If you are spending a good chunk of time in the morning playing hide-and-seek with your keys that are buried under everything else in your house, this article is for you. It has been discovered that decluttering can decrease your household work by 40%. Not only does it free up space, it is a great way to relieve some stress too.
When we posted on our Instagram about how cleaning can alleviate feelings of depression, the Sipping Thoughts Tribe agreed wholeheartedly. And for good reason. So, let’s look at the effects of clutter a little more closely.
How Does Clutter Affect You?
Messiness and clutter have been linked to many problems; physical, mental, as well as spiritual. With all the items collecting dust or developing mold as they lay strewn about, there are more chances of developing health issues like allergies or asthma. Not only that, some of the items like the stacks of paper can be a fire-hazard, while others can even block your way from escaping in case there’s an emergency. A study showed a connection between increased behaviors of unhealthy eating to cluttered environments too. People were twice more prone to consuming junk food like cookies in a messy room more than they were in a cleaner one.
It affects you even more mentally. Loss of focus is one of the most common consequences of clutter. Research also suggests that the appearance of chaos can often lead one to feel anxious, overwhelmed, and even more stressed than the situation calls for. It hampers your sleep, your mood, and even reduces your ability to make decisions.
Clutter has spiritual drawbacks too. Spiritual experts often link clutter with blocked energy. Your external state is the mirror image of your internal state, and as the former is chaotic, so is the latter. They go as far as believing that you may be blocking opportunities for a better life with the stagnancy that the messy environment brings into your life. In Feng Shui, the popular Chinese technique of arranging your interiors to promote a harmonious flow of the energy of life, or ‘Chi’, clutter is the enemy of peace. The interrupted flow of energy caused by it can leave you feeling drained or stuck.
What Advice Do The Declutter Experts Have For You?
If the thought of getting started is making you feel overwhelmed, there are a few tips from decluttering experts that might help you with this messy situation. But before we move to the tips, the first step is to recognize if your surroundings are cluttered. If you have more than one junk drawer, if you see no free surfaces in your house, or if you feel severe anxiety at the thought of cleaning, it may be time for a decluttering session.
Here are some tips to help you get started:
#1. Look for joy:
Marie Kondo, the renowned tidying-up expert, suggests using the ‘KonMari’ method. Here, you get rid of anything that does not “spark joy”. This makes your entire house a more positive environment on top of being clean.
#2. An eviction notice for your clothes:
The clothing items that don’t fit you are not only taking up extra space in your wardrobe, but also taking up your time when you get ready in the morning. If you aren’t ready to donate clothes just yet, Declutter with Shreya on Instagram suggests picking a time frame of six months or a year. If the clothes still don’t fit within that time, you have to let them go.
#3. Your stuff needs space from you:
Sort Story by Smriti posts “Tidy Thursday Tip’ on her Instagram that you can follow and learn as you go. In one of the tips, she suggests using up to 80% of your space to give a cleaner look because just the availability of space doesn’t mean that you have to use it.
#4. Drawing a line with your drawers:
If your drawers hold all kinds of items altogether, ‘Organise With Ease by Rohini’ has some tips for you. She suggests grouping the similar items together, like clothes, skincare, and cosmetics for easier access. Using dividers can also help with keeping the items in a neater way. And you can always label the drawers to save yourself time when looking for something.
#5. Innovative inventory:
We all tend to buy multiples of a single item (say like toothbrushes, body wash, batteries, toilet paper, etc.) and leave them in the cupboards. The boxes of the items end up taking more space and also the clutter of everything makes it hard to find what we need. Taking the example of Sorted Homes’ Karishma Khanna, try unboxing the items that you have multiples of, and placing them in bins or storage boxes instead.
Once you get used to having a cleaner, and more open space it will become harder to live in the clutter again. Take it from someone who did not have the motivation to declutter, who then ended up having the tidiest room in her entire hostel. It only happened once the responsibility fell on my shoulders. So, this weekend put on some music or a podcast, and give yourself a much needed reset of your environment.
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