“Clear your clutter and you clear your mind. Clear your mind and you clear your whole life.” ~ Luminita D. Saviuc

Clear Your Clutter

It wasn’t a sudden epiphany or a particular lightbulb moment that led me to realize that unsorted, unorganized and largely unnecessary material possessions had taken over my life. I’d known it for some time and tried to organize it a few times, but I was doing it all wrong. Just dumping things I didn’t need only worked temporarily, and soon the clutter would re-accumulate.

What I needed was a shift in my attitude towards clutter. I realized that clutter wasn’t just crowding my home, it was hurting my productivity, making me anxious and taking over my life. That’s when I started to think of all the ways clutter was affecting my life and all the reasons I needed to clean up. Becoming conscious of these reasons helped me a great deal in decluttering my life, and so I share my reasons here with you:

6 Serious Reasons to Clear Your Clutter

1. Clutter Siphons Your Energy

“Every minute you spend looking through clutter, wondering where you put this or that, being unable to focus because you’re not organized costs you: time you could have spent with family or friends, time you could have been productive around the house, time you could have been making money.” ~ Jean Chatzky, Financial Journalist

I would just take a look around the house and feel like I’ll never get through the day. I’d wonder how the house could look so horrific. Why were there so many toys on the floor, such a large pile of laundry and so many papers on the coffee table? I’d be drained of all my energy before I could even get to work.

Clutter does that to you – it drains your energy and saps away your focus. Just like random conversations and loud bad music doesn’t let you focus on the book you are trying to read, clutter lying around the house or your workstation doesn’t let you live or work in peace. It makes you feel tired and dampens your productivity. Getting organized is the only way and sorting your laundry every day, filing your papers regularly, organizing your closets and making your bed every morning is a good way to start.

2. Clutter Affects Your Mental Health

“If you have clutter in your real life, your tangible life, then it really adds to the emotional clutter in your mind.”  ~ Guiliana Rancic 

Studies have proven that clutter hampers your ability to focus, think and process information. It fogs your brains, overloads your senses and causes serious problems like anxiety, stress and even depression. In fact, research also found that clutter negatively impacts mood and self-esteem. So why would you gather up a bunch of stuff that is going to add to your worries? Instead, go minimal, and try to restrain your urge to amass a ton of material possessions.

3. Clutter Costs You

If you have debt I’m willing to bet that general clutter is a problem for you too.” ~  Suze Orman, Personal Finance Guru

Clutter is not something that only builds up when you go shopping without any restraint. It also happens when you are trying to be conscious but you really don’t know how much stuff you have and how much more you need. Every dollar adds up to a pretty big number pretty fast. So now you have a big hole in your wallet and more stuff you didn’t really need.

De-cluttering helps you organize better so you know exactly what you have and just what you don’t need to buy. Believe it or not, I saved a lot of money over the span of a year just by organizing possessions and not amassing more. If you only had fewer clothes, you’d care for them more. You’d store them better and they’d be newer for longer, requiring you to buy lesser new clothes.

4. Clutter Stresses You

“In the scope of a happy life, a messy desk or an overstuffed coat closet is a trivial thing, yet I find – and I hear from other people that they agree – that getting rid of clutter gives a disproportionate boost to happiness.” ~ Gretchen Rubin

You’ve probably noticed while trying to cook an elaborate meal within a certain timeframe, that you start getting stressed after a point. Time is running out, guests are about to arrive, the sauce has been boiling for too long now and you just can’t find the salt that’s right in front of you. It’s right there but you can’t see it because the counter is cluttered and you are stressed. That is why so many chefs obsess over having a clean working area.

That’s exactly what happens when important documents go missing and you break a sweat trying to find them, even though you’ll ultimately find them somewhere pretty obvious. Clutter stresses your brain and makes simple jobs complicated and you end up spending hours doing something that should have only taken a few minutes.

5. Clutter Stifles Your Creativity

“I’m not very good at writing songs when I have a lot of clutter in my mind.” ~ Solange Knowles 

Creativity needs inspiration, and cluttered surroundings have very little inspiration to offer. If you have to climb up on a ladder and rifle through a barrage of old books, papers, and knick-knacks to dig out that canvas you bought a while ago, you might never come around to painting it. If you have a clean bookshelf that’s duly organized though, you might just pick up that copy of Paradise Lost and read it again. If only you could organize all your belongings and surround yourself with things that inspire you and spark your imagination, things would certainly look on the creative front.

6. Clutter Takes Away the Beauty of Your Home

“When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and ‘good, orderly direction’ to enter.” ~  Julia Cameron 

A beautiful home is a happy home, and beautiful homes aren’t made of expensive things. They are made of well-organized spaces. Clutter can destroy your notion of a beautiful home and prevent you from being happy in your home. It ruins the prettiest of photographs. A pair of dirty socks on the table in the background will wreck any picture.

If the first thought that scares you when you hear the word guests, is the thought of cleaning up, then clutter is ruining your happiness. As you start to clear your clutter,  you organize better, clean up faster and make your home beautiful.

Ready to Clear Your Clutter?

Getting rid of clutter is probably the best gift you could give yourself. It helps you in so many ways that you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. So the next time you wonder why you are running out of storage space and still have nothing to wear, grab a large giveaway box and start getting rid of the things you don’t need. Someone else could really benefit from them, and you certainly will benefit from the peace of mind that comes with a clutter-free home.

What about you? When will you clear your clutter?

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