How Clutter Affects You Experiment

If you ever wanted to see how much clutter affects you, do what I did recently.  Let me start from the beginning.

While my daughter was away at music camp, we embarked on a home improvement project to remove her old carpet and replace it to cork flooring so she would not be displaced for too long.  I also didn't want to injury myself by rushing so we took our time throughout the process. Note: before she left, we went into her room and removed several bags of stuff she didn't want or need anymore. She did a great job!

The first day, my son and I removed the furniture (Affiliate Link) from this small 12' X 10' room.  You would think it wouldn't take too long, well, it took us 3 hours.  You see, to maximize the space in her small room, we had one medium tall IKEA cabinet and 2 narrow tall cabinets, a bed, desk, and a bookshelf (Affiliate Link) with doors.  Lucky for us, this was not my first rodeo.  I had my handy carpet gliders to help us. (Here is one from Amazon (Affiliate Link) if you want them: Waxman 4704095N 9 ½ inch by 5 ¾ inch Reusable Oval Super Sliders. 4 pieces. Beige) Love those things! We loaded every piece from her bedroom into our bedroom (a 14' x 16' size room).  The wall cabinets were standing up and we used every surface we had for her stuff.  Piles and piles of stuff left around the room for days on end.  You can just imagine how much stuff that was around us.

So, that night, I went to bed and had a horrible night's sleep.  I tossed and turned.  I keep feeling that the tall IKEA cabinets were going to fall on me. Or the twin bed that was on its side would topple over and make a large sound in the middle of the night.

It took me about 7 days to get comfortable with the clutter in my room. I asked my husband how he did with this experiment, and he didn't seem to mind.  My older chihuahua mix dog, Missey, was another story (Affiliate Link). She wouldn't sleep in our room. For the first few nights, she would only stay in the basement and wouldn't come up at all.  I think she was having issues seeing all the extra furniture (Affiliate Link) at night. We were having this issue too. So, to help her and us, we left a nightlight on in the hallway.  It helps with walking around, but I still couldn't sleep with the night light.

This is our tenth day of sleeping in a room with clutter and I have to say,  I don't like it one bit. Hopefully, only one more day of this and we can put the stuff back where it belongs.

In conclusion, clutter does affect us even if we can't determine how.  Though if the clutter hangs around for more than a week, we start to feel comfortable with it being in the space.  The clutter becomes a fixture that unless we bring our attention to it again, we won't take care of it.  Remember: We are creatures of habit.  My advice to you is to clear the clutter as quickly as you can so it doesn't get ignored and forgotten and you need to remember it again to take care of it.

"Clear the clutter as quickly as you can so it doesn't get ignored and forgotten."

I hope this helped you to see that clutter does affect us.  Let's continue the conversation. Did you ever experience a large amount of clutter in your bedroom?  Did it affect your sleep?  Your mood? How did you clear the clutter? Please leave a comment below.  I would love to hear from you.