Meet our healthy friend, Katie Sayad, Holistic Health Coach, Yoga Instructor, and blogger. Her basis a holistic health coach is "Declutter Your Space: decluttering your body, mind, and environment to achieve health, wellbeing, and stress-management." Sounds like a good idea to us! Without further ado, we present "The Magic of Decluttering Your Space"! 

A home serves as a foundation, a shelter, and sanctuary. It plays a key, integral part in shaping your life. The tone of a home sets the tone for how you choose to move in life – either cluttered and weighed down, or clear and vibrant. You choose.

Unfortunately, if you live in the United States, you have almost certainly been surrounded by far more than you need. Indeed, a team of researchers at UCLA conducted a study in the early 2000s on thirty-two families to gain insight on how the modern American family functions, in "Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors". The result was homes filled to the brim with material possessions. An incredible 2,260 visible possessions were noted in just the living rooms and bedrooms alone. And that’s not counting what lay hidden in the closets or drawers. The study also indicated a higher rate of depressed moods of participants who lived in cluttered homes.

A relationship with material objects is not inherently bad, but our homes are often too cluttered with things that we don’t really need, or worse, things we don’t like much at all. In a world where we equate stuff with happiness, and happiness with stuff, we often lose ourselves somewhere along the way. Coincidentally, we are a nation that is consistently ranked as one of the most stressed countries across the globe. It seems that the excess and clutter we're surrounded with daily could easily be a source of stress. Living in excess and clutter swallows up the joy of what we should really be cherishing.

The simple message of Decluttering Your Space encompasses organizing and focusing your time and energy positively, on the things that serve you. This way, you can declutter and clear away the negative and the stress that serves neither your health nor life. When we make a commitment to mindfulness of what we fill our spaces with, we can then shift our attention to what we allow to fill our bodies and our minds. A dramatic decluttering of the home can spark dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective.

Getting Started

If your idea of organizing goes something along like this:

• Getting rid of one unnecessary item a day
• Cleaning up your space a little at a time
• Storing things away in bins and secret compartments of your space

Then most likely, decluttering has not had much of an effect on your life. However, if you change your approach, decluttering can have a profound impact. Storing things away slowly only creates the illusion that the clutter in your space has been resolved. The secret to successful decluttering is to start by clearing out swiftly. If you focus on clearing out the clutter thoroughly and completely within a short span of time, you will see instant results that will empower you to continue to keep your space decluttered instinctively.

For every item evaluated, physically hold it in your hands. Rather than vaguely glancing in your closet on what to clear out, the trick is to handle each item through touch. Touching the item allows you to become more in tune with its energy, and more in tune with your true feelings towards the item. When you touch an item, your body will react. With the item in your hands, ask yourself:

1. Does this spark joy?
2. Does this also serve me positively?

Tune into your inner voice and allow it to guide you. Intuitively, you will know the answer. You always have. If the item answers “yes” to both, keep it. If not, simply clear it out. Then, shift your perspective to cherishing the things that you love, and the things you want to keep because they serve you in a positive way.

Now, imagine yourself living in a space that contains only the things that serve you and spark joy. By doing this, you can embark on a new lifestyle. Therefore, keep only those things that speak to your heart. This will help to put things into perspective so that you can clear out the rest.

Declutter Your Space by Category

When choosing what to declutter first, think about your items within these four categories:

• Functional Value = items that work for you
• Informational Value = items that educate
• Emotional Value = items that pull on your heart strings
• Replaceable Value = items that don’t contain much, if any, meaning to them

The process of deciding what to keep and what to clear out will go much more efficiently if you begin with items that are easier to make decisions about. These are the items that have "replaceable value". For example, clothes are the simplest to declutter because their value is extremely low, and can easily be replaced. However, photographs and letters, on the other hand, have a high emotional value. Items of emotional value should be left to declutter until last.

Use this sequencing list as your outline as you begin the process of decluttering your space:

1. Replaceable Value, these items include:
• Clothes
• Accessories
• Makeup
• Home Decor

2. Functional Value, these items include:
• Towels
• Bedding
• Office Supplies
• Cleaning Supplies
• Electrical Equipment (cords, appliances, etc.)
• Furniture
• Kitchenware & Kitchen Devices
• Consumables (foods, drinks, etc.)

3. Informational Value, these items include:
• Entertainment (movies, music, board games, toys, etc.)
• Emails
• Papers
• Literature (books, newspapers, magazines, etc.)

4. Emotional Value, these items include:
• Artwork
• Photos
• Cards
• Letters
• Sentimental Items

We hope you enjoyed Katie Sayad's first article! Tune in this Thursday for her next blog article "Decluttering" part two, where she'll discuss another important aspect to cleaning your home: detox! Don't forget to check out her blogs at katiesayad.blogspot.com/ and katiesayad.liveeditaurora.com