the effect of clutter on happiness

Smiley

I recently read an article on Huffington Post by Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, called “Could Clutter Be Making You Unhappy?  Take Our Test”.  I had heard a little about Gretchen and her book before reading the article, but didn’t know much.  After reading the article, I did a little more research and found out that she took a year of her life to try all of the theories out there about what makes someone happy, to see if any of them really work.  It is a very intriguing idea to me.  Even though it is an sample size of 1, it seems that it would be sort of like the Consumer Reports ratings for happiness (and I am a huge fan of Consumer Reports).

While I haven’t yet read her book, from my perspective, she couldn’t be more spot-on about clutter.  She says what I have found to be true in my own life, that getting rid of clutter brings happiness.  She even argues from her experience that the ratio is not proportionate — she says you get a lot more happiness back vs. the amount of clutter you get rid of.  In the article, she lists many of the excuses we all give for holding onto things.  I have heard all of those and more — I might need it again, someone gave it to me, it may be worth something one day, etc.  I believe those phrases are our defense mechanism to keep from having to deal with the clutter and make some hard choices.  No one ever said that it would be easy to get rid of our clutter, but Gretchen says that once we do, we will be exponentially happier for the hard work.  Sometimes it can be hard to find motivation to do a difficult task, but with Gretchen’s finding, I would hope that greater happiness would be enough motivation to do the work.

Now I am off to order her book.  I can’t wait to see what else she learned!

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