Four Ways Clutter Can Cost You

I used to be a habitual pack rat and an incessant clutterbug. My side of the room in college was the less organized one. Of all my roommates, I was most likely to be found frantically flinging papers around, looking for a exam study guide or a worksheet I’d laid carefully aside several weeks ago. Losing my keys happened every day—no joke. I’m much better about it all now, but I had a long time during which my disorganization was a complete drain on my productivity. My experience isn’t unique, either; nearly everyone who has a clutter problem can attest to spending increasing amounts of valuable resources on Getting Things Done. Read on!

• Time. It may be unintuitive, but excess stuff and time are directly related. You have to spend time acquiring stuff. You have to deal with caring for it. You have to clean, organize, and care for it. You have to move it. And you have to go through it to find things whenever something is lost. Think about how many times you’ve lost your keys [or your checkbook!] in a pile of stuff in the past year; how many hours does this total? Before I got myself organized, I looked for three or four lost objects every day. Even still, I occasionally relapse and forget to put my gloves, my camera cord, or my favorite circular knitting needle in its place, leading to an impromptu search party to find what I need.
• Money.Clutter, by definition, is anything you don’t need, use, or want. So the cost of clutter includes the cost of unnecessarily procuring it. On top of that, you have to store the clutter, so you end up paying for a bigger space than an uncluttered person might otherwise need, just to have room for all your stuff. And when it’s time to get rid of clutter, you often have to pay someone to haul it away. And when you’re absolutely sure you have something but you have absolutely no idea where it is, you end up popping out to buy a quick replacement. [Full disclosure: I've done this with about twenty different items in the past few years, including my cell phone charger, my black pencil skirt, my aluminum water bottle, my iPod headphones, and my favorite pen. I don't even want to think about how much money I could have saved if I'd gotten myself organized sooner.]
• Productivity. When your stuff is cluttered, you have to declutter it to a certain degree before you start to work. If your kitchen is a mess right before you have to cook a Thanksgiving meal for twenty-seven people, you’re going to have to block out some time to figure out where you put your turkey baster and your casserole dish. If your sewing room is filled with wrinkled, dirty scraps, your fabric stash is disorganized, and you’re completely out of rotary blades and serger needles, you’re not going to be constructing any garments anytime soon. Not only that, but clutter can completely obfuscate some of the tasks you need to complete. If, as we said, your kitchen is a mess, how will you know that you’re out of milk, your knives need to be sharpening, and your egg beater is missing one of its blades? If your closet isn’t neat and organized, you’ll have no idea that none of your pants fit anymore, nor that your best white dress shirt is missing two buttons.
• Peace of mind. If you have a proverbial place for everything and everything in its place, you know exactly where to go to look for things, exactly how long it’s going to take to get things done, and exactly what you’re missing to complete your next action. However, if not, the time and effort you’ll need to put into completing a task—or whether you can even complete it at all—is up in the air.

Next week, I’ll be writing about how you can curb clutter to make it easier to be productive. Check back for more! In the meantime, how do you feel about clutter? Do you thrive on a neat environment, or do you draw inspiration from disorganization?

Amanda Lee Anderson is a writer and editor living in Cincinnati, Ohio, and New York City. She writes about fashion, music, productivity, and happiness. Read her blog or find her on Twitter.