Clean house
Our Tuesday night guilty pleasure: my wife Weena and I lounging in our bedroom watching The Style Network’s Clean House hosted by Niecy Nash. The premise of the show is simple: Niecy and her interior design and organization experts, Mark Burnetz, Trish Suhr, and Matt Iseman, go on rescue missions to save the homeowners whose residences have become repositories of clutter, warehouses of useless possessions, and shrines to materialism.
If the show was simply a purely interior design show, showing the unattractive and unappealing “before” state of a house and then later contrasting it with the gleaming and beautiful “after” of the residence having undergone expert design treatment, then the show would be utterly boring and commonplace. However, Niecy and her team do much more than fix houses and decorate rooms; they transform lives, heal relationships, and bring hope and renewal to everyday American families.
What is compelling for me is that in the process of cleaning house, Niecy and her team unravel the root causes for the clutter — the family dysfunctions, the unhealthy attachment to a past memory, and, for many of the families, a deep hopelessness and a loss of a sense of control over their lives. And they do it with a huge dose of campy humor because otherwise it would be a melodramatic tear fest, which I, frankly, would not enjoy or even bother to watch. But the humor, the surprising honesty of the families willing to open their homes and share their life stories, and, most of all, the courage of the homeowners to admit that they have a problem that needs intervention elevate the show from mere reality TV, which often is just an excuse for the most crass kind of voyeurism and narcissism, to something actually worthwhile and eminently watchable. In 2010, the show rightfully earned a Daytime Emmy.
My wife and I have been watching Clean House for about two years and in that time I’ve learned some great lessons from the show, which, again for the uninitiated, may at first blush seem mundane and just another run-of-the-mill makeover reality show. However, the life lessons and the inspiration are there if you take the time to really see the transformation of not only the homes but also the families, the real men and women, who will inhabit these newly designed spaces.
So here are a few Clean House lessons:
1. It’s good to ask for help. The gospel tells us “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find” and so it is always good to ask, especially to ask for help. In order to get the Niecy Nash Clean House treatment, families have to send videos or pictures of their homes to the show’s producers. I can imagine how much courage it must take for a grown man or woman to admit that they have allowed their home to degenerate into a clutter warehouse and to ask for a bunch of strangers to come and clean their home, particularly in the American context where personal independence and the privacy of one’s home are held as high societal values. But precisely because they took the courageous step of admitting that they have a problem, which they cannot solve by themselves, then these families are able to get help. So whether your problem is simply a messy home or more complex challenges like addiction or financial troubles, the first step is always to admit having the problem and then asking for help. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to help you if you’d only ask.
2. Trust the experts. Of course, if after Niecy goes to a home and afterwards does a lousy job of improving and beautifying the residence, then the show wouldn’t make any sense or be a top rater. And episode after episode, Neicy is able to work her magic because of the support from her experts, Burnetz, who is a noted LA-based interior designer and author; Suhr, the show’s “Yard Sale Diva”; and Iseman, who does most of the physical work on the show. Surprisingly, most of the show’s experts have their roots not in interior design but rather in stand-up comedy, and watching them work, you can see that they do have real decorating chops. Simply, it is because of the team’s expertise and knowledge that allows them to de-clutter and create beautiful living spaces. So when you ask for help, ask the right people. And the right people may not be necessarily the usual suspects or those that have all the academic credentials. Simply, look for people who do their job well and ask for their help.
3. Clutter is a state of mind. More accurately, clutter, simply defined as a crowded, disorganized mass or collection of things, begins with a cluttered mind. Not necessarily that the minds of the families that need Clean House help are incoherent or disorganized, which might be true in some cases, but rather that the clutter is manifestation of a deeper intellectual or emotional problem. Like in the last episode we watched, the house became a mess because the wife dominated the marital relationship, became selfish, and filled the house with her things and relegated the possessions of the husband to a few rooms. And the husband was at fault as well, he allowed the wife to become domineering and didn’t speak out about his resentment at not being consulted in decisions about their residence. Or in another episode, the mess was the remnants of the possessions of a former life partner and the homeowner, instead of moving on after the loss of her partner, hoarded and stored of all of his things. So to de-clutter, we have to first address the real root cause of the messiness in our lives. It is only after resolving that most fundamental cause can the person or family move on to having a clutter-free existence.
4. It’s only stuff. In the ‘80s, Hall and Oates had a great hit song, Possession Obsession, and while it referred to possessing lovers and the dangers of over-possessiveness in relationships, the song could also have easily referred to people’s unhealthy desire to acquire things. In Clean House, the homes are often filled to the rafters with useless things, even newly bought items not yet used or taken out of their shopping bags. It seemed like some families were attempting to fill some spiritual void with their purchases. Unfortunately, as any shopaholic will inevitably confess, the “fix” obtained from buying is short-lived — and your are left with both clutter and a depleted bank account. In fact, possession is a two-way street, meaning that eventually, if we do not watch out, our possessions begin to “possess” us and take control of our lives. In some episodes of the show, the clutter was simply the belongings of a special person — a deceased relative or an old friend — and the attempt to hold on to the clutter was in reality an attempt to hold on to the past. The most riveting moments of the show were when Niecy would sit the family members for a talk, ask them to “take a big girl pill,” meaning to face up and ‘fess up to some harsh realities, and remind them that they didn’t have to keep the possessions in order to maintain their special memories of the past. That in the end, the possessions were just “stuff,” material things that will decay and diminish, while memories and moments with loved ones would endure. After much drama, the families would part with the clutter and be gifted with a beautiful home. Yet it isn’t the physical act of letting go of material things that would become transformative, rather it was the realization that lives of the families were more than their possessions, much more than their collection of stuff.
5. Letting go is good for the soul. This is an adjunct to Rule 4, letting go of our attachments to our possessions, not the mere physical act of letting go of the material object, builds character and reminds us of our essential human dignity. We deserve respect, love, and honor by the mere fact of our being human and the things we possess do not — and should not — determine our worth.
6. One person’s clutter is another person’s gold. In Clean House, after the family agrees to sell off the clutter, the next step is for Trish Suhr to organize a yard sale, so the clutter is transformed from useless junk to capital that will be used to fix and decorate the home. It is fun to watch not only the bartering and selling of the family’s old furniture, books, clothes, etc., but also to see other families availing of what were formerly under-utilized, unappreciated stuff and using these items to build their homes. Thus, beds too large or out of style for the Clean House family will be bought and given a new home wherein it would, hopefully, be properly appreciated it. Since the objects are often sold and a fraction of the price, there is an element of charity in the yard sale and you see the spirit of charity permeating the atmosphere of the show, energizing both the hosts and families. In fact, anything that’s left unsold at the yard sale is given away to charity.
7. Family is the most important thing. Lastly, as the show demonstrates on a weekly basis, the meat of the program is not the beautifully styled interiors but rather the healing and transformation of families. Often, it takes only one family member who wakes up from the haze of clutter-addiction who decides to contact Clean House, one person in the family who cares enough to take the effort to ask for help; and through his solitary action, family issues are addressed and kin are inspired to make their lives work. And that really is the point — that our lives, like our homes, are a work in progress: sometimes we fill it with clutter, sometimes we fall and fail but there is always the opportunity to change course, clear out our clutter, and fight for the kind of life we want and truly deserve. After that, great interiors would be almost an afterthought.
