Clutter

“Why do we have all this junk?!”

It’s a question I ask myself quite often.

We have a small house, and it doesn’t take much to make it look and feel cluttered.

Don’t get me wrong, I love our small house. It’s cozy. It has plenty of space to work and live. It promotes “togetherness” as a family. But, as I tell my overly generous mother-in-law, our house is “full.” It has “exceeded capacity.” It is, in a word, cluttered.

It’s not that we’re disorganized. We don’t have a bunch of stuff lying around that needs to be put away. Everything is away, there’s just too much of it.

One of my jobs in our house is dusting. I like dusting and find it therapeutic. I clear a surface, I dust it, then I dust everything that was on that surface and put it back in a way that is pleasing to the eye. It has a creative element.

It also allows me to take an ongoing inventory of our stuff and, when I’m feeling bold, try to get rid of some of it. The problem is that the majority of our stuff has sentimental value. It has been in our family for a very long time, is a memento of a great experience, or is a reminder of an achievement. Almost none of our stuff is frivolous (believe me, I’ve looked).

My point is that clutter can impact our lives. It can affect the way we work and live, our outlook, and can impact our clarity. It can make us feel tired and lethargic.

This includes not only the physical clutter that surrounds us, but also our mental and emotional clutter—it’s all related.

As we move through the day, are we able to work on one thing at a time? Are we distracted by all of the things going on in our lives? When we’re engaged in an activity, is all our other “stuff” organized or are we constantly having to move it so it’s not in your way.

Similarly, do we move through our life with a clear heart? Do we enter each day with positive energy? If we have emotional clutter, it’s not so easy to just move it so it’s not in our way. On the other hand, life marches onward and we don’t always have time to address emotional clutter when it’s in the way. So, what’s the answer? Dusting!

We don’t always have to address emotional issues every time they pop up—some of us would do nothing else—but we do have to dust them (process them) regularly or they will eventually get worse.

When I get distracted with life’s busyness or emotional issues—a daily occurrence—I try to clear the (mental) surface, dust it clean, then take each object that occupied that surface (my conscious thought), dust it, and put it back in a way that is pleasing to the eye, or put it out of sight—until I need it or able to address it. In this case “pleasing to the eye” means organized in such a way that it is either helpful to what I am doing.

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves what our things are giving us in return for all of that dusting. Do they serve some purpose? Do they give us pleasure? If the answer is no, or even maybe, get rid of them! Be strict. Be firm! Do this for all of your clutter.

If your mental or emotional knick-knacks aren’t worth the time it takes to dust them, give them the heave-ho. Only keep the mental stuff that gives you something back. Only keep the positive emotional elements. It is often by dusting them (processing them) that we truly recognize them as unhelpful or unnecessary. But once you have done that, don’t just put them back on the table.

Give yourself some space to live and breathe—in all aspects of your life.