Declutter Your Life to Help Your IBS

Lately I have been thinking about the clutter in our lives and its effect on our irritable bowel symptoms. I am convinced there is a link. Our issues are exacerbated by stress, and clutter causes stress.

When I was 18, I taught at a high School in the Fiji Islands on Volunteer Service Abroad (the New Zealand equivalent to the US Peace Corps). I lived in a simple house on the school compound with two other teachers and my bedroom contained a bed, a curtained wardrobe and a desk. At least, I think I had a desk though I remember preparing lessons on the floor. My wardrobe contained five or six dresses, two tops, two pairs of shorts and one skirt – the sum total of my possessions apart from a few toiletries. Our living room had a sofa and a side table while the kitchen had a small table for eating. That was about it. I received a tiny monthly volunteer salary which was enough for very basic food with a little left over for bus fares and limited play money. And yet I wanted for nothing. My weeks were spent teaching and my weekends were spent outdoors exploring with friends, in particular sailing the crystal blue seas and sleeping on the white sand on deserted islands. Life was simple and so were my expectations.

Back then, my IBS was mild though annoying and I always spent more time on the toilet than anyone else but I coped.
I returned to New Zealand at the end of the year and settled back in with some difficulty, living at home and studying for a degree at University. But, by 23, I was off again and this time to Italy, where I worked as a teacher of English as a second language, trained to be a fashion designer and found a husband-to-be. Those years were spent moving from apartment to apartment, accumulating more and more stuff. I arrived with a suitcase of clothes and left nine years later with half a container of possessions which were shipped to us in New Zealand.

Careers, a child, much travelling and acquiring filled the next two decades. We bought, renovated and sold twelve homes in that time and climbed the financial ladder to a place of comfort.
My IBS rumbled along, worse now with all the stresses of family and ownership. We had so much more we had to focus on with the maintenance of our possessions – mowing lawns, make repairs, cleaning the multi-roomed house, organising, tidying and still accumulating. And of course earning the money to pay for all the possessions and their maintenance.

Then, ten years ago, my father died and my IBS worsened considerably and was no longer bearable. Busy, stressed, in pain most of the time and grieving. A recipe for disaster for the IBS gut. At this stage we lived in a newly built house over-looking the Pacific Ocean with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and two linked living rooms. For the new house, we sold most of our old furniture and bought new, still accumulating, thinking that more meant better. And still spending most of our weekends maintaining our possessions. No time to breathe.

And then, about a year ago I looked around me at all the trappings of my life with a five bedroom, three bathroom, two separate living room home even closer to the Pacific Ocean and wondered at how far I had moved from that simple life in Fiji with five or six dresses, two tops, two pairs of shorts and one skirt. It didn’t feel like progress, if anything it was a regression as far as quality of life was concerned. I felt the weight of our belongings and I started to dream and plan towards moving to a much smaller house on the beach somewhere in New Zealand. We both ran our businesses from home but there were still two rooms downstairs that were never used now that our son had left home.

Today I am well on my way to achieving that dream. I have systematically gone through the house and decluttered, with piles of possessions being tossed or donated or given to family. I can honestly say that what I now own has either a useful purpose or gives me joy. My wardrobe is tiny, we have many empty drawers and cupboards and still those empty rooms but today we are going to visit a house on the beach just 30 minutes away with our real estate agent. I feel lighter, more in control, a burden tossed from my back with the empty spaces around me. I can still do better in terms of furniture but that’s tough because we have so many family pieces that are truly beautiful but a new, smaller house will dictate what will happen in that department. My IBS has never been better – I follow a strict low Fodmap diet and I have no excess stuff to clutter my brain and cause stress.

I am looking forward to a return to the simplicity of that year I spent in Fiji.

I have something up my sleeve for those of you like me who have started to wonder about the sanity of possessing so much and how much this impacts your IBS. Watch out for an email on Thursday.