Get Rid of the Clutter

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

Erev Rosh Hashanah — Friday, September 18, 2009

Jewish tradition teaches that when the Holy Temple, the bet mikdash was destroyed, God’s divine presence — the shechina settled not in the synagogue but rather in the homes of Jews around the world — thereby making each of our houses a mik’dash me’at — a sacred place.

We mark the sanctity of our home in many ways: we place a mezuzah on the door, we mark Shabbat and holy days under its roof, we open our homes in hospitality, and we fill it with words of Torah. Befitting a holy place, we also do our best to keep it in a respectful manner.

Many of us are — if you will excuse the pun — religious about cleaning. Others walk around returning things to their proper place — bringing the laundry upstairs, sliding the picture frame over on the mantle.

We work to make sure every corner of every room in the house is just right.

But then there is the garage — the forgotten room in the house.

Overflowing with things of varying purpose and value, the garage, in many ways is a lot like life. And like, life it is very difficult to keep organized and under control.

Many of us view making space in the garage as a Sisyphean task. Whether we use boxes, plastic containers or built-in-cabinetry; no matter how it is organized a garage is seemingly always full. It is as if objects, once placed in the garage, grow like goldfish to the size of their environment.

Similarly making space and time in our lives for the truly important things is a steep, uphill struggle. Each year on the High Holy Days we promise, through the set liturgy and the private reflections of our heart, to focus on the positives in life, to spend more time with family, and do more of the things we truly enjoy. We schedule time out with friends, put family night on the calendar, and make plans to golf, garden, or hike in the mountains. We commit to having Shabbat dinners, taking a class, or attending services. These things are all on the calendar in September and October, but as the months pass they appear less and less often; their place in the datebook and in our lives obscured by other things.

But of course things in the garage don’t really grow like goldfish and our schedules don’t fill on their own accord. If the bicycles are inaccessible and the Chanukah decorations impossible to find, it is because we keep piling more and more stuff into the garage. Likewise, if we can’t find time to play a game with the family or the energy to call an old friend— it is because we have filled our lives with other things.

Books with titles like “Find More Time,” “How to Create Time Out of Thin Air,” and “Organizing Your Garage in No Time” suggest the solution lies in getting more: more space, more time, more organization.

In truth, however, this treats just the symptoms and offers only a temporary reprieve. The lasting cure is not more but rather less — less of all the clutter that fills our garages and overwhelms our lives.

But if we are to cut back on clutter we must address its causes and acknowledge its costs.

According to organizing experts, clutter arises not from acquiring too much but rather discarding too little. In other words, our garages and our lives get overwhelmed because we hold onto things for too long.

One reason we hold onto things is a reluctance to admit a mistake.

To part with the jacket that never really fit right or the picture from the art fair that just didn’t match the rest of the house means acknowledging disappointment and regret — not always easy things to do.

And so sometimes we hang on to objects for which we have no use. Reluctant to admit a mistake, we assure ourselves the ill conceived purchase may yet find a purpose, that it is doing no harm in the garage. And so the garage fills up, getting more crowded each year.

Unfortunately, our unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes applies not only to material purchases, but also to our choices and decisions.

Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at MIT writes in his book, Predictably Irrational, “Once we take ownership of an idea . . . what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We praise it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it.

According to Jewish tradition, this is a problem that has plagued humanity since the beginning.

In Midrash Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Abba Bar Kahana teaches that after eating from the tree of wisdom God offered Adam a chance to repent — but Adam stubbornly refused. As Kahana explains, it was Adam’s reluctance to admit a wrong choice that results in his banishment from the Garden of Eden.

Holding onto a decision — long after we realize it is wrong — can cost us our own version of paradise — doing the things we enjoy and being with the people we love.

A 2006 New York Times article highlighted Erin Madden, a young woman who attended five colleges in search of the experience she wanted. But much more common are stories like David’s.

David and I swam together at Brandeis University. He was a great guy and an exceptional athlete. But he was never really happy at Brandeis. Coming from Hawaii, he had a hard time with the long, grey New England winters and life on the small suburban campus wasn’t the way he imagined college.

Despite being unhappy, he was reluctant to transfer. As David later explained, how could he when he had fought with his parents to attend university so far from home and then asked them to make sacrifices in order to cover tuition?

Up to that point, choosing a college was the biggest decision David had made and admitting that choice was a mistake seemed beyond his ability. Only after his academic performance began to suffer did David transfer — finishing college with a smile in sunny Southern California.

Reluctant to admit a mistake, we too stick with choices long after we know they won’t make us happy. With purchased ticket in hand, we sit through movies and plays that don’t interest us. Having enrolled, we attend classes and activities we thought we’d enjoy but really don’t. And perhaps most costly — once we call someone a friend, we keep them in our lives — even if they’ve hurt us and haven’t acted like a friend in years.

Like the mistakes piled in the garage, clinging to these choices clutters our lives and keeps us from the things and people we truly enjoy.

Our reluctance to acknowledge and part with mistakes is not the only source of clutter. As they do in the rest of life, emotions play an important role.

Each year, as we make efforts to clean out the garage we come across things we know we won’t use, but at the same time, things we simply can’t part with: boxes of toys belonging to a now grown child, souvenirs from decades of family vacations, a stamp collection inherited from a great uncle.

Some of these things are kept for reasons of nostalgia or because they are of sentimental value. Others are kept for less healthy reasons. Guilt and a fear of acting unappreciative prevent us from parting with thing’s we’ve received — even if the gift was never to our taste. Similarly, we feel a sense of obligation to hold onto things we’ve inherited, as though giving them away would be breaking a sacred trust.

Whether because of guilt or sentimentality, keeping so many things obscures the importance of the truly valuable objects. Tossed into a box of other stuffed animals, a child’s favorite teddy bear loses its sense of specialness. Its cups and carafe stored away with the rest of her china closet, Grandma’s cherished tea set and the memories it evokes become inaccessible.

Holding onto things we feel an obligation to treat as precious lowers the value of things that truly are. And of course, everything we keep takes up space in the garage.

While holding onto objects for emotional reasons contributes to clutter, our lives get overwhelmed because we hold onto emotions themselves — especially to anger.

Unlike a lot of the things we own, the acquisition of anger is not really a choice. Just assuredly as we will wrong others during the course of our lives, others will do things wrong to us. Our feelings will be hurt. We will be mistreated. When this happens we get angry.

For all but the greatest of tzaddikim — getting angry is an instinctual response — part of what it means to be human. Owning anger — temporarily — can even be healthy. As Doctor Bernard Golden writes, anger teaches us “about our own wants and needs.”

But if we hold onto anger and allow it to direct our actions — a behavior the Talmud likens to idolatry, or to manifest itself in the form of a grudge, it begins to clutter and overwhelm our lives.

Rabbi Abraham Twersky, who like the great Sephardic sage Maimonides is both a rabbi and doctor, speaks to the high cost anger elicits. Referring to grudges, he writes “all they do is eat away at you and cause you much grief in not ulcers. . . Why hang on to a feeling that can only harm you?”

Twersky continues, “In my work treating alcoholics, I find they place great emphasis on divesting themselves of resentments, contending that resentments are probably the single greatest factor responsible for relapse. One recovering alcoholic said it simply, ‘carrying resentments is like letting someone whom you don’t like live inside your head rent free.”

Whether fighting addiction or not, allowing something negative to drain and consume so much of our physical and spiritual energy — to clutter our lives so profoundly, is simply not wise. As Ecclesiastes teaches, “Anger rests in the bosom of fools (7:9).”

And finally, there is the clutter caused by clinging to an old self image or identity.

In her book, Making Peace with the Things in Your Life, psychotherapist Cindy Glovinsky writes, “The things that we own tells us and others who we are. Things are about identity.”

Because possessions are tied to identity, parting with them is complicated. Giving away or discarding something often means not just acknowledging the item is no longer of use, but that we are no longer the person that item represents. It’s not just that I don’t need a dirt bike anymore but that I am no longer a person who take those kinds of risks. It is not simply that this bag of pre-pregnancy clothes doesn’t fit — but that three kids later my body is different.

We often aren’t able to reconcile ourselves to these changes in self-image. Thus, more and more things remain in the garage: cobweb covered soccer cleats, a string-less guitar, a dusted over briefcase. Ignored for months or years at a time, they all add to the clutter.

Certainly we are not the first to struggle with leaving behind an earlier understanding of ourselves.

Twice each year, in Parshat Shlach L’cha and again in Parshat Devarim, we read the story of the 12 spies sent to scout the land of Israel. As the Torah describes, the spies return after a 40 days journey carrying giant grapes as proof of the land’s fertility. But while the Promised Land is in their words flowing with milk and honey, all except Caleb and Joshua counsel against invading. They warn the land is filled with giants, compared to which they were in their own sight as grasshoppers.

Famously, their report and its acceptance by the Israelites results in 40 years of wandering in the desert. But what led the spies and the Israelites to such negativity? Tradition teaches that despite having witnessed the exodus and God’s miraculous power, their view of themselves hadn’t changed since Egypt. The Israelites remained tied to a slave mentality. As Rabbi Gunther Plaut writes “they saw themselves as weaklings, powerless, without strength or imagination to overcome their enemies.” And so they were in their own sight as grasshoppers.

Like the ancient Israelites, we pay a heavy price for holding onto an outdated image of ourselves.

The English poet Henry Reed wisely observed, “As we get older, we don’t get any younger.” No doubt we get older physically. Our bodies feel and respond differently than they did ten years ago. But we change and evolve emotionally, spiritually and intellectually as well — often for the better.

Clinging to an old self-image means blinding ourselves to these changes, and, like the Israelites did in the desert, selling ourselves short.

And of course, as our schedules fill with things we always did — rather than those things that nourish who we are today, our lives feel more cluttered.

Holding onto things for too long — be they mistakes, emotions, or an outdated self-image clutters both our garages and our lives. But fortunately, recognizing these causes and their costs, we can begin to change.

Experts on home de-cluttering almost universally endorse “The One Year Rule.” The one year rule states that if you haven’t worn or used something in a year — it’s probably time to part with it.

This rule can also be applied to the things that clutter our lives. During this High Holy Day period — a period of reflection, think about the ways you spend your time and energy. If something hasn’t brought joy, meaning, or benefit into your life this past year — it might be best to let it go and find something new that will.

Another helpful hint professional organizers offer is to tackle clutter as a team. Most garages aren’t filled with things belonging to only one person. Even those of us that live alone may be storing things for children living out of the house or for parents who have downsized. We might not feel empowered to part with their things — and so often an important step is to sit down with everyone who contributes to the clutter and talk about what they’d like to keep and what they are ok with discarding.

A similar conversation with our families can be an important part of de-cluttering our lives. A Yale university study found that the average parent spends seven hours a week carpooling from one place to another. With so much time spent just getting to activities — it is imperative to sit down and talk about whether they are worth going to. If an activity isn’t valued by parents, and it isn’t fun for the child — then it is just clutter.

There are scores of other tips for getting rid of clutter — tips that can be applied to both our garages and our lives. No matter what approach we take, however, it is important to remember that the goal isn’t to get rid of things, but to de-clutter — to make space for those things that are truly important.

As we go forward into the year 5770, may our friendships, our passions, and our dreams be free of clutter. May our days be filled with joy and purpose. And may the shechinah — God’s holy presence — fill our lives and our homes on this sacred day and on each day.

Shanah Tovah and Shabbat Shalom.