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Ever feel like your house is suffocating your brain? Like you want to start decluttering, but the mess is so big you just freeze? You’re not alone. Today we’re diving into why clutter is stealing your clarity and the first simple steps to take, even when you feel like you have no time and way too much stuff.
As a professional organizer, I’ve worked with a lot of families who reach out to me saying “My house is drowning in clutter and I don’t know where to start.”
Maybe you’ve said this too. Thinking “I just can’t keep up. There’s too much stuff. I don’t have time to deal with it. This is just the way life is with kids, right?”
Wrong.
I know that’s blunt. But I need you to hear this: Clutter is not inevitable. It’s not a badge of motherhood you have to wear. And it’s definitely not something you have to live with forever just because you’re busy.
Here’s what I’ve learned, both as a professional organizer and as a mom who has lived in clutter more times than I care to admit: Your clutter problem isn’t really about time. It’s about decisions. Or more specifically, delayed decisions.
And today, we’re going to talk about why clutter is blocking your clarity, how it’s impacting you more than you realize, and what you can actually do about it starting today. Not next month. Not when school is out. Today.
So grab your coffee, take a breath, and let’s get into it.
The Real Reason Clutter Builds Up
Most homeschool moms believe that stuff has piled up because they just don’t have time to deal with it. That there’s too much stuff and too little time and it just is what it is. Everybody’s dealing with this. This is the way life is.
But here’s the truth: Most of our clutter problems occur because of decision delay or a little bit of procrastination.
Let’s imagine for a moment. You bring in your mail every day, but you just set it on the counter.
Your kids set their school papers, artwork, and scribbles down on the counter. Your spouse brings in the groceries and sets them on the counter. You go to Target, bring in your bags, and set them on the counter.
Now your counter and your table are piled with stuff. We are looking at a clutter problem.
And you look at it and say, “Oh, I don’t have time to go through this” or “I don’t know where this stuff goes.”
Well, the reason you don’t know where it goes is because all this stuff came into your house from various sources and it doesn’t have a home. It doesn’t have a home because nobody made a decision about what to do with these new items that came into your house.
What Happens When You Create Simple Systems
If you had an inbox system, that mail would have gone into the “to process” bin. Then you would have gone through it and put bills into the “to-do” bin, catalogs into the “time will tell” bin, and junk mail into the garbage. Now there are no piles of mail.
If your kids brought in papers from a field trip (maybe an invitation to a party that needs an RSVP, maybe work they want to save), nothing was done with those papers. No decisions were made, and so now you have a pile.
But you could have gone through that stack immediately. Thrown out papers they didn’t need. RSVP’d to the party right away and put it in your command center as a reminder or written it on your calendar. Signed papers that needed signatures and put them in the to-do bin. And then you wouldn’t have a pile of papers anymore.
Same thing when you bring in groceries and that bag from Target. You take out each item. You put away your groceries immediately. You take out that new bag of hair ties and go put it in your bathroom drawer in the little cubby for hair ties. You bought a new book? You pick it up, take it to your bookshelf, and put it on the shelf. Now it all has a place.
These things have to be given homes. And yes, it takes time to create those homes. But if something isn’t worth making a decision about and creating a home for, then it’s something you need to discard.
The Emotional Weight of “Obligation Clutter”
Here’s where it gets tricky. Sometimes a family member brings in an item that somebody gave them for free. Is that item worth making a home for? Or is it something they took out of obligation?
You know what I’m talking about. Sometimes we bring in a bag of used clothing for our kids and we’re like, “Oh, my kids don’t really need that much, but I do need a pair of pajamas.”
Okay. Go through that bag. Find the pair of pajamas in the size they need. And then take that bag right back out and donate it to somebody else.
If you don’t need the stuff that’s in there, don’t keep it around because you feel guilty. We have to be strict. We have to be ruthless. And that’s hard to do because we feel bad. We want to be people pleasers. We don’t want to upset anyone.
But here’s what I need you to hear: You can accept gifts with gratitude and then pass on that item if you’re not going to use it. It’s okay. Accept the thought behind the gift and then decide, “This isn’t something I’m going to use. I’m going to re-gift it or donate it or find somebody else to bless with this who could actually use this item” rather than it sitting in your house, collecting dust, making you trip over it, and making you feel bad every time you see it.
Value yourself enough to let go of the stuff that makes you feel crappy.
What the Research Says About Clutter and Your Brain
Now let’s talk science for a second, because this isn’t just emotional. This is physiological.
There was a study published in 2024 in the journal Neuron where Yale researchers showed that visual clutter literally changes how information flows in our brains. We’re not talking about a minor inconvenience here. We’re talking about your brain having to work harder to process everything in your environment when it’s cluttered.
And there have been years of studies showing that clutter increases cortisol, your stress hormone. Clutter impacts your home, your relationships, your job performance, your motivation. The impact of clutter is real.
When your house is cluttered, you can’t have people over without massively cleaning up or shoving things into rooms. You can’t feel good about your house. And honestly? It’s affecting you way more than you realize.
How Decluttering Changed Everything for My Family
I’ve come to this place a couple times in my life where rooms just get so cluttered and messy that I can’t take it anymore.
At one point our living room had gotten so bad, I thought I was going to lose my mind. There was just always stuff everywhere. We had guinea pig cages taking up space. So much stuff was taking over the room that we couldn’t even sit in there as a family. We couldn’t have people over. It was honestly a depressing room to be in. I didn’t want to be in there. We couldn’t sit down and play a game together. It just wasn’t great.
I made the decision to overhaul that room because I knew it would change the way we looked at it. But I didn’t realize until we actually did the transformation just how much it would impact my mental state and how much I would enjoy being in that room and just enjoy thinking about that room.
We got a new-to-us rug. We got a bigger couch. We moved out the guinea pig cages and moved most of the toys up to the playroom. A few are still kept down there, but we set up our evening reset so that everything is cleaned up every single night. That room is spotless. The pillows are fluffed. The blankets are draped over the couches. It’s truly a beautiful, cozy space now. And that’s something I genuinely never imagined we could have in our home.
There’s space for all of us to sit. We sit there and play games now. I can sit there and read while the kids are playing, and we can all be in the same room together. And it’s amazing. It feels so different.
A cluttered space will make you want to give up everything. You won’t have the motivation to do anything if you’re just overwhelmed and drowning in clutter and stuff.
I am so excited to be able to have people over again. To actually have a place for people and guests to sit and talk and just enjoy each other’s company. Have people over for movie nights. It changes how you show up. It changes how you think about yourself and about your life and about your family and about your home.
It changes everything.
The Mental Clarity You Deserve
I seriously had no idea how much the clutter in my house was affecting my mental space until I cleared it out.
When I sit in a clean and clear room, I can fully relax. My brain is not going 100 miles an hour. The mental to-do list is quiet because there is nothing I need to do in that room right now. It’s clean.
Clearing out the clutter clears your mental space.
And if you’re living in a home stocked full of visual clutter, you probably haven’t had a calm, quiet mental space in a really long time.
I desperately want you to have that. So please do the hard work. Commit to this. Make this a priority.
Because having a functional room (whether it’s your kitchen, your living room, your bedroom, your school room, your office, whatever it is) having those clear, functional rooms will change your life. It’ll change your life and your kids’ lives and your entire family’s life.
Where to Start When You’re Totally Overwhelmed
So when you’re totally overwhelmed, here’s where I want you to start.
I want you to set a timer for five minutes every single day. And I want you to start in one corner or one small space of a main room that is overwhelming.
Don’t look at the whole room. Don’t look at the whole space. Just start with one drawer. One table. One shelf.
Give yourself five minutes. Look at it. Visually see what is there.
Your Simple 5-Minute Decluttering Process
Step 1: Throw away any trash.
Step 2: If there are items there that belong somewhere else in the house, set them aside. Those things are going to go back to their homes.
Step 3: Look at what remains. Is it stuff that you use and you need?
If it is stuff that you use and you need and you want and you like, then you’re going to have to make homes for those things.
If it is stuff that you are not using, loving, needing (maybe it’s outgrown toys, maybe it’s broken things, maybe it’s just extra duplicates, things you’ve collected that you wanted to use someday) and it’s not worth making a home for it? Get rid of it.
Throw it in a black trash bag. Donate it to somebody. Get it out of your home as quickly as possible.
Being Ruthless When You’re Overwhelmed
If you’re overwhelmed, you have to be extra ruthless. You have to make tough decisions, and you’re going to have to get rid of perfectly good items.
Think very carefully about the emotional and mental aspects of this. If something is causing you stress, it is not worth keeping that item.
Do everything in your power to make your spaces clean and clear. Sacrifice. It will be worth it.
Now, I want you to start with five minutes, but I want to encourage you and push you to up that to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes.
And I know you’re gonna say “I don’t have the time.” But if something is important enough, you can make the time.
Yes, you can put on a show for your children. They can watch a little more TV. It’s okay. Because decluttering your home is so important (so important that you’re going to have to make sacrifices to do it).
Because if you don’t make sacrifices, you’re just going to make excuses. You’re going to delay more decisions. You’re going to say, “I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it next week. I’ll do it in summer break.”
No, no, no. We are not waiting for that. We are starting today.
And we are pushing ourselves and we are challenging ourselves and we are going to do this.
Finding the Time to Declutter
Take the time. Invest the time.
If you normally scroll on Instagram for 30 minutes a day, delete the app so that you can spend that 30 minutes decluttering. And when your house is in maintenance mode, then you can get Instagram back.
What can you reduce in your life to give yourself more time to declutter? I know there’s something.
If you take 10-minute showers, make them five-minute showers. There’s an extra five minutes.
You can find the time. A few minutes at a time (even if it’s five minutes three times a day) that works too. And during every five minutes, challenge yourself to throw out or get rid of five things.
That time adds up. Those simple little steps add up and make huge progress.
But you have to start somewhere.
And when you start, you’re going to give yourself the momentum to keep going further, deeper, and harder.
What to Do When You Get Stuck
If you get tripped up on something and something is too emotional and you just don’t know what to do with it, skip over it. Don’t let a couple of sentimental items stop your progress.
Focus on the easier things first. That first layer: trash, things you don’t use and love, outgrown items, broken items.
If you just got rid of that kind of stuff, you’d probably get rid of 10 to 20% of the stuff in your house. I’m being totally honest.
Most of us keep so much stuff that we are not using, not loving, have outgrown, think we’re going to use someday, think we’re going to fix someday.
Just get rid of that first layer.
You will go deeper. Every single time you go back to that space, you’re going to go one layer deeper. But we are first focusing on the easy stuff.
And it may not feel easy, but it’s way easier than sentimental stuff.
Create a System for Sentimental Items
Also, very important: Make a keepsake bin for pictures and memorabilia so that stuff has a place to go and isn’t just sitting out somewhere. You do need to make a decision on it and put it somewhere. Give it a place. Give it a home. And then you can come back to that later.
Final Thoughts
Mama, you don’t have to give in. You don’t have to give up your sanity for clutter.
We want clean houses. We want beautiful houses. We want minimal, calm, cozy spaces. We don’t want to trip over stuff. We just want it clean and calm.
But to get there, you have to make sacrifices. You have to be diligent. You have to say, “Our sanity is worth it. This clutter has to go.”
And even if it’s good stuff, even if it’s new stuff, it has to get out of this house if it’s not loved and being used.
Your homeschool deserves more peace. And so do you.
If you’re ready to take that first step and reset your homeschool space so you can finally feel ready to teach without the visual chaos, grab my Homeschool Space Reset Mini-Course. It’s a simple, step-by-step guide to decluttering your teaching space in under an hour with a coaching video, printable workbook, and the 5-minute daily reset ritual that keeps it clean.
Remember: You don’t have to do it all. Just do what sticks.