Have you ever noticed how much clearer and focused your mind is when your home is not cluttered? A cluttered mind is restless and unfocused. It can mean your vision is clouded, as your mind is distracted by all the stuff and adds to your stress level when very little gets done.
The very first study to ever step inside 21st-century family homes to see how a large number of possessions affected the everyday lives of middle-class Americans, researchers at UCLA found clutter to be such an overwhelming problem that it elevated stress hormone levels – especially in mothers. Another surprising discovery was that only 25% of families used their garages to store their cars because the space typically reserved for an automobile was filled with clutter.
Try our alternative treatments and practice mindfulness today. We focus on both the physical and mental holistic wellness to improve our lives.
If you often find yourself in these situations, this is a sign that you have more clutter than you need in your life.
constantly late or unprepared
stressed
find yourself moving in all directions in order to get things done
struggle to find items when you need them
seems to be doing a lot of things but little actually gets done
easily distracted and losing focus.
What is clutter?
Clutter is anything that we don’t need or use that saps our time, energy and space. Most importantly, it prevents us from doing what is most important to us. It can be something physical like books and clothes, but clutter can also be mental and emotional.
Physical Clutter:
Imagine entering a room full of stuff, your eyes start to wander from item to item, e.g. To-do list on your whiteboard, the empty cup that reminds you to drink water, the incomplete work on your laptop, the dirty clothes on the chair, etc. You are immediately swarmed with what seemed to be a long list of tasks to do and you never feel fulfilled even if you managed to complete some of these tasks at the end of the day.
On the other hand, if you find yourself enter an empty or a room with minimal clutter, you may feel uncomfortable initially but, as your eyes no longer get distracted by the heaps of stuff that you see and process in your brain, you will start to ask yourself what is really important that you want to focus on right now. It then becomes a conscious choice of yours to do what you really want.
Mental Clutter:
These are the voices in your mind. You can almost hear your boss telling you to have the work done by this week, a voice reminding you to attend your family's important event, a parent/partner telling you that they need your help to clean the house, and the list goes on. It is like you have this compulsive need to do something and you are unable to stay still.
The advancement of technology has made communications almost instant. We no longer has to logon to a computer at office to communicate with our colleagues and bosses. Many of us communicates with our colleagues with social media, instant messager such as WhatsApp, Skype, etc. This has created a new unsaid expectations that we want a reply from our colleagues at a snap of a finger. It seems to be "normal" to always hustle and achieve accolades that your friends and family will be proud of and has resulted in many people creating unnecessary stress sub-consciously in their lives. It is like we are robots living our lives.
Emotional Clutter:
This type of clutter can be in the form of physical clutter that you keep for emotional reasons or simply an emotional baggage that you cannot let go of.
Let's talk about an emotional baggage. These are some examples of an emotional clutter:
Need to do/help someone. Have you ever felt like you need to always do something for someone else and perhaps, out of goodness or guilt?
The Perfect You. It's like you have to always keep up the perfect image that you have, a perfect wife, perfect employee, perfect son, perfect dad, etc.
Toxic and one-sided relationship. These are people that drains you, fade you or make you feel awful about yourself.
What-ifs dilemma. When you are in a dilemma and is afraid to make a wrong decision, that is also a decision you made. However, these keeps replaying in your mind.
All the reasons not to. There will always be reasons not to start a relationship, make a change, go for that job, etc. Instead of making a move to do something, you keep thinking about it.
Other types of emotional clutter are reasons why you keep physical clutter and gives yourself justifications on why you have to keep them.
Nolstalgic Clutter: These are stuff that you keep as they remind you of your childhood days or the good days with that someone special. It can also be stuff that reminds you of your glorious past. However, dwelling on the past whether good or bad, also prevents us from moving forward. We see so many people holding on to the glorious past when they are in a worse stage of their lives, hoping to "relive" the good moments with these stuff instead of focusing on how to improve their current lives. They can be items like a trophy, certificate/award, or a beautiful wedding gown that no longer fits.
Gifts you cannot let go of. We felt obligated to keep the gifts we received from our loved ones even though we might never get to use them. This is mainly because we feel like a bad human being if we give/donate/throw them away. However, we need to know that once a gift is given to us, it is up to us how we want to use or keep it. Your loved ones would rather you be freed from the guilt/clutter to try to keep them but never put them to good use.
Kids' stuff. How many people actually keep their kids' stuff even though their kids have grown up? This is because it reminds them of the good times when the kids are all lovely and are still in need of the parents. When kids grow up to be adults, they spent less time with the parents. Instead of actually spending time with the grown up kids, the parents keep their kids' stuff.
Aspirational stuff. These are stuff that you promise yourself to learn one day or even items that you imagine the person you aspire, will have. E.g. you may have a musical instrument that you want to learn, to be the musical person you always want to be but you never get to the actual learning of the instrument.
We will share in our future articles on how to go about creating the clutter-free and stress-free environment that you can live in.
Comentarios