There’s plenty of reasons to declutter your home. Some of them might be obvious, but there’s a few you probably never thought of. Let’s start from the beginning.

When you look around your home, what do you see? Maybe you have too many kitchen gadgets, or your kids’ toys are strewn around their rooms, down the hallway and certainly not in the bins you bought earlier this year. Perhaps you have your dirty laundry in front of the machines and your clean laundry in the living room waiting to be folded? I know I currently have a stack of “waiting-to-be broken down” boxes in the garage not to mention an overflowing junk drawer or two.

If you can relate to any of these scenarios you are not alone. The good news is that there are steps that you can take when deciding what to keep when decluttering. The majority of us live with some clutter in our homes and cannot afford to bring in decluttering services everytime we have some work to do. In fact, our western society celebrates “things” and our possessions are seen as status symbols that both announce how wealthy we may be and are supposed to make us happy. The more we have, the happier we must be – right?

Well, it turns out that your clutter is affecting not only your physical space, but it is taking a toll on your wellbeing too.

Definition Of Clutter

So then, what is clutter? How do we decide what is cluttering our space and mind and what is actually important to us? Not to mention, how to declutter your mind and home when overwhelmed. These are great questions! Here are some ways to identify the clutter within your space:

• Clutter doesn’t usually have a “home” in our space, it is strewn around and moved from one place to another
• Clutter could be broken or in need or repair but we haven’t made the time to do so
• Clutter no longer serves the purpose it once did
• Clutter brings chaos and mess to a space and we are unsure how to manage it

In the words of Self-Care Coach Eleanor Brown, “Clutter is not just physical stuff. Clutter is anything that does not support your better self” (we love declutter quotes!).

The Not So Obvious Reasons To Declutter Your Home

Clutter has many impacts on our health and wellbeing. Clutter takes TIME from us; if we are always in search of something like clothing or keys we lose time in looking for these items.

Clutter takes away our FAMILY and FRIENDS because when our home is cluttered in excess we may hesitate to invite friends and family into our space due to embarrassment or simply a lack of space for them at all.

Clutter takes away our SLEEP; research has shown that people who try to sleep in a cluttered room have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.

Clutter takes PEACE from us because it can create frustration and unsettled feelings towards the space we live in. Interestingly, research has shown that mothers who live in a cluttered space have more of the stress hormone cortisol than moms whose space is not cluttered.

Clutter takes our WELLBEING from us in the case that it turns into complete disorganization and is excessive. In this kind of situation our home becomes dysfunctional and our ability to live healthily within it becomes limited.

All of these Sound like really good reasons to declutter your home.

Take Back Your Home From Clutter

Our homes and spaces within them should not feel chaotic; our homes are supposed to be our sanctuaries. Even more reason to declutter your home.

Many people consider decluttering to be synonymous with organizing but that isn’t always the case. In some cases we can find proper places for the things in our home but in many cases it is because we have “stuff” in excess that we actually need to purge and get rid of.

Tips for Decluttering:

• Remember to throw away your garbage
• Recycle where possible
• Donations are Helpful
• Decluttering is not a “one and done” job
• Do a Light Clean Often

When we clean up the clutter around us we realize that it took up as much emotional and mental space in our heads as it took up in our homes.