“We have a surface problem.”
That was one of the first things Susy said to me in our initial consultation. Exhibit A: the dining room table, which doubles as her desk and was always covered in paper. They never ate at the table, and it was hard for her to get much work done there. After accumulating stuff for 15 years in a 5400 sq. ft. house, Susy and Bob had moved 10 times in 8 years, moving to smaller places each time. Living in Anaheim, CA, they had been following Spirit & Space on social media (knowing me from Indianapolis) and were inspired to get help with downsizing. “This is our Christmas present to each other.”
We started with virtual sessions, working through clutter spots in their home and discussing the downsizing process. Susy was ready to let things go, but Bob wanted to keep things. The home is Bob’s domain, and through their moves they’d lost things that were deeply meaningful; he acknowledged unprocessed grief that they hadn’t talked about. Susy recognized that she hadn’t been respectful of Bob’s emotional attachment to things; talking about it made a huge difference. After our first session she said, “You’ve given us a framework for starting the organization process.”
Susy and Bob engaged the decluttering process with vigor, working together between our sessions to make a big impact on their space. I arrived on the scene six months later and we worked together for three and a half days, sorting through belongings, creating organizational systems, and bringing order to the space in an aesthetically pleasing way.
The transformation was remarkable. For the first time in years, the dining room table was available for relaxed meals. Organizational systems and products allowed them to utilize storage more efficiently, creating more space than they thought possible. Susy said, “This is the first time in 31 years that we’ve both been committed to purging and organizing. I’m aware that organization reduces stress; we’ve spent 31 years with stress due to clutter. But once we got started on this process, it got easier and easier.”
Susy reflected further: “We didn’t just move stuff; we found a home or got rid of it. Going through that exercise gave us the tools to make better decisions to keep things decluttered and clean. Having an empathetic third party helped us let go of things that we had emotional/spiritual attachment to and move on. It also identified the things we weren’t ready to let go. We’ve retrieved so much time. It’s so easy to put stuff away, and I get more work done at home because I don’t have a long list of organizing things to do.” Bob added, “I cannot overstate how grateful both of us are for everything you did for and with us. Physically and spiritually. Thank you.”
