Do you want to have a before and after picture of your house? Today we are going to talk about the benefits of decluttering, and then we will talk about a couple of resources you can use right away that will go deeper and help to get you moving in the right direction.
5 Perks of Decluttering:
1- You'll eat less and be healthier. Research done by Dr. Brian Wansink (author of "Slim By Design" and "Mindless Eating") showed that cluttered kitchens prompted people to eat 44% more of their snack food than a kitchen that was organized and decluttered. He says that it's better to change your immediate environment than to change your mind, and it's easier to become slim by design than become slim by willpower.
"Where a more organized kitchen may prompt self-control, a disorganized one does the opposite," Wansink says.
2- You'll spend less and make more. Obviously, the less you buy, the less you spend, right? But, even more important than that, a cluttered home can make it harder to find things when you need them. As a result, you will be more likely to run out to the store, either because you don't remember that you have the thing you are looking for, or because you don't have time to dart around the house trying to find it. Besides, once a space is clean and uncluttered, you will want to buy less, knowing that more stuff just fills up that open (and clean) space you just created.
In my decluttering, I recently went through a large stack of papers and mail we had accumulated over a long period of time and guess what I found? (I mean, besides mail from 2015) I found a $10 bill! Somehow a birthday card with $10 had snuck its way into that pile. That was a fun little surprise!
And how about the money you can make by selling the things you are choosing to get rid of? After you intentionally take the time to make piles of things to throw away, give away, and sell, you might be surprised at how much money you could make from your "sell" pile. (It all adds up!)
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3- You'll be able to focus better. There are a ton of reasons why people keep things that clutter their lives. You might get around to reading the books someday, or fit back into your clothes from 20 years ago, but the reality is we hang onto far more objects than we need, and instead of enhancing our lives, they become a symbol of what we don't have in order in our lives. Instead, we should keep things that inspire and motivate us, and get rid of the things that make us feel out of control or guilty.
Excess belongings compete for your attention and essentially make your brain multitask, resulting in decreased performance and increased stress.
If you want to be able to improve your concentration so you can focus better on your work and goals, getting rid of some of the distractions around you is a great first step!
4- You'll take care of and appreciate what you do have more. This was a harder lesson for me to learn. I grew up in a home where we did not have a lot of money, so we bought the cheapest versions of most things, thinking we were spending less that way. The truth is, though, that higher quality shoes, clothing, towels, and bedding typically last much longer than their cheap counter parts.
Over the long run, getting higher quality (sometimes more expensive) items can save us money. One of the best lessons we can learn when it comes to a minimalist mindset is that when we purchase less things, we can afford to purchase more high quality items, and we will be happier with those things.
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5- You'll be more productive. Reasons #1-4 feed into reason #5... The more you save time, stress less, spend less, and focus better, the more productive and efficient you'll be.
Another reason a clean home can relieve your stress is because the less you have, the less you have to clean. I mean, think about it... the less knick knacks you have, the less you have to dust and wipe down. On top of that, the less you have that could break, the less time you have to spend fixing things!
What can you get done in the time it would take to look for your lost item, or rush out to the store, or wipe down all your knick knacks? Think about what you would do with that extra time. Would you spend that time exercising? That would bring us back to reason #1: your health, so now we have come full circle.
