Sometime last week, I flipped when I looked at my phone and saw that I had over 20,000 unread email messages! That got me started on my latest task of de-cluttering my email box. For sure, it was going to take some time to get that number to almost zero, so I put a quick plan in place. I set a phone alarm to spend five minutes each day to gradually delete all those emails that were beginning to haunt me. Most of them were not junk mail, they were mails I received based on stuff I had subscribed to over the last ten years. Yes… 10 years! The emails had trickled in very slowly. Two today, five tomorrow, eight the day after, and I did nothing about them until they had become this mountain that was beginning to affect my sanity.
I immediately thought about how true this was for every other area of my life. In the past, I have allowed and learned to live with all sorts of clutter: physical clutter, mental clutter, emotional clutter, digital clutter, and social clutter, among others. They all act the same way, build up gradually and silently over the years without your noticing them until the effects of the clutter begin to damage your physical and mental health1.
Clutter build up reminds me of the boiling frog principle. When a frog is put in tepid water that is gradually boiled, it does not realize the temperature change until the water eventually becomes too hot and boils the frog to death. However, if that same frog were to be suddenly put into boiling water, it would immediately jump out and escape death.
This principle is generally true with humans as well. If you are suddenly put into a toxic situation, having been used to more wholesome environments, you will naturally reject such toxicity and find the nearest escape route. On the other hand, if you are gradually immersed in toxicity, for example through physical, mental, social, digital or emotional clutter in your life, you will not realize what is happening until the effects completely overwhelm you and you wonder how you got there in the first place.
A life filled with clutter can often make you feel like you are a train wreck about to happen. WebMD reports that people living cluttered lives have a higher tendency to gain weight, sleep poorly, live in isolation, have higher levels of stress, are less satisfied with life, may be prone to allergies due to collection of dust in physical spaces and find it harder to focus their brain1.
Clutter can be defined from several perspectives including: things you do not use any more, too many things in a small space, a disorganized space, and unfinished projects.
Physical clutter includes the physical environment in which you live and work. Leaving these spaces cluttered can affect your mental health and, in some cases, may become a safety hazard that results in trips and falls.
Mental clutter includes having too many thoughts always on your mind including regrets that you can do nothing about and leads you down the path of depression, and anxieties about the future that you have no control over that can lead to chronic anxiety.
Social clutter includes having too many relationships in your life that you feel responsible for. This may result in you spending more time on relationships that add no value to anyone at all and less time on the relationships that are mutually beneficial and should be cultivated.
Digital clutter includes having too many distractions from mobile devices, social media, TV, podcasts, and the list goes on. You are constantly in information overload mode, including your reading this wellness blog right now, and it is important to identify your priorities and get rid of digital clutter.
Emotional clutter includes harboring all sorts of toxic emotions that are detrimental to your health including but not limited to anger, unforgiveness, hatred, usually from the toxic relationships you harbor or hurts from past relationships that you have not been able to get over.
De-cluttering your spaces or not allowing them to clutter in the first place, in addition to contributing to a more wholesome health, gives you a sense of control over your life and the motivation to be able to tackle other life issues confidently.
One of my wellness coaching clients, whose cluttered space was keeping her stuck with moving forward in accomplishing other things, describes it this way when she had finally de-cluttered her space– “a cloud has been lifted off me!” She said the de-cluttering activity boosted her confidence to be able to tackle the next “whatever” successfully.
The other day, I was reading about how Simon Peter went to verify the reports of the women who went to take care of the body of Jesus in the tomb after he had been crucified. I couldn’t help but notice that when Peter looked into the tomb he saw that the cloth that was used to wrap Jesus’ head was not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place by itself. It got me thinking. Who rolled up the cloth? Was it Jesus? Did this mean that Jesus was a neat and tidy person who did not abide with clutter? I decided to go with that assumption and be just like him!
Do you recognize any clutter in your life and are you ready to de-clutter? Today is a good day and now is a good time to start. You might feel overwhelmed thinking about doing this because it looks ‘humongously’ impossible. If this helps, set aside a few minutes each day, like I did with my emails, and tackle a bit at a time. You’ll be amazed at how much you are able to get done in a reasonably short time.
Once your spaces have been fully de-cluttered, it may help to set aside periodic times- say every 3 months, 6 months or yearly- to refresh these areas of your life so that you never have to deal with that mountain again. Remember, de-cluttering is a life saver because it preserves your physical, mental, and emotional health in ways you have never even imagined.
If you enjoyed reading this post, please subscribe to this blog below, to get similar content directly into your email box each week. Thank you!
1. https://www.webmd.com/balance/ss/slideshow-clutter-affects-health