De-stress your Life – Unclutter Your Life

“Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein

Everything is made of energy and everything is vibrating with energy. There are many different things that can cause and create negative energy in your home. They can affect your physical health, your emotional well being, your relationships, and your finances. To establish a healthy lifestyle you have to create positive energy around you.

Creating a healthy lifestyle takes diligence. In this article I am going to discuss Clutter. Clutter is defined as ‘A confused or disordered state or collection; a jumble’. Clutter is the things which have accumulated over time in your home and which have just gathered and you’ve not had the time to sort. It could be a pile of papers needing to be sorted through, drawers and cupboards overflowing with a wide array of items, a garage stuffed with everything except the car, even a bulging handbag or briefcase.

Clutter is found in drawers, cupboards, wardrobes, basements, attics, spare rooms, storage areas all over floors, walls, in your sheds, cars, garage, and desks. It is not just what you can see. It is also what you cannot see that is hidden in any container, whether a tiny box, a large cupboard or a whole room. If it occupies a part of your home, then it also affects a part of you and your life.

Clutter can make you ill, mentally, emotionally and physically. It produces an unpleasant, heavy energy which affects you and everyone who lives surrounded by it. Your body absorbs this stale energy and, over a period of time, it begins to affect every part of you. It makes you feel drained, tired, congested in your body, confused in your mind and stuck in your life.

Clutter invades your space and takes over your life. Clutter makes you disorganised, stressed, out of control. Clutter muddies your thinking, takes over your home or workplace and distracts you from your priorities. Clutter can stop you achieving your goals. Clutter affects your self-confidence and the image you present to others.

A cluttered home is a visual and psychic drain. All that stuff makes you fatigued. The most obvious toll that clutter takes is added stress on one’s life. Clutter is a distraction that can make it difficult to relax or focus on anything.

I was recently working with a guy who had separated from his wife. Although there were a variety of reasons for this, one in particular caused great problems in the relationship. He described his bedroom. How the floor was littered with clothing. The bed side tables covered with all sorts of items. The wardrobes always open with clothing hanging off the hangers. He said sometimes making his way into bed was like going on an archaeological dig, having to remove the piles of clothes on the bed. The dining room table was already covered with papers, mail and bills, that his family rarely eat there, eating their meals sitting on a couch balancing their meal on their lap. The kitchen always resembled a war zone with clutter everywhere. He said this mayhem carried on in every room in the house. He said that his wife and him used to fight all the time, and clutter was at the root of it. He just didn’t understand why she kept all that junk or how she could live like that. He got to the point where he could no longer live in a ‘hovel’. At times he tried to sort things out, throwing as much away as possible, but the arguments this created were a nightmare. Having guests over became an embarrassment, he couldn’t let friends come over to see him, and was ashamed when anyone did enter the house. To him, his home, rather than a haven from stress, was a big stressor in itself, and created frustration, exhaustion and at times anger, creating conflict in his marriage. This situation effected him so greatly, that he said ‘It got to the point that walking into the house would just totally stress me out. I worked late hours to avoid going home. Nothing I said to her about the clutter would have any impact. It resulted in me looking at the place I lived as a house, it wasn’t a home. It wasn’t the place I wanted to be’.
Let me give you a few statistics.

• 9,000,000 hours per day are lost searching for misplaced items every year.
• 80% of the clutter in your home is a result of disorganization, not lack of space, and getting rid of excess clutter would eliminate 40% of the housework in the average home.
• 23% of adults say they pay bills late (and must pay fees) because they lose them.
• 25% of people with two-car garages don’t park any cars in them and 32% park only one.

Does clutter affect you.

• Do you like to have your home neat enough to have drop-in company?
• Are you happy to be company-ready after 15 minutes of cleaning?
• Is your home organized enough that you can generally find everything you’re looking for without having to search?
• Can you truly relax in your home, or is it an energy drain?

Once you understand the negative effects clutter could be having upon your life you will feel the urge to get rid of some. For many people, this can be the hardest part: deciding what is clutter, and what you really can’t live without.
A good starting point is deciding what is clutter to you. Possessions which are clutter include things:

• you don’t use
• don’t know you have
• don’t like (yes, we all have some of these, but we still keep them!)
• can’t find (do you know where the instructions for your VCR are right now?)
• don’t know how to use
• are broken or obsolete
• stir up bad memories
• you don’t want to find (bills are often left at the bottom of piles, it’s like hiding htem under the carpet)

Why would anyone keep something they never use? Look around your own home right now. How many things can you see that you never use?
Clearing your clutter is like cleaning up your body and life. It has a wonderfully therapeutic knock-on effect that will make you feel healthier and more positive each day.

Clearing your clutter is a way of simplifying your life. Getting rid of what is not necessary or not working for you any more, makes life easier for yourself. You can get down to the things that really matter to you, have more time to enjoy what you really love doing, and save time and money too. It helps you regain clear thinking and find direction in life. It is a way of getting yourself back in balance, improving your health and achieving that wonderful feeling of well-being which you desperately want but which you can’t seem to get.

Clearing the clutter in your home, your car, and any other area belonging to you, unblocks and frees up the energy in the atmosphere, bringing balance back into your personal space. In turn, this releases large amounts of stuck energy in your mind, body and life, helps to get you back into balance, and gives you a sense of freedom and well-being. This is when your life can begin to change because you are no longer being held back. You can move forward with energy, motivation, enthusiasm and confidence.

It will give you a sense of calm. Imagine walking in to a room where the tops are cleared off and there are no papers and mess scattered about. How does it make you feel?

So, how can you de-clutter your home , to de-stress you, and begin to relax and enjoy your home?

• Start now. Start somewhere. Start anywhere!
• Create the time and commitment to do it.
• Start small. Starting small is important so you don’t get overwhelmed and give up.
• Your home did not get cluttered overnight and it won’t get cleaned up over night either. Begin by devoting 30 minutes a day to de-cluttering. As you get momentum add time to each session, but never exceed 3 hours at a time. Remember to leave time for taking out the trash, putting away boxes, and cleaning freed up space
• Start with a drawer instead of a whole room; or one corner of your desk instead of your whole office. An important tool is a timer. Set it for 30 minutes and then stop and take a break. Congratulate yourself, rest, and schedule your next half hour.
• Going room by room, divide your things into four boxes: things to donate, things to throw away, things to keep, and things to store. If you don’t need it or love it, consider getting rid of it.
• Go through your box of things to keep and find a place for everything. Make it a logical place that’s in the same area where it’ll need to be used.
• Finish one room before moving on to the next.

Score Your Way To Good Health - With Our Healthy Lifestyle Plan

Score your way to good health with our healthy lifestyle plan and it's unique 70 point weekly scorecard!

Click here to find out more