I’ve got something that you’re going to LOVE!
I think the way your interiors look is important. We need to wake up inspired. And beauty has a way of inspiring us, for sure. But even more important than aesthetics, is how your home is supporting you.
We are often so busy that we don’t take the time to consider how our home is functioning for us. Is it working? Is it beautiful? Is it inspiring? Does it make you feel good every day?
In the Feng Shui book Decorating with the Five Elements Tisha Morris says “Our homes are second only to our bodies, as a space we have control over and can positively affect and create harmony within.”
Unfortunately, with the busy lives and over-stimulated minds and bodies most of us have, there is often little harmony to speak of for us. But the important part here is that we can control both our homes and our bodies, if we want to change the way we feel and operate every day.
Morris goes on to say in her book that by bringing more consciousness to creating a harmonious environment, the benefits will carry into all areas of our lives, because our home is a mirror of our own energy.
Let’s linger there for a moment…Our home is a mirror of our own energy. Does that scare you a little bit? Maybe it should.
Take a moment and consider: Is your home currently energizing you or zapping your energy?
The truth is: How your home feels will have a direct correlation with how your mind and body feel. It may be time we do a little work on our homes, if we want to be our most effective self in business and in life.
When we realize that just like we often cause our own health and wellness issues with our beliefs and our habits, we are causing our own “disease” in our homes, too.
Disease is defined as “a particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people”.
And boy, can a dysfunctional home certainly adversely affect us and our families!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my home to stand in the way of my goals and dreams. So, let’s dig in and figure out how to make our homes work for us and not against us by learning how to clear the clutter in our lives.
Clutter and Its Impact
Clutter seems pretty harmless, right? And harmless or not, it definitely seems impossible to handle for many of us, when life is moving as fast as it does.
But a cluttered home equals a cluttered mind.
Psychology Today magazine says that messy homes and work spaces leave us feeling anxious, helpless, and overwhelmed.
And Americans spend millions of dollars on medications and other solutions to not feel anxious, helpless, and overwhelmed.
Yet, rarely is clutter recognized as a significant source of stress in our lives. Fortunately, unlike other more commonly recognized sources of stress, clutter is one of the easiest life stressors to fix.
Dishes in the sink, stuff covering every flat surface, family belongings and toys strewn through the house, closets stuffed with things we rarely use; this clutter not only makes our homes look bad, it makes us feel bad, too.
At least that’s what researchers at UCLA discovered when they explored the relationship between 32 families and the objects in their homes. It turns out that clutter has a profound effect on our mood and self-esteem. UCLA’s anthropologists, social scientists, and archaeologists found:
- The more stuff, the more stress women feel.
- The more dishes that pile up in the sink, the more anxious women feel.
- Even families that want to reduce clutter often are emotionally paralyzed when it comes to sorting and pitching objects. They either can’t break sentimental attachments to objects or believe their things have hidden monetary value.
If stress and anxiety weren’t bad enough, dealing with clutter, moving it around and looking for things that are lost in a disorganized home wastes so much time. Studies show that Americans spend on average 2.5 days a year looking for things. And millennials are shown to be twice as big of “losers” as Baby Boomers.
What’s more, we collectively spend $2.7 billion each year replacing items, and more than half of us are regularly late for work or school due to frustrating searches. Then when we do finally arrive and start our day, our effectiveness is diminished for minutes, or even hours, due to the emotional state we are in after these occurrences.
Just think of all the things you could do with that time and money? Pay for a DesignYou Membership? Hire a virtual assistant? Maybe even take a vacation, depending on how much your cluttered or disorganized home is costing you.
The Clutter Test
One way to decide if your home is too cluttered is to recognize how hard it is to keep your house tidy. If you spend much time at all straightening your home regularly, then you likely have too much stuff.
What often happens is that our closets, cabinets and chests of drawers hold things we never use, while all our most-used items end up on countertops, other surfaces and the floor. No wonder we can never locate them. And this causes a real problem with mental clarity and productivity.
Are you organized, with extra room in your closets and drawers to tuck away the things you really use, until you need them? Or are you guilty of filling your storage spaces to the brim and rarely opening them or using what’s inside?
Clutter and Your Money
Money mindset also plays a huge roll, when it comes to clean and organized homes. First, as UCLA discovered, many people have a hard time getting rid of things because they attach an unrealistic monetary value to things that they own.
Making room in your home and having empty space in your drawers and closets makes room for wealth to come to you. And this doesn’t just mean emptying them until you buy more. It’s the idea of not filling them back up after giving things away and having garage sales, because this sends signals to the universe that you are open and ready to receive more money.
Whether the universe is in on this, or it’s just our own subconscious, when we don’t have room for anything else in our closets or our lives, we aren’t as motivated or mentally prepared to go to the next level financially.
From personal experience, when I doubled down on my already extremely organized habits and made empty spaces in my cupboards, closets and drawers, within 6 months my business revenues were higher than ever and I doubled my personal salary. That’s enough evidence for me that this philosophy works.
A scarcity mindset keeps your spaces cluttered. A scarcity mindset keeps you cleaning your own home, when you’d get a far greater return hiring to get that work done, while you operate in your own personal zone of genius.
It’s time to get organized and send a signal that you are ready for financial freedom.
If you want to go deeper into mastering your mindset, I created this free downloadable workbook with the FIVE steps I always follow to manage my mindset, specifically to increase my profits. Once I started following these steps, I saw my income double in less than a year! Get your free 5 Steps to Maximizing Profit By Managing Your Mindset guide now!
I hope this is helpful for you! Leave me a comment below and let me know where you’re struggling with clutter—and what rooms you plan to work on first!
xo,
