Can't buy me love — Define emotions, spiritual life before you declutter

Only 1 percent of the population are hoarders. This fact comes as a great relief to those who are merely "clutterers," Mike Nelson says. There is hope for clutterers.

Clutters might be able to cure themselves, Nelson says. Hoarders are going to need professional help.

In the new edition of his book "Stop Clutter From Stealing Your Life" (Career Press), Nelson explains the difference between clutterers and hoarders. When a clutterer goes to a restaurant, he slips a few extra packets of mustard into his pocket because "they might come in handy," Nelson says. When a hoarder goes to a restaurant, he takes home half a sandwich and he never eats it or throws it out because "I might run out of food."

Hoarders tend to be obsessive/compulsive, anxious and depressed, Nelson says. Still, he notes, cluttering affects a significant portion of the population. And clutterers tend to be a bit more anxious and a bit more depressed than the average person.

"I don't see this as a continuum," says Frances Wilby, an assistant professor at the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. She says a clutterer is not going to slip over the edge into hoarding. Unless, perhaps, dementia sets in and the person can no longer judge when it is time to throw things out.

Through the university, Wilby heads up a volunteer program called Neighbors Helping Neighbors. Several times a year, they get a call from a hoarder who is about to be evicted, she says. At that point the hoarder is willing to let college students spend a day chucking their stuff into a Dumpster. However, she says, unless someone makes regular visits to the hoarder's home, the piles will pile up again.

Wilby defines hoarding as a having a house so full of stuff that it can no longer function as a home.

Nelson's home never got that bad, even at the height of his cluttering. Still, he says, his house was so messy that he never asked anyone over. And his collecting habits were so bad that they caused problems between himself and his former girlfriends and ex-wife.

As a former clutterer himself, Nelson believes it is fairly easy for a clutterer to clean out a closet. However, he says, you need to think about your underlying emotions if you want to keep that closet clean.

Once you start to declutter, then you can begin to deal with the attendant emotions, Nelson says. "It won't be easy, and we may need the help of a therapist, but we can untangle ourselves from our stuff."

Decluttering is a two-part process, he says. First, you have to be practical and ask yourself if you need to keep something. And then you have to ask yourself the harder question, "What does this represent in my subconscious?"

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