Interview with Mike Nelson | Sound Authors Radio

December 27, 2008

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest on the show has little to do with politics but of course I’ll probably ask him about politics in this political season. It’s September 12th and the next guest on my show is Mike Nelson. He’s the author of Stop Clutter from Stealing your Life. Welcome to the show. Do we have Mike on the line?

Mike Nelson: Hello!

Dr. Kent: Hi welcome to the show Mike Nelson. Tell me a little bit about your book “Stop Clutter From Stealing Your Life”.

Mike Nelson: Yeah, what’s different about this book than most books in the same genre, which would be organizing type books is that I have come to realize from personal experience that cluttering is more of a psychological issue, a psychological and emotional issue than it is about how to organize so I approach things from the viewpoint of we’re cluttering for a reason and its usually a manifestation of what’s going on in our lives; frustration, anxiety, ADD, or just being overwhelmed.

Dr. Kent: Now I tend to be a fairly cluttered person lets say but when I do clean I clean extremely. You know, are there different kinds of clutterers?

Mike Nelson: Oh there certainly are and the types that you’re describing is like if you’re trying to overcome anything in your life, sometimes we go to when we finally make the effort to do something about it then we make a supreme effort. Most of us aren’t that way, we tend to be perfectionists so that when we do clean we’ll do it well, but we don’t want to get into completely cleaning up all the clutter all of the time because it’s just too stressful.

Dr. Kent: Now have you ever tried to declutter the government?

Mike Nelson: (Laughs) No, I don’t have the skills for that. I think that’s going to require more skills than I have.

Dr. Kent: So tell me about how you came about getting into this genre and this book in particular? How it differs from the rest of your books.

Mike Nelson: Well this book in particular is a very personal book in that I had a battle if you will with clutter pretty much all my life and I came to an epiphany when I was living in Los Angeles when my cluttering got between me and a relationship and at one point it actually cost me a very good job. I finally realized that there was more than just organizing that needed to be changed and so I started dealing with the emotions of it and saw there were no other books that dealt with that aspect, so that’s why I wrote it. I found that the support groups, clutterless recovery groups who deal with to help us clutterers try and find another way out of the same box.

Dr. Kent: So is it like an addiction? I mean you talk about the group and all of that, is it a compulsion, an addiction, what is it?

Mike Nelson: I think addiction is probably too strong of a word and compulsion is probably closer to the mark. It’s like hoarding which is a recognized psychological condition. It affects a very small percentage of the population, maybe 1.5 to 2 percent of the people in the United States. Cluttering probably affects about 40 percent but I think its more of a potpourri of an expression of other disorders; anxiety and depression being the biggest one and that clutterers don’t have their coping mechanism is to try and express some kind of control over their lives through their stuff so they feel that if they hold onto everything, they’ll never lose the past, they’ll never lose the affection of other people and the paradox is that it literally forms a barrier between us and the rest of the world.

Dr. Kent: How did you get into this? Lets say at some point you realized I’m someone who is dealing with clutter all the time, but how did you go from that to creating these stories, creating these methods and analyses?

Mike Nelson: When I started dealing with my own issues and with cluttering and I had been in 12-step programs for other things in my life and so in Los Angeles there was indeed a 12 step program that dealt with this and that gave me a start to understand what was going on and I later parted ways with them because as I started doing the decluttering I realized it was more psychology where we had to deal with the why than just the how. And I began interviewing psychologists and psychiatrists as well as professional organizers, people who are on the front lines of this and hundreds of other clutterers in order to form a comprehensive world view of the clutterer’s world if you will.

Dr. Kent: Wow, so let’s say that I’m a clutterer. What do you tell me? How do I go about controlling my life?

Mike Nelson: Well the very first thing is that one, you’re not alone, there’s a whole lot of us and we feel isolated because we are physically isolated. We isolate ourselves and two, the biggest phrase that comes out of a clutterers mouth is that of being overwhelmed. It’s normal to be overwhelmed by most peoples clutter because their whole rooms or whole houses are full of stuff and when you look at that, the disarray; it’s just a normal human emotion to be overwhelmed.

So we can’t deal with the big picture, we’ve got to deal with the small picture. So you pick a very small area, visualize what you’re going to do, write down what you want to achieve, and then as you declutter a very tiny area, maybe work for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and you keep a clutter diary, a decluttering diary of what’s going on. What emotions are going through your head when you’re trying to get rid of something if you’re having a problem with it so that you can work on the real problem, not just the physical manifestation, which is the clutter.

Dr. Kent: Hmm, and what is your daily work? I know you of course are an author and you deal with this, how does this manifest itself in your daily life? Are you working on a new project? Tell me about everything.

Mike Nelson: Well I pretty much make a living as an author and as a consultant and clutter is one aspect of what I do. Another aspect is research, I write books relating to Mexico, the sociology of Mexican citizens and of travel in Mexico and things like that. So I have to maintain some orderliness in my life or I’d never be able to do my work and that’s how the clutter books have helped me to prosper if you will and to move forward with the rest of my life. Then I am the executive director of clutterless recovery groups, which is nationwide, but a very tiny organization. Its difficult to get clutterers to do anything, there is the 12-step group Clutterers Anonymous, which is much larger than we are and probably people are more likely to find a meeting of that than with our group.

Dr. Kent: So your organization is called Clutterers Recovery Group?

Mike Nelson: No, I’m Clutterless Recovery Group.

Dr. Kent: Where can people find out about you?

Mike Nelson: At our website, clutterless.org.

Dr. Kent: That’s great.

Mike Nelson: We try and keep it simple and we do have a social networking with blogs and online meetings and stuff like that.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s a fascinating topic and it really is a part of a lot of our lives. I’ll certainly check out clutterless.org and I think many others will as well. Its been an honor speaking with Mike Nelson, author of Stop Clutter from Stealing Your Life and its available in just about any possible editions, including audio so its been wonderful speaking with you and I hope you have a great day.

Mike Nelson: Thank you doctor.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show as always, the fourth guest is a musician. The Boulder Acoustic Society will be joining me and I’ll play a track from their newest record. This tune is called Maggie’s Farm, of course we know the tune, but here’s a version by the Boulder Acoustic Society.

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