Day: 28 January 2015

Uncluttering is a difficult task for hoarders. It often takes two or three rounds before the ‘junk’ finally leaves the house. I think it is because uncluttering for the hoarder is an emotional thing.

In the first round of uncluttering an area in the cluttered, disorganized storeroom, a lot of white elephants did not leave the house. The hoarder threw one bag of stuff out and looked at the storeroom. Oh no. After more than an hour of uncluttering, the storeroom looked no difference – still too cluttered. The hoarder felt a little desperate …how to rid the rest of the house of clutter at this rate?

After a day or two, the hoarder, trying to be practical, ruthlessly threw out two more bags of the ‘junk’ he had cleared in the first round of uncluttering. And then worked like a beaver at uncluttering  another part of the junk-full storeroom, struggling hard to overcome the reluctance to throw out his ‘beloved junk’!

Uncluttering is a slow and tedious chore!

Hmmm…a  related story:

More than twenty years ago, a big fire razed a row of double- storey shop houses near the former Newton Circle, to the ground. My friend was at work when her room went up in smoke. All the victims of the fire had only the shirt on their back – nothing else. The next day when the rubble had cooled down, the victims went back to look for their jewellery which did not melt.

The govt. gave them priority in applying for new personal documents and allocated them new flats. My friend and her relatives got flats near Upper Aljunied Road.

WE always sympathized with our friend for losing all her belongings in the fire and she was also feeling miserable, but – a few years later, she said to me it was good that all her clutter went up in smoke! She appreciated the chance to live in her new place without any old clutter! Is this not a little irony in life? …

I sometimes think of a fire when I’m having a difficult time uncluttering. Lol!