De-Cluttering Your Life Benefits You and the Environment

Do you wonder whether it is worth the time and energy to de-clutter your life? Consider the costs of not reducing your clutter intake:

• Spending money to store items you do not use
• Investing constant time and money to maintain all you own, whether it is useful and loved or not
• Clutter increases daily stress level and lowers self esteem
• You cannot take it with you. Those who are left to inherit and deal with your clutter will be grateful to you for dealing with it now.
• When you eliminate the unnecessary, you open the door for new things that can enrich your life in new ways. 
• Having less increases your ability to enjoy the here and now.

Some sobering statistics:

• The average American gets over 50,000 pieces of mail in a lifetime, one-third of it junk.
• The average American consumes more than 700 pounds of paper a year.
• 80 percent of filed papers are never referenced again; 50 percent of filed materials are duplicates or expired information.
• 60 percent of materials going to storage have no retention value and should have been destroyed.
• If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road.
• Cleaning would be reduced by 40 percent if clutter were eliminated.