Clutter conversation
Janine shared something with me on Facebook last week that I just have to share with you here.
“Studies show that there is actually a link between clutter, stress, depression, and even the dissolution of familial relationships.”
I also shared it with Newman even though I’m sure he couldn’t imagine why. Ha ha. He has four sheds, five if you count the van, which is a tool shed on wheels, and a basement but I’m the one who knows where to find the duct tape. On the other hand, he clears away the clutter on the kitchen island every day or so and it takes me less than a day to have it full of stuff again.
At first glance the study’s conclusion may not seem particularly uplifting or even surprising and it only included thirty-five families, but I am sharing the article because it makes me really happy to know that apparently I/we am/are “normal” and the fact that sometimes we can’t get into the back porch from either door need not be a shameful secret that makes me feel bad about myself, and now I realize that most of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The study is called ‘Life at Home in the Twenty-first Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors’ and was conducted by researchers from UCLA who observed 32 middle-class, dual-income families from Los Angeles over a four-year period.
“It’s important to note that none of the families involved in the study are people you might find on A&E’S hit show Hoarders. Rather, the families are probably quite similar to your own. They have an average amount of stuff, which ranged anywhere from children’s toys, to books, to home decor items, to clothing, to electronics.
Although these families likely thought that the amount of stuff they had accumulated seemed normal, the study revealed that three quarters of the families who participated could not fit vehicles in their garages because they were using them for storage instead. This might ring true when it comes to your own garage, since they’re the typical spot to store an overflow of stuff.
It likely won’t surprise you to learn that the women in the study were primarily affected by the clutter in their homes. Women in the study group, particularly mothers, had heightened levels of stress hormones that were relevant to the amount of stuff in each of their homes.
However, women are by no means the only people negatively impacted by a cluttered home. The study revealed that the majority of children involved in the study rarely spent time outdoors. Why? Because they had an overwhelming amount of stuff inside their houses to play with instead.
It’s no surprise that clutter leads to stress. Many people don’t know how to properly combat it, so they generate more and more clutter in the meantime. If you suspect that clutter and mess in your own home is leaving you feeling stressed, anxious, depressed, or simply just overwhelmed, the main thing to remember is that you have to “start small.”
The article then gives you tips on how to declutter, all of which I’ve heard before, except for “Never rent a storage unit.” Haha. I am once more resolved to declutter even though we all know it’s never as easy as they make it sound. If it was, you wouldn’t have to keep doing it.
Starting small means do one room at a time and do not move on until that room is entirely decluttered. The problem is that it doesn’t count if you move some of the stuff to other rooms and if by the time you’ve finished the other rooms, the first room is no longer decluttered.
How many times have I written about decluttering? (Remember the Kon-mari method that I thought would change my life?) Not so long ago I determined to donate or throw away one bag a week. I’ve had to skip a few weeks but now that I know I’m normal it’s not so overwhelming.
Positive reinforcement is so much better than beating yourself up. I’m going to start again. Soon.