De-Cluttering Your Life Benefits You and the Environment |
Do you wonder whether it is worth the time and energy to de-clutter your life? Consider the costs of not reducing your clutter intake:
- Spending money to store items you do not use
- Investing constant time and money to maintain all you own, whether it is useful and loved or not
- Clutter increases daily stress level and lowers self esteem
- You cannot take it with you. Those who are left to inherit and deal with your clutter will be grateful to you for dealing with it now.
- When you eliminate the unnecessary, you open the door for new things that can enrich your life in new ways.
- Having less increases your ability to enjoy the here and now.
Some sobering statistics:
- The average American gets over 50,000 pieces of mail in a lifetime, one-third of it junk.
- The average American consumes more than 700 pounds of paper a year.
- 80 percent of filed papers are never referenced again; 50 percent of filed materials are duplicates or expired information.
- 60 percent of materials going to storage have no retention value and should have been destroyed.
- If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases — the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road.
- Cleaning would be reduced by 40 percent if clutter were eliminated.


