Lisa Hoffman and Charles Atkins, MD

Published July 6, 2006

"I threw out a lot of stuff yesterday," Lisa says, after first checking to see if I want a governmental brochure on the topic of resources for the elderly.

For those not familiar with our columns, Lisa and I have a running discussion/bone of contention around the amount of clutter that flies to her like moths to a flame.

"You know," she adds, "Doctor Phil had something on this subject the other day, where a woman divorced her husband because he had filled their trailer with so much stuff that she couldn’t stand it anymore."

I suppress a shudder at the mention of Dr. Phil and brace myself for a dissertation on why every piece of junk is a potential treasure.

"People have personal attachments to things," she adds, paraphrasing the balding talk show host. "It could be as silly as a burnt piece of spaghetti that someone saved as a child from a house fire."

She then fishes out an article from the local paper—saved from May—about people surrounded by clutter. As I look at the color photos of smiling faces peeking out from uncontrolled mounds of junk I realize that Lisa is not alone. In fact, in most places I’ve worked there’s always been someone whose office has turned into a maze defined by walls of journals, memos, policy manuals, saved emails and every other bit of paper that gets churned out in the day to day operations of hospitals and community agencies.

But getting back to Lisa, and off of Dr. Phil, whom she often cites in the same breath as Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, I feel compelled to bring you, our reader, to the ground zero of the problem--a small glass-topped end table that sits next to her riser chair.

"It was a Vietnamese fishing basket, that had the glass added to make it a table," she explains. "They used to catch the fish by throwing the basket over them."

As a kind of experiment I begin by measuring the Height-Of-Clutter, or HOC, on top of the Vietnamese fishing basket. It’s currently at a mere eleven-and-a-half inches. I quickly calculate that it was roughly two years ago that Lisa returned from a rehab facility—at that time the end table had been fully excavated—which means that Lisa’s clutter accumulates at an annual rate of 5.75 inches.

"It used to be much higher," she says warily as I continue to manhandle the table. "I sit here every night," she goes on, "you have no idea how much I throw out…every night. There’s so much…"

I must admit that at this point I’ve heard it all before and I tune out a heartfelt stream of justifications and rationalizations as I look to see what exactly has come to settle on the Vietnamese fishing basket, that a couple years back had a pristine, and slightly exotic look. Starting on the top—and I feel a bit like an archeologist, or a geologist about to take core samples—we find a review of her favorite restaurant—Sake.

"I saved you that," she says, as I let it fall to the floor.

Next comes this week’s issue of Country Life. I attempt to file it in the area where she saves old copies, but she’s too quick, and snatches it from my hand to put in another pile next to her chair. The next four or five inches—all of relatively recent origin--is comprised of important documents she needs to keep at hand to do her daily business and to maintain the steady flow of mail-ordered merchandise.

Cutting to the chase, and careful to not upset the delicate balance that has become the Vietnamese fishing table, I delve down blindly until my fingers scrape up against the smooth glass surface. What is down here? I wonder, as I grab and pull.

"Oh no!" she shrieks, "There’s a spider on you!"

Indeed, among the papers is a bewildered daddy long legs who’s obviously found a home in the Vietnamese fishing table. Being a man of science, and having somewhere read that it’s bad luck to kill a daddy long legs I carefully take him outside, before returning to the day’s catch from the basket. "Okay," I say, as I settle back, "let’s see what we’ve got…" First is an old fairy tale Lisa wrote over forty years ago entitled, How the Forget-Me-Not Got its Name.

"Oh, you found it!" she exclaims, "I’ve been looking for that, I wanted to make a copy and give it to a child."

I hand it to her, and watch as she places it on top of the mound. As she does, I’m reminded of a compost heap, and how one needs to turn it occasionally. From there, it’s a big mixture of clippings, coupons, bank statements, the important, the unimportant and the sentimental. Some she grudgingly consigns to the wastebasket but most works its way back to the top of the mound.

I attempt to pass on a bit of wisdom about all of the paper that comes my way. It’s something that resonated from an article or business journal that summed up the paper problem with a four-step approach. "When a piece of paper comes your way" I say, "you can do one of four things with it: throw it away, act on it—such as paying a bill, file it so you can retrieve it when needed," and then I get stuck not remembering the forth thing.

"I know," she pipes in, "It’s keep it next to you on a Vietnamese fishing table. That way you can get your hands on it whenever you want."

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