Hasta La Ideas

I feel like I have been unintentionally collecting links to great articles recently. I’ll spot something clutter/organizing/productivity-related in the news, immediately think it would make such a terrific topic for an Unclutterer post, save the link to a text file of post ideas, and then do nothing further. Apparently, I want ALL the links for myself. All of them. Mine.

Since this is ridiculous and there is no good reason for me to be collecting all these links and not sharing them, I thought an ol’ fashion link roundup post was in order. Please enjoy all of these links that have been catching our attention:

• “Why aren’t hoarders bothered by all that junk? Scientists find a clue“
  This article from NBC looks at a recent brain study by psychologist David Tolin that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the research, clinically diagnosed hoarders’ brains respond differently to physical stuff than the brains of the general population. As a result, their ability to make decisions is significantly limited.
• “Three habits that drive down productivity“
  I’m still trying to decide what I think about this article from the Memphis Business Journal. The article references a study that analyzes the work product and attendance records of employees with very different lifestyles at three large corporations. The article concludes that healthier people are more productive workers and it specifically names smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise as productivity killers.
• “Plan of Work for a Small Servantless House (3 or 4 in family)“
  After the war in Britain, many homes and estates that once had servants found themselves unable to afford any servants in the house. To help women learn how to keep house, someone (the British government?) published this guide for how a woman should spend her time. My friend Julie introduced me to this page from the I Love Charts tumblr, and I think it is a fabulous look back in time. I’m still confused as to how a woman with one or two children only seems to attend to them for an hour and a half each day “if necessary,” but maybe “servantless” doesn’t include nannies?
• “Re:Re:Fw:Re: Workers Spend 650 Hours a Year on Email“
  This article from The Atlantic confirms that most people with desk jobs (referred to as an “office stiff” in the text) spend “13 hours a week, or 28 percent of our office time, on email.” A quarter of one’s job is consumed with reading and answering email. The article also reports that time spent on tasks specific to one’s role at the company only consumes 39 percent of one’s time at work.
• “You Probably Have Too Much Stuff“
  This short piece from The New York Times looks at the burdens of being “over-prepared.” I like the use of the phrase “over-prepared” in the article because it so aptly reflects the “I might need this one day” mentality.

As you also know, I’ve been doing some writing for the Women and Co. website lately. Most of what I’ve been writing continues to be about home and office organizing, but they’ve been letting me branch out a bit and pick up some other topics. It reminds me of the days I wrote the Sunday news for the local commercial radio station in Lawrence, Kansas, so very, very, very long ago …

Anyway, this is what I wrote in July:

• “Is Your Child’s Lemonade Stand Against the Law?“
• “Tips to Staying Sane When Working from Home“
• “Resources for Walking and Biking in U.S. Cities“
• “How to Organize Your Back-to-School Shopping“

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

There is more than 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space in the United States, according to The Self Storage Association. Some of this space is used wisely — by people serving overseas, people storing personal things while they sell their homes, or for other temporary situations — but a lot of self-storage space is used as a very expensive extra room to hold people’s clutter.

Unfortunately, when people stop making payments on these units, they are sealed off and put up for auction. The television network A&E is tracking this auction phenomenon in a new series called Storage Wars:

A&E presents the new original real-life series “Storage Wars,” which follows four professional buyers and their teams as they scour repossessed storage units in search of hidden treasure. Part gamblers, part detectives, these seasoned veterans have found everything from coffins to the world’s most valuable comic book collection, paying as little as ten dollars for items valued in the millions.

The series begins tonight at 10:00 p.m. EST/9:00 p.m. CST with the episode “High Noon in the High Desert“:

It’s a showdown in the high desert as the buyers crack open a trove of abandoned storage lockers. Barry Weiss unearths the personal possessions of rap magnate Suge Knight. Jarrod Schulz and Dave Hester throw down their bankrolls in hopes of scoring a classic organ. And Darrell Sheets reveals a historic, one hundred and fifty thousand-dollar find. Classic items, wily personalities–let the storage wars begin!

I’m interested in seeing how A&E handles this material. I’ve written before about my frustrations with the television show Hoarders (and also here), and how I believe the editing of the show pushes aside the mental health aspects of hoarding and instead aims to wow viewers with shock and awe. I think the show can be dehumanizing. (Again, I want to stress that I think it’s the editing of the show and not the actual professional organizers and psychologists who are responsible for the dehumanizing.) A large part of me fears that Storage Wars is going to forget that there are people who once owned the possessions being laid out for bidding. I’ll watch tonight and see how this sensitive topic is handled by A&E. My fingers are crossed that they have found a way to highlight the self-storage problem in the United States without ridiculing or embarrassing the people who are losing their things.

(Image from A&E.)

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

Reader Anonymous submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I am hoping that you can give my brother and I some advice. Our mom is getting worse each year and refuses to believe she has a problem. In addition to her bringing other people’s garbage into the house, she also has a number of cats who use the house as one large litter box. When my brother and I attempt to clean, she yells and screams, and takes the rubbish back in when we put it out for the garbage truck. Unless we physically rent a truck to take it to the dump ourselves, it never leaves the house. We are so worried because it’s getting worse and she is approaching 70 and are at our wit’s end. She won’t go to counseling and when we clean anything it just gets disgusting again. There is food rotting as she doesn’t have a working fridge anymore and when she buys food she forgets about it and it gets compacted with stuff she puts on top of it. The piles of garbage are growing and we can barely get the front door open now. We have threatened not to come and visit and she said fine don’t. Nothing seems to work or get through to her. What can we do as we don’t want to see her die in this. Please, can you help us? Please don’t publish my name.

Only a doctor can give an official diagnosis as someone being a hoarder, but, since your mother is refusing to seek treatment at this point, that diagnosis is going to be difficult to acquire. I think that you will be okay if you function under the assumption that she is one, however, as it definitely won’t hurt her or you if you do.

Hoarding is a psychological illness. Your mother is not a bad person or a bad homemaker, she’s suffering from a mental health condition similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder or clinical depression. As much as she doesn’t want treatment for her condition, she desperately needs it. You and your brother can clean her house a million times, but it will always return to its current state if she does not get the medical care she needs. Cleaning her house against her will might also lead to her cutting off communication with you — and that is not something you want to happen. Keeping the lines open with your mother is extremely important.

Start by learning as much as you can about hoarding. There are many resources available to those who love and care about people who suffer from this condition. The Children of Hoarders website may be specifically helpful to you, and I recommend checking out their resources section.

Unless you believe your mother is endangering herself or others, you cannot force help upon her or commit her against her will to a mental health facility. Nagging, negative and judgmental statements, and disrespecting her stuff will only exacerbate her hoarding behavior. Learn as much as you can about her condition, be supportive and encouraging, and find non-threatening ways to encourage her to seek help. Best case scenario: She decides to seek treatment and finds a healthy way to live with her condition in a safe home environment.

Thank you, Anonymous, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. My thoughts are with you and your family. It is admirable that you and your brother are worried and care so much about your mother.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Tonight is the premiere of the second season of the A&E television show Hoarders at 10/9c. We’ve written a few times about the first season of the show, and even heard from people who have been featured on the program in our comments section. I continue to have mixed feelings about it — I love that it is bringing a human face to this mental health issue and raising awareness, but I wish that there was less shock and awe factor in what is broadcast.

We’ve heard from a number of people associated with the show that the second season is going to talk more about treatment options and look more closely at the psychological aspects of the disorder than was the case in season one. I truly hope this is accurate because I believe the hoarders on the show deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. I’m not saying that they weren’t in season one — I know from first-hand accounts that they were given excellent help behind the scenes during the filming of the episodes — but what translated onto the screen didn’t always reflect the entire process. I’m looking forward to tonight’s episode and seeing how the changes are implemented.

After the episode airs, feel welcome to jump onto our Unclutterer Forums and talk about it in our second season Hoarders thread. If you don’t get A&E, check out the official Hoarders website in a couple days where they will post the full episode online.

Professional organizer extraordinaire Monica Ricci returns to Unclutterer to talk to us about the anxieties hoarders experience. You can follow Monica on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog for more organizing tips.

On a recent episode of A&E’s Hoarders a key concept was brought to light by my dear friend and hoarding expert Dorothy Breininger. The important concept is stuff versus relationships. It’s so sad to see individuals choose their stuff over the people in their lives. To those of us watching the show at home, the hoarder’s behavior doesn’t initially seem to make sense.

In my industry, I often encounter clients who have a history of choosing stuff over people. It’s not just hoarders who do it, either. People often choose the comfort of stuff over relationships because relationships can be scary. People can reject you. People are sometimes critical and judgmental. People can be mean, insensitive, and heartless. People can leave you, abandon you, and disappoint you. But your stuff never will.

That is, until your stuff chokes the life out of you.

It could be easy to watch the television show Hoarders and lose sight of the humanity of the people featured. But we shouldn’t. All of us can empathize with the anxiety that the hoarders feel — we’ve all felt abandoned, disappointed, and ridiculed by others. We can understand how someone stopped focusing on the people in their life and turned to their stuff. Hopefully, with time, treatment, and assistance, the hoarders featured on the show can turn again to people and let go of so much of their stuff. I also hope that you continue to make the same choice.