One Step From a Gomi-Yashiki: Too Ashamed to Call for Help

Let me be honest. My house is one step short of a gomi-yashiki.

Gomi-yashiki is the Japanese word for a garbage house, a home buried under things that were never thrown away.

It is not the state you see on television, where there is no floor left to step on. But there are too many things. Things I cannot bring myself to get rid of are piled up all over the house.

So lately I have started thinking about hiring a junk removal service or a cleanup company. And still, I cannot go as far as signing anything.

I do not want an easier life. I want a house that feels settled

What made me think about a cleanup company was not a wish to take it easy.

It is not a story about housework being hard, either. The problem is the inside of the house itself.

There are many things, and many of them I cannot decide about on my own. Every time I set out to tidy up, my hands stop somewhere. It seems wasteful. It might still be usable. Someone might want it. While I am thinking that, it piles up again.

Because the inside of the house is not in order, my life itself does not feel settled. That feeling has been with me for a long time.

The biggest resistance was letting another person see my home

Hiring a cleanup company also means letting a stranger into the house.

Honestly, I feel a strong resistance to having the current state of this house seen.

Embarrassed is not a strong enough word. It feels like showing my own way of living.

It is less that an untidy room gets seen. It is more that the person who lives this way gets seen, just as he is.

I looked it up, and this was the number one reason

It bothered me, so I looked it up.

Taskaji, a Japanese housekeeping and tidying service, surveyed its own users in 2023. There were 287 answers. The results came out like this.

• People who said they felt resistance before using the service: 72.8 percent
• Reason number one, resistance to inviting another person into the home: 62.5 percent
• Reason number two, a feeling that they could do it themselves if they tried hard enough: 43.8 percent
• Reason number three, guilt about having another person do the housework: 40.4 percent

So most of the people in that survey stop for the same reason I do. I had been thinking that maybe I was the strange one. I was wrong. Everyone stops at the same place.

Things about the house are not mine alone to decide

The house is not my problem alone. There is family. Each person has a rhythm of living, and each person has belongings.

Tidying up and clearing things out cannot move forward on my judgment alone. That is exactly why I become careful about letting a third party come in.

I can pay the money. The problem was on the inside

I looked up the going rates for junk removal. About 20,000 to 30,000 yen for one light truck load. From 50,000 to 80,000 yen for a two ton truck. For a whole house, there are cases over 200,000 yen.

On a pension, that is a large expense. But it is not an amount beyond me. If I put a little aside every month, it is within reach.

The problem is not the price. It is the resistance to the act of asking. A man does his own things himself. That old Showa way of thinking, from the era I grew up in, is still stuck somewhere in my head.

But the body is honest. My back hurts. My knees feel heavy. Just carrying something heavy leaves me out of breath. It does not go the way it went when I was young. I know that, and still my pride will not let me ask.

The companies are not as shocked as we imagine

There was one more thing I learned by looking it up.

From what I read, cleanup and junk removal companies see more than ten houses like mine in a single month.

Seen from their side, my house may even be one of the lighter ones. What I have been calling embarrassing is, for them, an ordinary sight.

They also take care with the privacy of the people who hire them.

• They park the work vehicle a little away from the house
• Early morning or late night work can be arranged
• There is an option to have only female staff come

I do not want the neighbors to find out. I do not want to be seen. The companies already understand that feeling. I was the only one carrying it alone.

My wife is not against it, and I still cannot decide

My wife is not negative about a cleanup company. I think her position is that if it makes things easier, then fine.

So the reason I cannot decide is on my side.

In my head I understand it. At my age, with the strength I have left, it is better to lean on what can be leaned on.

Asking a company for help is not a defeat and not running away.

That is what I think. And still I cannot take the step.

Yet more than 80 percent of the people who used it said they would recommend it

There was one more number in the survey that caught me.

More than 80 percent of the people who actually used a housekeeping or tidying service answered that they would recommend it to others.

In other words, the one still hesitating is me, and most of the people who went ahead feel glad that they did.

Looking at that number pushes me forward a little again. But I want to think about it a bit longer. That is my honest feeling right now.

Even so, I do not think it is fine to leave it like this

What catches me most is showing another person how sloppy my own living has become.

The house is not untidy only because I have been busy. I think part of it is my character.

Is it all right to pay money and hand that part over to someone else? Somewhere in me, that doubt is there.

But that does not mean I think it is fine to keep doing nothing.

The next step is not a contract. An estimate is enough

Undecided as I am, there is something I found out while looking into it.

With junk removal and cleanup companies, there is no need to sign right away. Many of them offer a free estimate.

So the order goes like this.

• First, get an estimate. It is free, and it can often be finished by phone or on the web
• If the price feels right, place the order. If it does not fit, it is fine to say no
• On the day itself, some companies have an option where being present is not required

I could not move because I was weighing it as a contract. An estimate is a lower step. I can turn it down, and I can just look.

The conclusion is that there is no conclusion

As of now I have not actually hired anyone. I am not able to decide quickly, either.

Even so, I keep thinking about how to do something about this state.

This is a story with no conclusion. It is also a record kept so that I do not stop thinking.

If anyone else is standing still at the same spot, what I want to say is that an answer does not have to come right away. Only, it may be worth moving as far as an estimate. That is where I intend to start.

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