The proper environment for growth

In all likelihood you have a home of some sorts: it doesn’t matter if you own a sprawling mansion, if you live in a rental flat, or if you are couch-surfing with a friend for the duration. Wherever you put down your head is where your home is, right now.

A home serves a lot of purposes, and in my work I meet people living in all manner of situations. In the majority of cases, my intervention in based on the notions of ‘too much’, ‘overwhelmed’, ‘disorganised’ and ‘time running out’. But is that all there is to decluttering?

Your home (and I’ll call it that whichever your living situation may be right now) is the place where you are sheltered from the vagaries of life, people and the world in general. It also tends to be the place where you hold all your belongings to keep them safe. Of course, you want to have you belongings with you, but when they start affecting your life negatively, something has gone wrong.

That negative effect could be lack of space with all the issues that brings with it: difficulty to keep clean, having to shuffle things around to change the function of the room, etc. That is certainly true, but another – potentially more important – effect is a mental one: being overwhelmed by the prospect of doing anything, be it looking for a particular item or cleaning/clearing things, plus the obvious threats to health and safety … everything will drag you down and leave you open to depression and mental illness.

All these things are well-known and have been increasingly discussed on national TV, radio, magazines and books, but there is another element that has slipped from our collective attention: the effect an overload of stuff has on our ability to prosper. Ultimately, your living space is where you regroup from whatever is happening outside, but it should also serve as a place where new developments happen and CAN happen.

Think about it: if you are constantly worried about your environment, and you feel out of control of your living situation, your subconscious is aware of the situation but simply cannot get an open phone line to your conscious brain, of course you will be running in circles and never find a way out.

Now clear your mind and imagine a place where you can find what you need, a space that contains only the things that serve you both on a practical and a sentimental level, a home that is easy to clean and does not take up the majority of your thought process each time you step inside.

The choice is clear: a home that does not make many demands on you beyond the regular maintenance leaves your mind free to roam and consider options that would never occur to you in a cluttered environment. When your environment provides what you need to prosper, you can be in harmony with our world. And that is the only place where you can hope to take the right decisions and make plans for a good future.

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