I’m bad about making Great Plans to change my life and not following through. Plans to clean up my diet, plans to exercise more. Promises to spend more time doing the things I love. Good intentions to write more, worry less, stop just treading water and strike out for the far shore.

I could run a nutrition workshop with all the books I’ve purchased. I have gym equipment gathering dust in the garage and more exercise DVDs than I can count. I’ve started (paid) diet programs only to drop out and I frequently sign up for workshops on body positivity and the like without ever completing the courses.

I suspect one of the reasons follow-through is poor is that I’m already stretched pretty thin. Which is why my house is the last priority on a very long list. I’m starting to re-think this, however.

For Christmas, my husband got the oldest Girl-Child a copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I picked it up the other day and read it cover to cover. At first I scoffed at the idea of tidying by category instead of one room at a time. That’s not how it was done! And besides, it would take forever to sort things in this manner. But as I read on, it began to make more sense to me. De-cluttering one room at a time means you usually just shove things into another room, another set of drawers, out of sight to be dealt with later. And by sorting things from least to most sentimental, by the time you reached the objects you were the most torn about throwing out, you are already in a mindset of keeping only the things that are the most valuable to you. The things that bring you joy.

I’ve always been a bit of a pack rat but my longstanding pattern had been to do a ruthless purge every four to five years. I meant to do it the last time we moved, only I ran out of time and ended up carting things with me I probably would have thrown out, given the chance. Somehow 12 years have gone by since my last purge, and man, am I overdue.

Things have been complicated by inheriting a bunch of my mother’s stuff when she died earlier this year. The spare room became the catch-all for most of her things, while the garage was stuffed to the rafters with her furniture. I was executor of her estate, so there was always something more important to do than sort through her stuff. Besides, what was I to do with the photos and memorabilia no one else in the family wanted but I felt would be wrong simply to toss out?

I think the hoarding mindset begins innocently enough. It frequently starts from a place of deprivation. Money is tight, so we don’t toss out clothing, even when it no longer fits, is outdated, or is completely worn out. We throw that electronic device that no longer works (or has been replaced) in a drawer along with the old dog leashes and owner’s manuals to half-a-dozen appliances. We hang on to them because we might need them some day, and we don’t want to have to replace something we already own. We keep pieces of furniture simply because we’ve always had them, and besides, it’s too much trouble to haul it away. We collect coffee mugs because we like them, but we never get rid of the chipped ones or the ones we never use. We run out of storage space in our drawers and closets, so we buy storage containers and stuff them under our beds and in the attic because we just might need that hideously ugly sweater some day.

I have shoes I can no longer wear because the heels are too high for me but I don’t get rid of them because they are pretty. I have outfits I will never fit into again and yet I cling to them in the hopes someday I will. Anything not fit to wear in public becomes ‘barn clothes’.

I have more barn clothing than anything else.

The thing is, we’re not in the tight financial situation we were in when we last moved. We’re not millionaires, but things are okay. But the mindset of deprivation and want is still there.

It’s also hard to come home after a long hard day at work and tackle the mess the house has become. Correspondence is stacked on the table by the door, along with coats, boots, scarves, gloves, and hats. Books I want to read are piled on various surfaces. The cabinets are full-to-bursting for the apocalypse I’m sure is coming any day now. The fridge and walls are covered with photos, stickers, post-it notes, and inspirational sayings.

I think about decluttering from time to time. I’m a fan of the website unf*ckyourhabitat and sometimes I take before and after pictures of a room and spend 20 minutes sorting and putting things away. But the basic clutter is still there. And I suspect Marie Kondo is right–I’m just moving stuff from one place to another instead of ruthlessly unloading the crap weighing me down.

I feel like Sarah in that scene from Labyrinth, in which she wakes with amnesia on a junk pile, and the old woman starts binding Sarah’s belongings to her back…

“It’s all junk.” Yes, indeed. I’d hazard a guess that 75% of what’s in my house right now is all junk.

And then today, I had one of those weird connections between different subjects that made me go ‘huh.’ See, I’ve been half-assed doing one of those body positivity things online, and of course, one of the things that keeps coming up is how we’ve been taught to hate our bodies, even though they are marvelous, wonderful things, without which we’d be dead. And I get that, the idea we should be kind to ourselves, that we should appreciate the bodies that shelter us, that we should not bombard our bodies with hate. It’s the worst thing we can do to ourselves. Sure, there may be room for eating better and exercising so we can keep doing the things we love to do–but self-loathing doesn’t do anyone any good, and it might even potentially harm us.

Then it dawned on me. From nearly the moment I moved in, I’ve hated this house. Hated that it was poorly insulated and a probable fire hazard. Hated that it was a money pit that hardly seemed worth cleaning, let alone repairing. And yet it shelters us and provides us with a place of our own, a place where we can have big dogs and too many cats. A place where we can find rest at the end of the day. So maybe this house could use a little ‘body positivity’ style love.

And that means, among other things, cleaning out the clutter that has taken over our lives here.

I’m going to give the Tidying Up method a go. I have a feeling the end result will be far greater than just a clean house.