If you’re buried in clutter, you probably have a similar mindset to mine before I embraced minimalism. So how do you change ingrained habits to become a minimalist?
In our modern world it’s easy to accumulate stuff. It’s much harder to get rid of it. And after all, what’s the harm in keeping it? Anything could be useful someday, right? Why not store it in your living space just in case?
This line of thinking makes it very hard to declutter. If you’ve tried it, you may have had these conversations with yourself. You’ll look at something you haven’t used in years and imagine scenarios where it could potentially be used. Then you place it in the “keep” pile, telling yourself it’s safer to hang on to it, after all.
Shift Your Mindset to Become a Minimalist
You’ll continue in those thought loops unless you shift your perspective. Here’s the question you need to ask yourself: What is my clutter costing me?
We tend to think the answer is “nothing.” It doesn’t cost anything to hold on to something, so we might as well just in case. But there’s a reason you’re drawn to the idea of becoming a minimalist. That reason is that the clutter is costing you. Here’s how:
When was the last time you found yourself searching through a closet or a drawer for the one thing you needed? I used to frequently shuffle through clothes in drawers frantically looking for one item I wanted to wear that day. I didn’t realize that I could easily find things I actually wear if I emptied out everything I don’t wear.
Time Spent Tidying and Organizing
The more stuff you have, the more time you’ll spend tidying and organizing it. This is a big one for moms. My toddler loves to dump out all the toys he owns and spread them on the ground. Another favorite pastime of his is opening drawers, pulling out his clothes, and strewing them around the room. If he had tons of clothes and toys, I would be at my wits end putting them back every evening. As it is, though, it only takes a few minutes to tidy everything up while his dad gives him a bath each evening.
One observation from Fumio Sasaki’s Goodbye Things really hit home for me how the number of things you own can exponentially increase the amount of time you spend cleaning. He explains that he used to vacuum his apartment once a month and now, as a minimalist he does it every morning:
Cleaning can be really easy if you have fewer things. Let’s look at how we might clean the floor if we had an owl sculpture in the room.
Step 1: Move the owl over. Step 3: Wipe the floor where the owl had been sitting. Step 3: Return the owl to its original position.
And if we didn’t have this statue in our home?
Step 1: Wipe the floor.
You’ve probably done this plenty of times while cleaning your floors our counters – wipe, move an object to clean under it, wipe, move it back. The more things you have, the more times you do this. Having less stuff makes cleaning much less time-consuming. Like Sasaki, after becoming a minimalist, I find that I’m much more willing to clean.
When was the last time you struggled to close an overstuffed drawer? Tried to wedge a pair of shoes onto an overstuffed shoe rack? Accidentally knocked several shirts off their hangers while trying to grab one? If your answer isn’t “today,” it’s probably sometime in the past week. While each instance seems insignificant, wrestling with your stuff day in and day out increases your frustration. If you think that’s not true, try fighting with a drawer that won’t shut while you’re in a bad mood and see how quickly you go from cranky to fed up!
Until you become a minimalist, you may not realize how much these little daily frustrations are affecting your mood.
Your Relationships
You may not have thought of becoming a minimalist to improve your relationships, but it’s surprisingly impactful. Let’s take my example above about cleaning up my kid’s toys each night. Since he loves scattering them around the floor, if he had a lot, I would probably be at my wit’s end trying to clean them up night after night. I’d scold him for making a mess and resent my husband for not helping me tidy. My family would remember me as an irritable, harried woman who was always snapping at them.
But, since he only has a small number of toys, I can throw them in a box within about a minute and get on with my evening without any effect on my mood. As he’s getting older, I’m teaching him to put his own stuff away and even at a tiny-handed toddler pace, it doesn’t take long.
Your Peace of Mind
Studies have shown that just looking at clutter can increase cortisol levels and trigger anxiety. I certainly feel increased stress just being in an environment that’s cluttered with objects. If you’ve ever studied yoga or meditation, think about where your class was held. Was it in a cramped classroom with desks and books stretching across the room? Of course not. I’m guessing it was in a mostly empty room with just a few mats or cushions on the floor. Teachers of these disciplines that require inner peace and centeredness know that this can’t be accomplished in a busy space. An open and uncluttered environment can do some of the work for you when it comes to clearing your mind.
Your home isn’t a yoga studio, but the same principles apply. The ancient art of feng shui has been recommending a clutter-free home as a path to peace and positive energy for thousands of years for a reason.
Have you ever experienced this scenario? You bought something you regret – exercise equipment you never gathered the motivation to use, a juicer that turned out to be really annoying to clean, or an expensive accessory that you realized doesn’t fit your style at all. Because of the sunk cost fallacy, you leave it in your home. This fallacy tells you that you spent money on the item, so it would be a waste to give it away. At the same time, you don’t use it, so it sits and gathers dust. Every time you see it you feel a pang of regret or shame about the poor spending decision you made.
Or maybe someone bought you a gift that you don’t like. You keep it because obviously it would be ungrateful and offensive to get rid of it. Each time you notice it, you’re reminded of the fact that you don’t use it, and you feel guilty all over again.
Again, these moments are so small it’s hard to recognize that they’re affecting you. But as an example, think about how many times per day you lay eyes on an unused appliance on your kitchen counter. It could easily be dozens. All those little moments of negative feelings build up. It may seem wasteful to get rid of something you didn’t use. But the real waste is all the time you’re spending feeling bad when you could cut your losses and move on.
Hauntings from the Past
If you sorted through all your clothes today, would you find a number of pieces that no longer fit your body? Or maybe they no longer fit your lifestyle at your current age and stage of life? If so, every time you look through your closet, you get reminders of how you are not as thin, as young, as adventurous, as athletic, as social, as whatever, as you once were.
Beyond clothes, you may have items from a past hobby or field of study you gave up, a relationship that ended, or a former career. Looking at these may bring up feelings of failure. Instead of celebrating where you are now, you’re leaving upsetting reminders of the past to haunt you.
Next time you come across an item that fits this category, be mindful of the feelings that come up. Wouldn’t you feel better being free of things that bring up those negative feelings?
Self-Criticism
When you wake up to last night’s mess or open your closet door to see a disaster area, what thoughts come up ? Another impact clutter can have on your emotional wellbeing is setting off a cycle of negative self-talk. You can end up critiquing yourself for being messy, disorganized, lazy, or any number of labels. Here’s what you need to remember: it’s not that you’re fundamentally disorganized or not trying hard enough; it’s that caring for so many possessions is just about impossible. Becoming a minimalist involves admitting that the stuff is the problem, not you. Then you can stop blaming yourself for not caring for it properly.
4. Your Progress
This theme is also related to your emotional state, but it’s bigger than the day-to-day bad feelings that your clutter can bring up. Your stuff literally and figuratively weighs you down. The more stuff you have, the less possible it feels to make significant change. Let’s say you’ve dreamed of moving to a new city to pursue a different future. If you have a large home filled with stuff, it feels overwhelming to imagine packing it all up and moving it. People can even stay in relationships that aren’t right for them because it feels like too much work to move out.
It may sound unlikely if you haven’t experienced it. But once you embrace a more minimalist lifestyle, you’ll witness the change in your perspective on life. Suddenly, you feel free and light – like you could move quickly when opportunity calls. Without the extra weight, big changes don’t seem nearly as daunting.
This is the topic I’ve seen written about most often in discussions reasons to become a minimalist. This fact makes the problem very “real”: your clutter costs you more than your time and peace of mind – it literally costs money.
Storage
The cost of a storage unit is the most obvious manifestation of this. If you have extra stuff that you need to store in a facility, you’re basically paying a “clutter tax” every month. In many cases, this is incredibly wasteful because people don’t even remember what exactly is in the unit. It’s just an unnecessary financial burden.
While a storage unit is an obvious expense that results from having too much stuff, you could also think of your home as a costly storage space for your stuff. A bigger place is generally more expensive than a smaller one, and you may be paying for more space than you really need. It’s common when house or apartment hunting to be impressed by large walk-in closets or to rule out a place due to lack of storage space. I know I’ve done it! But consider – if you had less stuff, you could pay less for your rent or mortgage and spend more on experiences that bring you joy.
Then of course there’s elaborate closet systems, containers, and tools for organization. These can be very pricey. When you have a lot of stuff, they seem like a necessary expense. But one of the most freeing realizations I’ve had since becoming a minimalist is that you don’t need to organize or tidy your things if you just…don’t have a lot of things.
Cleaning
Two things I mentioned above can lead to increased cleaning costs. First of all, your space needs to be larger, so there’s more to clean. And second, cleaning takes much longer, so you’ll be more inclined to pay a professional. With a full-time job and a family, it’s incredibly difficult to keep a house full of clutter clean yourself.
Travel Costs
Clutter doesn’t only affect you at home. A tendency to keep too much stuff tends to spill over into travel as well. Do you overstuff your suitcases when you travel? Have you ever had to pay for an extra bag or overweight luggage at the airport? I certainly have before becoming a minimalist. Like a storage unit, checked luggage and oversize bag fees are essentially a tax you pay for keeping more stuff than you need. Not only is heavy luggage a hassle to deal with during travel, but it’s also literally costing you money.
Bottom Line: To become a minimalist, you need to recognize the cost of clutter
The bottom line is that your clutter is more than an annoyance. It’s costing you time, peace of mind, family harmony, opportunities, and yes, even money. The reason you’ve been hanging onto your stuff is that you think there’s no harm and some potential benefit. Not only is your junk not likely to be useful in the future, but it’s also negatively affecting your life right now. If you’ve felt an urge to declutter or become a minimalist but haven’t had the motivation to really jump into it, this mindset shift should light a fire.
Feeling motivated? Here are some resources to help you get started:
