BRILLIANT BITS: insights from the DeClutter Your Creativity Group

The monthly Bookstrategy DeClutter Your Creativity group is a part of my life I've come to enjoy deeply--a chance to dialogue with other creative women about the challenges and opportunities that affect us all.


Luckily, that's true even at times like this past Tuesday's meeting, when my own energy is either flagging or "off." Get a group of deeply creative women together, and some or all of them will be brilliant on any given night!

Two comments offered in the course of Tuesday's discussion stood out for me as especially valuable.

The first was to live in your truth...now.
It was the "now" part of that statement that hit me with renewed force. It reminded me that our truth in this present moment isn't necessarily the same as a truth that was authentic for us a decade, a year, even a month ago.

A piece, or size, of clothing. A particular art or craft. A habit. A relationship. A belief. A collection. Are there any of these in your life that were part of the truth of your past, but may not remain equally authentic in your present? If so, it is a great place to start decluttering.

The second bit of wisdom that really spoke to me was that one of the disabling forms of emotional clutter any of us carry is the belief that we are somehow different than others, and different in negative ways.

We might think that compared to "everyone else" we're more distracted. Less confident. More disorganized. Less creative. More confused. Less knowlegeable.

When we believe in these kinds of difference, we keep tend to ourselves isolated...ashamed...stuck. Needless to say, these are not feelings that lend themselves to creativity.

When we face and test them, we shed a limiting part of emotional clutter and free ourselves up both to connect and create. And that's a much more powerful kind of decluttering than even the most vigorous physical clearing-out.

If you're in the Vero Beach, FL area, consider joining us for this donation-only monthly group. You can find more information on my BookStrategy website.

THE STUFF WE LEAVE BEHIND: "Important Artifacts" by Leanne Shapton

Leanne Shapton's Important Artifacts is not officially about decluttering, but it's still of interest to those of us striving to release all that no longer works from our lives. It's also a wonderful work of creative imagination.

Fully titled Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, the book is a fictional auction catalog of items remaining from a love affair that has now failed. Though the owners and story are invented, the catalog contains actual pictures of objects from the ridiculous to the sublime. Together, they chronicle the story of a relationship in a way that is sometimes wry, sometimes sad, and always telling. It's not easy to tell a love story in a new way, but Shapton does it beautifully. You can't but look at this book without wondering how your own objects would tell your life stories if they were organized and disposed of some day. Or, at least, I couldn't.

Shapton's first book, Was She Pretty?, also mixes images and text to talk about love in a fresh and nuanced way. Browse the books and her illustrations, art, and ideas on her whimsical and inspiring website.

CULLING MY BOOKS: on reading, reveling, and releasing

Part of my silent time over the past two months has been occupied with the process of sorting through my possessions. "Sorting through" sounds simple and rather serene, but in reality the process is tedious and messy. I gave away or otherwise disposed of the stuff that was easy years ago. What is left is there for a reason. Usually, even, a good one.

Still, something in my soul said that it was time for much of it to go.

Culling my collection of books was one of the more interesting, and oddly enough for a writer the easiest, parts of the process. Perhaps because my work requires me to acquire new books regularly, I've never been especially reluctant to let the older ones go. It's easy to imagine someone else, in say our local library's Used Book Depot, enjoying the volume I've just donated—to imagine, that is to say, the cycle of ownership and reading continuing pleasantly and productively on before and beyond the point in time I happen to own a book. And it's always been clear to me that if I don't empty the shelves out fairly regularly, the house will all too quickly become overrun.

My test for keeping books is generally simple, consisting of only three questions. Do I truly love the book? Do I return to it regularly? Is it out of print, and likely to remain out of print for the foreseeable future? Of the three questions the last is the most practical and sometimes the most compelling. Living in a small town rather than my old home ground of New York City, the lesser works of, say, W.H. Auden or Virginia Woolf are not easy to obtain; even online old-book resources such as Alibris can be spotty in terms of book availability and price. Some of the paperback editions of so-called "literary" authors I bought back in the seventies are thus real treasures to me, in contrast to recent and/or mainstream novels and nonfiction that the library is likely to own and that Amazon and other retailers are equally likely to stock.

So I let go of several shelf-fulls of contemporary novels and nonfiction with only the slightest qualm. More difficult were a group of books on writing I like, but which don't meet the test of my first or second questions. Even more difficult were some of the books from my father's personal library (the subject for a later blog post). Like most objects once owned by someone loved and lost, so to speak, these volumes were not valuable as books so much as what author Seth Godin calls "souvenirs." My three practical questions didn't apply to them well; instead, a whole other kind of scrutiny had to take place.

As always seems to be the case in the aftermath of one of these book clearing-outs, I have found myself reading more widely than usual in my own collection of books. I am inspired to revisit authors I had forgotten, discovering that I like so-and-so more than I used to and so-and-so less, being surprised that I never finished one book or that I made the notes I did in another. In this way my little library comes alive again right at the times some of it is passing on, as though the very process of loss have intensified its pleasure and value...not unlike, say, life itself.

ENOUGH ALREADY

It was interesting to see the beginnings of Oprah's new television network, OWN, this weekend. I was particularly pleased to notice that one of my favorite experts on decluttering, Peter Walsh, will have a show called "Enough Already" on the network. Walsh, who anchored a program called "Clean Sweep" some years ago and has appeared frequently on Oprah since, is thoughtful, warm, feisty, and very clear about the emotional elements of clutter. I vividly remember seeing him ask a Clean Sweep participant how they were honoring the grandmother whose furniture they clung to when that furniture was dusty and piled with other things. It was fine to keep the things if they felt essential, he argued, but if they were indeed that precious, wouldn't they be clean...polished...used...cared for? Sounds simple, I know, but the question of whether we are honoring our memories merely by keeping "stuff" that is neglected is a powerful one. Anyway, the show should be interesting for anyone interested in decluttering practices that move beyond mere physical organization into more challenging and more liberating discoveries. Walsh also has a new book, Lighten Up: Love What You Have, Have What You Need, and Be Happier With Less, that approaches decluttering with a particular emphasis on the economic constraints that affect so many of us today. I haven't read it yet, but it might be a useful text.

OUT WITH THE OLD

Some of you who follow my blogs have commented on my rather protracted absence since sometime in October. I found myself going into and through a long period of exploration beginning at about that time. It was a decluttering of sorts, though one which illustrated the precept I repeat most often (and probably most annoyingly) in my decluttered creative classes: that decluttering is not, and never, just about the stuff.

That said, I have indeed released a lot of physical stuff in these last months. I sold six or seven boxes of antiques and a lovely daybed and desk that I had owned and loved for decades, but which no longer really fit my needs. I donated lots of books, linens, and other odds and ends to various good causes. I gave one friend lots of the plants and garden accessories I no longer truly want to care for and another a box of supplies for art forms I don't think I'll ever do. I did a lot of financial housecleaning as well, consolidating accounts and shredding old records and generally making space.

I also changed around most of the main living space of my house. That was a kind of decluttering, too: a releasing of the way I used to live and the spaces I used to like. The house had looked nice aesthetically, at least I thought so, but some of it just wasn't me any more. It ended up being a rather more monumental shifting-about than I had expected--I realized by the end that I had actually moved every major piece of furniture in my living and dining area and a goodly portion of the furnishings elsewhere. I reimagined colors, repurposed spaces, and just generally shook things up. It wasn't an expensive redo; almost everything in the new spaces is something I already owned except for the paint on the walls and some minor accessories, most of which I bought at thrift shops. But the overall style, the effect, and the feeling of the spaces is surprisingly different. I feel much more comfortable within this refreshed nest, and I can already feel how much more suited it is for the year of writing I plan for twenty-eleven.

Finally and most profoundly, I did a lot of inner decluttering as well. I found myself newly ready to look at my schedule, my habits, my business, my priorities, my money, my company...well, pretty much everything. I am not precisely sure where all of this re-exploration will take me, and I'm trying to be okay with that uncertainty. What I do know is that the uncertainty actually feels more authentic than some of last year's certainties and assumptions did, and that feels good. I have a sense of getting closer to that which is most important to me as the new year opens, and a sense of curiousity and excitement that is actually quite fun.

So that's what I've been doing on my autumn vacation. I look forward to connecting with all of you other decluttering creatives again through this blog and the class schedule I'm beginning to craft for the spring. And I wish you a year of decluttering, creativity, and change.

LIBERATION in the place least looked for

Originally known for her work as a book editor to the greats (and the grumpies) and then for her writing on aging, Diana Athill always speaks crisply, courageously, candidly, and without even the littlest bit of self-pity. Not surprisingly, her thoughts on moving into a retirement home at the age of 91 are both interesting and counter-intuitive. As Sarah Lyall points out in yesterday's New York Times, she found the experience of the move suprisingly freeing. “You gradually become aware of how liberating it is,”Athill says in Lyall's article (which is based, in turn, on a piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph). “Not a single domestic worry do I have.” And, she continues in the Telegraph,


At breakfast today I sat in my little room thinking how odd it is that I never get bored by my things. Then I realised that nothing in the room is here out of habit, or because it was given me by dear old so-and-so, or because I couldn’t be bothered to get rid of it. Everything, from the carpet to the biscuit tin and including of course the too-many pictures, ornaments and books, is here because, however uninteresting it might be to others, I love it. It’s as though “possessing” has been distilled down from being a vague pleasure to being an intense one: less is more. When I first saw the room in its bare state it shocked me: how could I possibly live in that tiny space? And now I am happy in it.


I love that comment, and its unexpectedness. If you do too, check out the Telegraph article in its entirety, and/or dip into one of the author's books.

I feel no desire to rush toward retirement-home living. Yet as I sit here today, I have to confess to the teensiest, eensiest bit of envy. I spent much of the morning finding someone to remove a swarm of honeybees from their nest under my house. (Thanks to Ronnie Slade of Clements Pest Control, who was prompt, personable, and reassuring despite the weirdness of a bee-proof suit.) I spent much of the afternoon making up for the morning. It's now evening, and I have a piled up desk, a piled-up mind, a piled-up laundry basket and a piled-up to-do list. If only there was a piled-up dinner plate waiting for me. Anyway, less stuff of all kinds looks pretty appealing right now.

Then again, Athill has emptied out her stuff but not her life. She still welcomes activity such as travel; in fact, her schedule makes me feel tired. "That is something all us oldies should bear in mind: until it becomes physically truly impossible, keep on doing things," she writes at the very end of the article. "In my experience it always turns out to be worth while."

A good reminder that having less doesn't necessary mean either doing less, or enjoying less...and that at 55, I'm not as old as I feel at the moment!

THE WARMTH OF WITNESS, part one

The concluding evening of my DeClutter Your Creativity Class last week reminded me of how important companionship is to the decluttering process. (For those of you in the Treasure Coast of Florida, there's a one-day version of the class coming up on September 18; just visit my website's "classes and groups" page for more information).
It made me recollect an experience I had after I sold my New York apartment in 2002. I moved some but all of the possessions I'd gathered in my 25 years ther to Florida, where I began to combine them with the things I'd accumulated down here. Most of the stuff fit fine, with some judicious thinning out. But I didn't have time to pick through a stack of ten or so boxes of old letters, manuscripts, books, vintage antiques, and mementos. Instead, I rented an inexpensive storage space nearby, intending to get the sorting done in a month or two.

Of course, I missed the deadline.

By about a year.

That storage space—so nice, so neat, so convenient, so affordable—had two terrible flaws.

First, it was out of sight, and therefore, if not exactly out of mind, at least out of deadline. In the midst of my busy life there was always something more important to do than clean it out.

Second, it soon became a source of shame. It was patently absurd to pay even $35 a month, $420 a year, to store stuff I didn't quite remember, didn't ever use, and probably wouldn't even keep. As the months marched on and the rental fees mounted I felt more and more frustrated with myself. Labels like "lazy," "spendthrift," and "stupid" started coming to mind. I knew intellectually that they were unreasonable self-judgments, but on a gut level they felt true. And the more true they felt, the more paralyzed I became.

Out of desperation, I finally asked my friend Abby to come with me to the storage facility. I made it clear that I was not expecting her to do physical labor. Her role was simply to be beside me—to reassure, to see things clearly, to help me give myself permission both to clear out and also to keep the clearing process simple and gentle.

Abby was the perfect person for this process. Nurturing but not crowding or cloying me; aware that I could "do it myself": she was there in the way the training wheels on a child's first bike are there, unnecessary if the bike stays upright but crucial if not. Abby opened some boxes and made a few trips out to the car that day, but the most important way she helped me was simply to stand still. To be there. To bear witness.

And to my shock, our work took less than two hours.

It was not really hard to do, it turned out. It was just hard to do alone.

When we bear witness for or around others, we are simply (but powerfully) present somewhere, at some time, for some thing. When others bear witness for us, they too take on the job of paying attention. As witnesses, they do not need to shape the transaction, provide advice, make choices. Their meaning is in their presence. They are richly but quietly there.

Because clutter and overwhelm are such isolating and/or shameful burdens for many of us, people we can trust to bear witness to and for us are worth their weight in gold. They can and will do far more than any organizational manual, plastic bin, storage space or to-do list to help us clear out our life's dead wood.

As you read this, does one or more names of possible witnesses come into your mind? Is there someone you would feel comfortable enough with to reveal some of your stashed-away or not-so-stashed away clutter? Is there someone whose witness could help affirm your worth, your sanity, your basic goodness as you clear away some of the things that no longer serve you?

I hope your answer is "yes." If it is, check back on this blog later this week, when I'll post a list of gentle suggestions about working with your "witness" to declutter.

If your answer is "no," there are two possible reasons. First, that you have starved yourself of relationships that see and build on your authentic self. Second, and actually more likely, that you are mired enough in self-blame to see judgments that others don't actually feel. I'll post on that soon as well.

Either way, just remember that one of the most powerful decluttering tools...is companionship.

CREATIVE COMMUNITY: the antidote to creative clutter

Last night, I taught the first session of a two-meeting offering of my DeClutter Your Creativity class. As I sat around the workshop table, it is not an exaggeration to say that I was absolutely awed by the intelligence, humor, insight, strength and energy of the participants. Each is truly an extraordinary woman. And part of that extraordinary quality, I think, is that each sees her life and creativity as a work in progress, something that both changes on its own and requires conscious change over time to respond to new challenges, new opportunities, new wishes, new needs, new visions.

As I sat talking and laughing with these women, I was struck by how different this form of decluttering is from the usual approach to it. I don't know about you, but most of the decluttering efforts I have made over the years have been done in solitude and with some level of shame, frustration, and confusion. They have been marked by a kind of grim determination to "get it done" rather than a spirit of celebration or joy. And though I wasn't conscious of it at the time, they have been imbued with a sense of aloneness, a tacit assumption that I am the only person in the world to have too many mementos or beads or collage papers or old photos or...well, you get the idea.

But as last night reminded me, that sense of aloneness is nothing short of a lie: a profound and profoundly destructive untruth.

Everyone who tries to live their life consciously is involved in a more or less constant process of clearing out the past.

Everyone who engages in a creative practice of any kind--humble or grand, public or private, literary or artistic or musical--is involved in a more or less constant process of reinventing their work, their process and themselves.

And there is something healing about being reminded that we are all on this same journey together, walking side by side.

Next time you think about clearing out or decluttering, don't start the process with ten plastic bins, an afternoon alone, and an attitude of heroic self-discipline.

End there if you must. But start by reaching out to at least one person like yourself, who "gets" how glorious you are and how inevitable this kind of work is.

Start the work of decluttering with a sense of community.

Release what no longer serves you by remembering the human connections that do serve you.

Begin to let go of what you have by affirming all that you are.

If you do, I promise that the decluttering journey will go more smoothly, reflect your needs more authentically, and get done more quickly.

If you would like to join one of my DeClutter Your Creativity workshops or groups to help start a decluttering journey amid others like yourself, I would be honored to walk this walk with you. But this is not a plug for my work. Though I hope my offerings bring helpful ideas and helpful pepple to the table I want to be utterly clear that you don't need me. You can make the creative human connection I suggest above with one good friend and a phone.

Creative community and authentic connection are the antidotes to clutter.

Try them, and you'll see.

SORTING SUZANNE'S STUFF

Some nice comments about one of my recent poems by my friends Barbara and Peace Sanchez prompted me to glance through my file of my own poetry yesterday. (Before I go on, a thanks to Sky, Peace's sister and the mom of two of the world's most adorable little girls, for her great email as well.)

Here's a piece from February 2009, written during a period when I was intensely decluttering my arts and crafts supplies. It was really fun to write a big miscellaneous overabundant poem about overabundance and a visually shaped poem about visual art supplies, as well as to work the line lengths as they sprawl out and then constrict again. The turn toward ruefulness of the final line happpened unexpectedly, yet felt right. There's something so cathartic about making art from experiences fraught with frustration, and also about making a little fun of oneself. Might just be coincidence, but shortly after the poem was finished the studio decluttering process seemed magically to take hold. I've had absolutely no time to bead or collage of late, but all the little bits and pieces for those activities sleep peacefully awaiting their wake-up call, and fit perfectly into the limited space I was willing to devote to them. Ah, the power of the written word!

STUFF

Stuff everywhere:
no longer stuffed

anywhere, burst of bright sweets from a reft pinanta,
sparks from a Roman candle, bugs scurrying
wild in a sudden glare: paper and cord,
beads and brushes, sketchbooks
and inks,

evicted
from albums, armoires,
bags, baskets, bins, closets,
cupboards, drawers, folders, tubs, totes
(all, mind you, gorgeously labeled, color-coded, styled)

onto counters, floors, tables, sofa, bed; no surface, no plane,
no mesa for that matter, would seem wide
enough to hold this vivid
clutter; this is a
diaspora

of sorts,
minor and mostly
benign but an uprooting
nonetheless, a material nation expelled
from its longtime homelands by a (minor and mostly)

benign) despot queen beset by mental coup, creative
apoplexy, itchy feet, bottle neck, hot flash, hot
need: as antic as her own court jester,
as possessed as Ahab by
his dream;

her dream,
just as madly pure
and maybe as elusive, glimpsed on far
over the flotsam, jetsam, chop: space to make
art, not just own art supplies; time to play; room to move

and remove; the clear decks, fresh start, clean slate
that she has rarely seen.


"Stuff" poem © Suzanne Fox 2009. Please do not reproduce without permission.