Clutter Is An Indication

This post is originally from BioPsychoSocial

      Last fall, I flew to Brooklyn to visit Janie, one of my oldest and dearest friends and a former colleague from my days in the magazine business.  Upon arrival at her apartment, I was eager to rid myself of airplane microbes, so I hit the linen closet for soap and towels.  I found the towels, along with a stockpile of about 100 unopened beauty products. At its center was a bottle of Chanel Vamp nail polish. I recognized it immediately. Janie had snagged it and a dozen other random items at a beauty product giveaway sponsored by our former workplace, a large, now-defunct women’s magazine.
        The beauty event occurred in 1994. Twenty-two years in a dark closet had transformed the once-coveted nail polish from a fashion statement to a potential biohazard.  I asked Janie, “Why do you still have this?”
She glared at me. “That color is in again. And it’s Chanel.” 
Both of those statements were true—I’d give her that.
“If this nail polish were a human being, it could drink and vote,” I said.  She shrugged, and I wondered what other relics from the 20th century were lurking in other spaces. When I went to
hang up my coat, I found a blazer that looked to be a discard from the cast of Working Girl: The Musical.
         There’s a reason I’m dedicating a blog post to clutter. You don’t need psychiatric training to know that the objects with which we choose to surround ourselves are laden with meaning. The process of sorting through items and exploring their place is both a physical and a metaphysical exercise.  It’s how I know that Janie’s nail polish had absolutely nothing to do with manicures, present or future, and had everything to do with deeper, more serious issues.      

A 2013 Huffington Post online survey asked respondents what stresses them out the most. 47% put household clutter at the top of the list.

Read the full post on BioPsychoSocial.  Pondworks Psychiatry & Psychotherapy is an outpatient psychiatric practice in Northwest Austin, Texas. We are an Austin mental health care clinic carepsychotherapy-oriented psychiatric care, using an approach that addresses the biological, the psychological and the social. See our other blog properties.