How Our Insecurities Can Cause Clutter

What is holding you back from simplifying and organizing your life? From getting rid of the clutter in your life?

Have you ever thought about how your own personal insecurities might be a cause of clutter as well?

I think that denying that we have any insecurities, is an easy solution. Denying means we don’t have to deal with them, right? Unfortunately, the insecurities show themselves in other ways – like through the clutter in our homes.When I was uncertain about the type of life I wanted to live, I found myself buying things, trying to fulfill a certain lifestyle or certain way of living. In reality, I was searching for peace, but was trying to achieve that through buying random things. By all means, I am not a big spender, but before I knew it, our house was full of supplies I never used. I wanted to be a scrapbooker: had all of the supplies, but was never caught up. I would try to keep up with the style trends, but never achieved the latest and greatest fashion looks. This was all in attempts to find who I really wanted to be. It was out of my insecurities, that I caused clutter in our home.

After a few different life situations and experiences, I learned deep down, that I wanted to live a simple life. Simple in possessions, simple in schedule, and simple in life. But what did that look like? I had to dig deep and realize that I needed to work on my own insecurities.I have found that many have insecurities that cause clutter, which I decided to share with you. These are not all true for everyone and I think there are many more. These are just a few of the big ones: the ones that I think can cause the most clutter:

1. Desires to have a magazine cover home. I can’t tell you how many magazines I have poured through, drooling over the rooms and homes on the front covers of House Beautiful, Coastal Living, Country Living, you name the “living.” I realized that in looking through them, that they were causing me to be insecure. I kept thinking that my home should look like those too, in order to be organized. In fact, when I first started this blog, I thought I had to have the perfect home in order to even write about simplifying and organizing – because that is what many organizer’s homes look like.

Our home is far from that. We have old, used, and “run down” items and furniture. We do not have every organizing supply out there. What we do have, is less. Honestly, when I really thought about it, do I really want a home that I can’t even walk through or furniture I can’t sit on, for fear of making it “unorganized” and dirty? My home, I want to freely live in. That is why I never want my home to look like a magazine cover.

2. Recognition. Lets be honest. How many times do we make, do, or wear something, in hopes of getting recognition or a sweet compliment? If I am honest with myself, I can say I have! Our nature has a desire in it to impress. We want to impress others, in order to make ourselves feel good. The thing is, we tend to hold on to things or even buy things, in order to impress or for the recognition. How often do you do a DIY project, in order to get a compliment? All this does, is just cause more clutter. WHAT IS THE MOTIVE?

3. Busier, the better. How many of us want to be wonder woman? Come on, being able to cook a Rachael Ray meal, DIY like Martha Stewart, having your home look like it came out of HGTV, we want to have it all! So, we jam pack our lives with one thing after another, or order to obtain a certain life and lifestyle. We think that the busier we are, the more successful and happier we will be. We end up trying to constantly out-do each other. In fact, what is one question we always ask after a weekend? “So what did you do?” If you weren’t able to list 10 things, do you feel you did anything? I will be the first to admit, that you will never be happy or satisfied living a life trying to out-do everyone else. A busy life only says that at times you can have a hard time saying no (not always, but sometimes). A packed schedule could mean that you are searching for a satisfying life, but not finding it, so you pack it with more, trying to find the right thing. Don’t let the insecurity of wanting to be able to do it all, cause more clutter physically and mentally!