3 Psychological Reasons For Clutter

Do you struggle with clutter?

Are there one or more rooms that you simply dread walking into? Or avoid all together?

Hi there, I’m Vanessa Long and I’m guest blogging for my good friend, Linda. She’s asked me here to talk about the psychological reasons that we clutter our houses and our lives from my perspective as a transformational coach and trainer.

In the early 1900s, the famous psychologist Dr. Carl Jung drew a connection between your external life and your internal mind and the impact that each has on the other.

Did you know that you have both an unconscious and a conscious mind? 

Your unconscious mind is everything you aren’t aware of right now – that’s about 98% of your power and your mind.

Your conscious mind is about 2% of your mind and power and is everything that you are aware that you’re thinking right now.

For instance, if I asked you what your best friends name was in Grade 4… a name will probably pop up. You weren’t thinking about it before so it must have come from your unconscious mind. Really, that’s all the unconscious is: everything you’re not aware of right now – and it’s running your life.

What’s important to know is that your conscious mind can only handle a very few thoughts at one time, somewhere between 4 and 9. If your conscious mind can only hold a few thoughts at any one time, what happens to the rest of the thoughts that you have? They go unconscious! They get stuffed down into that part of your mind where you don’t have to deal with them.

And that brings us to your basement. Or garage. Or whatever area of your house has clutter that you just don’t want to deal with – or can’t bring yourself to face.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

One of my favorite sayings is ‘How you do anything is how you do everything’. That means that if you’re holding clutter in one physical space of your life then you are probably holding clutter in other places as well – energetically, at work, emotionally, relationally.

If you have a cluttered basement, then you have clutter elsewhere that you don’t want to deal with. If you look around and think ‘Ugh!’ then you are doing that internally as well with one or more issues. It can be pretty depressing, and, in fact, clutter, unfinished projects, and other holes in our energy field actually do have a significant impact on our emotional and mental health.

There is very good news, though! You have the power to change whatever it is that is dragging you down. You do! You have 100% power to change your life for the better – or to ignore it and watch it get worse.

So here’s where it gets really cool. If you want to get unstuck, if you want to get moving on something in your life, I have found that one of the best ways to do so is by cleaning up a physical mess. When you have successfully tackled a mess in or around your home it frees up a tonne of stagnant energy and that energy can then be used to finish other projects.

Each time you clean up a physical mess you’ll find that other messes want to clean themselves up – that a situation that has been dragging on with no end in sight suddenly changes. There will be shifts in unexpected places.

What mess can I clean up?

In fact, when I feel stuck on a project my first thought is ‘What mess can I clean up?’ Even if it’s just doing the dishes, it gets things moving. And, if I want to see a big change, I clean up a big mess. I tackle something in the basement or rip down a wall that has been vexing me.

You can change your world. You have that power. And if you take just a baby step you’ll find that the power of the universe is waiting to help you on your way. Your unconscious mind knows exactly what is keeping you stuck and it will tell you if you ask.

If your physical messes are just too much for you to handle, call Linda, she’s amazing. She brings her background in social work, as well as her compassion and uber-efficiency to get your project moving in a powerful way.

Author’s Note: Vanessa Long is a Board-Certified Master Coach and one of Canada’s top NLP and Hypnotherapy Trainers. She works with super-busy people to help them break through their stuckedness and blow past their stuff to live the passionate life that they dream of. If you’d like to learn more about the unconscious mind and how it is impacting your ability to get stuff done, you can visit her site at http://vanessalong.ca/takecharge-lvk-thankyou for a complimentary training on the unconscious mind. It’s her gift to you.

Photo by Tomwsulcer (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons