11 WARNING SIGNS YOU HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF IN YOUR HOUSE AND NEED TO DECLUTTER

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This article is all about the warning signs you have too much stuff in your house! 

Are you drawn to minimalism, or at least, feeling the urge to declutter your home?

If so, your house or apartment might be overflowing with things.

While there is nothing wrong with that, it might hinder your well-being and quality of life in your space. 

And no, it doesn’t mean you should upgrade your home to a larger one.

You can, if you want to, but here is a better option for you: eliminate the excess so that the things you love and use fit comfortably in your current home.  

In this blog post, I share with you 11 warning signs you have too much stuff in your house and it’s time to declutter.

Pay attention to these signs to be able to create a peaceful space for you and your family, free of all the clutter! 

How does having too much stuff affect you? Why having too much stuff is bad for you

As human beings who live busy lives, our resources are limited.

We don’t have infinite attention, time, and energy and we get to choose how we use them to live the life we want. 

However, having too much stuff in our homes requires us to spend those precious resources on cleaning, tidying, maintaining, repairing, and much more.

It can get overwhelming! 

Having too much around creates stress and anxiety, and prevents us from relaxing and feeling good in our own space. 

Not to mention all those things used to be money, so accumulating so much stuff also affects our bank accounts.

Plus, each thing we buy has an environmental footprint, which is something we need to keep in mind in this context of climate change and global pollution.  

For those reasons, it’s important to regularly check and notice if you see any signs you have too much stuff in your house! 

Read more: How to stop being materialistic and overconsuming?

How do I know I have too much stuff? 11 warning signs you have too much stuff in your house

1. You can’t find things when you need them

Do you sometimes find yourself looking for an item in your home and you can’t remember where you put it?

This is one of the clearest signs you have too much stuff! 

If you lose things in your space and you often don’t know where they are, you might be drowning in an excess of clutter.

Whereas when you live with less, items don’t get in the way and your closets and drawers aren’t overflowing, so it’s a lot easier to remember where things are.

Everything has a home, so you know where to go whenever you need something. 

When we think about it, having an overflow of material possessions can make us waste a lot of time and energy! 

2. The house looks messy even after tidying up 

Tidying up our house and feeling like it still looks messy and cluttered can be discouraging.

We’ve made an effort so it can look good and we can’t seem to reap the reward. 

That problem may come from the fact that we have too much visual clutter around.

We have lots of things on flat surfaces like coffee tables or kitchen counters.

We may have open shelves with tons of books on them, or countless kids’ toys everywhere we look. 

And if things are out, it’s often because our closets, cupboards, cabinets, and drawers are overflowing.

We can’t put things away because there is not enough space for them. 

Read more: 15 things that make your house look cluttered

3. You feel stressed and overwhelmed with too much stuff in your home  

Our homes should be a haven where we feel relieved to retreat to after a long day outside, in the chaos of the world.

They should be places where we can relax, slow down, and rest whenever we need to.  

But when we have too much stuff, the clutter contributes to our stress levels and overwhelms us.

We feel like there is constantly something that we need to get done.

We need to clean, tidy, repair, maintain, put away, and so on.

The list of chores gets bigger with the amount of things in our homes. 

But if even our homes stress us out, where can we go to unwind and take a step back? 

4. You experience a lot of decision fatigue 

One of the most obvious signs you have too much stuff in your house is that you experience a lot of decision fatigue every day. 

You may have a wardrobe full of clothes you never wear.

As a result, every morning, you need to dig through everything to find what you want to wear that day and might struggle to make decisions. 

You may have too many hobby supplies, making it harder for you to decide what you’d like to do in your free time. 

We may not realize it, but even the simplest things like deciding what to wear or what to do, take mental energy.

Those decisions add to the total number of decisions we need to make each day.

And the thing is, as the day goes by, our ability to decide and make good decisions decreases.

To avoid struggling with decision fatigue, we should declutter the excess so that decision-making is easier and less overwhelming. 

5. Cleaning is time-consuming and draining 

Yes, even cleaning a minimalist home takes time and energy, and most of us don’t look forward to this tedious task. 

But cleaning a cluttered house with tons of things in it is so much harder and challenging!

We need to dust each and every object and move them as we dust flat surfaces, mop, or vacuum.

We also need to make sure we put them back where they usually live afterward. 

All those actions add up, making the cleaning process a lot more time-consuming and energy-draining compared to if we had a clutter-free home.  

Read more: The best eco-friendly alternatives to Swiffer for zero-waste cleaning

6. You feel ashamed of the messes whenever people drop by unannounced 

Feeling ashamed of the messes and clutter whenever people drop by your house unannounced is one of the clearest signs you have too much stuff.

Similarly, if people let you know at the last minute that they’ll drop by soon, do you find yourself panicking and rushing to tidy everything up? 

If so, you are conscious that the overflow of items makes the space look messy, so it’s time to do something about it. 

Get rid of excess clutter so you don’t feel stressed and ashamed when that happens again. 

7. You can’t park your car in your garage

If you can’t park your car in your garage because it’s already full to the brim, you probably have too much stuff in your house! 

A survey of 1,000 Americans found that 47% of them regularly encounter problems with being able to park in their garage.

And in a poll of 1,500 people, 20% responded they were unable to park in their garage. 

If that’s the case for you, here is a little food for thought. 

Our cars are some of the most expensive possessions we own.

And yet, many of us choose to leave them outside, and instead, store useless things that are often not worth anything in our garages.

Of course, we might have good reasons why we keep certain items, but we don’t need to have a garage full of things.

And if those items are in the garage, we probably don’t use them anyway (at least regularly) so we’ll be better off freeing up some space for our cars. 

8. You still have unopened boxes from your last move 

Do you still have boxes from your last move that you never got around to opening?

If so, you probably don’t need any of those items. 

You’ve lived without them for months, if not years, so why would you allow them to take up precious space in your home? 

If they’ve been sitting there for such a long time, you may not need them in your home so you can safely let them go. 

You might not even remember what’s in those boxes, so have a quick look to make sure there is nothing valuable or with personal information on it.

But make the decision beforehand to declutter everything because you won’t miss that stuff!

Read more:

• Decluttering before a move: What to get rid of when moving?
• How to move like a minimalist? 10 minimalist moving tips to make moving easier

9. You own things you haven’t touched in years

Unopened boxes from our last moves fall into the category of things we haven’t touched in years.

But we may have many other things we haven’t used for ages.

This is one of the biggest signs you have too much stuff! 

Whether that’s old clothes from when you were younger, toys your kids have outgrown, or paperwork from ten years ago, some things get lost in our homes.

They get tucked away in a closet, and with time, we end up forgetting about them. 

So next time you see a bin in your basement, closet, or attic and you don’t remember what’s in there, let it go.

You’ve forgotten about those items so decluttering them won’t make any difference to your life.

Actually, yes, it will create space for the things you need and love right now.

Release clutter from the past!  

10. You struggle to close drawers, cupboards, and cabinets 

If you regularly struggle to close and open drawers, cabinets, or cupboards, you have too much stuff in your home! 

The same can be said if you have things falling out of cabinets as you open them.

Your storage spaces may be overflowing and you can’t fit everything in them. 

We have all had that drawer that was so full we couldn’t close it, or that cabinet where, whenever we put something back into it, other things were falling and creating a mess. 

To avoid that annoying problem, declutter and get rid of the excess! 

11. You’re constantly trying to find the best organizational system for your stuff

Constantly buying storage baskets and being on the hunt for the best organizational system for your stuff is one of the clearest signs you have too much stuff. 

You think your house is messy and disorganized, so you feel tempted to find a solution by buying other items.

You might think that a nice filing cabinet, storage bin, or organizational tray will change everything.

But as usual, it never solves the problem.

And you constantly end up buying more and more. 

Instead, consider reducing the inventory in your home.

You will see that when you have less, you won’t feel the need to always buy organizational items.

Everything will be effortless to keep neat and tidy. 

Read more: 12 minimalist home organization ideas for an organized space

What to do if you have too much stuff?

If you have too much stuff, take an afternoon on the weekend to reassess everything you have and make decisions to let things go. 

If you don’t manage to tackle everything in a few hours, don’t worry.

Try to do it, little by little, one hour at a time, whenever you can.

Even five minutes of decluttering will bring you closer to your goal! 

Ask yourself questions and be realistic with what you use, need, and love.

Allow yourself to get rid of things that no longer serve you.

They have served their purpose, but now, they are only taking up precious space in your home.

So sell them, give them away, recycle them, or if you have no other choice, throw them away. 

You will feel so much better without those burdens in your house, and you’ll reap many other benefits of minimalism. 

Here are a few resources that will help you tackle the clutter in your home: 

• How to start decluttering when overwhelmed with clutter and mess?
• 18 areas most people forget to declutter
• How to declutter fast? 25 efficient and quick decluttering hacks 
• 20 lazy habits for a clutter-free home
• 8 common mistakes to avoid when decluttering

After you’ve decluttered, make sure not to accumulate so much stuff again.

Shop with intention and don’t buy unnecessary things.

Final thoughts on signs you have too much stuff in your house

I hope this article about warning signs you have too much stuff in your house was helpful and that it helped you realize that you may (or may not) have an excess of material possessions in your home. 

Of course, if you don’t want to get rid of any of them, don’t feel compelled to.

But I promise, doing so will significantly simplify your life and you will feel calmer in your own space. 

If you liked this article, you might be interested in the following ones too:

• 6 signs you have clutter blindness & 6 effective tips to overcome it
• 30-day declutter challenge: how to declutter your life in 30 days?

Which of these signs reflected the most your situation?

Please drop a comment! 

Don’t forget to share this blog post with your friends so that they too can identify the warning signs they have too much stuff in their houses. 

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