Quick! What comes to mind what I say “just in case”? What item or items?
Clothing? Old toys? Dishes? Paper bills? Old emails? More pens than you will use in this lifetime?
Just in case clutter is an attempt to feel safe. That’s it. It isn’t more complicated than that. A primal desire to feel safe.
You see, there’s a small lizard living at the base of your skull in your brain, right by where it attaches to the spine. He’s the oldest part of your brain.
That lizard is the primal part of you that is determined to not get eaten by a sabertooth tiger. No tigers around? Then he’ll find something to protect you from. Depending on your own trauma history, messages you received growing up, and experiences you’ve had of loss, your lizard may decide the modern day sabertooth is not having stuff when you need it.
The problem with your lizard is he’s a little out of touch. He gets freaked out and tries to take over the other two thirds of your brain where emotions and executive thinking come from.
He doesn’t think about the logic of how you have enough dishes for 36 people and never have more than six to dinner even at holidays. He also doesn’t bother with the emotional toll of all of those extra dishes draining energy from you every time you see them or think about them.
Today we’re going to do some of that thinking for him.
FEAR AND CONTROL
Control is a fabulous thing. It gets a bad rap, but it’s actually excellent as it gives you a sense of what is to come, making it less necessary for your lizard to take over. A problem arises when we try to control things that are not in our control out of a sense of fear.
Fear that something bad will happen if you don’t have the exact right thing when that moment comes. Fear of what it will mean about you if you got rid of something you ended up needing. Fear that your value is only based on your preparedness.
Your lizard is trying to create a sense of control even though you can’t possibly control whether or not you will suddenly have a dinner plate emergency.
Ask yourself: What is it I’m afraid will happen if I don’t have that thing (the thing you thought of at the beginning of this)? What am I afraid it will mean about me?
Now ask yourself if your fears are based in reality or are a story you created.
The story is usually what keeps our fear alive. Give yourself permission to let the story go.
THE EMOTIONAL TOLL
It might seem silly to think of stuff as taking an emotional toll, but you know it does. Staying on alert to what might or might not happen takes an emotional toll, too.
When you keep things “just in case” you are banking on a future that doesn’t exist.
“Just in case means never” – Courtney Carver, Author of Soulful Simplicity
Yes, having a fire extinguisher around “just in case” is a great idea. That’s a small thing to do to have a real failsafe in your home in case of fire. If you have 20 fire extinguishers in a 1500 square foot house, now I’m a little concerned.
How much of an emotional toll are all of those extinguishers taking? They’re a manifestation of your fear that the house will burn down any second. There’s no way you can relax in a home you’re that afraid is about to burst into flames.
One extinguisher in the kitchen, one upstairs, one in the basement, sure. Unobtrusive, yet handy.
Those dishes I mentioned earlier? Take them out of your cabinets and put them in a bin in the garage (this is only a temporary experiment, not a fix). Over the next three months’ notice if you feel lighter not looking at those dishes. If you feel lighter you may want to consider donating those extra dishes to a needy college student.
Waiting on a future that may never arrive keeps you hyper-vigilant, or perpetually alert. That will wear on you.
THE LOGIC
How do you overcome a fear-based behavior? Logic and taking the risk to try something different.
With those extinguishers I would ask you how often you have fires in your home. If it is weekly, we have a whole other topic to talk about first. But if it’s never we’re going to need to take a deeper look to see why you feel you need all of them. Was there a fire when you were a kid?
Using logic is about getting to the source of what’s going on and about identifying the potential illogic of our actions. It is not about invalidating.
If you have 20 extinguishers it is not helpful to say “I know, it’s stupid, but I just have to have them”. That’s invalidating. You could say “I know it’s not logical, but when I think about not having them, it scares me.” Okay, we can work with that.
Let’s look at those dishes again. We said you have 36 place settings. We also said you have never had more than six people to dinner at a time. Logic dictates you do not need more than six place settings. The rest are clutter.
I’m going to give you two extra place settings because it’ll be a little cushion, but it won’t be the space suck of those other 28 place settings we’re donating. Heck you could keep an extra four settings and it would still be a massive space savings.
ANSWER THE WHAT IF’S
This is one of my favorite tools. Answering your what if’s.
What if I suddenly have 36 people at my house wanting to eat?
Answer the question for yourself.
Perhaps you’ll decide paper plates are just fine. Perhaps you’ll decide you really need those additional plates and will go out and buy more. Is either of those scenarios the end of the world? Would it be worth the risk to reclaim that space?
What if there’s a fire?
Answer the question for yourself.
My guess is 20 extinguishers is not going to be any more helpful than one per floor since you only have one set of arms, and if the flames are that out of control we need a bigger solution than fire extinguishers. If you agree with this, are you willing to take those extinguishers down to 10? Maybe after six months with no fire, take them down to five? What are you willing to do to reclaim your home and your mind?
What if’s are traps we create for ourselves. The solution is to keep answering them. Answer one and if a new what if pops up, answer that one, too. Keep knocking them down with answers until you run out of what if’s.
FREEDOM
Attending to just in case clutter is an emotional experience, but freeing your lizard from the fear that bad things will happen if you aren’t vigilant enough leaves you free to relax and enjoy life.
Worst case scenario? You find yourself chatting with the little lizard at the base of your skull like I do, and then find yourself explaining this to people who looks at you like you’ve totally lost your mind,
But the jokes on them. You found your mind, made friends with it, and set it free!
This is a tough process and a coach like me who has the years of psychology to back up the decluttering experience is exactly what you need if it all still feels far too overwhelming. Together you and I can create solutions that release you from you pain.