I know many people who severely purged their homes of stuff during the pandemic’s peak: I am not one of them.

If anything, I doubled down on my hoarding tendencies. I squirreled away non-perishable foods, school supplies, plastic bags, books, and bottles of cooking oil. It soothed my anxiety a little to think that no matter what, I was ready. The world may be ending, but damn it, I can still cook rice and beans, and we’ll be fine.

Late this winter, I looked around and realized: I was drowning in stuff.

After another avalanche of stuff fell on my head out of a jam-packed closet, I began to wonder if I had the beginnings of a real hoarding problem. I looked it up, and The American Psychiatric Association says that those who suffer from hoarding have difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. The resulting clutter disrupts the ability to use living spaces. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, commonly hoarded items may be newspapers, magazines, paper and plastic bags, cardboard boxes, photographs, household supplies, food, and clothing.

Sounded all too familiar.

I was determined to fight off this growing urge to keep it all and to take back my countertops, closets, and perhaps a drawer or two.

It was difficult to begin, but I started with the area in my kitchen that I call ‘the bad corner.’ It’s called that for a good reason: It’s a shifting, messy tornado of papers, coupons, school forms, mail, and all that. I sorted through it all, discarding most of it (out-of-date catalogs begone!), and the results were exciting. I no longer felt overwhelmed when I walked into the kitchen; instead, I felt organized and ready to take on the day’s incoming flood of paper.

I gathered shoes from various closets and bagged them up to be recycled. I threw out reams of paperwork my kids had brought home from school. My non-hoarding husband was stunned when I offered up the idea that we could throw out several years (not a typo) worth of bags I’d been shoving into a pantry closet with other cleaning supplies.

I made a list of other ‘bad areas’ to tackle once or twice a month until the list is completed. Truthfully, I feel a little sick each time I embark on a new task, but I feel energized and proud once it’s done.

And finally, I attacked a core issue: My personal email inbox.

I had more than 57,000 unread emails. No kidding. I kept losing urgent emails in the clutter, so today, I set aside a little time, reviews, and filed and deleted my way through the past two months of messages, and then, slightly trembling, I selected the rest and hit the trash can.

Boom.

The past few years have been about locking down, shutting out, hiding away. I know the pandemic is not truly over – but I feel like it’s time to think about lifting my load, literally and emotionally. My home has been my refuge, but it also felt like a bunker at times.

The joy of getting rid of things has caused an unexpected enthusiasm for other home improvement projects. I found a fun pendant light to hang in the dining room, and I picked out wallpaper for several rooms. The couch needs some reupholstery and so do the dining room chairs. Suddenly, taking on paint and a new backsplash in the kitchen seem like things I need to do.

In meditation, one practice is to picture distracting thoughts as clouds in the sky, and you sweep them away and clear your mind. It’s like once the junk is out of my way, I can clearly see the possibilities at home and in life.

Spring cleaning has begun, and I’ve never needed it as much as I do right now.

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This essay also appeared in the March 2022 issue of FLM - Fete Lifestyle Magazine.