How to confront your clutter compulsion

With TV programs like TLC’s “Clean Sweep” and HGTV’s “Mission Organization” finding durable audiences, it would seem clutter has emerged as a social issue — literally coming out of the closet and spilling into kitchens, down hallways, into garages and filling lockers at self-storage facilities.

Is this excess of stuff a symptom of too much disposable income sloshing around household budgets? An outgrowth of the irresistible lure of easy credit brought on by an accommodative Federal Reserve?  Or maybe, as some psychologists conclude, it’s an expression of increasingly unfulfilled lives?

Possibly, but Barry Izsak, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, has a different take. “The main reason there is so much clutter is that it represents all the decisions people aren’t making.  Delaying decisions about what to do with things is what leads to the clutter in people’s lives,” he says.

“While clutter is mainly an organizational issue, there is also a financial aspect to it,” says Lynne Hornyak, PhD, a Washington D.C. based psychologist and money coach. “We live in a culture of expanding choices and possibilities. Choice is about freedom, and exercising it is gratifying,” she adds.

Which explains why shopping often relaxes people or is considered therapeutic. It offers an opportunity to exercise authority in at least one area of life — the mall. At the office, within one’s family, having the final say can be elusive. Making a purchase requires exercising authority at least over the transaction. Besides, having stuff — cars, electronics, clothes, sporting equipment, artwork, furniture — can serve as motivation and as a reminder of what all the commuting, working and compromising is all about.

“Pursuing material wealth is neither good nor bad,” says Hornyak.  It is only unhealthy, she says, when possessions mean more than they should to people or when the spending or hoarding of objects begins to impact the health and financial well being of the household.  At that point clutter can be a warning sign of impending trouble in the form of unpaid bills or postponed savings goals.

To combat the financial fallout from clutter, Darlene Simard, a certified financial planner in Manchester, New Hampshire, urges her clients to adopt a shopping mantra: Do I want it? Do I need it? Will I really use it?

Pausing to ask these questions helps address the two threats inherent to every transaction: Clutter and the careless spending that creates it.

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