Living with a packrat
Havi Brooks teaches a metaphor shifting technique where you take something that bugs you and transform it into something you can work with. It has been really helpful in thinking about business stuff, so I thought, why not, lets try it for my husband.
I’m married to an engineer who is beyond packrat. Packratus Magnimus. I moved into his house/office when we got married, which was floor to ceiling electronic gear. People say I ‘knew’ what I was getting into. But honestly, I thought I was going to change him, I mean really, why would anyone want to live like that?
I’m not exactly a neat freak. I did underestimate how challenging it would be to share space with someone who saw space so differently. I spent the early years trying everything I could think of. Negotiating, whining. bitching, pleading, rationalizing. He did change, a lot. We rented half a duplex across the street where he moved his office, some of the electronic test equipment went to the shed, he brought a whole bunch of things to his airplane hanger (don’t ask- airplanes in pieces and stashes of stuff). There is still more than is comfortable for me. All the storage is packed full. There isn’t space to stage the day to day flow of things that come in and out.
Converting Packratus Magnimus to Super Squirrel
Accepting I am married to someone who loves being surrounded floor to ceiling with electronic gear was the start. No, actually, he adores it. Full immersion, surrounded with bits of flotsam that can be combined in a myriad of ways to create new things. He’s an inventor, and he really can take a couple of tin cans, pieces of wire, and a pile of those little parts and make something amazing. He talks about thinking like an electron. Yea, and electrons are surrounded by electronics.
It’s his creativity. I started having more compassion. I never thought about creativity in the form of these kind of things. I knew he was a designer, and there was some place of overlap between the artist in me and the engineer in him. Took me a while to make the connection that he thinks the things he works with are beautiful like I think about paint, beads, and Apple computers.
When I looked closer, I started to realize that what I thought was just heaps of random stuff, actually had order to it. Things were carefully lined up and stacked. I started noticing that no matter how much stuff I piled up to go ‘somewhere’, it would disappear. I know he wasn’t getting rid of it. The space isn’t that big, and only a certain percentage of it was going to the hangar. I started notice he was like a squirrel with nuts, and he can fit an amazing number of nuts into a space.
So starting with my original thought of husband as Packratus Maginmus, I began to list my associations. When I thought of Packratus Magnimus, I thought about overwhelming, overstuffed, fear, scarcity, impossible to clean, tension, battles, over-attachment to stuff and a really ugly Lazy Boy recliner.
Looking for a new metaphor, I remembered the squirrel. Yes, they can be pesty when they eat all the food out of the bird feeders, but basically they are kind of cute. The fluffy tail instead of the skinny rat tail helps. Squirrels are really good at storing things for the winter, and fitting an incredible amount of stuff into a small space. They have quite a bit of energy to scamper about.
Yes, husband as Super Squirrel.
Putting Super Squirrel to work
I’ve been working on a major decluttering and excavation of my office/studio. Through this process, I have come to a deeper understanding of where the places are I get stuck. The first one is not having a place to just empty out a room and then move stuff back in. It’s like a slide puzzle, and there is a stage when everything is ripped apart and I need to see new ways to configuring where I shut down. There is just too much.
Super Squirrel to the rescue. Not only can he spin things in three dimensions in his head, he can tell if things are going to fit in particular configurations just by looking at them. So, when I got stuck, I was able to ask him to help me by telling me about several ways I could move things around. He even made me a little map on graph paper with cutouts of the furniture so I could play with the ideas. When I decided, he helped move them. And didn’t say anything when I changed a few of them after seeing how they felt in the space since it is about more than actually fitting for me.
Another big place I get stuck is what to do with all the stuff that isn’t trash or treasure. Where I have to decide to keep it or get rid of it. The vast majority of stuff fits into this category for me, the trash and treasures are fairly easy. This whole category of stuff in the middle does not exist for Super Squirrel. There is only trash (a tiny amount of things) and NUTS, which are all treasures. Because if there is any slight doubt that there may be value someday for any reason, it is a treasure to be stored.
When I get to the point where the whole floor is covered with things I don’t know for sure what to do with, I discovered I can call in the Super Squirrel and he can tell me multiple ways to compact and store it, using just what I have in the room. Very handy when my sister is on her way to visit and the room is still a mess.
I’m sure I will discover more ways to utilize the Super Squirrel. Its much better to work with the strengths rather than trying to contain/change/battle Packratus Magnimus. He is so much happier when he can help me, and when his behavior makes me happy instead of irritating me. Good all around; for me, for him and most important for our marriage.
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Thank you for modeling this metaphor process for us! I’m great at dissecting why a certain metaphor isn’t working for me, but not so great at transforming it into something better. I think seeing this example will help.
Christine, thank you for this beautiful, loving post about transforming resentment and overwhelm into appreciation and gratitude through a conscious shift in perspective. And in metaphor. What a wonderful demonstration of love in action! You have such a spacious, generous heart.
Love, Hiro
Christine, this is seriously magical. What an amazing insight and turnaround! I love the way you describe the whole process, it’s such a great example for how to focus on the positive in a relationship (or any situation really.) That is a true act of love. Thank you!
Brain candy acorns! Spatial relationships! Yessss! (I would seriously bet this is the guy who can pack a car trunk to six times its normal capacity and remember where everything is when you reach the destination.)
I *know* this skill/talent/way of seeing — many years ago, my husband and I bought and sold antique furniture. We would often buy at auction. By the end of a long day of fast and furious buying — often jumping between multiple auctioneers and bidding alone simultaneously and never knowing in advance what we would end up with — we would have accumulated a random heap of stuff in all shapes and sizes. At the end of the day, it was my job to figure out how to load it into the truck. I always made it all fit, somehow.
Lovely delicious puzzle!! Oh my goodness, thank you for reminding me of those fun times. LOL
@Barbara Martin:
So you have the skill, but only use it for good? Wow!
@Victoria Brouhard:
I’m finding I’m getting better at the technique with practice. It was easier to get started with Havi helping me on the first one, and getting other people to help brainstorm the possibilities.
@Hiro Boga:
@Eileen:
I wish I could say it was a quick process, in actuality it has been a journey of a thousand steps. And really, I can only take part of the credit. If I had not seen the Super Squirrel trying so hard, it would have been more difficult for me to muster up the compassion. Relationships, like small businesses are deep personal development processes!
Now Christine, nothing is ever “all good” or “all bad”.
I must admit I can still pack a closet with the best of ‘em. (That’s how I used to clean my room when I was a kid — roll it all under the bed or cram it into the closet. Willy nilly just get it OUT OF SIGHT. Ummm defs NOT what my mother had in mind.)
And no, I am not a tidy person by inclination, not at all. But I do appreciate orderliness. I am a split between left and right brain.
I prefer to think of a messy place as a “rich environment” — especially for kitty who likes to explore, and for the creative person in me who likes finding surprises and discoveries and unexpected connections. But sometimes I must have a tidy space, it helps me think straighter. And tools need to be in the right place so I can work efficiently.
So, yah-noooo.
@Barbara Martin:
I must admit I utilized the Super Squirrel to get the residue of the redesign out of sight in the guest room since my sister arrived last night. As I’ve been working through the whole thing, I’m beginning to see I have these crazy internal rules about what skills are used for what task. Instead of using my whole brain for everything.
As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about your recent posts about using books about creativity. I don’t read books about creativity much, and if I look at my bookshelf, there is only a small percentage of books on art and my creative work topics. That’s experiential to me— I just don’t read about it, I do it. Yet I have tons of books on business, marketing, training, facilitation and things that are more left brain oriented. Its like I have different ways of learning things. Never really noticed it until you started talking about it. Don’t quite know what to make of it yet.
Now that’s really interesting! I never thought of my garden design or photography or 3D stuff as “creativity” per se either, let alone cooking — until recently.
It’s a very small section of the bookshelf compared to those other subjects. It’s not really a cut and dried step by step “here do this” kind of instruction book with rules and models.
And the field is sort of new and sort of small. It seems to be surfacing a bit more via popularization among babyboomers and self improvement literature, currently, too. “Find your bliss.”
Anyhoo, what you are saying here reminds me a little bit of Maisel’s thing about dualistic vs. holistic thinking. Sort of, why assume and limit yourself to one brain part or the other? Instead, you could look at your project at hand and ask “What does my project need now?” And then do that. Here’s the link fwiw.
http://reptitude.com/creativity/dualistic-and-holistic-thinking/
My squirrel has a glowing/lighting scarecrow! There is so much heavy stuff packed on top that I am afraid that everything will cave in and squash my “super squirrel.” The electronics are okay, but the scarecrow has to go! I need a walkway and pathway through this maze!