Break Up With Your Junk

It’s Not You, It’s Clutter

Valentine’s day approaches, but you’re feeling a little less than ‘in-love’ with all the stuff you’ve accumulated around your home or business.

Sure, when you first bought that beautiful new couch, shiny appliance, or plush mattress you got a mental boost just as potent as a shot of the cuddle-hormone oxytocin. Your great aunt gave you that slow-cooker, bright pink snuggie, or ornate floor-length mirror and you were feeling warm fuzzies all around and the stars seemed brighter at night.

For a little while at least. It seems the honeymoon is over, the spell is broken, and you’re just not sure you can get the spark back.

Time to call that stuff what is it—clutter. Just like your last ex, clutter has a way of sticking around past the point at which the relationship should have ended.

Junk.com would like to remind you that letting go is a form of emotional self-care, and making a major cleanout is the first step on your journey to healing and moving on.

How Clutter Keeps You Down

Clutter moved in, and started throwing up red flags. You might have brushed off that tense feeling you got when you walked by your crammed closet or told yourself that everyone struggles with procrastinating while sitting at your overflowing work desk, but your instincts know better.

Here’s what the research says about how clutter affects your everyday life.

Clutter stresses you out: A UCLA study found that women who described their homes as cluttered or messy had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol and reported a more depressed mood than their counterparts who described their homes as tidier. Long-term stress and chronic elevated cortisol is linked to a whole host of other health problems like heart disease, excessive weight gain, and insomnia.

Clutter interferes with your ability to focus: Having trouble getting that report completed? The problem could be all the clutter piling up on your work desk. Researchers at Princeton University found that visual clutter can make it more difficult to focus on tasks. Cluttered surfaces around where you do work or chores forces your brain to split its limited attention. The result is lost productivity and less attentive work.

Clutter disrupts your closest relationships: According to a survey by The Storage Center, excess clutter and messinesscan cause increased tension with your romantic partner and make you appear less attractive to your partner.No partner? Clutter might be keeping you from finding one. The same survey reported 1 in 4 Americans have decided against pursuing a romantic relationship after seeing the state of the potential partner’s home.

Clutter is connected to lower overall life satisfaction: As it turns out, getting all the stuff that you want probably isn’t going to make you happier. A study published by the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that people with more clutter reported lower levels of mental well-being and lower overall life satisfaction. Tossing the junk could give your self-esteem and your whole life outlook a boost.

Get 14% off your big clutter breakup through the end of February with Junk.com.

Three Categories of “Toxic Junk”

Just like all your worst romantic partners, clutter is not going to take accountability for its toxic behavior. It’s up to you to identify the junk lurking in your basement.

If you have clutter that falls into one of these three categories of “Toxic Junk,” then it’s time to call it quits, cut your losses, and let go.

1. Guilt Items

These are the items that you’re hanging onto because you’d feel bad if you threw them out or gave them away. Guilt items might get limited use, or be boxed up somewhere out of sight so you don’t have to confront them.

• Inherited Items: Your great-grandmother left you her antique dining table and you’ve shelled out thousands of dollars in storage rent to avoid dealing with it.

• Gifts: You adore your best friend, but the hummingbird feeder he gave you for Christmas was definitely a miss.

• Memorabilia: Now that the kiddos are grown, you can’t stand the thought of tossing their drawers full of drawings, report cards, and macaroni art.

In the case of most guilt items, it’s not the actual item that you love. What you love are the memories and the people associated with the items.

2. Outgrown Items

These items served an important purpose, but only for a season. That season has ended.

• Ill-fitting Clothing: Even if you did fit into again one day, it’s not really your style anymore.

• Outdated Electronics: You’ve upgraded to the latest and greatest gadget, but you’re not sure what to do with your old electronic item.

• Remnants of an Old Hobby, Job, or Relationship: A series of microphones from your starting-a-podcast-phase, a textbook for that major in college that you ended up changing, and your ex’s old hoodie.

Outgrown items might make you nostalgic. They represent a version of you and your life that likely does not exist anymore. It’s okay to appreciate the good times these objects brought, mourn the dreams never realized, and still send these items on their way.

3. Broken Promises Items

Unlike guilt items and outgrown items that keep you in the past, broken promise items often represent an idealized version of the future. You bought the item or hang onto the item for a nebulous “someday” that predictably has not arrived.

• Dysfunctional Items: You swear you’ll get them fixed. Never mind that you’ve been swearing you’ll get them fixed for almost a full year now.

• Defunct Resolutions: You bought a treadmill in the new year ready to run on it every morning and then your actual daily life laughed at you.

• Junk Waiting to be Replaced: The mattress that’s lived through every bad relationship you’ve ever had.

Be honest with yourself and your broken-promise clutter. Is “someday” coming?

Five Ways to Let Go and Move On

Toxic junk drags you down and keeps you from becoming the best version of yourself. Time to tell toxic junk goodbye, and keep it from ruining your future.

Of course, telling yourself you’re done with clutter is only the first step. Actually letting go of clutter might prove difficult. Despite all the wrong it has done you, clutter holds precious memories.

Here’s five ways you can address the emotions keeping you hanging onto clutter.

1. Assess Actual Value

Search for the same or similar objects on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or OfferUp. What are they actually running for? More importantly, would you pay that much for the item in its current condition?

This is also a great exercise to sort the items that can be sold and/or are suitable for donation from the items that you really should just discard.

2. Thank the Item

This might sound weird, but we promise it’s not weirder than keeping your prom dress for 40 years. Thank the item for the time that it spent in your life, the memories that it left you with, and the growth that you’ve experienced as a result.

Write a tearful goodbye letter. Give the object one last hug.

You might feel better about parting ways at the end of it.

3. Take a Picture

Sometimes the most important thing about an item is the memories you associate with the item. Ask yourself if you can take pictures of the item and keep the memories without keeping the item itself.

You can also digitize paper clutter like old tax documents or manuals to keep in a secure hard drive or cloud.

4. Make “Someday” Happen Today

If you’ve got an object waiting for “someday,” tell yourself to act on making “someday” happen within 24 hours. Call the repair shop and get that quote. Hop on the treadmill right now.

If you can’t make time to take action within a day, wise up and call junk removal. Junk.com can be there to haul as soon as same day. Clutter and shame gone.

5. Love it or Leave it

Think of what certain items make you feel. If you feel happiness or warmth when holding an item, then that’s a point toward the keep pile. Beware of items that make you feel bitter, sad, angry, or worse, apathetic.

Your space should bring you joy, so cull the clutter that does not match the vibe.

No More Clutter Heartbreak

Imagine life without the dead weight of clutter. You’ll be free to cultivate a home that helps you feel happy and productive.

If the idea of breaking up with your junk makes your heart race but you need help with the actual decluttering bit, call Junk.com. We’ll cart off old furniture, appliances, electronics, and more. Need to break up with a garage, attic, or basement full of clutter? Junk.com loves the big junk jobs. Our team prioritizes sustainable disposal methods like donation and recycling before responsibly taking out the garbage, so you can feel great about the way you chose to end things with clutter.

You could be free of clutter and celebrating life solo as soon as today.

Get 14% off your big clutter breakup through the end of February with Junk.com.