Our new puppy, Lucy, a lab-Brittany spaniel mix, often chases her own tail.
The sight is comical, as she spins and snaps her teeth at her long brown tail.
She spins in both directions, quite fast, until she catches her tail in her mouth and, after a brief pause, continues to spin in circles.
I often feel I’m spinning in circles, not seeming to accomplish much of anything when it comes to dealing with household clutter.
The recent sight of a large roll-off dumpster outside a Hardwick home brought focus to my circle spinning. In their grief, family members were cleaning out the small white home with the majority of the items tossed into the dumpster for disposal in the landfill.
I couldn’t help but think the owner should have been the one doing the tossing, donating or giving away of the items collected over the decades, not family members.
Ironically, what people collect in their homes has a cost.
Minnesotans are hoarding almost $50 billion worth of unused goods, which, on average, is the equivalent of $390 per home, according to ServiceMaster of Lake Shore, Minnesota, which surveyed 7,000 households.
Questions included, “Do you still have that pair of jeans you bought three years ago in the hopes of fitting into them soon, or the cute, colorful cardboard box your delivery came in a few months ago? You know, the box that you’ll make use of eventually?”
I have a lot of these items, too, and I feel I can’t get rid of them because of the “what if” questions that creep into my thoughts. I keep these items stuffed into closets of my home because they may be needed some day.
Not only does the collection of stuff have a monetary pull on our lives, but it also causes strife among household members.
The survey found 22 percent of arguments between couples center around the refusal to rid our homes of items we no longer use.
What are the items we find most difficult to part with? Twenty-eight percent said clothing, followed by outdated technology (24 percent), furniture (18 percent), books (16 percent), movies (12 percent) and seasonal items (2 percent.)
If we cannot dedicate time to a big cleanup, ServiceMaster suggested dedicating a few minutes per day to spot tidying.
I have since adopted a “20 minute” rule.
To get through all the stuff I have accumulated, I commit 20 minutes every now and then to going through a box and making decisions about its contents.
Over a month’s time I have made great strides and surprisingly I’ve made use of items I didn’t even know I had.
Little by little I no longer feel as though I am chasing my tail when it comes to conquering clutter. Lucy, however, still enjoys the activity.