"Lessons in Letting Go" by Corinne Grant

I follow another Professional Organizer's blog, Lissanne Oliver of Sorted! organizing & decluttering. Lissanne interviews Corinne Grant about her new book "Lessons in Letting Go - Confessions of a Hoarder" I haven't read the book yet but I will certainly put it on my to-read list. Here's some bits from the interview that intrigued me the most:

Lissanne: I thoroughly enjoyed this book: an easy and entertaining read. Very early on, I got a sense of how personal this story was and how brave you were to share it. I really bonded with you over this book. I think many readers will feel the same, and they will definitely identify with your story: I don’t know of any other book like it on the market. Do you feel vulnerable having it all out in the open?

Corinne: I don’t feel vulnerable, strangely enough. I think it’s a combination of having done so much stage work, where I’ve talked about myself, that the book feels like an extension of that, and also, just the fact that I’ve written and re-written so many drafts of the book, that at some stage, it just stopped feeling so deeply personal. I don’t believe in doing things by halves, and the story couldn’t have been told properly unless I was honest, and so, that was simply what had to be done.

You say “In the evenings I would waste my time rearranging and re-stacking piles of god-knows-what, trying to find the magical configuration that would enable me to feel like I was in control. The fear of doing something I might later regret over-ruled any desire to throw it out. If I threw out an old placemat, I might all of a sudden find myself completely unmoored from my past. If I threw out a cardigan my mother had given me for my twenty-third birthday, I might destroy the family bond that held us to each other. We don’t call our possessions ‘belongings’ for nothing and without Thomas beside me it felt like my belongings were the only things holding me together.” You spent a lot of time and energy trying to organise your stuff. How do you feel about that now? Do you have guilt about it?

That’s part of the illness I think of being a hoarder…I think it’s a very Western illness. We do place far more importance on objects – we almost imbue them with human qualities. I had an Indian taxi driver once and he was asking me about the book and I was explaining it and he was saying I just don’t understand what you’re talking about, I Just…. And I tried a few times and he said I seriously don’t understand. And I thought, you know what, you’re not going to! We are completely different people, culturally, to you in that respect just be thankful you’re not one of us!

I guess the point I try to make all the way through the book too is that you’re not going to learn to let go of the stuff until you figure out why you’re hanging on to it in the first place. And you really need to get to that the stuff is a symptom of the fact that you’re not dealing with shit in your life. In the book, as I’m shifting things around, I’m doing that instead of facing up to the fact that I’ve just broken up Thomas… Why did I break up with Thomas? Why did I leave him? I should have been focusing on that not making sure that I labeled a box of 20 year old video tapes. Hoarding’s a very good way of avoiding your life and yet, sitting there in the back of every hoarder’s brain is the thought that there’s something, that you’re just not quite on top of things, or there’s something that you’re missing.

And I think that understanding underpins your success, because people who don’t get that it’s not about the physical stuff, they’re never going to get on top of things.

It’s about a lack of identity I think too. If you’ve got a strong sense of self, you don’t need to be relying on other objects to do that for you. That’s what I figured out for myself, anyway.

That once I started figuring out who I was, then the stuff wasn’t important anymore. I could throw something out and not feel unmoored from my past.

Corinne really did some soul searching and found out some very important things about why she was holding onto the stuff in her life. If you think Corinne's story may help you Let Go of some of your stuff, click here.