Why You Need to De-Clutter Your Home

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar to you?

-You needed a roll of tape to wrap a present, went to the store and ended up buying a 6-pack roll because you get a free roll when you buy 5.  You think, “Well, I’ll use them up someday”, and proceed to store them somewhere in your house.  10 years later, you still have 5 of the 6 rolls you bought.

-You have a pair, or several pairs of ’skinny jeans’ or outfits that you keep in case you finally lose that weight you’ve been battling with and start fitting back in your skinny clothes.  You never lose the weight.  And you never get back into your skinny jeans–which are, by the way, out of style already.

-You keep gifts given to you that you don’t like, thinking you will re-gift them to somebody else someday.

-You collect pens, stationery, soap and shampoo from every single hotel you stay at, but never really use them.

-You keep all sorts of items because you paid good money for them, or just in case you finally find the time to sell them at a garage sale or on Ebay.

There is a big difference between keeping something that you will be using between now and a few months down the road vs. keeping something you have absolutely no need for now or in the near future but decide to keep it “just in case”.  Before you know it, you have an attic/basement, and even a house full of just-in-case-I-might-need-them items that are actually nothing more than junk.  A lot of people don’t like to let go of all these junk because they usually think they will eventually need them.  But what really happens is one of 2 things: either when you actually need that item you can no longer find it among the rest of your junk and end up buying a new one anyway, or you end up never needing the item at all.

I used to be one of those people that never threw away anything.  I had tons of magazines that I wouldn’t throw away thinking I might re-read them later.  I kept all sorts of stationery or any blank paper thinking I’ll use them for scrap paper someday.  I stored all these nifty little gadgets from several years ago thinking I might use them again.  But this habit just created a way for my home to gather dust.  Then I learned about “space-clearing” from a friend of mine who was a Feng Shui master.  All it is is just getting rid of clutter.  Surprisingly, the less I had in my home, the more abundant our lives were.

The amount of junk you have in your house inversely relates to the amount of luck/blessings you have in your life.  It’s kind of ironic, but true.  The more junk you keep, the less fortune you receive.  You need to be able to detach yourself from things you don’t need in order to get more of what you do want/need.  I’ve been to enough people’s homes to know this to be true.  People who tend to keep everything and don’t throw away anything tend to be the ones that are either struggling financially, feel stuck, or don’t have a lot of joy in their lives.  Same thing applies to people that buy and hoard a lot of things or have messy, crowded, over-decorated and cluttered homes.  If you have a messy desk, chances are that your career isn’t doing too good.  If your kitchen, dining area or refrigerator is cluttered, chances are that your health isn’t at its peak.  If your bed and bedroom looks more like a dump than a personal sanctuary, love and romance is probably lacking in your life.  Get the idea?  You need to respect your living area, because it will reflect how your life is going to be.

But isn’t just throwing things away wasteful?  Not if you don’t need them anyway.  What good are they going to do sitting around in your house and turning it into an oversized trash can?  Forget how much you paid for them, how much they’re worth or how much money you can get out of your junk.  If you can’t find some way to use them now, or find some way to recycle them or somebody who can use them now, just get rid of them.  And learn to stop buying things you don’t need, even if they’re half price.  Is all that clutter really worth the few pennies or dollars it might save you in 5 years?  There is no point keeping stuff that doesn’t enrich your life or bring you joy.  Make room in your home for abundance by simplifying your living space.  If there’s less stuff to clean, less stuff to organize, maybe you’ll have more time and space to enjoy what really matters.