There is an abundance of tutorials, how-to articles, and books out there on decluttering your home. There are several right here on Home Made Lovely. Major universities have done studies on the effects of clutter on our mental and physical health. But why does getting rid of the clutter matter? Why is decluttering important?
In this post, I’m going to share why I think decluttering your home matters so much.
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Our homes have a major effect on our wellbeing.
According to a 2009 UCLA study:
- women who see their homes as cluttered have an elevated level of the hormone cortisol, which can affect everything from our blood pressure to our weight, to our skin, and to our sleep.
- the more clutter people have in their homes, the more stressed they feel.
- women relate how happy they are to the state of their home and how much they love it.
That means that clutter affects our hormones, our sleep, our moods, and how happy we are!
Is Minimalism the Answer?
When talking about decluttering our home, many experts talk about it from the point of minimalism, getting rid of everything, living with as little as possible.
I personally am not a minimalist. (I kind of like my stuff.)
But I do believe that the more things that you have, the more work you will have to do to take care of them.
Another way to look at it is that your stuff is like inventory. You have to take care of it. You have to clean it. You have to dust it. Heck, you even have to clean around it.
So the more stuff you have, the more work you’ll have to do.
Conversely, the more you reasonably simplify and declutter – keeping just the right amount of stuff for how you live your life – the less work you’ll have to do.
Minimalism isn’t for everyone – it’s not for me. But if you think you want to give minimalism a try, here’s how to see if a minimalist house is right for you.
5 Reasons Decluttering Your Home is Important
Here are five major reasons I believe decluttering your home is important.
1. You’ll Have Less Visual Clutter
The first reason that decluttering is important is that you’ll have less visual clutter.
Again, I’m not a minimalist and I like my home to be cozy. But even I need some white space, some blank space, some pauses, some rests where the space is not full of stuff.
If you allow your home to visually breathe in this way, you will probably find that you literally can breathe easier too.
2. You’ll Have Less to Clean
The second reason that decluttering matters is that you’ll have less to clean.
I mean, if you have less stuff, it stands to reason that you’ll have less to clean. You’ll have less to clean around, and cleaning will be much faster and simpler if your home isn’t full of piles of clutter that are collecting dust and dirt.
Only keep the things you love so much that cleaning and taking care of them is worth the joy that they bring you.
3. You’ll Spend Less Time Organizing
The third reason decluttering your home is important is that you’ll spend less time organizing.
Organizing has to come after decluttering, otherwise, you will waste precious time and energy trying to organize things that shouldn’t be organized.
Also, decluttering cannot be replaced with more organizing – or more decorating for that matter.
Decluttering has to come first.
Once you get rid of the things you don’t need, organizing what you do keep becomes so much simpler.
4. Your Home Will Function Better
The fourth reason that decluttering matters is that with less clutter your home will function so much better.
The point of decluttering is not to move things around and push one pile from here to there.
The point of decluttering is to clear out space so that then you can organize and so that your home will function so much better.
When you don’t have too much clutter, you’ll no longer waste time and money searching for or buying things that you cannot find because of all the clutter.
5. You’ll Feel Less Stressed
The fifth reason that decluttering your home is important is because you’ll feel so much less stress in a less cluttered home.
This is sort of a culmination of the other four points:
- You’ll have less visual clutter
- You’ll have less to clean
- It’ll be easier to organize
- Your home will function better
And all of those things combined make it so that you have less stress.
FAQs
Clutter causes anxiety because it reduces productivity, it’s visually disruptive, and it may also cause you to feel embarrassed or guilty.
A clean and organized space promotes better function, peace, and relaxation.
Decluttering boosts your mood and makes you feel more in control of. your surroundings – and by extension – your life.
Summary
Our homes matter because how our homes look and function affects us so much. It affects:
- our hormones
- our sleep levels
- how happy we are
This makes decluttering one of the most important things you can do for your personal and your family’s wellbeing.
Have you got spaces you should declutter? Now that I maybe reminded you of how important it is to do so, what’s stopping you from tackling that clutter? Let me know in the comments below, maybe I can help.
