Cleaning Your Living Space
We love our stuff and we just continue to accumulate it. We promote it to each other on social media platforms, see it on TV, and review it on the web. Buying stuff is one of the obsessions of our world today. When we are young, we have to have that certain brand item, and as we get older that money continued to burn a hole in our pocket. We get married and two worlds of stuff become one mass pile of stuff, and now we need to acquire together stuff, then with each child comes more stuff. Why is it the more stuff we accumulate the more stuff we seem to need? It’s an endless cycle that can start to create undue stress, anxiety, and pressures, if you don’t take control of your stuff and how it can clutter our lives.
Where to Start
If you want to reduce stress in your life, take a look around your home. Start by assessing each room and deciding how you can simplify all the clutter. What is truly needed, what is here that you don’t really need, and what is here that you might need in the future, but you haven’t needed in the last two years? What piece of furniture or accessory was added simply because it was acquired along the way? Many times, the clutter is simple items that fill the spaces in our home and they’ve been around for so long that they go unnoticed for years. When you look around the room and see clutter like this building up, it may be a good sign that it’s time to clean your living space.
Expect More
If your home is full of clutter more likely than not, the clutter will spill over into other areas in your life such as your car and workplace. Many times, we simply transfer our stuff from one spot or place to the next, instead of clearing it out altogether. For health reasons alone, people need to attain some certain aspects of cleanliness to feel a sense of well-being. By expecting some self-pride towards the look and feel of your living space, one can help stop the clutter from building up. Cleaning your living space is proven to remove not only papers, trash, cups, bottles, or grime, but to also drastically makes you feel less occupied with unnecessary emotional stuff as well. This means that you feel less stress and healthy by clearing clutter from your life.
Just Start Organizing
The idea of cleaning your living space to bring back some order to your home doesn’t need to be a nightmare. You can tackle one area of your home each day or week. Work on these areas in a manageable chunk, you’ll want to reduce stress by cleaning without becoming overwhelmed. These are quick cleanings, not deep cleaning, save those deep cleanings for another time, possibly bi-weekly or monthly. If you decide to do daily cleanings, you’ll start off each morning with a clean slate.
A quick tip is to have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil, or post-it notes work great, too.
- What you have duplicates of.
- What you don’t need.
- Keep notes of what you have.
Creating these lists makes it easier to put the duplicates and the stuff you no longer need to the side, so you can donate or sell during a garage sale or just throw it out altogether.
Reclaim your Self-Worth
Many times, the longer we keep items, the more emotionally attached we get to them. Even though these are objects, getting rid of them may feel like you’re giving a part of your heart away, losing a friend, or even, what will we ever do without it. Actually, by ridding yourself of these objects you’ll reclaim your heart, rebuild your ability by simplifying your life by not letting your possessions own you, and know that life will be just fine without so many items in your life.
Clutter Stifles Growth
When we continue to stuff our living areas, garages, storage units, sheds and whatever with items we no longer need or use, we start to smother the energetic possibilities of life. We begin to trap ourselves with objects that may be holding us back. We hold onto notes from those who have long since been in our life. Some of those notes serve a purpose of encouragement, joy, and achievements, while others are of regret, sorrow, and defeat. These notes like many objects in our lives carry much positive and negative energy.
If you’re looking to grow further in life, let’s say in relationships, but you are still hanging on to objects that represent struggle and hardship within a relationship, those energies may be holding you back.
Tips for Letting Go
When you rid yourself of these items be mindful to truly let go of the objects and the energy they hold.
- Be grateful for the lessons it taught you.
- If needed, forgive those that didn’t live up to your expectations.
- Visualize any painful memories releasing or lifting away from your body and living space. At the same time, image how it feels as those memories drift away. And listen to them slip away, as they fade away into the distance.
- After releasing each object, take a moment to notice how you feel. What are you sensing? How you are now seeing or hearing the world around you now. What has changed and what has stayed the same.
By ridding yourself of this stuff, junk, or unnecessary objects that have emotions that block you from growing and enhancing your life, you will start to free yourself of clutter. You will be able to evaluate what is really important in your life and let go of that which serves you little or nothing. Cleaning your living space will not only help make for a clean home, car or workplace, it will create a space for healthy living.
