Lighter
I don't know about you, but when my house is clean and neat I feel lighter. I am happier and feel more energized. I seriously cannot breathe if my house is cluttered. It will sometimes still happen though as I am busy mother of four and I run a successful business out of my home. I also don't want to spend too much time always cleaning and organizing as my children are growing up right before my eyes and I want to spend as much time as I can with them. With that being said, I find myself doing a little bit of organizing and throwing things out here and there through out the day. What about you guys? Do you ever find yourself looking around your home and thinking what is all this junk? Especially if you have kids, it seems like stuff will pile up faster than ever. I actually have a box with ALL of my firstborn's school papers and I mean ALL of them. I don't need all of that. I am planning to go through it all this month and purge as much as I can. I also have a box of old memories from my childhood and from my teen years with old pictures, notes, and souvenirs. I have moved this around from so many places and I hardly ever go in there to look at it. It's gotta go!
How do we start? Well, I would suggest one room at a time, one box at a time. Maybe start with the smallest room first. Go through all the junk, have a bag for salvation army and a bag for garbage. I have been forced to do this quite often as we have moved several times and each time we moved I go through this process. We get rid of all the old broken crap that has been sitting in places we could not see like under the beds! We find things that were once lost. Sometimes we will find ourselves sitting and pondering old memories when we find an old yearbook or picture from a few years ago. My daughter and I are guilty of this. My husband would find us reminiscing in between a pile of boxes and have to snap us back to reality at least once with every move.
When you are all finished organizing and purging what is no longer needed in your home, you will feel like a load has been lifted off your shoulders. You will feel refreshed and energized. You will enjoy your home and space so much more. I also feel that less is more. Get rid of as much as you can that takes up space and is not being used. If you are someone who likes to hold on to things just because they look cool or because it has some sentimental value, that is okay as long as you can keep it to a minimum. We might not realize this, but a cluttered house actually has an impact on our well being. See below an excerpt from "Psychology Today."
The two factors of attachment to home and possession self-extension positively predicted the individual’s sense of the psychological safety of the home. Clutter, though, was negatively related to the psychological sense of home and, ultimately, to well-being. As the authors concluded, “Clutter is often an insidious and seemingly harmless outgrowth of people’s natural desire to appropriate their personal spaces with possessions … when [clutter] becomes excessive, it can threaten to physically and psychologically entrap a person in dysfunctional home environments which contribute to personal distress and feelings of displacement and alienation. Living in clutter impedes your identification with your home, which should be a retreat from the outside world and a place to feel pride. As we see in the University of New Mexico study, having too many of your things in too small a place will lead you to feel that your home environment is your enemy, not your friend.
I hope with this spring air coming in, it will motivate you to take a good look at what needs to be cleared out and organized in order to promote a healthy peace of mind. Allow some empty space as well that will offer a feeling of lightness and fill it with a picture or an item that brings tranquility.
May we all become a little lighter each day...
Many Blessings, Marcia
