Easy Ways to Stop Being Stressed Out About Clutter!
| 3 min read
Clothes piling out of your closet, dishes filling up the sink, papers covering every surface—if this all sounds way too familiar, your messy home could be doing more harm than you might realize. Experts believe that clutter can lead to stress and anxiety and make it harder to relax at home. But even if you know that tidying up your home could make you more focused, calm and productive, the job can feel overwhelming. Luckily, there are some simple steps you can take to create a peaceful, clutter-free home.
- Pick a single room or space. We all have our weaknesses when it comes to clutter. Maybe you leave mail scattered across your kitchen counter or your dirty clothes all over the floor. Whatever your issues, tackle them one at a time starting with your biggest problem area. Here are ways to declutter each part of your home, from kitchen to entryway to bathroom.
- Visualize your goal. What do you want your space to look like? What function do you want it to serve? For example, maybe you want your office to be a clean space where you can get work done and be creative. By having these answers in mind, it’s easier to be motivated to declutter. One other trick: Try pinning pretty, clutter-free homes on Pinterest or making a vision board of what you want in your home.
- Don’t try to be perfect. You don’t need your house to look like a showroom—you are living in it every day, after all. Instead, just try to have two goals: to not feel stress when you glance around your home and to be able to find any item within three minutes.
- Get rid of things you haven’t used in a while. Little by little, spend a few minutes pulling out clothes you haven’t worn in a few months. If you see something around the house you don’t need, use or love anymore, immediately donate or recycle it. Do this until your closet, drawers and rooms around the house only contain things you actually use regularly.
- Put together a system for everything. Clutter can come in all forms, from laundry piles to in-progress craft projects, and it’s important to come up with systems for handling it. For example, if you’re fighting laundry piles, try this: Do two loads on Sundays, fold and put away on Mondays, do two loads Thursdays, fold and put away on Fridays.
For more on maintaining a healthy and clutter-free life, check out these blogs:
Photo Credit: Mark Wallace
