15 Inspiring Reasons to Start Decluttering Your Home Today
Let’s dive into some important and inspiring reasons to start decluttering your home!
Everyone talks about decluttering and having too much clutter in their homes, garages, sheds, and, these days, offsite storage units. They read the blog posts and watch the Netflix shows.
But talk is cheap, and someone has to start the decluttering process first. Take action! Odds are good that you will notice the benefits before your family members do, but when they do, they are more likely to buy into it and start decluttering their own excess stuff.
Table of Contents
Mental Benefits
Physical Benefits
Bonus Benefits
What happens to your brain when you declutter?
While you may encounter some resistance at the start, as you put in the hard work, your brain will enjoy a decrease in tension and anxiety as your sense of well-being increases. Improved health starts with a boost to mental health as you declutter.
Mental Benefits.
1. Mental Clarity
When you declutter, you also declutter the baggage that gets in the way. Those limiting beliefs—I could never have a tidy home, or I’ll never get my shopping habit under control—get decluttered, and you learn what’s really important to you. You become aware of what you really want.
This is a gradual change and you may not even notice until you are thinking back on how you felt about your entire house when you started. Your habits will have changed.
2. Reduced Stress
Another important reason to declutter is stress. When you are overstimulated, your stress levels go up, and your body releases stress hormones. Cortisol can increase your blood pressure and affect your immune system, leaving you more susceptible to viral and bacterial infections. A house with too much stuff has no place for your attention to rest, as you are looking at stuff constantly.
Reduce the stuff, you will have less stress. You will feel calmer, more relaxed and in control of your home.
3. Increased Productivity
People think they are good at multitasking, but this is a myth. What really happens is task-switching, with rapid starts and stops as our focus switches. This is not efficient and leads to mistakes.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/creativity-without-borders/201405/the-myth-of-multitasking
While we are trying to find something in the mess of our junk drawer, our attention is pulled away by the paper clutter on the counter, demanding to be dealt with, and the stuff sitting on the counter that there wasn’t room to put away in the cabinet. If the room was decluttered, your focus wouldn’t be divided, and you could do one thing at a time.
When you live in a clutter-free space, you don’t need coping and avoidance strategies. You don’t need to waste time mindlessly scrolling through social media while you eat a bag of chips.
4. Increased Efficiency
Efficiency is about how you use your resources. As you declutter more and get stronger decluttering muscles, you will figure out what practices work best for you.
You might work very well with a to-do list, a timer or maybe it’s more efficient for you to work with one small space at a time.
5. Enhanced Focus
Instead of being pulled in many directions by competing demands for attention, a decluttered home lets you focus on only the task in front of you. You will be more present in your life when you aren’t constantly being tugged on by your past.
Many of us started big projects while we were staying home during the pandemic, but now the quilting supplies in the dining room or the bread tins stacked on the kitchen island are reminders of unfulfilled promises. That’s taking a chunk of focus in your own home while you are trying to help with math homework.
6. Enhanced Decision Making
As you get further with decluttering progress, the decision-making gets easier. Your home became cluttered because you put off the decision of what to do with things in the first place. You weren’t making conscious decisions to keep it; a lot of it was just getting put away and not thought about.
Life is busy! You put that book on a shelf for now, and five years later, there are six books there, but it’s a laundry room, not your living room or library, where you keep your books. And three of those books are Dr. Seuss books, even though your youngest is in high school and far beyond those picture books.
Like anything you practice, you will become stronger at it. Work on those piles of stuff in manageable chunks to avoid decision fatigue. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time. Even fifteen minutes per day is 7.5 hours in a month. How much of a difference could you make in a month?!
7. Clearer Goals
Consider starting with a decluttering goal, even if it’s something as simple as a time goal or clearing out one hot spot that seems to attract all the small items. As you see the potential in your home and what you are capable of yourself, possibilities open up. You will see goals that you maybe weren’t willing to admit to yourself before.
You will be clearer on what you want. This is the perfect time to write those goals down if you haven’t already.
8. Enhanced Creativity
Living in a cluttered space involves making a lot of decisions—how to work around the stuff, what space to use, do you have the things you need, which tasks need to be done, and on and on—and can lead to decision fatigue. The more decisions you make in a day, the more physically, mentally, and emotionally drained you become. At that point, the executive function becomes impacted, which impairs judgment and decision-making.
To be creative, you need to link different ideas in new or different ways in a way someone else might not. By dealing with the clutter in a manageable way, you can free up your mental power to be creative.
9. Spiritual benefits
When you declutter, you create space for positive energy to flow freely. The openness and mindfulness of decluttering can open you to a new version of yourself and grant you inner peace and a spiritual connection.
Your decluttering journey might not be exactly the same as anyone else’s, but be open to what comes up. It might surprise you. Your mental space will change as you go down that road.
Physical Benefits.
As you declutter, you are going to see tangible changes in your physical space. These may be the ones that your family members notice. It’s more than just a clean house.
10. Better Organization
You can’t organize clutter. When you have less stuff, it’s easier to put it away and easier to sort because you know what you have.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the extra stuff, you’ll understand what you are organizing and can look at the options that fit the amount of stuff you have instead of ending up with bins you don’t need because you don’t have so many material things.
11. More Space
Physical items take up a lot of space. In a clutter-free home, you have clean surfaces and space to put things away in their proper spot when you are done using them. This is why people feel so comfortable in hotel rooms; they are clean and minimalist with nothing pulling at you.
12. Positive Environment
Decluttering can create a very positive environment because you’ve reduced the inventory you need to take care of. It’s also important to note that it’s more positive because you’ve let go of the unwanted items that made you feel bad, and the sentimental items aren’t hidden away anymore.
You got rid of the ugly lamp you kept because it was a gift. The problem was that it reminded you of a fight with your sister.
You moved your grandmother’s cookie jar to the counter to replace the plastic tub for baking. Now you can be reminded of her daily.
Your home is your living space, a place to enjoy and love, not just to exist in. Keep your possessions with good sentimental value and enjoy them.
13. Time Savings
After you’ve decluttered, you will spend less time cleaning because you no longer need to shuffle things around. Those monster cleans can be limited to spring cleaning when you do the extra work you only do seasonally.
You will save a little time in your day because you know what you have. You are not digging through the containers, looking for something you thought you had (maybe?) and then running to the store to buy something. (And worse, more clutter might follow you home from that last-minute pickup.)
It’s a good idea to decide before you start what your boundaries are for when to donate and when to sell. This will save you from wasting time debating what to do. If you are unsure how to set that boundary, this article suggests a great way to handle it.
14. Financial Benefits
When you have less clutter, you know what you have and aren’t spending money on duplicate items. You aren’t spending money on that storage solution promised to make your life perfect that is really too much for what you have. You won’t be wasting money on things you don’t have a space or need for.
You don’t need much money – only some trash bags and maybe a few boxes – when you are decluttering, so finances should never be a reason to procrastinate starting.
Knowing where to find your important documents can also save you the cost of replacing them. Passports, birth certificates and legal documents can be pricey.
You will enjoy the impact on your bank balance. Maybe you’ll find it leaves you with some extra money at the end of the month for your social life!
15. Simplified Living
Knowing what you need to be happy is a powerful thing. For most people, it’s a lot less than they thought, but they can’t see it for the stuff in the way. We are constantly being bombarded with buy, buy, buy messages in our consumer society and we forget it’s a choice to have more. We don’t have to keep it all.
Through the process of decluttering, you will find yourself pulled toward a more intentional life. You can have a clutter-free environment. Maintenance becomes part self-care and part regular house-cleaning as you live with fewer things and without the stress of clutter.
Where is the best place to start decluttering
The first step when starting decluttering is to identify why you want to do this and why it is important to you. This will help when the first bout of motivation wanes. Whether it’s having less to manage, reducing your stress, or you are getting ready for a move to a new home, set yourself a goal.
Know you are going to have a hard time with some spaces when you are decluttering, but good stuff will happen too. You’ll let go of the tent with the missing parts and the sheets in the linen closet that aren’t the right size for any of the beds still in the house. You’ll find treasures you thought were lost. You feel more relaxed as you see your house change.
You can find more helpful tips here. https://minimalisthome.ca/declutter-more-faster/
Just keep going! You can do it! You deserve to feel better in your own home. You just have to get started!
For a headstart on decluttering, try the 30-Day Minimalism Game Challenge
Related Resources
Decluttering my home changed my life! Watch all about it here