Clutter is usually messy, but mess is not always clutter. I try to be tidy even though I tend to be messy. Artist life. I see mess as potential in progress. Mess allows your possessions to be used, and sorted, and used again. Mess is a part of life.
Clutter is where stuff goes to die. Clutter is the messy piles in the cabinets, closets, and counter tops where stuff gets placed so that it doesn’t have to be used – and there in lines the problem. Clutter is only a problem because we own things that we do not use, and we own so much of it that stuff gets lost. Then, we buy more because we can’t find something when we do need to use it because it’s lost in all the stuff we aren’t using. It’s ok to have things to use only sometimes, but everything needs to have a proper place. Clutter gives me anxiety and is doesn’t have to be a part of life.
When we really decided to live clutter-free, the biggest slap in the face (me slapping my own face) was every time I kept finding multiple items of things. I found four to five rolls of weed-eater string, enough pens to supply a classroom for a year, tarps and more tarps, duplicates of crafts supplies, and hidden cans of shaving cream that I bought when I took up couponing for like three months and bought a whole-lotta extra things and then hid them from myself because I really had no grasps on how to store the things I had in the first place. I was living in a house full of wasted money, but the real problem was that I didn’t know how to properly store weed-eater string. It’s not like the weed-eater string was going to tell me where it should go. All I had to do was create a space for it – that simple.
Designated places are key to living a life less cluttered. Houses are like Stuff Budgets. Our homes have only so much space and we must create designated places within them for our things and then we have to commit to living within those means. If you knew where everything you had in your home was, there would be no clutter. That may sound overwhelming and complicated, but it’s really as simple as creating a space for the weed-eater string.
Life Less Cluttered 
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