The Cost of Clutter (financially and emotionally)

Financial Cost of Clutter
From: 10 Ways Your Clutter May Be Costing You "Whether you have a little clutter or a lot, you may be losing money by having it in your home! Don't believe me? Here are 10 ways that clutter may be costing you financially.


 * 1) You pay late fees because you misplace bills or forget to pay them when they are buried under a pile of paper. {Missing bill payments can also reduce your credit rating/score which can have financial implications if you need a loan someday.}
 * 2) You buy duplicate items because you can't find the ones you already have or you don't even know what you have.
 * 3) You eat out or order in take-out food because your counters are too cluttered to cook on.
 * 4) You pay storage fees because you have so much stuff that you need to store it off-site.
 * 5) You pay for extra water & electricity when you do extra loads of laundry because you have too many clothes.
 * 6) You pay for medications and therapy to deal with the stress of living in a cluttered home.
 * 7) You are too embarrassed to have friends over because your home is cluttered, so you always meet at a restaurant or entertainment venue, which costs more money than serving something at home.
 * 8) You waste time searching for things, moving items from place to place, or cleaning around all your belongings. Time is money!
 * 9) Your vehicle is exposed to the elements because you can't park it in your garage which is full of clutter.
 * 10) You are not as productive because you are overwhelmed by the clutter surrounding you (both at home or at work). Clutter decreases your ability to focus, making you less efficient."

Cost of Storage Units
"Secrets" from the Self-Storage Industry
 * It almost doesn't matter what you put in a storage unit, the cost of storage will nearly always exceed the market value of the item(s) within a year.
 * Most storage costs exceed market value in six months.
 * Most renters incur hundreds of dollars in late fees a year. (Out of sight, out of mind)
 * Storage facilities don't usually tell you the auction date of your unit, so good luck trying to buy your unit back at auction.
 * When you are delinquent 90 days, they can put a lien on your stuff, which is when they cut your lock and deny access to the unit until the balance is paid in full. This is the beginning of the process that allows them to take legal possession of your stuff.

Emotional Cost of Clutter
Everyone benefits from, and functions better in a clutter-free and organized space. Clutter not only makes our homes look bad, it makes us feel bad, too. For more information: The Link Between Clutter and Depression

Why does mess lead to so much stress? For information on how to address each of these points, see: Why Mess Causes Stress: 8 Reasons, 8 Remedies
 * Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli (visual, olfactory, tactile), causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren't necessary or important.
 * Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on.
 * Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.
 * Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.
 * Clutter makes us anxious because we're never sure what it's going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.
 * Clutter creates feelings of guilt ("I should be more organized") and embarrassment, especially when others unexpectedly drop by our homes or work spaces.
 * Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brain storm, and problem solve.
 * Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the "pile" or keys swallowed up by the clutter).

Opportunity Cost
What if everything you are keeping in your house is costing you 89.55% more than you have considered? Add to that your buying of things you don’t really need at all and all the larger things or investments you could have had instead… There is quite a cost to impulse shopping and then keeping things you don't need.

From: Frugality and Hoarding - The Simple Dollar “Those costs might seem tiny and trivial for individual items, but they really add up. Let’s say you buy a lawnmower for $20 at a yard sale. You bring it home and stick it in your garage as a backup because it was a good deal. You use it maybe once or twice over the next ten years and then eventually get rid of it. What does the cost of that look like?

Storage cost You live in a 1,000 square foot home and the mower takes up 3 square feet. You pay $2,000 a year in property taxes, $500 a year in insurance, and $600 a month in rent (totaling $7,200 a year). That’s $9,700 – or 9.7 cents per square foot per year. Over the course of ten years, the mower takes $2.91 to store.

Maintenance cost You have to maintain the lawnmower a little. You change the oil every year and start it up to make sure it works. Let’s be generous and say that you only spend $0.50 a year maintaining it. Over the course of ten years, that adds up to $5. Depreciation cost At the end of the ten year period, you decide to sell that old mower. You stick a $10 sign on it at your yard sale. Someone offers you $5 and you take it. Over the course of ten years, the mower has lost you $15 in value.

Opportunity cost You could have taken that $20 and stuck it in an investment, turning that $20 into $35 as described earlier. That’s an opportunity worth $15 that’s completely lost to you because of that lawnmower.

All told, that $20 lawnmower actually cost you $37.91 – and, in the end, you have nothing at all. If you keep hanging onto it, the opportunity cost, maintenance cost, depreciation cost, and storage cost keep increasing, making the balance even worse.”

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