How to Organize and Declutter Your Home: Why Clutter is Causing Depression

Now that the holidays over, it’s time to focus on a new year and new beginnings, and what better way to start off the new year than with a clean slate- literally!

Check out my e-book HERE on Amazon for only 99 cents!

Here is what you will learn from this book:

• How to Start

• How to Make a Schedule

• How to create a check-list

• How, What and where to store important information

• Ideas on how to start organizing and keep organized

• How to clean up

• How to create a command center (and even involve your kids- if you have any)

UCLA once did a study on the affects of clutter in a room called “Life at home in the 21st century”, this study was based on a groundbreaking, four-year, ethnoarchaeological CELF study conducted in 2001-2005. What they found was that a staggering number of possessions and an array of spaces and furnishings that serve as the stage for multiple family activities can tell us a lot about who we are as a society.

The results were astonishing! The cluttered homes caused as much stress as postpartum depression based on their cortisol readings. Think about that for a moment…the clutter was literally causing depression. As the clutter begins to pile up, your stress levels raise as well. If you don’t do anything about the clutter, eventually you will have a mental break point. A point at which the stress becomes too much to bear, and you give into depression and loose all motivation to clean up the clutter that is causing your stress induced depression. Only furthering your depression deeper. It’s a loose-loose cycle.

So how do we stop this cycle? Read my book “How to organize and declutter your home” to learn all the steps you can take to creating a life of freedom from clutter and depression.

Does your house feel like cluttered chaos? Do you feel overwhelmed or chaostrophic in your own home? Getting your house organized can be overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you separate what you need in your home from what you want in your home? There are many steps to getting organized, but this e-book will guide you through the whole process one step at a time. You will work at your own pace, and accomplish one goal at a time, and before you know it, your entire home will be organized and clutter free! Each step is tried and tested, by me, to get your home organized and help keep it that way without making it feel like you are carrying the world on your shoulders while trying to juggle every aspect of your life all at the same time.
Your home reflects how you see yourself, and now is the time to let your brilliance shine! Now is not the time to let what other’s think get in your way, you are on a mission! A mission to show everyone (or perhaps just a disapproving mother-in-law) that you’ve got a beautiful home and you did it all by yourself (This e-book can be our little secret!). Maybe you just moved into a new place and need help organizing each room, or maybe you have been living in your house for years and are finally fed up with the dysfunction of your space- no matter your reason, I am glad you are here, and I want you to know that I can help.

Check out my guidebook How to Organize and Declutter Your Home

Why is Interior Design Important when building a small space?

What does it mean to design someones home?

Well first, let’s take one step back. What is a home? A place where we keep our loved ones safe. We can hide away from the world in our homes when we need to. More importantly, it is a place where you can express yourself, and we have an emotional connection to our homes because of this.

So why is Interior Design important? Because we all live and work somewhere and these spaces affect our bodies, our minds, our energy levels, and even our productivity levels. Small, cramped spaces make us feel uncomfortable and can even cause injuries when furniture and lighting is not placed in the right locations. Low lit places (especially those without windows) make us feel lethargic and slow, even depressed- directly affecting our energy levels and our productivity. Overly loud places can make completing a task challenging and cause you to loose focus.

Good Interior Design addresses all of these needs, whereas bad interior design meets none, and can actually worsen a space. Interior Design is the study of understanding peoples behavior to create functional spaces within a building to enhance their experiences by addressing efficiency and energy levels of those inhabitants.

So how do we react to design? Everything that is man-made is designed. From the shoes you wear to the buildings you walk into. But you don’t notice good design, you simply use it. You don’t feel it, you just feel content in the space. And it looks nice, therefore you like it.

Bad Interior Design is like a pebble in your shoe. When you have a pebble in your shoe, its all you can think about; where can you sit down and take care of it? Bad design is like the pebble in the shoe- its annoying and you notice it all the time. It’s annoying to have to move around furniture in order to sit down. It’s annoying to not be able to reach the top shelf. It’s annoying to have to bend uncomfortably low to reach a sink basin.

Don’t let bad design happen to you. Hire a professional.

You can learn all the tricks of the trade, but this might take you years if you don’t already have some education in this area. There are some people who have a knack for this type of thing, but even those who have a knack for design don’t have the qualifications or education to give great advise on how to make your space the best it can be. This is why hiring a professional is so important.

One of my favorite discussions is when I work with an architect, drafter, or manufacturer and I begin to talk about furniture. Most of the time, furniture is an afterthought for people in these professions, but it should be the most forefront thought since the furniture that you place within your space will make or break the space. It will either make it feel large, cozy, and welcoming, or it not designed well, it could make it feel small, cramped, and uncomfortable.

When placing doors and windows within your space be sure to consider not only the placement, but also the furniture that will be going into the space. For instance, you don’t want a door swing to open and hit your sofa. And you don’t want half your headboard in a window, making it inaccessible and unusable.