healthy living
Declutter and organize your world Make some emotional and physical room to breathe LEA HANSON
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ach time we fail to put something away is a missed opportunity to make a decision. Whether it’s procrastination or just plain messiness, challenge yourself this fall to change your habits and make a hundred small decisions every day. Making decisions feels good and creates closure on issues whether big (buying a house) or small (picking up a shirt from the floor and hanging it in the closet). It closes the loop on a project. The fewer open loops we have, the less stress we feel. Clutter in the home (or life) can easily lead to increased stress, anxiety, and can negatively affect relationships. Both physical and emotional space exist in our lives. Just like a loud, obnoxious, close-talking person can take up too much emotional space, too much “stuff ” in the home takes up too much physical space. Most people can easily see the benefits of getting rid of the unneeded stress that fills up our emotional space, but few place as much value on the benefits of ridding ourselves of unneeded items that fill up our physical space. Decluttering the physical space cannot be discounted; it is often just as rewarding as decluttering our emotional space. It’s simple: When we have clutter and unwanted stuff in our lives, there isn’t space for the real, valuable items we seek. Freeing your home of clutter is freeing your mind and spirit, too. While many think of deep cleaning and organizing as a springtime activity, the best organizers with the least amount of junk and clutter spend time each month, week, or even day getting rid of things they no longer need or want and/or putting away things that have been misplaced or left out. Those with lots of clutter are usually those who find the tasks the most daunting. But decluttering doesn’t have to be overwhelming and it can be done in small, manageable steps. Here are some tips: 16
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USE BOXES AND CONTAINERS Organizing items into smaller boxes and containers not only helps save enormous amounts of space, it also forces you to go through smaller items and assess their value to your life. Also, utilizing smaller containers gives every item a proper place in your home. Once everything has a proper place, it feels easier to tidy things up and put things away. PUT ALIKE THINGS TOGETHER Once you’ve put all the spatulas together in one drawer or all of your shoes on a shelving unit in your closet, you’ll soon realize you have no need for eight spatulas and 25 pairs of shoes. This simple move compartmentalizes a declutter process. It’s daunting to declutter an entire kitchen, but easy to put a few spatulas in a garage sale box. ACT LIKE YOU’RE MOVING Walk through rooms and go through doors with a packer’s mindset. Would you move this item to a new home? Whether or not you would move an item to a new home depends on many things: Is it in good shape? Is it something you’ve used recently? Is it something you use regularly? If
you’ve answered no to any of these questions, consider getting rid of it. ASSESS YOUR ROOMS Walk through the rooms of your home and assess where you use each item. Games are mostly used in the family room, kids’ toys are mostly used in their rooms. Remove things from rooms and put them in the room that makes more sense. Some rooms will empty out while others will fill up; this simple feeling of emptiness or fullness will make it clear which areas of your home (and life) have too much stuff. And, since it feels more urgent to declutter a full room, you may get just the motivation you need. THINK OF YOUR ITEMS AS HAVING VALUE Unused and unwanted items are still valuable, even if they’re no longer valuable to you. Whether you can sell them for money in a clothing exchange such as The Clothes Mentor or Once Upon a Child or hock them on Craig’s List, someone may want—and pay for—the things you aren’t using. And, even if you can’t trade them in for cash, challenge yourself to consider the value someone else would place on an item as something they could not otherwise afford.