to be highly organized and naturally fastidious would lose something they treasure, like a favorite yellow hat.