Spring Cleaning: Why It's Always Easier to Solve Someone Else's Problems.
On underwear, construal level theory, and why your friend can solve your problems better than you can.
We all have those overworn exercise pants, blouses that have accumulated dust, and, of course, issues we have to deal with that we just never seem to have the time to confront.
The concept of Spring Cleaning is not a new phenomenon…it’s actually rooted in religious practices like Easter and Passover. For thousands of years, to prepare for Passover, Jews performed a ritual cleaning of their home, tossing any leavened bread. It seems a lot easier to get rid of carbs than jeans you haven’t worn in 5 years, right?
Last week, we had an epiphany. Despite Caroline’s impending move-out date, she volunteered to purge Eva’s closet. In fifteen minutes, Caroline made executive decisions about things Eva had been holding onto for over fifteen years. T-shirts from high school, thirty pairs of ratty underwear, nautical oversized sweaters, and (granny) lingerie with tags on them (from Eva’s bridal shower). All tossed in the trash!
While Eva lamented some of the decisions, Caroline’s emotional detachment gave Eva the support she needed to refill her underwear drawer with thirty new pairs of NUDE underwear she had already purchased from a store’s closing blowout sale (years ago!). Next steps: Caroline is going to add some colorful thongs to Eva’s underwear drawer, get excited, Doug! (Doug is Eva’s husband.) Caroline also DESPERATELY needs to do a massive closet haul, but can’t seem to do it herself. Every time she sits on the floor in piles of years’ worth of “collecting” clothes, she feels like she’s in a constant state of stalemate or actually checkmate…and she’s not the winner.
Taking a quick lunch break, Eva dove right in to trying to help Caroline tackle her move. A subject Caroline dodged to start talking about how Eva needs to take disciplining her tween to a new level. Both of us were talking at each other, easily solving each other’s personal issues just as effortlessly as Caroline was able to clean out Eva’s closet. Why couldn’t we be as lucid when it came to our own mental, emotional, and physical clutter?
We asked our boyfriend Claude…and it turns out there’s a scientific reason for this.
Construal level theory: When you have psychological distance from a problem, it literally changes how your brain processes it. You zoom out. You think abstractly. You stop getting bogged down in the emotion of it.
This is why your friend can tell you with clarity and ease that you should leave that job, end that friendship, or give away that ancient, sad pair of jeans that you’ve been going back and forth on for three years.
We spent most of this week’s episode unpacking that idea. And it goes way beyond the closet. It’s why meditation works: you become an observer of your own thoughts instead of being held hostage by them. It’s why journaling helps: you can write about your feelings and get some distance from the raw emotion. It’s why going for a long walk in nature, or standing at the edge of the ocean, or looking up at a mountain, suddenly makes your problems feel a little more manageable: you realize how insignificant man is compared to nature. Perspective, baby.
We also talked about Marie Kondo’s “does it spark joy” method and why we think it’s fatally flawed. Because a lot of us aren’t holding onto stuff just because it brings us joy. We’re holding onto it because we haven’t decided we deserve better yet. Underwear included.
We take a different approach to spring cleaning: Does this reflect how I feel or want to feel about myself? Who do I wish to be? Do I value myself enough to have beautiful underwear? If you want to be sexy and rich…MANIFEST IT BABY! Dress for the part you want to have.
WORD OF THE WEEK
Winnow: To separate the valuable from the worthless. (We’re doing this to our closets, our contact lists, and our sock drawers.)
BOOK OF THE WEEK
And the book this week, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, is basically a masterclass in this whole episode. It’s about what happens when you’ve been living someone else’s narrative for so long that you can’t even see it. And what it takes, i.e. years of therapy, rock bottom moments, and a lot of brutal honesty, to reclaim your own life. It’s a lot. But it’s also really funny and weirdly inspiring. And it’s our choice because gaining perspective is often necessary to realize you aren’t living your best or even your own life.
Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts — and subscribe to Mic’d and Medicated so you don’t miss what’s coming next.
If this resonated, forward it to a friend who needs to clean out their underwear drawer. You know who they are (hahaha).
Xx
Eva & Caroline