How Clutter Affects You

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Length: 1:44 minutes (1.59 MB)
Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

April 5, 2010

Interview with Barbara Tako author of Clutter Clearing Choices: Clear Clutter, Organize Your Home & Reclaim Your Life

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Mike Carruthers:
If you have clutter in your home or office it may be having a bigger impact on you than you realize.

Barbara Tako:
When we look at unaccomplished tasks or piles of paperwork or piles of clutter, we feel all sorts of angst and guilt about that stuff. It’s visually distracting and wearing us down.

Barbara Tako

Barbara Tako author of the book Clutter Clearing Choices: Clear Clutter, Organize Your Home & Reclaim Your Life says the good news is that tackling clutter actually takes less energy than looking at it everyday.

We waste a lot of emotional energy staring and looking at those piles repeatedly. And it really takes less time to just set a timer for ten or fifteen minutes and just tackle some of that.

Barbara believes if you really stop and think about it, a lot of the clutter you keep makes no sense. You simply hold on to it out of obligation.

You know, we get a sweater from our mother-in-law and we think, “Well it was a gift from her, I can’t get rid of it.” And so it lingers in our closet even though maybe it doesn’t fit our body type or isn’t the right color… We associate this obligation with things that I think is more perceived than actual.

Think of it from the perspective of the gift giver.

When we give a gift to somebody for example, do you want them to hang on to it for decades out of obligation or if it’s not their “cup of tea” would you prefer they got on with their lives and recognized that, yes you are their friend and you care about them – but that doesn’t mean they have to hang on to a gift you’ve given them.

You can link to Barbara's website here.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.