My parents aren’t serious hoarders, but they had way too much stuff when I was a child. They don’t keep trash and don’t pick up stuff off of the street, but they own a lot of furniture, and my father could never throw out a newspaper article that he thought might be useful someday. They lived in a gigantic house, which my mother is still in. It is totally full, but it doesn’t have goat trails or anything like that. Still, my mother has like eight sets of dishes, six or seven sofas, five dining room tables.

I grew up with similar bad habits, thinking that more was better. I lived in a pretty small apartment with my then husband, and we had stuff everywhere. I collected books, vinyl albums, house plants, so many different things.

I don’t know what exactly flipped the switch in my head. I think it was watching that old TV show, Clean Sweep, where they clear out two rooms of a cluttered house. Peter Walsh was the organizer and declutter expert on the show. I started reading his books. I suddenly realized that I had so much stuff, I had videotapes in the kitchen and cookbooks in the bathroom. It was crazy.

I started by putting things in their proper rooms. All videotapes and albums had to fit in the living room, where the stereo and TV were. All books had to fit on the hallway bookshelves. I got rid of anything that had foxing or was not in good condition. And gradually I started to see that my mind was much clearer when I had much less stuff.

My challenge now is to not buy. I still feel that I have way too much stuff. Like my parents, I have room for it. But I would prefer to have empty space.

Another challenge is that my partner is not fully on board with me getting rid of things. We don’t live together, which makes it a little bit easier. The next time he goes out of town, I am going to clean crap off of high shelves and out of my closets. I just like having empty space.