I was all revved up to begin the next cycle of decluttering when I got a message from the estate agent, we have an inspection in a week. That was the catalyst that started my deepish dive into funerals and death, a slight overreaction maybe, but an accurate reaction to the depth of anxiety I have over the clutter in my home. When I tell you it looks like a hoarder lives here, I’m not joking! At least the real estate agent already knows we have boxes everywhere so it won’t be a total shock to them. So far, my aim has been to have the total amount of clutter diminish each time they come through, so they can see progress being made.
I had hoped to be much further along this time, I’m feeling a bit disappointed in not having as much done as I could have. Truth is though, the pace I’m going at might be glacial but it’s allowing me to make the mental adjustments I need to make permanent changes. I’ve done the massive, explosive clear out in 24 hours before and while it felt great to have so much stuff gone, it never lasted because the necessary changes didn’t have time to sink into my brain.
That’s autism and adhd for you. Our brains operate on a different time frame, we can ‘get’ the same ideas and pattern changes as everyone else, they just often tend to take a bit longer.
I feel the shift inside me, I’m ready to let go of all this stuff and NOT replace it with more. Part of the reason I like watching decluttering and minimalism youtube channels so much is to see their clean, tidy, easy-to-breathe-in rooms on the screen. Every time I see one I’m ingraining this is the outcome I want, this is the home I want to live in. I do have quite a clear image of how I want to be in this world but the getting from here to there isn’t that easy. I can’t just make a change and keep doing it, it doesn’t quite work that way for me. Before I make any change, I need to know it makes sense, more sense than how I’ve been doing it so far. Let’s face it, if being a slob wasn’t working for me, it would have changed a long time ago. It does work because it’s so much easier to live in a pile of boxes and papers and clothes not put away for a week than it is to constantly be cleaning and maintaining it. That’s the part people don’t realise, for autists who don’t tidy up and keep everything neat and organised, it’s because doing that takes up far too much energy for us and we’re already burning through enough energy just existing in a social world.
My solution to this is minimalism. I don’t actually like having a lot of stuff around me anyway, it constantly reminds me of things I need to do, use it, maintain it, clean it, buy it accessories, updrade it, get it out only to have to put it away again. The list of things I need to do for each thing I own is endless. I’m exhausted just thinking about it all! Instead, working out what I truly need and want and only having that is much more powerful and simple, because I work it out once and that’s pretty much most of the work done. I end up only having to maintain 150 things instead of 2,000. Trust me, stuff adds up, things have a tendency to attract other things to them so before you know it, you turn around and you have a small pile of stuff going on in the corner that you have no memory of ever putting there.
My brain is like an excited child reading the christmas toy catalgue, everything I see it wants. I’ve now gotten into the habit of feeling the initial ‘I want’ then asking myself will I really use it and then not buying it because as much as fantasy mean knows the perfect use for that thing, reality me knows I won’t ever use it. Or maybe once to try and then religate it to the back of a drawer. My brain is changing, I see it. There are times when I came across an idea and decided it made a lot of sense and I really wanted to incorporate that into my life, but I had no attachment to it, no internal motivation to change to this upgrade. Now when I see those ideas represented, I feel a real commitment to making them happen, I feel desire for it, the passion to make it real in my life and I know the idea has integrated.
I’m longing for the day when it’s all done and my energy switches over to maintaining it. As I go through things now to be decluttered I’m finding myself being willing to let go of things that before I wasn’t. If I’m waiving or not sure if I want to keep something, I make the decision to let it go. If I really wanted to keep it I would feel the instant pull to keeping it. Now it’s either a ‘hell yes!’ feeling or it goes. And I also know I will be editing again in the future because my goal is to get down to the bare basics plus one or tow pieces for decoration. I want my home to be comfortable to be in but I also want it to be empty. The older I get the more I really feel the need for emptiness and space in my environment. It allows my brain to switch off and relax.