"To clear my house and head of incredible clutter"

Brighton, United Kingdom
female
single
Speaks: English, French, some German / Latin
Joined Jan 18, 2009

more about Gabriel Mills »

This is the kind of invitation I've learnt to dread -- as I usually go straight off the rails. (What rails? Of moderation.) There's something about a computer screen that incites me to write, and write, and write -- only to decide it's all OTT, and ditch the lot. So this time, I've duly warned myself.

I live in a narrow, terraced three-storey house -- opening straight onto the pavement (sidewalk), in an attractive little street built around 1865 as "workers' cottages" near the top of a hill in a sea-breezy town (now City) in East Sussex, a lush green English county on the south coast, facing across The Channel to France. (Much too far away to be seen in any weather conditions.)

Each house is painted in a different colour, in the highest-density urban area but for one, in the whole of the UK -- good for speedy delivery of Green Party leaflets, when I was an activist. I retired from that many years ago: too exhausting, and someone else's turn. But after 25 years of local campaigning, Brighton has the highest number of Green City Councillors in Britain, and a very good chance of electing Britain's first Green MP to Parliament, in the constituency where I live.

Brighton also now has the highest number per capita of Green and campaigning groups, "alternative" healers and clinics, and pursuers of weird and wonderful and occult leanings, in Britain. As well as an annual cultural Festival (source of income from tourists), any number of music groups of all kinds, and cyclist paths. The best bit of the Festival (to me) is Artists' "Open Houses" where you get to see them and their houses as well as their paintings! (and pots, sculpture etc).

Right outside my house is a tree -- one at each end of the street -- and planting in a "traffic-calming" narrowing of the street, which is mainly why I chose to live here, though my back yard is tiny. I'd love to have a bigger garden, and one less overlooked. But I've also always been a city-dweller -- in London where I was born, in Edinburgh where I was a student, and finally for my last job as an architect / academic researcher down here, now many years ago.

More of my time is spent reading, than anything else -- a habit acquired in childhood. I can't begin to list the stuff (mostly non-fiction) I've read and am fascinated by. Even in a house infested by bookcases, books now also line the floor of the entrance hall, the stairs and the landings, in heaps. But clutter goes way beyond this: too much of everything. Though I've learnt every reason for it, it makes it no easier to find the energy and the will to sort and get rid of it -- to Freecycle, to charities or to eBay. And as it makes it impossible any longer to have visitors, I've also lost the incentive to do the kind of clear-ups their impending visits used to motivate.

Unfortunately, I'm not even bothered by this (though sometimes embarassed, when far-flung relations threaten to visit!) as I love solitude, and the friends I used to have, have all but one (who doesn't mind the mess) moved away to other cities.

But basically, I prefer order -- and used to be a neat-freak: as an architect, my instinct for order was even extreme. So evidently two opposed sides of my nature have battled it out, and wildness both outside and in has won (for now, but also for too long).

So I've just splurged on eBay on a cheap Sony handycam: to take the "Before" tour (ducking under coats etc hanging over doorways) and revealing the full horrors of chaos, dust and dirt -- cleaning has become all but impossible too -- and make the "After" even more rewarding. I also want to use this shaming photography, eventually or even in progress, to perhaps join up with and help / be helped by others who suffer the same problem -- as I've also learnt that people seldom manage it on their own. But I don't think I'd dare to let any "befores" be seen, before achieving a few "afters" too!

It's all incredibly bad Feng Shui, of course. And Vastu (the Hindu version). The handycam is at Brighton Sorting Office -- to be collected tomorrow. And after, or as well as, the grand clear-up, I intend to walk around Brighton streets with it: still photos are no longer enough to capture the continuously changing sequences of colour and texture that enchant me here.

(I also have too many cameras -- and computers dating from 1989, having got rid only of the very first, from 1986.)

Meanwhile, my usual bookish and computer preoccupations seem an active cause of chaos! Seeking explanations of cosmic and human order is too handy an avoidance for sheer laziness and neglect -- though for years I've also have fibromyalgia and am tired all the time, so that's another front I've been tackling anew. In terms of Feng Shui and energy interaction, though, it's chicken-and-egg. Some hard work ahead.