Clutter can be overwhelming and stressful, but understanding the process of clutter can help us overcome it. Clutter is not just a physical problem, but also an emotional and mental one. It can be caused by a variety of factors such as lack of organization, attachment to material possessions, or even underlying psychological issues. Either way, the process to get a difunctionally-cluttered space involves the same process.
Let me break it down for you.
Filling Our Home
Most people start out as young adults with very minimal things. Maybe a basic pot and pan set, a few dishes, some towels. Pretty much we have a house to fill and we want to fill it with items we enjoy, to make us feel calm and like we have it together. I remember in my first years starting out I loved going shopping on the kitchen section and getting new things for my home. Well when I did this, it made me feel good. Like I was doing the right thing.
Lack of Planning
What happens when we start filling our home is it doesn't seem to matter how meticulous and organized we are, we seem to have space for our stuff. Items are fitting. We may not even know where the toe nail clippers go, possibly the easiest place to put them when we are tidying up. No biggie. This seems to be fine so we keep doing things the way we are doing them.
Accumulation
This can somewhat feel like an invisible step because when we are in this phase, we don't necessarily realize we are in this stage. We might start to notice it might be harder to fit the groceries where they go now and maybe realize they seem to have 5 sets of nail clippers for no reason. You see we don't notice it because it is not yet the phase where it is problematic. It is very gradual.
Overwhelm
After accumulation if we are still accumulating and not planning, we will likely reach a state of overwhelm. We may ask ourselves how we got here. We may think we just need more storage and start getting more containers, only to find our house is getting worse. We may start experiencing feelings of guilt, anxiety, and not knowing what to do. We may start blaming other people in our household. The problem is that none of these things are going to solve the problem and the overwhelming feeling snowballs until we get the root of the problem taken care of.
Chaos
What do they call it if you keep doing the exact same things and expect a different result? I'll let you answer that. Unfortunately when overwhelm accumulates and accumulates, it can become complete chaos. At this point we may feel hopeless for change. We tend to not see a way out. Just remember, you started filling your home with the best of intentions, you just didn't understand what you were doing wrong. The fact that you are even reading this proves you are not a lost cause. You came to the right place. I don't want you to feel ashamed but maybe just understand that you started with good intentions without to knowledge of where it was leading. So what can you do?
Getting It Right
We can get it right at any part of the journey. If we planned when we were just starting out where things would go, what are limits are for our space, and understanding the difference between filling our home and habitually accumulating, we likely wouldn't have gotten to a state of overwhelm in the first place. But here is the thing. We need to go backwards. We need to do this in order. We may have tried to get organized when we had too much stuff and it didn't work. We almost need to just start over, as if we just moved in. What stuff do we really need and want for our home to function, plan where it will go and the limit to what we can fit, and realize you are done and accumulating doesn't serve a purpose. If you need to change things up, simply get rid of things to make sure the new things fit.
If you need the broken down steps to organize your home, read that in my post here.
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