Cleaning And The Meaning Of Life: Simple Solutions to Declutter Your Home and Beautify Your Life - Softcover

Jhung is the author of award-winning How to Avoid Housework (Fireside) Guests Without Grief (Fireside) and co-author of Entertaining at Home (No-Brainer's Video Guides to Life) Cerebellum. A regular contributor to Family Circle, her articles have appeared in dozens of publications including House Beautiful, Home, Bridal Guide, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Herald, Women's World, Cosmopolitan and Women's Day. She has appeared on HGTV, Bloomberg News Radio, Party at Home, Today in New York, and scores of other television shows across the US and Canada. Her books have been picked up by the Literary Guild and Doubleday book clubs and have been excerpted in hundreds of publications including The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, Reader's Digest, Child and Redbook. She is an interior designer who owns CleanDesign, a low-maintenance, high-comfort decorating service. She lives in California.

TMSû Too Much Stuff Syndrome

ôWe want everything.
We want it bigger, louder,
shinier, faster, and we want
it now. Instant gratification is
as American as drive-through
microwave apple pie.ö
ùDennis Miller, comedian

Life was free of TMS when home was a campfire in a snug cave, a few furs on the floor, maybe a nice hunting scene on the wall- the kind of artwork that stayed when we moved. But with progress came possessions; possessions that in time took on such importance, they followed us in death. Burial pits grew into mounds, mounds grew into chambers, chambers became the great pyramids that held more treasure for the future life than what was meant for the current one.

Sort of like the self-storage units we rent today. Today, we could give any pharaoh a run for his money with all theôtreasuresö we own. But itÆs gotten to the point, for many of us, where the treasures own us, not the other way around. Instead of enjoying life, we spend much of our time servicing what we do have or shopping for what we donÆt.

Sages through the ages have always known that owning more than we need weighs us down and compromises happiness. The Buddha warned his followers who coveted worldly goods, ôThose who have cows have the care of cows.ö Jesus believed that we canÆt fully love one another when weÆre preoccupied with the acquisition of things. ôDo not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where it grows rusty and moth eaten,ö he cautioned. ôFor where your treasure is, there will be your heart.ö Taoism teaches that we canÆt live in the moment when weÆre burdened with possessions from the past. Its founder, Lao-tzu, summed up the secret to happiness when he pronounced, ôHe who knows he has enough is rich.ö

Even when we know we have enough, itÆs not always easy to let go.

I know. IÆve held on to the excess much of my life. I grew up in a home that was so stuffed with stuff it was suffocating. Not good stuff, mind you, but dreck. Little was discarded because of the family motto, ôWe might need it someday.ö There was also, ôWe paid good money for this,ö and the ever popular, ôThis could be worth something at some point.ö That last motto could have been part of the family crest, if we had one. It would be inscribed under an illustration of baseball cardsùthe ones we could never find because on every horizontal surface sprawled layers of junk only a family of devout savers could hold onto.

The time we spent looking for things was mind-boggling, and trying to clean was a joke. Maintaining the place took
twice as long as it should have, yet it always looked so messy it was embarrassing to have anyone over.We suffered
from an acute case of TMS, and I longed to be free of it.