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Friday, August 14, 2009

7 ways your clutter is costing you


Having clutter around not only cost us our money but also our piece of mind and happiness with it. Your house might be filled with piles of books and magazines you mean to read it, the smaller size clothes in your closet when you get back to your college weight, every toys that kids got from family and friends, many bills are just a few of example of clutter that most of us go through in our lives. Kitchen, bathrooms and office are worst places in a house for clutter to pile up easily. Instead of you owning the stuff, your stuff ends up owning/controlling you. Here are few ways, clutter cost us more than we bargained for;

1. You misplace bills to pay or check to deposit in your huge piles of paper. By the time, you find anything, bill is past due and check is no longer cash-able (after 90 days). You have just lost money and added interest or fees on bills too.

2. You buy item, only to realize months later, that you had that same item in your storage pile somewhere in the house. It was hard to find and hence forgotten. Sometimes, you may buy same items a few times over the years, not remembering, costing you more money.

3. You panic when someone called for unannounced to visit, as it will be overwhelming to clean up clutter in such a short time. Either you are embarrassed when company comes or choose to do less social inviting on purpose, either way you are losing social life with friends and family because of your clutter.

4. You do not want to come home as cluttered and messy home does not make you feel better. So you tend to eat out more often and do more outside shopping to make yourself feel good, adding clutter to your already cluttered house.

5. You may think it is wise to put all extra storage in storage place, leaving your house cleaner. However, you may pay $50 a month for your junk and your house slowly begins to be cluttered again.

6. You may lose your valuable time finding things in the house. You may search every morning your car keys under the stuff pile, or you may find that food in your fridge has gone bad, wasting food and money both. Your self esteem may take hit.

7. You are not living your true potential life, due to all clutter. You are waiting for some miracle to make it all better, clutter robs you from happiness. A happiness you get when your sink is empty and kitchen is clean and your bills are paid on time. You will get so much joy once work is done and you can truly relax and enjoy your home.

Is clutter costing you in some ways? In future we will look at a few ways to get started on path to simplifying and de-cluttering.

Photo source: Comstock: Gettyimage

Zengirl

4 comments:

vikum said...

Hi zengirl,
A great post.This is something we do not care much.But the results we get are so bad.We say we don't have a time to worry about this clutter which is not the truth.We are too lazy to act on it on a daily basis.
Thanks for sharing and looking forward for the paths to de-cluttering :)

zengirl said...

Vikum,

True, when our house gets messy, so does our life and mind.

Zengirl

Betsy Bargain said...

This is all so true, Zengirl. My significant other keeps a lot of junk in a storage space, and I just can't convince hime that this is a waste of money, since he will never use this stuff again, and he just continues to collect more to clutter up his office!

zengirl said...

Betsy,

My husband is like that for his computer stuff sometimes, so I understand. He just recently started doing more giving away, by himself. So, there might be a hope for your SO, or I hope he finds use for his stuff!!

Zengirl