Free Declutter Your Life: Reduce Stress, Increase Productivity, and Enjoy Your Clutter-Free Life by Michelle Stewart Page A

pests are building nests or leaving biological waste throughout your home, but your lungs will eventually catch on. In addition to diseases that can be carried through insect or flea bites, excessive clutter may increase the chance of developing or aggravating respiratory problems like asthma.
    Even if you do not have clutter to an excess that would allow pest problems, there is still the potential for injury. My husband collects vintage home audio and video equipment. At times, this equipment will sit in one of our open spaces while he waits for parts or determines where to put it. I have walked around a piece of furniture and stubbed my toe or banged my knee on a number of occasions. Luckily those injuries were minor, but when clutter expands into the walkways of your home, you increase the risks of dangerous slips and falls.
The Cost in Mental Health
    At the beginning of this book, I shared the story about my grieving friend. At a time when she was already under a great deal of stress and emotional torment, the clutter in her home added more. You do not have to be in a tragic situation to suffer mental costs associated with clutter. One of the most common emotional or mental issues associated with clutter is stress. Often, this occurs when you consider having people over but you want to present a nice home. Rallying the family to last minute cleaning can be a difficult and stressful task, lessening the enjoyment of a social gathering.
    You can also experience clutter-related stress simply because you are constantly aware of the stuff around you. Perhaps you would prefer a more organized home but you cannot find the time to declutter your space. In these cases, we often enter a dangerous mental cycle. We avoid thinking about the problem for as long as possible. Then, something occurs which brings the problem to the forefront. We might have company coming or the search for a needed item makes us late for work. We resolve to fix the issue but cannot find time. Many people start to develop feelings of guilt regarding the situation and that turns into burying the problem again. As time goes by, such mental high jinx can lead to anxiety or depression.

The Psychology of Clutter
    If any of the costs of clutter discussed in the above section resonate with you, then you may want to declutter your space and stop paying those prices. Before you can create a plan for ongoing organization and declutter, you need to understand some things about the psychology of clutter. Understanding the thought processes that lead to clutter will help you stop it from occurring over and over again. After all, clearing away the mess only to allow it increase again meets Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. –Albert Einstein
Why We Keep Things
    Physical clutter occurs because we keep items in our homes or offices. One of the key things to conquering clutter is to understand why you keep the things you do. Generally, we keep extra or unneeded items around because we believe we might need them in the future, we have a sentimental attachment to them or we perceive a value in the object that makes it hard to throw away.
A Possible Future Need
    It is amazing what we keep because we might need it in the future. My husband keeps all sorts of cardboard boxes and containers. He might need to store something or ship something. I have a problem with hanging on to bits and pieces of craft supplies. I will keep a tiny ball of yarn because I might incorporate it into a future crochet project. It matters very little that I rarely have time to crochet anymore or that I do not like the color. I perceive a possible future use, so I am hard pressed to toss out an otherwise useless item. In our basement at this moment, we have several half used cans of house paint, a stack of old carpet squares and a few odd bits of plywood. We have no plans for using these items in the immediate future,