Which Type of Clutter is filling your Life?

‘More will lead us to happiness’ is a misconception we have. Filling our houses, our offices and our minds with more than we can manage only adds to our worries.

When things get too much it turns to clutter and all it does is rob us of our peace of mind and overwhelm us. Clutter is not just physical stuff that clogs our spaces, but it can also be digital, mental, emotional or even spiritual.

Here are 6 kinds of clutter that get in your way of enjoying life or accomplishing work.

• Physical clutter – consists of overflowing closets, overstuffed cabinets or excess groceries. In short, they are the things that you own but don’t use and don’t love
• Digital clutter- is like 50,000 emails, (half of them unread) in your inboxes, or several unnamed files on disk space that you waste your time spending that one email or file you want.
• Social Clutter – is keeping old friends you have nothing in common or interacting with people who pull you down and drain your energy.
• Mental clutter – could be your fears filling your head. It could be your anxiety about to-do lists, what the future holds or unwanted thoughts, negative patterns and pessimistic beliefs hovering in your mind like “I can’t lose weight” or “I can’t run my own business”.
• Emotional clutter – are the emotions that deplete your energy like hanging onto anger, frustration and playing victim mindset. It can also be attributed to your inability to forgive, let go and move on.
• Spiritual clutter – is self-destructive behavior you engage in to fill the hollowness inside of you, such as drinking alcohol, overeating or getting into toxic relationships.

Of all the kinds of clutter, the last two — emotional and spiritual clutter — can be very subtle yet the most paralyzing. While it may not seem obvious, the cause of all the clutter are: Postponed Decisions.

• For e.g. Take physical clutter. When you look in your closet, perhaps there’s a pile of clothes that you don’t wear at all, and you’ve accumulated them because you postponed the decision to throw it away or donate it.
• When we keep receiving emails, we may open it or not, but rarely do we reply, delete or put it in a folder until it comes to point where the inbox is too full to manage.
• Instead of letting your emotions out, you bottled them up. This anger, sadness, grief or frustration is the cause of increased stress.

To limit physical clutter, you’ve got to box it up, and take it to the donation center or the bin. Same for digital clutter, you need to delete unwanted emails or files as soon as they’re received and shift important ones into a folder. For emotional clutter, you also need to act — talk to a trusted friend, spend time in nature, meditate or journal to get hold of your emotions.

To move forward, you need to make a decision- DeclutterChange is a result of an action, and action is the result of a decision. You have the power — even amid helplessness or overwhelm — to create change by deciding today. In short, do something, move forward, even if it’s one small step at a time.

Clearing clutter in your life opens space for you on several levels and moves you from chaos to peace.

Alvina Clara, Content Writer, emQube