When Beauty Becomes Clutter

The Fact of Clutter

It was consultation time with a returning client. We were walking around the house as she was showing me her spaces and letting me know a little bit about the why behind the clutter. She was telling me about the local CSA boxes, the bounty of food, and the beautiful flowers that her husband got her. Then she said something that struck me deep down.

“At this point, something beautiful just adds to the clutter.”

Read that again.

“At this point, something beautiful just adds to the clutter.”

This young mother of three small children had gotten to the point of not being able to enjoy something beautiful in her home. That is just striking. That is the state of so many homes. That is why I do what I do: help people find peace and freedom, and beauty, in your home.

How Do Our Homes Fill with Clutter?

How do we get here? How do our homes get so full of clutter that we can’t enjoy the beauty inside? It comes down to a few basic things.

1. We choose to bring in more things than we can maintain.

2. We choose to fill our time with more things than we can maintain.

The combination of these two things always equals chaos in some form. Most of the time it means a house so full of stuff in such a messy way that we can’t enjoy the beauty or even the every day or the people who live inside. Our visual space is overwhelmed and overwhelming and so is our mental space.

Here are a few ways these things can show themselves in our lives.

1. We use our time to buy things we know we already have but can’t find.

2. We bring in things we don’t need - mindless shopping, some freebie, etc.

3. We don’t keep up with regular household chores.

4. We don’t teach our children how to do regular household chores.

5. We try to do everything in the house by ourselves from daily chores to major repairs.

6. We shop to kill time, to fill a void, to make us “feel better”, or to keep up with the Joneses.

7. We keep things in our home past their usefulness.

8. We fill our calendars because of FOMO; because we can’t say “no” to our friends, to our kids, to our families; we think the more we do the better a person we are; we think the more our kids do the better people they will become.

9. We don’t know how to rest or be alone or not be busy all the time.

10. We don’t take the time to know what is in our homes or to decide what gets to stay.

11. We let other people shame us into keeping or buying things we know we don’t need in our homes.

What would you add to this list? How do you see the clutter pushing out the beauty in your home?