Ready to DeClutter? You Can Change How Your Stuff Impacts You, Your Space, and Your Time

Clutter. What does that word conjure for you? How does your energy shift when you hear it? For many, clutter is a chronic challenge – and its causes, as well as its impact, go far beyond mere ‘messiness.’

Clutter, clutter everywhere…

Living life means interacting with lots and lots of things. The more engaged we are, the more attached we become.

As you can imagine, this is an important insight into why we may sometimes acquire things that later become ‘clutter’ for us. (And when I speak of ‘things’ in this post, I also mean virtual clutter – the articles that we save, the shortcuts that we place on our desktops to visit later. In short, I mean anything that we, in some manner, come to possess.)

Clutter and Letting Go…

So, not only is it easy to acquire things that we may not need (or even really want) but also — and this is important — it seems that it may be physically difficult to let those things go.

In a study conducted at Yale, researchers identified the part of the brain that is engaged in the act of letting go. What they found was:

Your brain views the loss of one of your valued possessions as the same as something that causes you physical pain.

And the more you’ve committed emotionally or financially to an item, the more you want to keep it around.

Clutter, Your Space, and Your Time

While letting go of clutter may be painful, its impact on you is even more so. Clutter affects your energy, your productivity, and your stress level. everything about how you spend your time and, ultimately, how you live your life.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but I think it isn’t. Clutter is constantly competing for your attention, no matter where you are or what you are doing.

• Your cluttered desktop is draining, as the piles of paper catch your eye and increase your stress when you try to focus on completing an article for your e-zine.
• Your cluttered closet means that it takes you longer to decide what to wear in the morning.
• And your cluttered inbox keeps you from getting to the e-mails that matter.

Clutter: What Helps?

Well, for starters, accumulating less means that you’ll have less to let go of later. This is a shift that you can engage with gradually. You can give yourself a lift right away by cultivating gratitude and an attitude of abundance.

It also helps to reward yourself every time that you let go of something that contributes to your clutter. Letting go gets easier with practice, and validating your efforts helps you want to continue.

Finally, cultivating boundaries is key to taking back the space that clutter co-opts. Whether it’s physical or mental clutter, your boundaries, and most especially your internal boundaries, help you cut down on distractions and focus on what you need to. You can think of your boundaries as clearing clutter and creating space.

And once you experience how good it feels to have that clutter-free space, you will feel extra-motivated to let go of more ‘stuff.’ That’s a real win-win!

Source by Paula Eder