Ways to Declutter Your Home and Mind

Ways to Declutter Your Home and Mind

The following contribution is from another author.

It can be too easy to let stuff pile up around us. Unnecessary junk can gather in a home, affecting the atmosphere of a room and adding to feelings of stress and claustrophobia. When this happens, it’s important to take a step back, breathe deeply, and take a bit of time to declutter calmly and methodically. If you do this every now and then, it will help keep your house clean and tidy – a space where you can focus, relax and feel at home. There are many different ways to declutter, and you’ll certainly have come across most of the major techniques before, but here are some more left-field actions you can take to clear your environment and your mind.

Don’t Throw Away – Prioritize

Often, people can find it hard to declutter as it conjures images of having to cruelly throw away items which might have sentimental value, or ‘may come in useful’. To work past this common psychological block, declutter in two stages. Throw away the obvious culprits, then put anything you’re unsure about in a box and stack it somewhere safe and discreet (the attic, under the stairs, etc). Wait for a month – if you take something out of the box during that time, you can keep it. If not, at the end of the month, throw out the whole box. This will help you to know what is actually important to keep, and what you are simply clinging onto.

Declutter Your Computer

We’ve all been there, right? Your laptop is being horribly slow, it’s whirring, heating up, refusing to co-operate. If your device becomes filled with too many files, it can start finding even the simplest tasks difficult – and this can have a serious effect on your stress levels. Treat your laptop as you treat your house, and make sure to keep it decluttered and clean. If you need to keep a large number of files, look into cheap vps services so you can host those files away from your own operating system, keeping it neat and organized.

Use a Robo-Vacuum

You might think a robot vacuum is only useful for one thing; vacuuming. It’s true, they’re a great device for keeping your floors clean when you’re too busy to spend hours doing it yourself. They also look cute, and many people end up treating them as strange little pets – but they have another brilliant side effect. These little vacuums roll around your floor on a fixed schedule – but of course, they need clear access to the floor in order to do their work. The presence of one of these buzzing around every now and then will act as a brilliant reminder and incentive to prevent clutter from building up in the first place. Sometimes the best form of treatment is prevention, and this is the perfect example.

Conclusion

Decluttering your home will help keep your property looking clean, attractive, and even help increase its value in the future. However, it’s not all about obsessive cleaning and throwing items away – it’s also about thinking methodically about those elements which will help you clear your mind and live in harmony with your surroundings.

Author

Eric is the creator of At Home in the Future and has been a passionate fan of the future since he was seven. He's a web developer by trade, and serves as the Director of Communication and Technology for a large church in Nashville, TN (where he and his family are building a high tech home in the woods).