Lifestyle Traits Learned From Decluttering

This is an excerpt from Stop Clutter From Wrecking Your Family. The benefits of learning to live a decluttereed life apply to adults as well as to children.

Teach your kids to not-clutter and this is what you are really teaching them!

1. Respect for others.

2. Decision-making.

3. Concern for those less fortunate.

4. Increased self-esteem.

5. Decreased anxiety, at home, school and in adulthood.

6. Combating depression.

7. Taking responsibility for one’s actions.

8. Better study habits.

9. Acceptance of ourselves and what we need.

10. Gratitude for what we do have.

11. Respect for property.

12. A sense of balance, in having what we need and want, and not letting those things we neither need nor want vying for our attention.

The solutions come from understanding the reasons people, adults and children, hang onto their stuff. They aren’t just learning to make neat “homes” for stuff in brightly-colored containers, or following rigid rules about “keeping neat.”

Rules are fine and necessary for a household to run. Structure is needed (and psychologists tell us actually wanted) by children and teens. Rules help families function smoothly. But understanding why kids and adults make messes is a far more powerful tool for permanently changing cluttering behavior. Ever had a child ask, “Why?” when you told her to pick something up or put it away? Now you’ll be able (most of the time anyway) to come up with something better than, “Because I said so, that’s why.” I doubt I’ll ever rank up with Dr. Spock, but if you want to say, “Because Mike Nelson said so, that’s why,” go ahead. Heck to a five year-old, that might mean something.