Live a Full Life – Clutter Free – THE LONG READ

The end-of-year holiday season is an interesting time, environmental-psych wise.  When we massage our homes into just the right spaces to mingle with others and get in some badly needed time for solo revitalization, we make them great places to live year round—but it’s tough to keep a home in end-of-year shape all year round so we start to slack off here and there once January rolls around and before you know it, everything is back to where it was before the great end-of-year transformation began.

The sad truth is that can be really hard to keep your home in end-of-year shape all year round—so a master plan to preserve what you reasonably can lead to the happiest residents in June and September.  Your house can give you the present of wellbeing all year with a few nudges from you.

Live a Full Life, Clutter Free

When we’re getting ready to spend time with others in our homes at the end of the year, for a Christmas Eve soiree or a New Year’s Eve bash or some grown-up, well-behaved mingling, we take a look around our homes and see . . . STUFF.  Sometimes lots of STUFF.

There are few things that can stress us out more than stuff.  We worry about having the right stuff and then about what to do with it once we’ve got it.  And to be totally honest, some of us keep hold of some stuff for long after it should have been composted, recycled, or donated.

The pluses and minuses of stuff from a psychological perspective all flow from the fact that we can see it (we can also often smell it and touch it and some of it makes sounds, but we’ll get to that later).

And the stuff that we see talks to us—here I’m not referring to some weird or creepy stuff like the sugar crystals that have spilt onto the tabletop mysteriously arranging themselves into messages when no one’s around—I’m talking about the messages objects send out about who we are now, what we value about ourselves now, and what we plan for our futures. The things that we choose to surround ourselves let others know about the life accomplishments (our own and others’) that we think are worthy, that merit others’ attention.  They highlight our bonds to others, whether those others are individual friends, collections of fellow enthusiasts for this or that, the other people in our part of the world or that who share our religion or something else entirely.  They signal how we like to spend our free time, whether that’s hanging out with our friends (think: an oversized, overstuffed sofa perfect for movie night) or painting exquisite landscapes, or volunteering at the local food shelter (maybe the smock that we wear there is in view).

It’s in part because of the messages that they send that we bond to things, we form relationships with them as strong as we do with some people, so any attempt to remove objects from our lives can make us as sad as we would be at bidding farewell to an old friend.  And no one should ever have to say goodbye to an old friend that they still value spending time with.

Even though our things are old friends, our home can only welcome a carefully selected set of friends when we have a party, and even fewer could move in long term.  As we need to manage the visits of friends, we need to manage the number of objects we can see at any one time.

Just as we take pride in our ability to plan a party that everyone enjoys, we feel better about ourselves when we get the feeling that we are effectively managing our lives by managing our homes well enough so we feel good being in them.

High visual complexity

Lower visual complexity

Your goal is to have about as much stuff going on in your house as in a residential interior designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (for example, take a look at the interior of the Meyer May House)—this is known as moderate visual complexity to scientists and to being uncluttered to the rest of the populace.  No more than a couple of patterns in the upholstery and the rugs and the drapes and the wallpapers, for instance.  Some apparent plan behind how the space came together.  A few families of colours in play, largely unsaturated so that viewers feel “nice,” neither devoid of energy or overwhelmed. Continuity in the design elements, if some elements say “botanical” others shouldn’t scream “spaceship.”  Take a look at a few Frank Lloyd Wright spaces and you’ll have a clear goal.  It’s actually pretty straightforward to match the complexity of your place to one of his, once you give it a try.  Another example:  the Japanese flag has low visual complexity while the United States flag is very visually complex; the Canadian flag has moderate visual complexity.

Cutting visual clutter is worth all the effort, even if it’s not end-of-the-year time because when we’re in a space with a moderate amount of stuff going on visually we’re in a better mood and better at problem solving, thinking creatively, and even at getting along with others, our stress levels are lower. We learn more effectively and efficiently (brain-wise) when we are in a space that is not visually cluttered.

The goal is never to get rid of all your stuff or even most of it if you’ve had things pretty much under control from the start. 

What we’re trying to do when we de-clutter, whether we consciously realize it or not, is to create a situation today that mirrors one that made us happy in the early days of our species when we lived by our wits even more than we do today, and didn’t have all of the stuff today to keep us safe and alive—such as doors that can be closed between us and lions and tigers and bears who think we might be very tasty.  Aeons ago the spaces where members of our species were safest, where they could spot approaching danger (whether that was animal, weather, or something else entirely)—this is a space with moderate complexity.  Our sensory systems and brain developed in tandem to endow us with a special attachment to places with moderate visual complexity, we still feel most comfortable when we’re in them.  When we’re in a place with moderate visual complexity we’re in just the right mental state to think great thoughts and get along well with other people, for example.

Our sensory apparatus and brain did not develop in a stark, bleak box.  Having too little going on around us is as stressful to us as too much—it destabilizes our wellbeing at our very core.

As you plan your end-of-year at-home get-togethers, think about creating stress-free views through your home for your guests, so they can have just the sort of time at your home that you’d like and those views will be available to you to boost your morale and positive feelings about yourself all year long. 

Those views don’t have to come at the expense of things you value, however.

Do throw away any actual trash that has built up in your home.  Trash bags can be your friend if the delivery pizza boxes and paper magazines (not a continuing clutter threat as more and more of what we subscribe to is delivered online) and do try to recycle what you can.

Donate to charity what, realistically, does not have a continuing place in your life.  Clothes that will truly never fit again now that you’ve had three children, for example, should find their way to some charity somewhere.  Having things around that bring undesirable thoughts to mind, such as how small your waist used to be can be depressing and the mere act of helping someone out can make you feel really good.

Also, be honest with yourself about things that you’ve inherited.  If you really don’t like them or want them in your home but keep them in your home out of sense of duty, review your holiday card list.  It very well might be that something that’s clutter in your home is a coveted addition to your Cousin Mary’s home.

You might want to reconsider some stuff you’ve inherited if it brings you down…

Throwing away and donating and giving may not solve your clutter problem, but rotating things in and out of view may.

Divide your stuff into two groups, “out now” and “away now.”  If you’ve had 40 photos on top of the piano, choose 5 to leave out now and tuck the other 35 into the piano bench or into a closet somewhere handy.  Every month, go to wherever you’ve put those 35 pictures and select 5 for display next month (you might do this every month on the first or last day of the month or the day of the month that aligns with your birthday [born on the 13^th, rotate the photographs on the 13^th]).  At the end of a year or 18 months or whenever you get a chance, take stock of the photos that have never made it to the top of the piano—maybe it’s time for them to get tucked into photo albums somewhere.

The same goes for sofa pillows; some of us have an amazing number of cushy things to lean back on.  Cushions that aren’t rotated onto the sofa may need to be donated somewhere or, if they have sentimental value, have their stuffing removed so the pillow covers can be easily tucked away somewhere out of view.

You likely won’t have to throw away if you rotate and knowing that means that de-cluttering isn’t getting rid of old friends, it’s just spending time with different sets of friends at different times.

There are the occasional items that do need to move along to somewhere else even though you’re attached to them.  You may have collected carousel horses when you lived in a large home but now that you’ve relocated to a much smaller place to live near the beach, walking around them as they commandeer valuable floorspace may be aggravating—so you’ll need to sell them, donate them, or give them away.  Many people in this situation find it comforting to photograph whatever they need to send to a new home; having the photos to keep makes it easier to move along to a new way of living.

Something that doesn’t get discussed much in terms of visual clutter is indoor plants.  We hear so much about how seeing plants helps our brains stay stress-free and refreshed and thinking awesome thoughts that it seems that if one plant is good and two plants are good that 30 potted plants in view is better by far.

Sadly, particularly for people who sell potting soil and flowerpots, this is not so.

It would have been tough for our early ancestors to see approaching danger in a jungle like space, with plants and tree trunks potentially helping hide the approach of animals (and perhaps other people) seeking to do us harm.  As a result, our sensory systems developed in ways that continue to give us warm and fuzzy, happy-ish, feelings when indoors we’re around a couple of green leafy plants, say a couple of feet tall or so, but not when our living rooms become hot houses, although growing many, particularly difficult to raise, plants indoors may give us a sense of personal accomplishment and a boost in self-esteem, they can make us the intrepid, never-fail horticulturist.  If your living room or dining room or den has become a well-stocked plant conservatory, redistribute your plant wealth for more even home in-home greenspace coverage.