Why You Need to Get Rid of Clutter in Your Home

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Hmm, ever hear yourself say any of these?

I can’t find my keys and I have to leave in 2 minutes!!

Where are my shoes! My ride will be here any second!!

My house is such a mess and I have no energy to do anything about it.

No, you can’t come over! My house is a disaster!!

Do any of these sound familiar? Have you caught yourself saying or thinking any of these this week? Or in the past month? Chances are you have (or something close to it) and you’ve probably said them more than once.

Unfortunately, this is what clutter does to us. It causes us unnecessary stress. When we can’t find our shoes or our keys or anything else we need right now, we freak out. Our minds race to where they could be and as time passes and we can’t find what we’re looking for, the stress builds.

And what about when our energy is zapped as we look at the condition of our home? Or we push people away who we love because we don’t want them to see our home in its condition.

I know how it makes me feel. Anxious, depressed, unmotivated. When I haven’t cleaned up my kitchen the night before, my stress level is immediately heightened the moment I step into my kitchen the next morning. My mind races to all the mess I see. My mood is killed. It didn’t matter how I felt 5 minutes before I walked into my kitchen.

And when my laundry is all over the place, I’m even more unmotivated to do anything with it. It’s only when someone is out of something that usually snaps me out of my fog.

Your home may be so overrun with clutter. And you may not know where to even begin. But I know staying in the mess that you’re in isn’t helping or serving you well either.

And here’s why you are better off getting rid of your clutter. It affects us in these 4 crucial ways.

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Visually

When we see it all, clutter causes us unnecessary stress and anxiety. Remember when I talked about not finding something? Well, that’s normally an everyday occurrence when our home is a cluttered mess. We spend more time looking for the things we want.

And how about seeing it all? When we see it day in and day out, our brain gets used to it. We don’t realize what it’s really doing to us. We think we might be fine but are we really? We’re probably living in a fog from all the clutter. Thinking it’s not affecting us but it really is. Constantly seeing it in every moment you spend in your home. The only time you don’t see it is when you’re sleeping but I imagine as soon as you wake up you never feel peace after seeing all of the clutter.

Mentally

Clutter zaps our energy. It sucks the life out of us. Ever notice how you feel when you leave your home? When you aren’t surrounded by all that mess and clutter. Can you breathe lighter? But when you get back home, how do you feel? Clutter puts us in a depressed state. We can’t be our true selves with it all.

And we are our worst critics for ourselves. What do you tell yourself when you are surrounded by all of your clutter? That you’re lazy, unmotivated, a bum? None of these are true. But it’s what you’ve been telling yourself for a long time so you believe it as true. And how is that helping you? It’s not. But it’s going to be hard telling yourself you aren’t these things with all of the clutter around you.

You aren’t going to believe they’re true.

Emotionally

When I said that clutter sucks the life out of us, that affects us mentally as well as emotionally. But I also want to talk about ways that clutter affects us emotionally. Remember when I mentioned in the beginning about not letting people into your home? People you love and care for. Friends and family members. You are embarrassed by the condition of your home so you turn away everyone you know and not let them in your home. And that tortures you.

You would love to open up your home and let the people you love in. Girlfriends could come over and you could socialize with them in your own home instead of always having to go out to meet them. How does that make you feel? Wouldn’t you like that?

Physically

Do you love doing housework? Spending time on your weekends dusting and mopping? Tidying up around your home so you can actually vacuum it?

And how easy is it to do housework in your home? Can you get to your surfaces easily to dust them? Can you easily mop and vacuum or do you have to move things around to do that?

How about your kitchen countertops? Are they easy to clean or do you have piles of stuff all around your kitchen that you can barely see your countertops?

I read a book a while back called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. In her book, she says “eliminating clutter would cut down the amount of housework in the average home by 40 percent”. Say what!! 40%! That’s close to half the amount of housework we’d have to do just by getting rid of all the clutter.

Now, who wouldn’t want that!

Your Reality

Now, I’m going to be honest here. You’ve probably been living with this clutter for a very long time. If that’s the case, you may not even realize what clutter is doing to you. And it makes sense why we think we are staying “comfortable” with all the clutter. We truly think we’re better off staying this way since knowing we have so much work to do to clear all of the clutter.

But staying in this same situation isn’t good for your overall health. So you have to ask yourself this question:

Is it worth doing the work so you can actually ENJOY YOUR LIFE or do you want to stay the same and slowly diminish the quality of your life?

Answer that question honestly. Only you know yourself. But what I do know is that we are ALL special. EVERYONE deserves to live their best life.

And when it comes to clearing the clutter, no one expects (and you shouldn’t either) that you’ll have your home decluttered and organized in a week or a month, or even a year. I don’t know how much you’re dealing with. But I do know we can all work slowly to remove the clutter and clean up our space.

Start small. A closet or a drawer. And remember this: Action brings Results. You’ll always be improving your home and yourself just by starting and doing the work.

Remember this: your clutter didn’t happen in months and maybe even years so this will more than likely be a long process. Be kind to yourself as you work through your clutter and celebrate every win, big and small.

RELATED ARTICLES ON KEEPING A HOME CLEAN AND ORGANIZED

7 Ways to Have a Clutter-Free Home

Get Rid of Paper Clutter Forever

How to Declutter Your Kitchen Countertops and Keep Them That Way

11 Habits That Will Keep Your Home Clean

Clutter is Killing Your Happiness and it Shouldn’t Be

Stop Letting Clutter Steal Your Time

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