Funny thing is that George Carlin has already talked about this very thing (George Carlin Talks About Stuff). Wonder if he got influenced by George? Anyways…

I’ve had first hand experience with someone who was one of the worst pack rats I’ve ever seen in my life. My wife’s mother was moving from Ohio and into a small two-bedroom apartment in Texas where we live. So my wife and I offered to help her move. Big mistake! What she failed to tell us was just how much she wanted to move. I kid you not…she literally had two large studio vans filled to the brim with boxes and stuff! After all the boxes were moved in there was no place for anything! Virtually every room was stacked three to four boxes high. Both bedrooms were full of boxes. The dining room was full of boxes. There was barely any place to do anything in the kitchen. About the only areas you could walk in and out of was the kitchen, living room, hall, and bathroom. That was it. It was pathetic.

There’s an obvious emotional element to people who leave a lot of useless stuff lying around. My wife’s mother is the absolute worst-case scenario. The level of emotional attachment to so much useless stuff was mind boggling!

It did teach me one thing though; that eventually, like it or not, you will have to make a decision on what to do with some of your stuff. You will eventually will have to decide whether to throw out that 10 year old Sound Blaster 16-bit sound card you’ve been holding on to. Or the box full of old cassette tapes you know damn well you’ll never play again, many of which you already have on CD.

Even the most organized people in the world have clutter in their life. There is always the equivalent of a proverbial crap drawer somewhere. Could be a cluttered desktop on your computer. Could be the clutter in your mind. Or it could just be that you really do have a crap drawer and don’t like throwing anything away.

At any rate, how you choose to act upon your emotions and get rid of the clutter in your life is entirely up to you. If you don’t, truth be told, sooner or later someone else will help you make that decision. And that’s a pattern that’s just filled with a world of hurt.

After doing a HUGE clean out of our home I will say that, for me, avoidance was the issue. If I didn’t have to deal with it then it just wasn’t an issue. After 80 bags to the thrift shop and a full dumpster I got over the avoidance behavior.

The next step was to deal with my body. I have joined a little gym and have slowly started to lose weight and tone up. Again, it was not an issue if I avoided it. In the end though it wasn’t very scary! I just had to get off my ass!

Bag, Box, Container Store, Self-Storage, Incinerator.

In regards to:

What is your vision for the life you want to live, and do your life choices reflect that vision? Specifically: Is your home a space for the life you want?

I would add: is your home a space for the life you have. What are your actions and instincts when you move through your day, and does your space respond well to those actions.

WHICH IS TO SAY: If you use keys to open your front door, do you have a space right inside the door for those keys? Stuff like that.

While I like very much using your space as a way to reflect your vision, it seems to me that for some folks that can lead to vague wishy-washy organizing principles. “I want to be healthy and good to my kids,” is a hard thing to act on or organize around. Judo-ing that into an actual action or instinct, however – “I feel best when I’ve eaten fruit” – might lead you to place a fruit bowl in your pathway from den to freezer where the ice cream lives.

Mattlatmatt brings up a great point, the whole idea of lifehacking your environment has become huge for me, as I’m sure it has for others as well. I know especially for myself (college student) I take 20 minutes to wake up, but I don’t have twenty minutes to waste every morning. Now, I’ve arranged everything I do to get ready in order of visual importance. I can do most stuff (shower, shave, cereal) with very little visual aid… by the time I need to see what clothes I’m putting on, I’m awake. Before I sleep I put all my work by the door so all I gotta do is grab everything in that pile, and head on out.

Only question that I always think with lifehacks, “Are these improvements in my day, or just me compensating so I can be fairly lazy? Haha, I’d like to think we as lifehackers are innovating our day so we can devote that extra energy to better things.

One problem I have found myself facing once I have decided my life is better off without a lot of the stuff I have - what do I do with it? How do I rid myself of these items in an environmentally friendly fashion?

It seems our North American culture is not only based on the idea of accumulating, but disposing can be downright hard to do because of a lack of facilities\companies who can do so in a green way.