Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight (5 page)

Does this sound like a typical morning at your home?

When you wake up, the very first thing your eyes see is a cluttered, messy bedroom, which immediately sets an unpleasant tone for your day. You get up and can't find the outfit you know is somewhere in your closet (thus starting your day with a failure). Your kids' homework has disappeared, you're out of milk for breakfast, and your car keys are nowhere to be found. You've had more frustration by 8 a.m. than some people feel all day. If this sounds like you, is it any surprise that you feel tense and on edge before you step out of the house?

I can show you how each room in your home can drag down your happiness in its own special way.

If your kitchen counters are cluttered and your drawers are overflowing with gizmos that you bought in a moment of culinary enthusiasm—but haven't used once—then you're not likely to cook a healthy meal that brings your family together. It's just too stressful an exercise.

If your home office is such a mess that it keeps you from getting your finances in order, it's no surprise when stress, uncertainty, and fights about money disrupt your marital happiness and keep everyone in the home worried.

The clutter in your house may be a cause of deeper personal and emotional issues in your life, and it will almost certainly contribute to stress within your family. This clutter can also directly affect your weight and serve as a warning light that you're making decisions that threaten your health.

Since a cluttered home can so completely drag down a family's quality of life, why do so many people bring so much stuff into their homes, use it so little, and find it so difficult to let go? A more useful question might be: In today's society, how could people
not
do this?

A Culture of Clutter

In the United States, consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of the nation's overall economic activity. The same is true in other developed countries: Of all the spending that goes on, everyday consumers account for most of it. As a result, the forces that run the place where you live—the government, big businesses, the media—keep a very, very close eye on whether
you,
the consumer, are spending enough.

Did you catch that? The powers that be don't necessarily view you as a citizen, a voter, or a person. You're a
consumer
. You're someone who buys products, then consumes them. After you eat it, use it up, or wear it out, you buy more.

As I sit at my desk writing this today, the headlines on my computer are very excited about how much Americans have been spending recently. “If You're Average, You'll Spend $98 Today,”
Time
magazine tells me. The typical consumer spent $98 a day last month, pushing the average to its highest in 6 years. That doesn't count things like your mortgage, car payment, or utility bills. It's a measure of your purchases at places like coffee shops, convenience stores, department stores, and online retailers.

If you're contributing to this daily flow of commerce, the newscasts will speak of you in glowing terms. Your neighbors may look at you with envy. But this spending, I fear, will continue to keep you overweight, overcluttered, and
under
happy.

This pressure for consumers—I mean
people
—to keep spending has been building since before you were born. Thousands of years ago, humans evolved in an environment of scarcity, says Peter Whybrow, MD. He's a psychiatrist at UCLA whose main interest these days is trying to figure out why people need to buy so much in the pursuit of happiness.

Our ancient ancestors spent their time seeking the three things their brains told them to chase: food, shelter, and sex. At least two of these were typically hard to find. These primitive people spent a lot of time and energy chasing down a tasty animal to eat or looking for a safe place to spend the night.
When they succeeded, their brains' reward centers released chemicals that made them feel happy and content. Another day as successful as that might not happen for a long time, Dr. Whybrow says.

Even in the 1700s, when philosophers and economists were setting up the foundation of our free-market economy, even basic necessities were still scarce for most. “You can only harness your horse and go to the market once a week,” Dr. Whybrow explains. “The constraints of work, the climate, the mountains, all of those things that constrained people were so dominant that they could never imagine the situation where we live now.”

Our economy was set up with the expectation that these constraints would always limit our ability to get our hands on food, clothing, and tools. So would our desire to not look greedy in front of our neighbors, says Dr. Whybrow, who covers these issues in his book
American Mania: When More Is Not Enough.

But that all changed, even though our brains haven't. Now we live in an environment of plenty. Most people can afford more than they need, and even if they can't really afford it, credit cards aren't usually hard to get. On the one hand, we can divide expensive items into monthly payments, and on the other hand, the stores we visit are flooded with cheaply priced items we can buy without a second thought.

“The only thing that constrains you now is your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part in the brain that enables us to say, ‘That isn't a good idea,'” says Dr. Whybrow. “‘Even though that chocolate cake is attractive, I don't really want to weigh 200 pounds at the age of 14.' But the trouble is, that is a very weak inhibitor.”

This little part of your brain, just behind your forehead, is now up against some powerful adversaries, from big business and the federal government to genius-level marketers to Hollywood actresses and reality TV stars. If you've ever felt like a war is going on inside your own mind, you're sort of right!

“There are a lot of things that contributed to this growth of consumerism and our self-identity being overly associated with being consumers,” says Annie Leonard, the founder of the Story of Stuff Project. She's especially concerned with the damage that manufacturing all our stuff causes the environment and the damage that
buying
all that stuff causes our well-being.

“After World War II, our economic and business planners, including folks in government, were trying to figure out how to keep a humming economy going when you're not having to make all these
war
things,” she says. “The way is to make toasters, blenders, cars, couches, and all this stuff. Prior to
1950, people didn't have such a desire to buy endless consumer stuff, so that desire had to be stimulated.”

And who better to stimulate our desires than marketers? After WWII, “the real science of advertising came to fruition,” says James Roberts, PhD. He's a Baylor University professor and marketing expert who focuses on the psychology of consumer behavior. He's also the author of
Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money We Don't Have in Search of Happiness We Can't Buy.

Nowadays, two-thirds of advertising dollars pay for messages that are broadcast on TV, computers, and handheld devices. These messages had much less impact on people's lives—or were nonexistent—in 1950. That year, only 9 percent of Americans had a television, which carried a couple of black-and-white channels and didn't broadcast at night. And zero percent, of course, had Internet access or handheld devices.

Today, marketers will direct somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 messages at you, Dr. Roberts says. They'll do the same tomorrow and the next day. Just as any flat surface in your home is a magnet for clutter—from your refrigerator door to your bedside table—any open space in your environment that could catch your eye now attracts advertisers.

“I was recently in Boston on the subway platform, and you can't wait for the subway without looking at these giant new TV screens bombarding ads at you from across the tracks,” Leonard says. “There's increasingly fewer places where we can rest our eyeballs without getting commercial messages. It's relentless!”

Marketers often exploit your insecurities, Dr. Roberts says. They make you wonder, “Do I smell bad? Am I unattractive? Is everyone else having fun somewhere because they bought a certain object, and I'm left out? What can I buy so I'll be more accepted?”

But above all, marketers sell the promise of happiness. “Buying new jewelry or pants or a car makes us feel better about ourselves. If we have low self-esteem or we're depressed, we get a lift from the purchase,” Dr. Roberts says. “I think it simply has to do with distraction. When we're spending, we're not thinking about things at the core of our unhappiness. We don't have to think about problems with our spouse or kids or problems at work.”

It's often difficult to know exactly what we're buying when we hand over our cash or swipe our credit card. You might
think
you're buying a specific item, but I'd challenge you to think about this a little differently.

When we buy a “product,” we frequently—and unwittingly—hand over our money for the
promise
we hope that product will deliver on. We buy:

A treadmill (the product), but what we're really investing in is the dream of losing weight and being fit (the promise)

A beautiful set of pots and pans (the product), but what we're really hoping to get are the wonderful dinner parties and the appetizing food that will amaze our family and friends (the promise)

Remember: Every product you buy comes with a corresponding promise that you invest in. Your heart is set on attaining both. But while you'll definitely come home with the object in your hands, you may or may not get the promise you see in your daydreams. Always look beyond the product to understand what's really motivating your purchases.