Our cupboard under the stairs is neither a cruel and claustrophobic bedroom for a young wizard; nor a compact but highly efficient modern storage space with slide-out fitted drawers. In fact, it's a bit of a mess and, despite best intentions, it often gets messier.
Children will kick shoes off into the dark recesses. Husbands will hurl plastic bags in after returning from doing the weekly shop to be recycled at a later date. Wives will shove laptop bags just inside the door.
It hides a multitude of sins; it's a multiverse of madness.
"Muuuum! Where are my boots?" or "Who put my coat under there?" or a stream of profanities, stifled so the kids can't hear after a bumped head on the low ceiling - all of these echo from the nooks and crannies.
Most of the time we function fairly well without doing so, but every so often (to make sense of its senselessness) either I or my wife will pull some or all of the dark matter from the cupboard under the stairs, revealing the hoarder's delights and peripheral mess inside.
Any large scale clear out will inevitably turn the lounge, the room in which the door to the cupboard under the stairs can be found, into even more of a mess than the cupboard itself.
Until you get everything out, the thinking is at these times, you can't see what to reorganise; it's challenging to see what treasures are in there that you really want to focus on, and it's hard to see what needs keeping or what should have gone a long, long time ago.
If one of us tries to help the other, it's best not to get too heavily involved as the space doesn't allow for two people delving around in there all over the place. Becoming too heavily involved, more often than not, causes dissonance.
Once everything's back in the spandrel, things are a lot clearer, much more organised, better functioning and less likely to result in conflict.
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In a recent mentoring session with the delightfully helpful Rituparna Ghosh, we discussed the similarities between the process of clearing the cupboard and the coaching process.
When we begin a coaching session, we're in the dark. We don't know whether the person just wants to look at something specific that's important to them in that moment or if they want to get everything out into the session for a complete tidy or a deep clean.
We don't know what the person wants to think about, what treasures will emerge, what ideas they'll want to keep, replace, recycle or throw out: what will change and what will remain the same?
It's better not to get too heavily involved, but rather to step lightly as the space doesn't allow for two people delving around in there all over the place.
Becoming too heavily involved can cause dissonance.
Sometimes the other person will want the bigger process of pouring everything out which can initially seem a cognitive mess.
However, until they get everything out they may not see what to reorganise; what treasures are in there that they really want to focus on; and it's hard to see what needs keeping or what should have gone a long, long time ago.
In accompanying them in this process, we hope things may be clearer, more organised, better functioning or just providing reassurance.
And, on that note, I'm off to clear a cupboard.
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