Did you know that one of the side effects of a cluttered home for siblings is increased fighting?
Biting, pushing, hitting, yelling all increase within the confines of a cluttered and chaotic environment. I found this to be true in my home, and in the classrooms I taught in. Even better though, I believe and know how decluttering promotes peace.
Decluttering does not replace parenting, but it is an effective tool for facilitating moods and behavior.
We know that our physical environments reflect our internal environments
We hear things like “outer order, inner calm” and love it. Yet we don’t infuse the essence of this into our lives.
A spa makes us feel instantly soothed. The environment has that effect on us. So, the same is true of a cluttered environment.
When I returned home from work back in the day I would step into my home and seize up a bit.
The clutter in your space is a visual trigger for everything that you have to do still. It is a constant reminder of how far behind you are.
If your space is clear and uncluttered, it makes you feel at ease and relaxed. It allows you the space to think and feel freely.
It affects more than just our feelings though, clutter affects behavior
I used to teach teachers how to declutter their classrooms.
Initially I was always hired to help teachers gain control over their classrooms. All of the teachers I worked with believed I would be teaching behavioral strategies and teaching practices. All were reluctant to declutter their classrooms with me before I was willing to have a conversation about specific behavioral challenges.
This was because I knew that if you could set the environment up in a way to support the children, their behavior would reflect that.
This is true in classrooms and at home.
When children have too much to manage, they also get overwhelmed. This manifest in behavior that is labeled as destructive, aggressive, whiny, impulsive, unwilling to help clean up, and many other negative terms.
When really, kids are just like adults and affected by clutter, too. You are irritable when surrounded by clutter. It’s also hard for you to focus and be productive. Kids are exactly the same.
I would see dramatic difference in children’s behavior immediately after decluttering the classrooms. The destruction and aggression stopped. Children cleaned up after themselves more easily. Creativity, fun and engagement sky rocketed. All without any behavioral management.
Children are given the space to be children, and you are given clarity on how to support them
Clutter clouds this for us. Clutter acts as a barrier to the peace that we want in our home. It tricks us into blaming each other, our behavior, or our natural tendencies when really eliminating the pointless stuff can fix so many of the problems we experience.
Clutter creates chaos
We internalize that chaos, and then our kids do too. We can turn this around and we can claim space and peace, then let our kids internalize that as well
Let’s normalize feeling at ease and peace. The simplest place to start is by decluttering the physical stuff in our homes.
You can declutter it in just four weeks by getting into Decluttering Simplified and decluttering alongside us!