- Many of us have lots of stuff. We live in a society that gives us lots of options of things we might buy, and then encourages us to make many purchases, even ones we cannot really afford.
- So, the situation with stuff.
- You can purge what you no longer need or want, but that can still leave you with lots.
- When you can see many things around you, you are stressed.The reason why is buried in our early days as a species. When there was lots happening around us visually long long ago, we couldn’t see danger approaching and that was not good. It has never been part of our plan as a group to be something else’s lunch. Coordinating with others can also be hard when you can’t pick that other person out of the scenery, and killing Mammoths and similar activities took more than one person.
- All this is the reason why today we find visual clutter so stressful—our brains still deal with lots of visual information now as they would have many, many generations ago.When we’re in a cluttered space, not only do we get tense, but research shows that our cognitive performance declines.
- So, storage is your option. Storage that you can’t see into—no cute clear glass fronted cabinets, etc. Clear glass fronted cabinets are fine for showing off stuff, particularly if you have kids or pets, but whatever is in them is part of the clutter equation. Putting something into a container you can’t see into makes it a visual clutter non-entity. Even a wall of giant Tupperware-like containers is a better view, psychologically speaking, than mountains of clothes, shoes, etc.
- How much should you tuck out of sight? Your goal should be a space with about the same number of colours, shapes, and patterns, and roughly the same level of organization (for example, symmetry) as a residential environment created by Frank Lloyd Wright (look here for more on this and an image of a FLW residential interior). If you look at a picture of a FLW residential interior and then around the space you’re working on you’ll right away know how much has to go—or come back.
- Creating a place that’s too stark, that doesn’t have as much going on visually as a FLW residential interior is just as stressful as being in a place that’s visually cluttered.
- We need things around us that remind us of what we value about ourselves as a person, what we want people visiting our homes (even the most hypothetical of visitors if you “don’t have people over”) to know about us. We share all of this information readily in the photographs and art and style of furniture . . . and even the type of plants we choose to nurture (and whether they’re alive or artificial).
- When you are putting stuff into storage containers, consider doing so in a way that allows you to move things in and out easily.Presumably, you’re keeping what you’re keeping because you value it, so experiencing it from time-to-time is a good thing. If the right number of photographs on the long windowsill in your living room is 3 and there are 6 there now, swap two sets of 3 in and out on alternate months, perhaps making the exchange on the same day of the month as your birthday.
- Storage is your friend. Used wisely, it makes your life much, much better.
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