Getting Rid of Stress By Getting Rid of Clutter

Are you a clutter bug or have difficulty throwing things away? Living with clutter can be stressful. It’s not just about having a neat home to look at. If your home or workplace is orderly and tidy, your stress will be lower. Why? Because you’ll be able to find things more easily, thus saving time and money because you won’t go out and buy things that you already have. Often people whose surroundings are filled with clutter are filled with guilt about it too. So eliminate the clutter and eliminate the guilt. An organized, tidy and beautiful environment is relaxing. Plus, you can have people over for company.

There are two things that lead to a person having a lot of clutter in their environment. The first is what we learned. I grew up in a large family, so we learned early on to keep things tidy. We learned the value of having a routine for cleaning. Every Saturday morning, once we were old enough, we’d have to vacuum and dust our rooms before we could go out to play. We made our beds every morning. We put our dirty clothes in the hamper, never on the floor, and took it to the laundry room when it was full. We learned to fold the laundry and put clean clothes in our closet or bureau drawers as soon as they came out of the dryer. We cleared the table at the end of every meal and washed, dried, and put away the dishes. Groceries were put away as soon as they were brought into the house. Mail was opened and sorted immediately. Things didn’t sit and wait until later. “Everything has a place and everything in its place,” was my Mother’s motto.

I took it for granted that everyone lived this way. I know people who learned to be messy and disorganized in the same way that I learned to be neat and organized. They learned behaviors and attitudes that can be summed up as, “I’ll take care of that later” or “what does it matter if I take care of my things or not” or “if I can’t find it, I’ll just buy a new one.”

A second cause for having a lot of clutter and difficulty organizing one’s environment is Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD. Characteristics of ADD include: difficulty concentrating, distractibility, impulsive behavior, excessive daydreaming, and a proclivity for procrastination. It manifests outwardly in difficulty keeping your environment organized, difficulty finishing a thought to its logical conclusion. In conversation, people with ADD will get off and a tangent, then tell you infinite detail about that, then switch topics to something else that doesn’t even seem connected.

My ADD clients talk about having stacks of unopened mail, being late for appointments or for paying their bills, unbalanced checkbook leading to overdrafts, having piles of clean and dirty clothes lying mixed up on the floor, and having so much “stuff” filling up their homes that they literally would have to make a path through their living rooms. Consequently they were too ashamed to invite people to their homes. Without knowing that they have a treatable syndrome, often times people with undiagnosed ADD think they are lazy or stupid and suffer from low self-esteem.

Fortunately, you can learn strategies to organize your environment. These are similar strategies that someone who grew up without a mother like mine can learn. There are so many tools to help you get and stay organized. The simplest tool is making short “ta da” lists. When you complete a task, cross it off the list and say “Ta Da!”. Then throw away the list when you’re finished. Don’t have several lists going at one time. It will overwhelm you. Many ADD people make long lists, then get distracted and don’t finish them, thus feeling discouraged. When you finish a task, give yourself a compliment. Doing “work” without a reward isn’t a lot of fun. Remember to reward yourself.

Another idea for organizing your life and environment is purchasing a filing system, date book, clothes hamper, hangars, and see through bins to store things. Find or create a way to label your shelves and bins at home and just put the stuff that belongs there into the bin. Then when you use something from that shelf or bin, return it there as soon as you’re done using it. Don’t throw it on the floor or dining room table and tell yourself you’ll put it away later. Chances are you won’t.

A date book is an essential tool for staying organized. Write everything in your date book. Get several colored highlighters to indicate the difference between different types of appointments or tasks. Sometimes a visual reminder of an appointment is helpful. Other people also set alarms on their cell phones or PDA’s to remind them 15-30 minutes prior to an important appointment.
If you have piles of old mail, take 5 minutes a day to sort through it. Sit right next to a garbage can while you’re doing the sorting and toss out junk mail immediately. No, you don’t have to open and read everything that is obviously junk mail. Eventually, you will get to the bottom of the pile.

Once the pile is gone you can start getting into the habit of sorting your mail as you are walking in from the mailbox. Immediately throw away the junk mail, open the bills, determine which ones need to be paid and when. Then either pay them right away, or file them in a system that alerts you to when they are due. You could use red file folders for bills that need to be paid this week and blue file folders for things that don’t need your attention until the end of the month. Then write on a calendar a deadline to pay those bills. Usually plan to mail them at least 3-7 days ahead of the due date.

There are lots of ways to get organized. The final tip is to get rid of stuff you don’t use. It helps to change the assumption, “this is still good, I may need it someday” to “I haven’t used this in 6 months, I’ll give it to someone who can use it.” A great idea for getting decluttered is to create 3 piles as you’re sorting through stuff. Those piles are 1)Keep and put away 2) give away and 3)throw away. If you have difficulty figuring this out, get one of your organized friends to come over and help you. That’s what friends are for!

Think about how much time you waste trying to find things. What's your favorite strategy for getting organized and decluttering?

Annette Vaillancourt, Ph.D. - Corporate Trainer and Motivational Speaker
EnterTraining Seminars: "We Learn You Good!"
Peak Performance, Stress in the Workplace, Communication and Conflict Resolution Skills
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