ByJohn A
How can decluttering your home create more usable living space?
My friend moved from a large house with a big back yard to a small house on a small block. Her new place is about half the size of her old house and she had been in her old house for 11 years. So for 11 years she had school projects kept ‘just in case’ they were needed for school, Christmas decorations taken out of storage and spread all over the garage, and a spare room full of exercise equipment that was used for a few weeks in February every year, after which it would be abandoned forever and left to gather dust in the forgotten room. It was in this room that we finally left my friend standing after we had cleared out her old house. She looked around at the empty space of the room where she had stored her exercise equipment for all those years in shock and said “I forgot this was even a room”.
That space where people store “just in case” items they rarely use was so completely taken over by her stuff that she had no idea a whole room existed at her house. I was amazed at the space of about 20 square meters that her “just in case” items had taken over. I was amazed that one person could amass so much stuff that it would take over an entire room in her home. I was amazed that she could let stuff take over her space to such an extent.
What else are we not seeing in our homes?
The quiet tax of too much stuff
Most clutter does not arrive overnight. A few boxes that find a home here and there, a number of ‘I’ll sort that later’ piles that evolve into their own spaces here and there, before long a large portion of your home is walled off to the rest of your living space. That space has become ‘cluttered’ and, often, before long that ‘clutter’ has become ‘normal’. It can evoke feelings of stress, anxiety and panic when people are in their own homes.
Clutter also has a well documented psychological effect on people. But the effects of clutter are also very obvious in practice. As clutter builds up people start to behave differently in the space affected by the clutter. For example a person with a cluttered garage may not like to have visitors to their home. Or a person with a cluttered kitchen may find that they are reluctant to cook for other people. And before long the effects of the clutter begin to affect your mind and body as well. You may start to feel stressed or anxious every time you go into the cluttered space. Or you may start to feel under pressure when making decisions in the space. The key is to recognize the effects of clutter as soon as possible and to do something to address the problem.
Decluttering or de cluttering as it is also called is different to tidying or de untidying. While tidying just moves objects already in your home to a new location and organizes them in that space, de cluttering tackles items in your home that you no longer need to keep. So the main cost of too much stuff in your home is that it stops you from using your space in the way you wish.
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Seasonal items are the sneakiest offenders
Seasonal storage problems are another category of clutter that cause homeowners to store goods at home throughout the year. These goods include: Christmas storage, camping gear, kitchen appliances like bread makers which are only used at Easter time of year, outdoor pool toys and the storage of winter duvet cover in a wardrobe at the end of summer. When you add up all of the space taken up by these items, it is clear to see that many homes could have more useable space if these goods were stored elsewhere throughout the year.
When you have a lot of stuff in your home it can be very difficult to work out what to do with it all. There is so much that it can be hard to know where to start and it is easy to get overwhelmed. Seasonal items are one of the biggest groups of stuff that take up a lot of space in the home. Items such as Christmas trees, camping gear, bread makers and pool toys are all items that are used for a couple of months of the year and then left to gather dust for the rest of the time. The problem with storing these items is that they take up a lot of space in your home and this can make it very difficult to find room for everything else that you need. When considering what to do with your seasonal gear it is worth remembering that storing them off site for the majority of the year can be a lot more effective than storing them in your home. Why should your stuff control your home for the better part of a year? Consider ANCHORLINK[self storage](https://selfstoragebunbury.com.au/storage-solutions/) ENDANCHOR when deciding what to do with your seasonal gear.
Of course, there are ways to store all of your seasonal objects, off-site, and then bring them to your home for use and then back to storage for the remainder of the year. Here at ANCHORLINK[self storage]ENDANCHOR in Bunbury, we have many customers who store their Christmas decorations, and Summer camping gear and so on, at our storage facility and then bring them to their home for use throughout the relevant season.
Sentimental Clutter.
This is where
On the other hand, Inherently sentimental objects are generally much easier to part with than those that have become ‘stuck’ through circumstance. The inherited item with a beautiful patina that no longer fits in your home? Usually easier to let go of than a hand written note from your child that you are afraid to lose. Same with wedding dresses and old photographs- you can keep a few of your favorites and store the rest of the items in a dry, out of the way space where they will not get in the way of your daily life. That does not mean you have forgotten them- it means you have honored their place in your heart by keeping them in a space where you can visit them from time to time, as opposed to letting them accumulate in a forgotten storage space and slowly deteriorating.
But storing such objects in damp, dusty garages or long-forgotten cupboards at the back of the house does not honor the memory of the object of our attachment. In fact, it interricts them from view, and we delude ourselves that we are preserving them when in reality we are just storing them away.
Keeping sentimental objects means to give them a proper home, not necessarily on display in the living area. It could be stored in a dry place, neatly and easily to retrieve from time to time. Then people can go to that space to look at your sentimental objects as often as they like.
The concrete things that change
The most dramatic change that occurs when you clear space is so obvious it’s embarrassing to mention but most people report that after clearing space the most dramatic change is that they have more space.
- Rooms start functioning the way they were designed to. A spare room becomes a guest room again, or a home office, or somewhere to actually do yoga instead of just feeling guilty about not doing yoga.
- Cleaning becomes faster because there’s less to work around.
- You stop buying duplicates of things you already own but can’t locate — which, if you’ve ever bought a third pair of scissors because the other two vanished into the chaos, you’ll know adds up.
- The general atmosphere shifts. Difficult to quantify, easy to feel the moment you walk in.
(For example, I’ve been sleeping so much better since I cleared out the storage from my bedroom and it no longer doubles as a closet. I don’t know what it is about the room, but I’d heard other people comment on it before but I hadn’t really believed them. And then I cleared the room out and suddenly I’m sleeping like a baby. I don’t know what the deal is, but it’s very real.)
Step 5. Sort Items into Categories
No glamorous system here. But that’s how to start: to work from left to right through this list of things to do with clutter.
- Pick one room, not the worst one, not the easiest. A medium-difficult one, where you can make a dent without it feeling futile.
- Sort into four categories: keep and use regularly, keep but store off-site, donate, discard.
- Deal with each category the same day. The donate pile sitting in the hallway for three weeks is not done. It’s just relocated.
- Only then move to the next room.
| Item type | How often used | Best approach |
| Seasonal decorations | 1-2 months per year | Off-site storage |
| Sentimental keepsakes | Rarely, but meaningful | Dedicated, accessible storage |
| Duplicate kitchen items | Never, honestly | Donate |
| Sporting or hobby gear | Occasionally | Off-site or organised garage |
| Everyday essentials | Daily or weekly | Keep, store accessibly at home |
Here is the room of my friend who was telling me her story earlier. She transformed it into a beautiful reading room. One armchair, one table with a lovely lamp and a very organized bookshelf that she actually uses from time to time. Nothing impressive in that room. Just a space that does something for her in her current life. Not the life of six years ago when she bought all that equipment for her body to get in shape in January with great enthusiasm but got lost halfway through the year.
I work with homes in a very down to earth way. I’m not interested in creating ‘before and after’ shots for magazines. Instead, I focus on clearing space and helping you to create a home that functions well for you and the people who live with you.
