marie kondo

Everyone thinks that home makeover projects have to cost thousands of dollars and include knocking down walls, new appliances, hard wood floors, and more.

But there’s actually a sneaky, simple little way to completely make over the feel of your home for free.

It might be that you don’t really need a new kitchen, a bigger dining room, or a different couch.

The biggest impact (and most affordable) home makeover project for you might be simply this: declutter.

The Unexpected Danger Of A Cluttered Home

Clutter doesn’t just make your home feel less enjoyable or less beautiful. It has actually been associated with higher levels of cortisol (stress hormone) and other very bad things:

A piece of startling evidence that emerged from CELF’s work shows, for the first time, that clutter can be so bad for the health of women it should come with the sort of warning they put on cigarette packs: clutter kills. By recording how people feel about their homes and testing them for the stress hormone cortisol, UCLA psychologists Rena Repetti and Darby Saxbe found that women who have issues with clutter have the signature pattern of cortisol that is associated with people who have chronic fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a higher risk of mortality. Source: TIME

To really experience the benefits of decluttering in your home, says Marie Kondo, don’t just organize the clutter; get rid of it!

Her method is extreme: Purging must be done all in one go. No procrastinating. No “maybe” pile. “Keep only the things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest,” she advises. “When you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too. As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t.” — Marie Kondo | Source: The Wall Street Journal

Marie Kondo’s book The Lifechanging Magic Of Tidying Up has become a cult classic in this area, but many other bloggers and writers are sounding the same call. We have too much stuff, and instead of bringing us happiness, it is stressing us out and stopping us from truly loving our homes.

So before you jump in to your next big budget (or even small budget) home improvement project, tackle decluttering – then you can tell how much work you really still need to do.