The Truth About Clutter

It’s obvious that clutter is a clear sign of disorganization. Science has proven time and again that disorganization affects productivity, but there is so much more! Here I dig into the truth about clutter, and how clutter affects home and office life.

The human body likes to function as an organized, orderly process so chaos doesn’t occur. It makes sense that it easier for us to go with the flow when there is more organization, process, and order. If that is the case, why do we allow clutter to mess it up and create levels of chaos?

The truth is we get used to the clutter and get comfortable doing more to accommodate it:

walk the extra steps,
extra time to find something,
the extra effort used to tidy up for that guest.
giving excuses to keep that item, “just in case”.
purchase cool gadgets to help, but are never used.

It starts small and then slowly grows over time, and we don’t realize how much it is affecting our life.

The Clutter Effect

When there is an imbalance in your life it is very easy to let clutter build up, but when you dig into the clutter you find that it is more than just piles of laundry or paper. There are 6 factors that affect clutter, and understanding these factors will show you how clutter affects home and office life for you specifically.

In the Office

In the office, each of these points may reflect the health of the company finances and employee engagement. Let’s look at some examples:

No Time: When people are wasting time trying to find items or information, the tasks that they should be working on will take longer to complete.
Stress or Anxiety: Usually stress and anxiety occur when deadlines aren’t being met and can be a result of clutter or lack of organization.
Poor Health: With increased stress and anxiety, employees will suffer from poor health habits and declining health. There are also safety concerns with clutter creating workplace hazards.
Relationship Issues: With high levels of stress in the workplace it is difficult to take a moment to build healthy working relationships with your team. As time progresses, the team may start to disengage.
Money Issues: Costs always increase with clutter. Time is money. If it takes extra time to find that part or tool than it should, then that project cost more than it should have.
Productivity Reduced: It is harder to complete a task if there is clutter in the way. When the desk is cluttered, the brain sees a messy space and will have trouble staying focused on the task.

In the Home

Now let’s look at the home. This is a sensitive subject for me because I personally let my busy lifestyle be an excuse for keeping objects over the years.

I’ll get to that.

But rarely do.

How could clutter affect the home life?

No Time: It takes longer to clean a house that has clutter. It takes longer to find the missing shoe or sunglasses. All of this time, adds up and uses more energy than necessary.
Stress or Anxiety: Clutter adds to stress and anxiety when the brain is distracted by clutter. This mentally drains a person and will affect their sleeping habits, creating more stress or anxiety.
Poor Health: Lack of sleep, depression, anxiety will lead to poor choices for a healthy lifestyle. Exercise will seem harder to maintain, and the “no time” excuse will become easy. Comfort foods are eaten more often, instead of healthier options.
Relationship Issues: Clutter creates tension in relationships: fights about stuff not being put away, bills having missed payments, or no time to spend time together.
Money Issues: It is easier to go out for dinner more when the kitchen is a cluttered mess. A “missing” bill didn’t get paid, resulting in late fees. To escape you might go shopping and buy more “stuff”. Families spend 20-30% more money when they are disorganized and there is clutter in the home.
Productivity Reduced: When we let clutter take over, it is harder to stay on top of simple tasks. Everything takes longer to do and seems more daunting than it should.

We are guilty of buying more bins to put more stuff in storage. We have bought something just to find a duplicate in the home, a week later. After moving into a home that is half the size of our previous house, we are bursting at the seems and still have stuff in storage. I haven’t found everything yet but I also don’t know what’s in all of those boxes.

Over the next while, I am sorting through the collection of stuff and finding new homes for it. There will also be space created to help improve the organization, and hopefully, I’ll start to feel comfortable having people over. It is time to create that comfortable living space, a home.

The key to reducing the clutter is to look at each of the Clutter Effect: time, stress, health, relationships, and money. Understanding how clutter affects home and office life will help you determine how it impacts you personally.

When you find a meaningful reason for improving the situation then you are more motivated to push past the bad habits to create good habits. It’s important to dig into why the clutter is happening and find ways to reduce the clutter that will help you make small improvements bit by bit.

What about you, is clutter affecting your balance?

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