To Clutter ?

Most city folks believe that to live is to be surrounded by beautiful things, not realising that cluttering one's home can lead to mental stress.

Prasad Abu Bakar

Consumption: Human beings are compulsive buyers, specially when they can afford to buy what they wish. If you walk in to a house and look at the many things that they are surrounded with, you will realise that they are mostly things that have not been used probably at all.

Decorating a home just does not mean filling every bit of empty space with meaningless things that you acquire because you were attracted to them at a glance. It is always good to ask yourself a few questions before you actually harbour into buying something.

Always come back and have a second look if you are not sure that you really need it in your home. Another approach is to replace it with something that you already have and will fulfil a similar need. By re-placing it means you try to sell what you already have it or if it is not saleable give it away.

Being surrounded by everything that you want to have in your house just because you think that they are essential to make your house 'appear' to be perfect is a very insensible act. It is also a colossal waste of money. To have everything does not mean that your house can be transformed into a home.

You might have noticed that some walls in most homes are decorated with innumerable ornaments and decorative pictures without any consideration to the use of space. If you are a collector of some sort what ever you have in your home should reflect that passion and that hobby of yours should give you an insight at how to decorate your home with that hobby of yours running through the entire decor of your home.

To throw away what is absolutely of no use is one way to clear your surroundings. People have a strange sense of belonging to things they have used and have gone out of order and being of no use to them any more.

Footwear takes a front line in this matter. If you ask them why they have so many shoes and slippers and even umbrellas and other personal belongings that are all broken, evidently after a long term of using them, they will say that they are looking forward to repairing them and never got around at doing it.

But the fact is that while they never got around at repairing the ones that are already broken they keep on buying more to add to the clutter. If you look at the ones that stand un-used one would see that there are a number of shoes and umbrellas in a house that is beyond repair or simply unusable.

The same theory goes with regard to clothes, sometimes you find that there are clothes in some people's wardrobes that they themselves claim that they never found the time to wear or never came across a fitting occasion to do so.

It trickles down to other areas like food too.

The kitchens in some homes are just over-crowded with containers of food items and even the people using the kitchen do not realise that some of the contents have gone off and cannot be used.

Refrigerators can convey a similar story and each time people go super marketing you find that they shop mostly with their eyes and not with their sense of need, which would give them an opportunity of buying only what is really needed.

An over crowded home can actually extend a lot of stress which can lead one to suffer constantly from minor ailments as common cold or migraine.

This has been cited recently by experts discussing regular bouts of flu and other minor ailments saying that a stressful life can lead to such deficiencies.

The habit of overcrowding one's life in fact, begins at a very tender age. Living within such surroundings since childhood can be seen as a major factor.

Another one is the habit of wanting to have everything that is seen in other people's houses without actually looking at the fact whether they are of any use to you. How can one avoid the habit of over-crowding one's home and escape the feeling of being bombarded by unnecessary clutter. Rule number one is to always discard goods, including personal belongings that are not functional any more. Always look closely, not at what you are buying but your need to have them.

There are scores of urban dwellers that get the servants in their homes to wash the clothes while having the washing machine in a visible place to visitors as a show piece. Blending machines and juice makers are lying idle in their kitchens, probably not used from the initial day that they were placed in the pantry; while the home folk are drinking carbonated mineral waters and cordials day and night.

Always consider that there should be a place in your home for everything that you buy for it and for your self too. Also make sure that you don't buy something that is not used very often, as with clothes. Always make sure that you don't allow to clutter your bedroom or bathroom by making sure that you put them away every time you have used them.

Dirty clothes are a menace and can lead to decay if left too long in laundry storage or airing. If you are rich enough to wear and throw, do it by all means but make sure you throw them in the direction of somebody that has some use for them.

Extravagant lifestyles can demand for more and a variety of things that can furnish that extravagance with what it needs but the more sophisticated our lives become it will need more discipline to keep it in place without making our living one huge unmanageable self in disarray.

Always leave some space in your life to be filled with, otherwise you will find that there is no deserving space for anything worthwhile that you come across one time or the other - which or whom that you will find fulfilling.