Does it seem like your house is an eternal mess? Does cleaning your house suck all life out of you? Or perhaps you’ve outsourced this task so you don’t have to deal with it yourself? This used to be me. And apparently 54% of all Americans.
Usually, it’s not the cleaning itself though that is so overwhelming. Vacuuming an empty room takes practically no time. Dusting an object or two, no big deal. Putting things back in an empty spot can be done in a second. The problem is this is usually not what we face.
Before we even take out the vacuum we have to pick up all the lonely socks and coins from the floor. Maybe we need to relocate a pile of not clean-not dirty clothes and decide where to put them next. And toys, all the toys.
Dusting used to be the task I disliked the most. And frankly, it’s not my favorite chore nowadays either but I do it much more frequently because now I don’t have to move things around to get the job done.
And why are there so many things everywhere anyway?! Because the closets are full, the bookcases are full, the cabinets are full and even those nice-looking extra floor bins we thought would solve the issue are full. There is too much stuff to comfortably fit into our home. There are too many things for our kids to be able to take care of. There is simply just too much! And to add insult to an injury 80 percent of the items we keep are never used.
Before I started decluttering I never differentiated between clutter and mess. All I knew it looked messy and it stressed me out.
Actually, I didn’t even realize it stressed me out until I started removing things from my home. Every carload to Goodwill however made me feel that much lighter. Only then did it become obvious to me how negative of an effect all this stuff had on me.
“Clutter in a home makes it more difficult to clean effectively and makes cleaning take significantly longer. Getting rid of clutter would eliminate 40% of housework in the average home, according to the National Soap and Detergent Association.” I don’t know who wouldn’t be sold by that?!
Now that I have extra space to breathe in my house I have even found joy in cleaning it. I hope you will too.