What Type of Clutter Control Do You Need?  

Are you buried in treasures?  Have you tried many times to get organized but you end up right back where you started?  Identifying what type of clutter may be holding you back in your business, your life or in your home are the key to living the life you love, getting clutter control, and being and staying organized.

• What don’t you have room for in your office or home?
• What don’t you have time for in your business, relationships or for yourself?
• What are you tired of tripping over again and again every time you walk into a certain room?
• What’s holding you back from living the life of your dreams?

Identify what type of clutter control you will need.

Here five different types of clutter that may be getting in your way to finally being and staying organized:

Sentimental Clutter:

• It’s not easy to let go of things that you aren’t using when you have attached a lot of meaning, feeling and emotional to the item.  You feel that if you let this item go, you will lose the memory of the past.  Your thoughts tend to dwell in the past instead of in the present and future.
• When you have a strong emotional attachment to your possessions and have a difficult time letting go, it’s because you have a strong belief about the importance and value of the items. This type of clutter control is very difficult.
• It’s natural to keep a few items from our childhood, a few greeting cards, pictures of loved ones and places travelled or a comfy pair of boots that is broken in.
• These things connect us to events and people in our lives
• But when possessions consume too much space and you attach too much identity into your possessions, the piles of clutter accumulate and items are rarely used.  You don’t need to keep every greeting card received to know that you are loved, baby clothes or all of your children’s art and school books to preserve your memories.  Keep a few select pieces and preserve them in a way that you can enjoy them instead of collecting dust in the attic.

Perfectionism and Clutter Control

• Typically, we think of perfectionists with perfectly tidy and clutter free offices and homes.  For some, the opposite is true.  The clutter piles up because now is not the perfect time to deal with it and so you put it off for later when you do it right.  Meanwhile, it piles up.  Perfectionists tend to avoid making decisions because they have strong feelings of anxiety and worry that if you don’t make the right decision, you’ll regret it later or the item may be useful down the road.

Security and Clutter Control

• Possessions are your safety shield and provide you with a feeling of protection and security from the outside world.  No matter how much you have, you never feel secure.  You have a need to surround yourself with a lot of possessions and keep others away at a safe distance.  In extreme cases, you won’t let anyone in your home or help them as they see it as a threat to their security.
• Advertisers deliberately market to your insecurities and if you don’t have the latest than you’re missing out.  The minute you get something, you need something else
• Then you worry about losing your stuff.

Identify Beliefs and Clutter Control

• You wrap your identity into your things – like a ticket stub to a concert from 15 years ago, a gift from a friend or a collector of crafts, but you don’t do anything with your crafts.  You define yourself by what you have.
• You keep garage sale bargains but never resale or use what you have.  Your collections take over your space collecting dust or you rent more space to house your collections
• It’s ok to keep some of these things if they still have a current value for you and you use them

Seeing Waste- Not Clutter

• You refuse to let go of your junk, or the item was free or a really good bargain.
• You want to squeeze every last ounce of your money’s worth out of it and use every last drop from the jar.
• Scraps of paper, fabric remnants and miscellaneous screws and nails may be useful someday.
• You can think of many ways to reuse the item and you feel responsible to not be wasteful.
• When taken too far, Kleenex boxes, scrapes of tiny pieces of paper and toilet paper rolls become a pile of clutter

Self-criticism and piles of clutter are stuck energy that depletes your energy.  When you identify the actual causes of your clutter you’ll be able to create organizing systems that work for you and bring clutter control into your reach.  The freedom you will receive as a result of letting go of your physical and emotional clutter will be the transformation you are looking for and the key to being and staying organized.

What strategies do you find effective for clutter control? Tell us in the comments!