What Your Clutter Is Trying to Tell You is an easy-to-follow guide that will support you in finally clearing the clutter that collects in countless ways, leaving you unencumbered on your path to liberation and abundance.”
What Your Clutter Is Trying to Tell You is not your typical 'clear your clutter and be happy' story. It spills the beans on why you haven't been motivated to handle the mess, and it shows you how to use your clutter as a catalyst for growth so you can create more space, prosperity, and peace in your life.
Behavioral/psychological: Clutter caused by depression, attention deficit disorder, low self-esteem or lack of personal boundaries.
While some chalk it up to laziness, there's actually underlying psychology of clutter and disorganization that keeps people from tidying up. Potential reasons people hold onto clutter include: They feel overwhelmed: It's often a huge job to get rid of things, which can be both physically and mentally exhausting.
While the physical stuff is obvious, most of our clutter is invisible, says Barbara Hemphill, author of Less Clutter More Life and founder of the Productive Environment Institute. “There are four types of clutter: paper, digital, emotional, and spiritual,” she says.
In most cases, this clutter is directly linked to traumatic events. Clutter could stem from the fear of letting go. This would be especially the case if a person grew up during or shortly after a time of war when people did not have much and had to use everything they had until it fell apart.
When one is exposed to trauma, people build guards around themselves and everything around them. If they start losing the stuff or declutter, they feel a void inside of them, so it's tougher for them than other people. Clutter acts as an unconscious barrier.
Clutter in the living room might suggest blockages in your social life, as well as your relationship with yourself, while a cluttered bedroom might relate to issues surrounding your sexual self, fears of intimacy or gender roles.
It is possible to declutter too much, and this can be a sign of an anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are situations where people declutter to the point of only having furniture left in their house. This can come about from feeling the need to get rid of everything that seems to be cluttering up the house.
“Cluttering is another behavior typical in folks with ADHD. Leaving items out as visual cues is a common way of compensating for an unreliable memory or inadequate time-management system, but to the untrained eye it can resemble hoarding,” she says.
A key difference between ADHD and hoarding disorder is the reason why people have so many possessions. A person with symptoms of ADHD may be untidy or live in a cluttered home because they are unable to organise their things whereas a hoarder will have a specific reason why they can't let go of something they own.
If you don't clean your house, it might mean you are busy and have little time to clean and organize. It might be a sign that you have too much stuff. Or it might be the result of having young kids in the house who are usually not motivated to clean up after themselves.
So why is it so common for people to find themselves burdened by clutter? “It's a one-two punch of over-acquiring, buying because we think the stuff will fix us and then not being able to let go because we've created an attachment (emotional, sentimental or economical) to our stuff,” McCubbin says.
Cultivate a gratitude practice to make letting go easier.
One way to practice gratitude is to make an intentional list of things you have in your home that make you feel thankful. Write down everything that resides under your roof that you are grateful to have in your life – family and pets included.
People with depression can often find themselves living in messy spaces. This is because feelings of hopelessness, low energy, and lack of motivation can make it hard to keep on top of everyday tasks, such as tidying.
Diogenes syndrome is a behavioral-health condition characterized by poor personal hygiene, hoarding, and unkempt living conditions. It is most common in older men and women, which is why it is also called senile squalor syndrome.
Compulsive decluttering is a type of disorder that is classified within a broad name, obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. Compulsive decluttering is the act of throwing items, or clutter, away, or getting rid of them in an attempt to "clean up" what one with the disorder may think is cluttered.
Clutter Can Be Normal for an ADHD Brain. If you have ADHD and notice that you seem to be having a hard time organizing things and decluttering, you're not alone. Apparently, some adults with ADHD really struggle with decluttering.
Messiness can actually be a sign of creativity and freedom. Or it may mean a teen is busy with school, hobbies, and socializing, and hasn't made time to clean their messy bedroom. However, a messy room can also be an outward sign of feeling disorganized or overwhelmed.
Bursting cupboards and piles of paper stacked around the house may seem harmless enough. But research shows disorganisation and clutter have a cumulative effect on our brains. Our brains like order, and constant visual reminders of disorganisation drain our cognitive resources, reducing our ability to focus.
Sometimes, living with anxiety, depression, or stress brings on clutter. If you're overwhelmed by sadness or other negative emotions, you might not have the energy to clean and organize.
Clutter can trigger the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which can increase tension and anxiety and lead to unhealthy habits. Cortisol is a hormone produced in response to stress by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA).
Since your brain is naturally predisposed to favor order over chaos, constant visual disorganization tires the brain, impairs working memory, and makes it harder and harder to regain focus. Clutter also releases cortisol and is correlated with stress and anxiety (which also impede learning).