The Behavioral Corner 

Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano. And this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us, as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and wellbeing. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner, please hang around a while.

Steve Martorano 

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Behavioral Corner. I'm Steve Martorano, you know, I'm hanging here on the Corner, waiting for interesting people to show up. What we do is we talk about...we talk about everything on the Behavioral Corner because it is about everything, everything that affects us psychologically, emotionally, physically, our mental health. So we have a pretty broad purview here on the Corner. It's all made possible by our partners Retreat Behavioral Health, you'll hear about them a little bit later down the road. We are going to talk about something that is all around us -- on an everyday basis -- and sometimes it's not a problem. Sometimes you don't even notice that it's there. Other times you're overwhelmed by it. It is a consequence, I think of living in the greatest consumer culture on earth. Lots of stuff and a lot of it winds up in your basement, or at least it has in my case, or on shelves, or in closets or drawers. We're talking about clutter, this time on the Behavioral Corner. So what do we do we wait for some expert to come wandering past us. We grabbed them by the arm, and we say excuse me second, are you not Betty Lennon, the decluttering guru. And she is luck would have it. Betty Lennon. Thanks for joining us. Betty is an author. She is a life coach. And as I said, she's our go-to person this time on the issue of clutter. Hi, Betty.

Beth Lennon 

Hi, how are you?

Steve Martorano 

But before we get to the meat and potatoes of this thing, you know...you know the expression one man's treasure is another man's trash? 

Beth Lennon 

Yep.

Steve Martorano 

Let's define our terms. When you or I talk about "clutter," what are we talking about? What is clutter?

Beth Lennon 

So when I talk about clutter, having been what I call myself now is a reformed collector. I say clutter is stuff that gets in your way, physical items that you hold on to that instead of bringing you joy kind of weigh you down, that are packed away, as you said, in boxes that you have that just kind of sit there, they don't add joy or value to your life, but you also can't, for whatever reason, seem to remove them from your physical space.

Steve Martorano 

I guess this stuff is just popping into my head because this is a great topic around our house. Because I'm a kind of everything in its own place kind of character. I'm not a neat freak. But I think everything's got to be its own place and my wife is not, she's not. I guess the most ubiquitous demonstration of clutter is the proverbial junk drawer. Everybody in the world has a junk drawer, right?

Beth Lennon 

Well, I mean, a junk drawer is basically probably the smallest measurable unit of clutter. And what you see in your junk drawer is what you see elsewhere is that it's a jumble of things. You know, you said everything in its place. And maybe yeah, there is a junk drawer -- there's a...there's a drawer where smaller items can live. But within that drawer, you could have them organized into little slots, or they could just be a mishmash of stuff. So when you've got the mishmash, that's what you think of like junk drawer. Now I grew up in a family that pretty much almost every drawer was a junk drawer. So my drawers when I think about it, I just envisioned my own kitchen. And I'm thinking well, no, we actually, you know, we don't have a junk drawer, we've got a drawer which certain things go in certain drawers. And you know, that's pretty much it. Things that don't have homes. That's one of the things I teach when I do my...my decluttering coaching is thinking about well, where does that live? When you go after you use it -- after it does its little job -- where does it go home? So that is one of the things that cause clutter. 

Steve Martorano 

That's a great way to put it because you're right, how does something wind up in the junk drawer? Not because it's junk. If it were junk, you just discard it, but because it has no other designated spots. 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Martorano 

So let me put it in the junk drawer. By the way, you...you are a former collector you say your family was made up of collectors. So you've got a great position to talk about when...collecting can be a wonderful thing and it can be...it can be lucrative it can be sad, satisfying. But when does being a conscientious collector tip over into a kind of...a kind of addiction to just accumulating things. Well, I collect salt shakers, and now I have 2 million of them. When does that become a clutter problem?

Beth Lennon 

Well, I think for everybody, it's a little bit different. But I think one of the guideposts about that is when you start to collect something, there's a certain energy, there's a certain, you know, discovery. I loved that notion of discovering and sharing the things that I was collecting, like, "Oh, look, what I just found another one of these things." And I noticed that you know, that was commonality and things like that. But it...to me, there's a tipping point, there's a certain point where instead of being delighted by it, it almost becomes an obligation. Like, "Oh, I collect," as you said, "I collect salt and pepper shakers. So, ergo, I guess I have to buy the salt and pepper shakers because I'm on vacation, and I buy the..." and all of a sudden it goes from "Ohh" to "Eh." And then the light kind of goes out of it, you know?

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, it moves from a...a kind of pleasant hobby, to a not a compulsion. But you're sort of now required... 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Martorano 

...to accumulate this thing. I think we do that with...with sweaters and, and socks, and all kinds of stuff like, "Well, I like sweaters, let me buy another sweater." And pretty soon you've...you've got sweaters everywhere. So, you help people and we're going to, you're going to take us through some of the steps. You show people that they can do as well, to declutter. But before we do that, what are the negative consequences of clutter?

Beth Lennon 

Well, you know, the interesting thing to me is, is that, you know, somebody could look at my house and say, "Who are you to talk about clutter, you've got stuff all around the place." Clutter becomes a negative thing when it impacts your life. When it stops you from doing things that you want to do, either physically, or, you know, emotionally. A couple of examples I'll give you is, this one was really powerful. I got this acronym from a woman I was coaching. I had never heard it before, which is crazy. But she said, "Well, do you know what chaos stands for?" And I said, "Well, no." C.H.A.O.S. Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome." And it blew my mind to think that yeah, and I've heard that from people that they, you know, it negatively affects your social connectivity. You're...you can't have asked people to come over to your house, because you're embarrassed. Because you're, you know, you have clutter all over the place. You don't often, you know, accept invitations for fear of then having to reciprocate. You know, and the fact to me that there was this acronym that could be posted, you know, printed on a t-shirt that seemed to be socially acceptable, like where people were like, "Yeah, I know what you're talking about" means that is a negative thing. It also costs you money, when you are paying late fees, because you've misplaced your bills. Have you seen how it seems like every place nowadays, when I drive around, turns into these, you know, cubes, where you go and spend money to store your stuff because you've run out of places in your house? You know, so you're paying sometimes to externally store the stuff that you have? Or even just I've heard people say, it was easier for me to go and buy another whatever I had because I couldn't find the one that was supposed to be in my home. So I just went and bought another dress or another iron or, whatever it was. Spending money on things duplicating it, because you can't find it around your house.

Steve Martorano 

I'm sure there are also negative consequences to one's relationships, correct?

Beth Lennon 

Oh, completely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as you said, and I was, I've heard for many people, especially if there's a slightly more organized person in the...in the relationship, or perhaps it is a parent who has the clutter, and there's a child, you know what I mean? And I say, parent-child, I mean, I'm of the Gen X generation. So my mom's still alive. She's in her 80s. But, you know, there are those kinds of relationships where it's like, this person has all this stuff. I know I want to help them with it. It's dragging them down. But if they don't see a problem with it, there can be a bit of conflict.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah. And the solution to that is of course not to clutters living together because then you have, you know, the worst possible... 

Beth Lennon 

Right.

Steve Martorano 

...situation. I love CHAOS, too. That acronym is perfect to describe the syndrome, but it also describes the nature of clutter. Clutter, by definition, is not an organized system of acquiring things. It's just stuff. 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah. 

Steve Martorano 

Are you familiar with George Carlin's...

Beth Lennon 

Oh, yes, I am. 

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, right. 

Beth Lennon 

Mm-hmm. "My stuff is good stuff here stuff is junk."

George Carlin 

"I would have been out here a little bit sooner, but they gave me the wrong dressing room and I couldn't find any place to put my stuff. And I don't know how you are, but I need a place to put my stuff. So that's what I've been doing back. They're just trying to find a place for my stuff. You know how important that is. That's the whole...that's the whole meaning of life isn't it? Trying to find a place for your stuff. That's all your house is. Your house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn't have so much goddamn stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. That's all your house is it's a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You see that when you take off in an airplane and you look down and you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff -- everybody's got their own pile of stuff. And when you leave your stuff, you got to lock it up. We wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They don't bother with that crap you're saving. Ain't nobody interested in your fourth-grade arithmetic papers. They're looking for the good stuff."

Steve Martorano 

Couple things about the pandemic, I want to talk about. You, I guess, in before the pandemic would go to people's homes and help them with this?

Beth Lennon 

I have on select times done that. That was more of like an informal thing I would do for decades, I would be the person that if somebody in the family passed away, I'd be the one to come in and kind of help them clean it out. But really what I realized when I was doing that -- kind of in that notion of you know, you can bring a man a fish, or you can teach him how to fish...

Steve Martorano 

Right.

Beth Lennon 

I could go in and I could clean out your house. But that's not solving the problem that's causing the clutter. As soon as I do that, if you don't deal with what is causing the clutter, your house is going to be cluttered again. You know, so what I love to do was in -- especially during the pandemic -- where none of us were leaving our houses is to think about "Well, what are the causes of it? How can I help people without going into their house?" And then, help them discover why they have the clutter and teach them processes and methods to get decluttered and to stay decluttered

Steve Martorano 

Stay decluttered. 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah.

Steve Martorano 

Because after all, you being the...the outside agent here had none of the baggage emotionally and psychologically that was causing the clutter in the first place. You could be very ruthless in a sense because you had no attachment to these things. But you're right to point out. And it's very true of lots of compulsive behavior, that there...there is the behavior -- and you can see it -- but what's causing it.

Beth Lennon 

Yeah.

Steve Martorano 

So in that regard, before -- we get to your steps you can help people with -- I sent you an article I know last week we're talking about doing a show about the relationship between clutter and trauma. And I know when I first saw the title of the article, I thought that's a little extreme. I mean traumas something horrific and clutters just a problem, but they make the point that this type of behavior can have an impact on brain chemistry. It can literally change the way you think. Are there examples of that? Well, I can give you a couple, but...but, you know, what I mean, it can change the way you think. 

Beth Lennon 

Oh, completely. I mean, I think...I think...I think I think about thinking. The inability to concentrate, the...the distraction that...that never being able to focus on anything while you're surrounded by clutter and the how that causes us dissatisfaction in your life. You know, also frankly, that constant low lying hum and the barrage of...of negative self-talk that anywhere your eyes land in your house is something that's telling you -- that you should be doing something else that you should be decluttering and yet you're not that. You know, "I should be doing this. I should be doing that." And that instead of motivating you which I guess it's opposed to is just that digs you down further and so then you know you resort to other things to make you feel better sometimes that shopping or acquiring consuming more things to make you feel better. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Steve Martorano 

You know, it's amazing. I mean, you're right clutter to put a fine point on this is not some small thing it can be...it can crush one self-esteem. 

Beth Lennon 

Oh yeah. 

Steve Martorano 

And make you feel less than good about yourself and, and kind of weak and what's wrong with me. No one's happy. People may be okay with clutter and so far as managing it. But if you ever run into anybody that was blissfully cluttering the place up and went. "I don't care. Who cares?"

Beth Lennon 

Well, I think there are some people... I mean, as I said, like your version of cluttered may be different from mine. So you know, somebody could look at, you know, "Be like, I love all of my stuff that surrounds me, it brings me joy, it lights me up." And if they're saying that from a true point of having gone through and sorted through it, and really kind of, as we like to say, separating the wheat from the chaff, you know, your...your Goldilocks soft bed, baby, my just right, you know? However, I think there are some people that, you know, the word "hoarder" gets bandied about a lot. And you see it on TV...

Steve Martorano 

What's the difference between a clutterer and a hoarder?

Beth Lennon 

Well, I think honestly, it's just the sheer volume of stuff that people have in their homes. And that not discerning, you know, it's just too much of everything. And in that, that notion of, you know, you've kind of given up on trying to even pretend to want to take care of it.

Steve Martorano 

Let's talk about some of the things that you have to confront when you're helping somebody declutter...

Beth Lennon 

Okay.

Steve Martorano 

...as the life coach...some of the barriers you have to overcome and some of the belief systems, you have to break down, I went to a nearby expert in clutter, my lovely wife, who said, "Oh, my goodness, ask her this...", She knows that this is a problem and she, over the years, has gotten much, much better. Still great at it, but there are still problems. So. how do you overcome the emotions that are attached to certain items? She put it beautifully. She said, "Ask her how I can throw away a memory."

Beth Lennon 

Well, here's what I would tell your wife lovingly, is, first of all, reassure her. And I will reassure everybody, you are not throwing away the memory, you are not throwing away the person, you're not throwing away your feelings for them. We as human beings have this crazy ability to imbue inanimate objects with such meaning that, you know, I could show you this pen. And you may think I just bought it at Staples, but I could tell you that this is the pen that my father, you know, something...something, it's so precious. And if I get rid of this, it means that I have, you know, somewhere in me, something is telling me that if I throw away this pen, I'm throwing away my father. 

Steve Martorano 

Ah ha.

Beth Lennon 

The thing I would pay attention to is to reassure you that you're not throwing away the person or the feeling. However, listen to those stories in your...in your own head, who's telling you that story of telling you to cling on to it. The great thing is that we do have that ability to you know imbue things with a story. Therefore, we can also extract that power we get...we can, you know, put a story into it. We can also remove it. You know, and say "It's really just a pen."

Steve Martorano 

Remove the story from the item. So..

Beth Lennon 

Yes.

Steve Martorano   

...your item goes away but the story remains.

Beth Lennon

Completely. Completely, and you just...you have to remind yourself that people...people live in your stories and your stories live in your head and your heart. And if at a certain age like some of us are -- your head and your heart get a little bit too much -- you can also literally grab a little book, and just write it down to yourself. "Remember that time that Timmy made that little thing for Christmas, and it was made out of this and whatever." And then if you ever want to be reminded of it, you just jot down the prompt for the memory. The thing is not the memory. The thing is the thing that reminds you of what the story is in here. So you can easily -- one of my tricks is -- to say make a bullet point, you know:  That Christmas ornament I got from Major Mudd when he came to St. Bartholomew's in 1973." You know, and then you're like, "Oh, I remember that. We went down there with the Blairs and it was so much fun."

Steve Martorano 

Right. Right...a catalog of the items I used to have. 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah. 

Steve Martorano 

And these are the stories that I still have. That's a great way to think about it. Here's the second question she wanted to ask. And that is, how do you overcome the nagging sense that how do I know I won't need this at some point down the road?

Beth Lennon 

Isn't it interesting? Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of that comes from...I will say this, you had mentioned at one point just all of us being alive at a certain point in US history. And many of us still have people in our lives that have that shadow of the original Great Depression, where there were things that you didn't have anything and you really needed to make do with such little that there's that kind of survival mechanism of holding on to things "in case of..." That can be very, you know, you feel like you're smart. "Oh, I don't have to worry about that I have one of these things in here." The trick I would recommend is literally getting yourself some post-it notes, right? Put a post-it note on something that last time, you know, if you haven't used it in a while, put a post-it note and say use it by x. Or you say, "When's the last time I used it" and the last time you used it, just write the date on it. And really say to yourself, "Do I need that?" Or the other thing too is if I pass this along, I really try hard. I'm trying to train my own self to say not get rid of. But if I pass this along to somebody else, if I should need another one, could I easily get one? Could I borrow it from a friend? Could I buy one inexpensively when I need it? Versus holding on to all this stuff, just in case?

Steve Martorano 

What a great tip. I mean, yes, there should be an end date, a shelf life, and it should be very easy for anyone to go, "I haven't used this in 15 years. I'm not going to likely need it next month." And then..and then move on. So that's a great tip. I will...I will share both of those as soon as we are done. And that whole idea of scarcity, the sense that, you know, "Gee, if I lose it, I'll never get it back." is no longer a part of our lives. There's nothing we can pretty much replace in terms of stuff. We're talking Betty Lennon. Is your isn't your father, who's John Lennon?

Beth Lennon 

Yes. My dad's name was...is..well still is... He's...he's gone. But he...he was John Lennon. So and I'm a huge Beatles fan. So that's very convenient.

Steve Martorano 

Could you be anything else? You once collected what roadmaps? Is that what you liked? 

Beth Lennon 

Well, I actually have a website that I do. I do collect roadmaps. But really, it's my website was Ret...excuse me, Destination Decluttered is my current website. Retro Roadmap is where I basically actually collected cool vintage places from around the US and told people about places to travel to -- hence, the roadmap. And the funny thing is, is that during the COVID, I couldn't go anywhere. But I developed my own kind of internal roadmap to help people, you know, go on their own journey to decluttering. So that was...that was kind of like creating a road trip, as it were to help people with their clutter. 

Steve Martorano 

You know, it's interesting, I don't want to put you on the spot because I don't know the answer to this myself. Vintage comes up a lot. 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah.

Steve Martorano 

I associated immediately off the top of my mind with old. In other words, something that's vintage has to be a certain age. But that's probably not true. What is when we say something is vintage, thereby bonding as to it tighter? What do we talking...are we actually talking about a real thing?

Beth Lennon 

Well, there are actually I mean, I know for example, in the car world, a car has to be I believe, 25 years to maybe be vintage. And then there's a certain number of years that goes by and then it's an antique car. So there's kind of a hierarchy or length of time, let's say so you've got your antiques. I'm from Boston, so I would call those they're wicked old, right? Wicked old stuff is antiques. Stuff that at least -- when I started collecting and traveling and looking for places -- that is a little bit more, maybe the 1920s to the 1960s, though now I say 70s and early 80s. To some people, like every year that a year goes past and a generation goes old gets older, their idea of vintage is a lot closer than you think. If you think about the fact that Happy Days was you know, filmed in the 70s. About the 50s. That's only a 20-year span. So now the...the places that are equivalent of Happy Days now would be something that was filmed in like the late 90s or early 2000s. Right? So it changes.

Steve Martorano 

You need to remind me that's too depressing. With regard to the pandemic and we're trapped in the house. On the one hand, you're not free to go out and accumulate more stuff. But on the other hand, you're...you're suddenly stuck with your clutter. 

Beth Lennon 

Yeah. 

Steve Martorano 

What are you observing as to the impact of being shut in on clutterers?

Beth Lennon 

Well, I think it depends on where they are in their journey. If they don't want to, you know, don't feel like they can make a change. They are going to be surrounded by their clutter and probably feeling bad, you know, in a low lying version of it, you know, forever, like, certainly putting on...putting on blinders. You know, stuff that they don't even see it anymore until they see it with fresh eyes and realize that they have piles all over the place. The other thing that's interesting too is we may not be able to go out and travel. But I mean, the ability to push a button and have something delivered to your house has never been more readily available and acceptable, because it's kind of the safer way. So there's a danger there of people who try to fill their lives with meaning and...and kind of patch a hole. kind of fix something by chopping that it can actually make it worse.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah. Yeah, like everything else associated with...with this. With this situation...

Beth Lennon 

Yeah.

Steve Martorano 

...made it worse. You're right. Boy there on the doorstep? Sometimes, before it seems like you've ordered it, it's here.

Beth Lennon 

Right.

Steve Martorano 

After all, you are going to want it anyway. So we just thought it'd be sent it to you. Let's give some people some...some hardcore advice. First of all, is it difficult for people to admit they have a problem? And if they do admit they have a problem? What's the first thing they should do?

Beth Lennon 

Well, I think with anything in your life, it is always difficult to admit that you have a problem because then you are admitting to yourself in the world that you are flawed or broken, or somehow imperfect. So that's always tough for anybody. The first thing I would say is, you know, kind of get some help and get some support. First of all, know you're not alone. No, you're not alone, that so many people, you think your story and I say this loving you, you think your story is so unique, but it is really so common. You know, you're you've got stuff that you've inherited from people. You tried to make yourself happy by shopping. You know you've got your kid's stuff, here are things that you used to, like, you don't like them anymore, but you feel bad that you don't like them anymore. So you keep them. You know, realizing you're not alone and realizing that honestly, getting some support and some guidance and some help with it is the easiest and quickest way to get you out from under it. Because if you think about it, the reason you became cluttered. One of the reasons is that perhaps you were never taught how to not be cluttered. You know, you wouldn't tell...you wouldn't ask somebody who doesn't know how to drive, how to teach you to drive? Why would we expect people that may not have the best organizational processes, when you've been surrounded by them, they weren't aren't going to be able to teach you certain, you know, simple methods to keep yourself decluttered.

Steve Martorano 

That's just great advice. The idea that you're not alone in this sounds self-evident, but it's really not if you're in the middle of it. And I'm wondering if there are clusterers, support groups, where they exchange views and, and try to lift each other up? You know, there is another phenomenon, I'm going to let you go after we kick this around a little bit, where we began talking about the consumer culture we live in. And I know you're probably aware of this, there are many, many sites that have been around that -- sort of probably predate the social media phenomenon -- where people who have an abundance of something rather than throw it away or even donate it, they will set up an exchange where they'll say to someone else, "I have too many of these and not enough of these. Would you be willing to swap?" That's a way that you could declutter, isn't it?

Beth Lennon 

Oh, of course, there are so many ways to declutter. I mean, as you referenced earlier, if I was to go into your house to declutter, I could do it in a few hours, because I don't know the stories behind everything. I always say to people, "The fastest way to declutter is to just rent a dumpster, but all the clutter in there." Of course, that's not what you want to do, because you have the stories attached to it. And that's why I am a coach and I...and I lovingly help people think of those things. But there are myriad ways of releasing the objects in your life that no longer bring you joy. And one of the great ways to ease that transition is to think about the joy you can bring somebody else, either somebody you know, or somebody you don't even know. The joy you can bring simply by sharing the abundance of stuff that you have. Think about it, we can only have too much in a...we sometimes we have too much. I can still survive on half of what I have, and provide joy and delight or whatever it is that somebody else needs with half of what I have.

Steve Martorano 

It's exactly right. And you know what else you have demonstrated in spades, that when you're interested in helping somebody no matter what the problem maybe if you are not empathetic, and compassionate, you're not going to help these people. So it's great to hear you begin from that...that place where you've got to appreciate how people feel about their stuff before you can help them unclutter. You do know...you could do absolutely no better than that. begin that process by visiting Betty Lennon's website -- I hope I get it right, Destination Declutter.

Beth Lennon 

Yep, DestinationDecluttered.com.

Steve Martorano 

Decluttered.com. It'll be on the Corner's website, you'll be able to see that. Betty, thanks so much. It was really fun talking about this topic.

Beth Lennon 

Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad -- I appreciate the opportunity to share what I do. And I am so glad I got to answer your wife's questions. Because trust me, she's not the only one who wants who have those.

Steve Martorano 

Well, every now and then I'm able to accomplish something that she appreciates. And this will be one case. So you've made me a hero. And I appreciate that. Betty Lennon thanks so much for joining us on the Behavioral Corner and maybe we can have you back sometime real soon. 

Beth Lennon 

I would love that. 

Steve Martorano 

And the rest of you thanks for hanging with us. Straighten up your rooms. And we'll see you next time. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and like us there and do all that neat social media stuff. We'll catch you next time on the Behavioral Corner. Bye-bye.

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