{"id":760,"date":"2015-03-01T17:04:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T06:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/?p=760"},"modified":"2015-06-14T19:12:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T09:12:56","slug":"break-free-from-clutter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/break-free-from-clutter\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleanse Your Life, Break Free From Clutter!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your home ought to be a retreat from the stress and pressure of the world outside. However, if it\u2019s instead making you feel anxious,\u00a0helpless and overwhelmed it might be time to address the mess.<\/p>\n

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WHAT A MESS: Clutter can make you feel anxious, helpless and overwhelmed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to psychologist Sherrie Bourg, clutter\u00a0can play\u00a0a significant role in how we feel about our homes, our workplaces and ourselves, but it’s rarely recognised\u00a0as a\u00a0significant source of stress in our lives. (Psychology Today, March 2012)<\/p>\n

Bourg highlights a number of reasons mess leads to stress including excessive stimuli causing our senses to work overtime; distraction; difficulty relaxing physically and mentally; feelings that work is never done; anxiety about getting through it all; guilt and embarrassment when people visit; inhibiting creativity and productivity; and frustration caused by difficulties locating things.<\/p>\n

Breaking free from clutter may feel overwhelming and be time consuming, but if you take on each task in separate increments, you can celebrate the wins along the way \u2013 and be rewarded with that wonderful cleansing feeling.<\/p>\n

In the long term, the health and lifestyle benefits of decluttering your home are plentiful. Every trip to the charity shop and every overflowing bin are all signs you\u2019re well on your way towards taking control of your home life.<\/p>\n

Here some ideas to get you started:<\/p>\n

Take stock of your CDs, DVDs, Music Cassettes, Video Cassettes and Books<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s time to break up with some of your books. Keep only those you\u2019ve had a long-term love affair with and say goodbye to\u00a0those one-night stands. Once you’ve given away some of your books to\u00a0charity, alphabetise them neatly on your bookshelf or, if you want to get creative and really frustrate a librarian, you can even colour code them. That\u2019s right, all the red books together, all the blue books together. It\u2019s totally impractical, but looks terrific \u2013 better for non-fiction than fiction.<\/p>\n

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If you have old home videos, transfer them onto a digital format. With the right tools, you can do this yourself \u2013 otherwise you can pay a service\u00a0to do this for you. Once you\u2019ve got them on a digital format and have backed them up, you can discard the videotapes.<\/p>\n

Even if you have a cassette player, it\u2019s likely your old music cassettes will get chewed if you try to play them. Subscriber services like Spotify and Pandora and music players like iTunes pretty much have everything from your youth. Make it a project to search for and download all your old tapes and mixed tapes. Once you have them on digital format, you can discard the tapes and actually enjoy listening to all those classic old songs.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re no longer buying CDs, it\u2019s likely you\u2019re no longer listening to them either. Naturally, you want to keep the tunes, so burn them onto your computer so you can include them on your digital playlist instead. Once that\u2019s done, donate the CDs\u00a0to charity. If you still listen to them, take time to store them nicely on racks and alphabetise them.<\/p>\n

While video shops are now few and far between and downloading movies and TV shows is becoming more commonplace, owning DVDs still seems to be relatively\u00a0popular. Yours may very well be bursting out of your TV cabinet and spilling over into other areas. If that\u2019s the case, don\u2019t be afraid to buy a dedicated bookshelf for your DVD collection and alphabetise it. That said, if you don\u2019t watch any of your DVDs anymore and you\u2019re purely a digital junky, simply donate them instead.<\/p>\n

Organise your memories and give them a new life<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with sentimentality, but when it inhibits rather than adds to your wellbeing, it\u2019s time to reconsider your options.<\/p>\n

Photographs:<\/strong> Get rid of all your old crusty, yellowing photo albums, buy some funky new photo boxes and transfer your photos from one to the other. As you are doing that, scan your photos into digital format. Make it fun to look at your old memories. Pick one of your favourite photos and turn it into a canvas print<\/a> or, to display a collection of memories, create a canvas collage\u00a0instead. Mount these somewhere you can enjoy them everyday.<\/p>\n

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Recipe books:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a great way to divest your recipe collection and invest in something significantly more useful. If you have kept magazines and cookbooks for the sake of that \u2018one amazing recipe\u2019 it\u2019s so easy now to keep individual recipes and say goodbye to the books. Smartphone apps like SnapRecipes let you scan the photo, ingredients and instructions and keep them in digital format for you \u2013 accessible whenever you want them (and much less dusty!).<\/p>\n

Old artwork:<\/strong> It could be your children\u2019s artwork or it could be your own. Perhaps your own parents have decluttered their house and you\u2019ve suddenly ended up with all your old childhood artwork. It\u2019s time to get ruthless! There is a way to respect the artwork and throw them away all at the same time. Take a high resolution photograph or scan of the artwork. Rather than them taking up space in the corner of the house somewhere, you can now enjoy them in digital format anytime. You might even like to pick some favourites and give them new life as canvas art prints.<\/p>\n

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While it\u2019s often easier to hoard, particularly if you\u2019re the sentiment type, ask yourself \u2018Will I actually use this?\u2019 and \u2018Am I going to be needing this?\u2019<\/p>\n

Think about which items are the most sentimental rather than deciding they\u2019re all sentimental. For your most sentimental items, ones that you simply can\u2019t part with, instead of keeping them in a cupboard or box, put it on display.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s tucked away in a box, perhaps that means it\u2019s actually not that important to you. If it\u2019s truly valuable and you have a very real emotional connection to it, give it the presence it deserves in your home \u2013 on display in a glass display cabinet or shelf.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to break free from the shackles of clutter and enjoy all your home life has to offer! You’ll start feeling much, much better. Happy cleansing!<\/p>\n

\"Canvas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your home ought to be a retreat from the stress and pressure of the world outside. However, if it\u2019s instead making you feel anxious,\u00a0helpless and overwhelmed it might be time to address the mess. According to psychologist Sherrie Bourg, clutter\u00a0can play\u00a0a significant role in how we feel about our homes, our workplaces and ourselves, but … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interior-design"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1396,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions\/1396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canvasfactory.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}