BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Cleaning Clutter Makes You Fat

Now here's a post I could put both here and in my low carb forum!!

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Wow, thanks for that link! Interesting theory.

Well, I think my space and my place is pretty uncluttered and fairly well organized. I have a writer's group and we exchanged office photos and some of them are quite scary. :0 I think writers in general are known for their "piles" of paper, magazines, folders and such.

Well, I have to say, my home is somewhat cluttered... and well, it does make my butt look fat HA HA!

I do happen to know a gal who has been steadily loosing weight ---- and she happens to be decluttering her home too.

I am a total believer in feng shui, so I can see where clutter would affect our energy - and if our energy is affected, that can affect how we eat.

It makes sense.

How can one get a healthy body when their environment is sick?

Good "Food for Thought!"

I definitely agree, that when you start to get your life in order, you feel better about yourself, so you take better care of yourself, and it all supports itself.

Plus if your house is less cluttered you can get to your exercise bike and actually use it

I definitely agree with the writer-paper-pile theory. I have tons of notes in my office from trips I've taken, restaurants I've gone to etc etc that all need to get written up.

And if you are busy decluttering you don't have time to eat.

LOL now there is a thought I hadn't come up with!! But if you're working hard decluttering maybe you build up an appetite!!

I'm still laughing that I worked so hard to clean out the living room and now my boyfriend has filled the entire room with recording gear. Ah well, at least it's being used

Yikes, I'm doomed if i do, and doomed if i don't.

Well OK but you're burning calories by decluttering so as long as you eat healthy food you still end up with a net loss - and you're building muscle so long term that will burn off lots of calories just by being on your body

I decluttered my house and now I am eating a pumpkin pie! that and I have had the munches all week! I must have worked up an appietite! so much for the get decluttered and get skinny diet! lmao! It was a good theory though Just didnt work for me...

LOL well at least pumpkin pie is reasonably healthy - much better than candy or chocolate or something. Now to get you to transition to butternut squash or something as your treat

What is a butternut squash and how do you cook it? I tried the spaggettie squash but it was crunchy and kinda slimmy at the same time...yuck! and it had no taste! I would have had a carmal cake but the eggs were old.....I love Carmal but pumpkin is good too!

Butternut squash is great! It's the long yellow squash -

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I love the shows Neat and Clean Sweep on Discovery Home airing on Wed nites. The host for Neat Helen is so good at what she does.

I know that when I don't even have the dishes done let alone all the other clutter I am more tempted to want to go out and eat! Thus expanding my waisline and shrinking my wallet, something that I am now working hard to do in reverse!

Declutter, De-stress, and De-weight. Haha, that's a diet plan in itself.

If I took the time to go from the top of the house to the bottom, I'd be thin in no time. Just finished doing the living room, already I feel more relaxed and ready to go.

Well definitely the more cluttered the kitchen is the less likely we are to take the time in there to cook something healthy. So I definitely think you're on to something there, Marci.

The kitchen is a mess right now, and the kitchen table too. I don't know how this happens. However the basement is in much better shape. Today's task will be to re-clean the kitchen table.

So, it isn't the food I've been putting in my mouth that put on the pounds? (Just kidding!)

The problem is getting the family on board, too. Over the years, I go in spurts of cleaning and clearing -- and I discovered that as I eliminated stuff from my space, everyone else expanded their "stuff" to fill it up. In the end, I just had less space!

It's hard, too, when two pack-rats marry, and have a baby pack rat.

But any suggestions for getting others in the family on-board, too?

Well, Ms. A, you can try all sorts of trickes to get the family on board, but the easiest (and most peaceful) thing is to declutter the areas you care about, give them some space of their own (I shut my son's bedroom door for years, for example), and just do what you need to do to declutter your space (which might include the main living areas, too.)

You can try a yard sale and everyone gets to keep the money they make from selling their own clutter. (If they help with the sale! LOL)

You can get together and agree on clutter-free zones. But, again, you'll still probably have to take their clutter back to their area often until perhaps they get the message.

I have found it more peaceful to just compromise on what matters most. For instance, I have books and magazines that were always called clutter when I wanted everyone to clean up their clutter. I still have many of them. It's not clutter to me! LOL But, I would limit what I had in the living areas to what I called reasonable just to have everyone else pick up their socks and glasses and jackets.

I think every person should get their own space and common areas have sanity rules. So just because you clean up the living room doesn't mean other people can dump their junk all over it! They have to put it back into their own area. If a space is yours you deserve to have it clean, not to be filled up with their junk!!

And yes in terms of them decluttering their OWN space, by them bins and shelves. Give them a half a chance of having somewhere to put their junk. And organize a charity run. Give each person a big box and say you're going to your local charity on Sunday. Tell them to dump stuff in the box to donate. It might give them some incentive ...

I really love the uncluttered look and I like our countertops and other surfaces free from junk with only some tasteful decorations there. I make it a point to clean up behind myself when I leave a room. The rest of my family aren't as neat as I am so I've had to find ways to deal with that for common areas of the house. If a family member clutters up a room, I ask them to take care of it but if they are gone and I can't wait, I put the junk into a laundry basket and deposit it in their rooms (or in my husband's "spot" in the bedroom or in his in-box). That way, they can deal with their own stuff. It's sort of like what BellaDeb does.

Isn't it amazing how clutter can occur so quickly? It can take only 5 minutes to trash a room!

That is a great idea. My boyfriend has PILES of paper and bills in the living room next to where he sits and laptops. I get him plastic bins to put them in and then the bin overflows. He does in fact have an office upstairs but it is so full of junk you really can't walk in there at all.

So here's my new plan. There is a blank space on the wall to hold a shelving unit. I am going to get another shelving unit and put it up there. Then I am going to take his plastic bins of paper and put them on the shelves, and date them with when I put them up. I'll get him new plastic bins for by the living room. When they fill up I'll date them and put them on the shelves. Eventually the shelves will fill up and then I'll offer to him to shred the oldest bin. Obviously if he hasn't looked at it in say 3 years it can't have anything important in it ...

OK so step 1 is to get a shelving unit. I'll talk with him about that tonight.

I hope your plan works for you, Lisa!

I think it can be particularly difficult to deal with children who are not neat. Sometimes you have to hang in there a long time. I have had to remind myself that letting them deal with their mess is the best way to resolve it. I would just keep putting their stuff in their room until it was unimaginably cluttered. Then, eventually, they can't stand it anymore and a cleaning takes place. I think it can often be the only way for a person to learn what happens when they don't attend to clutter. It's a valuable lesson.

My personal method of keeping things neat is to take the time to "complete" everything you do which means cleaning up behind yourself before you move on to a new activity.

Well, I tried my bin idea and he said he would rather just file the things from here - so it's still a mess

I've gotten in the tidy-up mood (I go with it when it happens -- it's such a rare event!), and have filled bags to go to goodwill. Even managed to get dh to find some no longer used items that he can part with (such a tough thing for packrats like us!). Bit by bit, it is looking nicer -- and feels so good!

That's wonderful news!! It's definitely important to celebrate even the small victories