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The definition of Clutter by the Dictionary is “a collection of things lying about in an untidy state.” Some might call it a good sign because it is a sign of creativity, but most often than not it is a sign of disorganization, procrastination, and a lack of control. Clutter can even cause problems you may not even be aware of.

Maybe you think it’s just not that bad, it’s just a little clutter, and a little messy but it’s not hurting anything. The fact is that clutter can wreak havoc with your physical, mental, and financial health. I live in a flat with 3 bedrooms and I can say that I have had a lot of clutter because I do enjoy keeping things but with the Lunar New Year just over and after the major spring cleaning I did for my house, I must say it cleared my mental health because I feel much better with the cleaner rooms and the lesser clutter around. In this blog, we will discuss on the ways that clutter can affect our lives. 

Increases Mental Problems 

The clutter and disorganization around you are ruining your focus. It becomes hard to concentrate due to having to deal with the mess and thoughts that are continually popping up interrupting your flow. The exciting thing is that science is discovering that in some cases the clutter came before the mental illness. This means that there may be a cure.

1.    Anxiety Inducing 

The clutter causes anxiety too because you may be worried about someone coming over, or wondering how you’ll get everything done, or concerned that you cannot find an important document. You may have many other things going through your mind that can be classified as mind clutter. Worry, anxiety, circular thoughts are all increased when surrounded by clutter.

2.    Obsessions with The Past

The other thing is that clutter is closely tied to an inability to let go of the past. If you’re finding that you’re obsessive about the past, it manifests in the inability to get rid of things. You may not even be storing the thing right that you want to keep. If you look t the past as the “best of times,” this may explain your inability to get rid of clutter. Many elderly will have this issue but some of us have it as well, me for one have this issue that I can keep trophies from 20 years ago when I was still in Secondary school, I wonder why?! I was finally able to just let it go when space was running out in my small apartment. 

3.    Risk of Becoming a Hoarder

While not all people who have clutter become hoarders, it can happen. Hoarders are people with a “persistent difficulty to get rid of possessions because they think that they are saving the item” (Ref: https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/hoarding-disorder/what-is-hoarding-disorder) If you have clutter but it’s not blocking your walkway, and you still have some clean surfaces, and you can take a bath without removing the garbage you may be safe from being a hoarder. However, if you are starting to cross the line, you may want to get some help.

4.    Chicken or Egg

People with lots of clutter physically also have lots of clutter mentally that makes life, in general, feel messy and out of control. Usually when the clutter is cleared their outlook improves, and their mind becomes clearer. That kind of blows the idea that mental illness causes clutter – it’s really the other way around in a lot of cases. The fact is that mold is a common culprit in many mental illness diagnoses involving clutter. Some people are more vulnerable to effects from mold than others.

When you have too much clutter, you may not even notice that you have mold or that you had water damage because it’s all hidden behind the clutter. You may not see the dust mites, the vermin, or anything else unless you start to clean it up. The only way you can know that something is wrong is to be honest with yourself about how you feel mentally and physically in your current living situation. 

Physical Health 

When the house is dirty, the car is a wreck, and you’re running on fumes, it’s not shocking that you’re not making good food choices. It seems too hard to plan grocery shopping, cooking time, and so forth when it’s all so cluttered that you cannot find your kitchen table and your oven is full of books.

5.    Junk & Fast Food Seems Easy to Grab

Eating in a disorganized environment will make it more likely you grab the easiest things without a lot of thought. There is even a book about it called “Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight: The Six-Week Total-Life Slim Down” by Peter Walsh. It’s a useful book with scientific fact to back it up. 

6.    Guilt Makes You Do Unhealthy Things

The other problem with stress and clutter is that sometimes to make up for your guilty feelings for not doing a good enough job taking care of your home and office clutter can cause you to stuff your feelings with eating. However, not only that, you may feed your family unhealthy junk to make them happy too and to numb the feelings associated with being surrounded by stuff.

If you want to be healthy, it’s essential to be able to cook healthy home cooked meals. It’s hard to do that if you have no counter space and nothing is clean enough to throw together a meal quickly. 

7.    Dust Mites Grow Because of All the Clutter

One of the health dangers of having clutter is the problem with dust mites. Dust mites are microscopic bugs that eat dead skin. If you have too many dust mites in your home, you can end up being diagnosed with asthma and other health problems. 

You may not notice how much dust, dander, and dirt you have until you start cleaning. I stayed near a highway for 5 years already and have only clean the windows twice; once when we first shifted here and once 3 years ago, so as we were spring cleaning for the Lunar New Year, we brought out our cloth and water again and I must tell you the amount of dust there is! (No wonder we been under the weather for a while). 

8.    Falling Risk

Elders usually like the keep a lot of things because they feel that there are memories attached to every one of them, but this clutter would make it one of the most preventable injuries among elders. Most falls can be prevented if the paths that they walk are clear and clutter free. One problem with having things in your path is the risk of falling. Even a few papers in the wrong spot can cause a person to slip and fall. If you’re alone, you may be found dead on the floor among all your stuff. That would not be a good way to go. Not only could you fall, but anyone who visits you is in danger too.

9.    Fire Hazzard

Another risk of clutter in elders who live alone would be fire hazard. Collections of papers stored in rooms, attics, and crawl spaces create severe fire hazards. It doesn’t take much to start a fire when you have a cluttered environment. Newspapers, magazines, and old bills dry out as they age, which makes them even more combustible. Not only that, if there is a fire, burning materials break away and may make escaping a fire difficult or impossible.

10. Mould Growth

Especially in our hot and humid climate, if you leave a place without clearing it for years, the moist would also get trapped there. Where your AC lives, where your water heater lives, under the kitchen sink, bathroom skins, toilets, tubs, showers, near your water dispenser – anywhere there is water is at risk for mold growth without regular cleaning sessions. Some types of mold is a serious and dangerous health threat for some individuals because it can cause mental and physical health issues.

Productivity Decreases

If you have to do an hour of reorganizing just to get something done the clutter will contribute to procrastination because of the time you have to waste to get to the thing you wanted to do. The time that is lost trying to “get ready” or prepare for anything is frustrating and causes your productivity level to dwindle to nothing.

11. More Procrastination 

When you don’t feel that you can succeed, it’s easy to procrastinate. Procrastination involves delaying unnecessarily, it doesn’t mean that you are lazy but because maybe you are unable to find your document, or you see too much clutter that you would know it is a waste of time to find.  If you know that your work won’t be the best, your mind will force you to put things off. It’s the classic case of the fear of failure. If you think you’ll fail, you don’t want to do anything. 

12. Inability to Meet Deadlines

If you cannot find things, your work is unorganized, you didn’t name files right, you didn’t file things right, and you misplaced important paperwork and so forth it can be hard to meet your deadlines. If you cannot meet deadlines, it can adversely affect your career. There are some that live in a pile of documents that they are still able to find but doing a yearly declutter would be great as some of the documents might already be years ago and not needed anymore. 

13. Lack of Motivation

Even just walking in a room and seeing the clutter can be demotivating. You see a table full of documents, would you be spending your time packing it or spending your time working on the work you have to do. Your mind is bombarded by the possibility that you would have to work on clearing up the clutter before you can start work and that would lead to being unmotivated to work at all.  

14. Serious Distraction

Normally, I would say that Television or Video Games are a distraction but every time you need 15mins to find another document, you would already have forgotten what you were working on already. 

15. Can’t Find Stuff

One of the most significant factors in reduced productivity is just not being able to find stuff. If you cannot find your assignment, important research documents, your frying pan – whatever it is that you needed to complete a task it causes costly delays and reduces your productivity. 

Everyone has the same hours in a day, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’ve allowed your home and or office or anyplace you must get things done to get so cluttered. Clutter can really drag you down and make you feel like giving up. 

Decrease in Financial Health

Clutter can cause so much destruction if you’re not careful. You can even end up with bad credit. You will end up spending more money on replacing “lost” items or buying something you already own because you forgot that you own it since you cannot find it. In addition, you may end up paying a lot of late fees.

16. Surprise Bills

In most cases, a surprise bill will be something like an unexpected expense because something broke down, or because you got sick not because you simply forgot to pay the water bill. If you’re always forgetting that certain billsare due, it can be very costly to you.

17. Not Balancing Your Bank Account

If you’re so cluttered in your mind and space that you cannot keep track of time, it’s likely that you’re also not balancing your bank account regularly. It’s not as hard now with online banking, but you should not trust yourself to remember or for the bank to deduct your expenditures in order. 

18. Paying Late Fees & Higher Interest

When you pay a bill late, it’s going to carry a late fee. These can really add up. Another bad thing about paying late fees on one bill is that the interest rate you pay may go up on all your other bills too.

19. Rebuying Things You Already Own 

This is something a lot of people who have a lot of clutter end up doing. They either forget they own something and buy another one because they like it, or they go out and buy another one because they cannot find the one that they know they own.

As you can see, being cluttered can impact your financial health in a big way. Being cluttered can cause you to be poor at money management. You may not have any idea how much money you have or use in any given week or month if you aren’t organized enough. 

Of the 19 ways that clutter can affect you, did you note down how many is already affecting you? I know for once that there are a few that are already affecting me like late payments, rebuying things I already have, distracted because I am looking for the document I left somewhere and definitely more procrastination.

In conclusion, these are some ways that clutter can affect our lives if we do not do anything about it and just leave with it.

In the next few upcoming blog posts, we will be discussing on the various decluttering methods and how we can organize our homes and clear the clutter in our houses.