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Why Declutter?

As I looked back over the decluttering articles, I realized that I have covered how to start, but never WHY to declutter. So here it is:

Clutter Defined

Clutter is anything you have that you don’t use, or don’t take care of. These things are interwoven: if you use it, you will take care of it, and if you truly love it, even if you don’t use it, you will also take care of it. So, to borrow an example from Peter Walsh ( It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff), if you claim you love those lace table cloths from Grandma, why are you storing them in paper bags in the garage?

It’s clutter.

What Clutter Does To Us

Clutter can be a killer. And it doesn’t have to reach the levels we read about in the news, where a pile of clutter fell over on someone and killed them. Clutter can weigh down our energy in a way that it becomes a stressor. And we all know what too much stress can do.

Here are five reasons to declutter:

1. Less stuff to store. Think about it. Clutter is more stuff in your space. That means you have to spend more time cleaning it, storing it, moving it around and searching through it. With less stuff around that we don’t use or take care of, we suddenly have more space.
2. Less stuff to maintain. None of us buys things to let them fall apart through disuse. So even if we are not actively using it, we still feel its pull on our time. The china we never use still has to be cleaned when it becomes dusty. The gadget we thought would save us so much time, sitting on our counter, still has to have the food spatters wiped off of it. Less stuff means less maintenance.
3. Less stuff to pay for. It seems they make gadgets to do everything these days. I remember my purchase of the grilled sandwich maker. I used it once, then went back to the standard frying pan for making grilled cheese sandwiches. But I still had to pay for it. The two sandwiches I made with it ended up costing about $15.00 a piece. At the time that was over an hour’s worth of work teaching a classroom of people who didn’t want to be there. Much too expensive.
4. More space. Once you declutter, you will gain not only physical space, but mental space. You will find out that tossing fourteen half-finished craft projects will take a bit of a load off. When I got rid of 80% of my books, I experienced a surge in creativity unlike anything I’ve felt before.
5. More freedom. With less stuff, you have more options. Your living spaces can be smaller. Your activities are less restricted. Your time is not taken up with maintaining or paying for things you don’t use.

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I hope that you will experiment in how decluttering can free you up. Start small, with a drawer or a bag. You will find the benefits in getting rid of the clutter.

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Photo by evelynishere

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