The myth that clutter is ‘just’ stuff significantly underestimates the emotional and psychological complexities connected with it.

This myth implies that people who struggle with clutter simply need to ‘get rid’ the belongings they don’t need to achieve order. However, this fails to recognise the profound attachments and meanings that we attach to our possessions.

Here are 10 reasons why our clutter is not ‘Just Stuff’.

This myth implies that people who struggle with clutter simply need to ‘get rid’ the belongings they don’t need to achieve order. However, this fails to recognise the profound attachments and meanings that we attach to our possessions.

Here are 10 reasons why our clutter is not ‘Just Stuff’.

1. Emotions and Memories

For many, clutter is more than a collection of items; it represents memories, identities, and emotional connections. Sentimental objects, such as gifts from loved ones or souvenirs from significant life events, often carry deep personal meaning. Letting these items go can feel like erasing memories, severing ties to important moments and people, or devaluing those experiences in one’s life.

Items associated with past achievements, hopes, aspirations, or relationships can evoke strong emotions. Letting go of these objects may bring feelings of loss, grief, or regret. Thus, the process of clearing our clutter is not merely a physical act but an emotional journey that requires sensitivity, understanding, patience and time.

2. Health Conditions

Clutter can be a visible symptom of various conditions. People with anxiety, depression, ADHD etc may find it overwhelming to clear their clutter because they struggle with making decisions. The mental and emotional energy required for decluttering can be substantial, leading to procrastination or avoidance.

3. 12 Values

Other people see physical ‘stuff’. We may see things in our clutter in terms of sentimentality, practicality or the financial value of things in our past, present or future.  These are the three most common all values that people consider, yet there are a total of 12 values that we need to consider to be able to make a balanced realistic decision that we won’t regret.

That’s why deciding whether to ‘keep’ or ‘get rid’ of something in our clutter will never work for those of us who struggle with clutter.

4. Give our Life Meaning 

For many of us our clutter grew when we felt ‘stuck’ in other areas of our lives.  It represents our achievements in our past that give meaning to our present and create a feeling of comfort, safety, stability and predictability in an unsafe, uncomfortable, unstable and unpredictable world. 

The things in our clutter can also represent our dreams for the future and act as a visible sign of future possibilities. Take away those physical things and you take away those future possibilities.

5. Evidence 

If we struggle with self-confidence or self-worth, things in our clutter represent evidence of certain characteristics that we may feel we don’t have in the present such as:

• study notes or books representing our intelligence
• birthday, Christmas or thank you cards representing our kindness and compassion
• pay slips representing our earning potential.

6. Security

If we’ve experienced scarcity in our lives, or grew up around people with a scarcity mindset, focused on what you don’t have or might not have in the future, especially in relation to our finances, then our physical clutter represents security against financial challenges or insecurity in the future. We develop habits of accumulating things as an insurance policy that is guaranteed to pay-out in the future should the need arise.

7. Unresolved Trauma

Our clutter can represent and trigger traumas that we experienced in the past that we’re not yet ready to face and process in the present, for example:

• Childhood experiences / trauma
• Divorce
• Job loss
• The loss of a loved one
• Unhealty relationships

8. Choices

The present practical need and use of the things in our clutter is often outweighed by the fact our physical things give us endless choices about what to do with our time in the present, which in turn influences how our future might be. If we let go of the clutter, we automatically limit our choices in the present and the future. 

Limiting our choices is not an option for a clutterholic because they are predominately in-time, of which infinite choices in the present is an important element.

9. Helping Others 

Many of us keep the things in our clutter because they represent our ability to help others in the present or future, although in reality, people rarely ask us for our help or for some ‘thing’, and even if they do, we struggle to find the thing they need that we have in our clutter.

What’s needed is a reframe, from keeping things in our home to help people we know, to letting go of things to be able to help people we don’t know and who need our things right now.

10. Family Expectations

We may believe that family expect us to be the keeper of the family heirlooms or archive. This expectation may be perceived or actual. When people resist asking family members to make decisions about family belongings in their clutter, it’s often evidence that they are using it as an excuse to keep the clutter.

You can clear your clutter fast, or you can clear your clutter forever, but you can’t clear your clutter forever, fast. 

To find out how Clare can help you clear your clutter Forever, without the need for an expensive home visit, click here now: https://www.clutterclearing.net/clares-help-centre/