Make eating a whole bag of chips or a pint of cookie dough ice cream a habit, and you’re likely going to gain weight. That’s a given.
But did you realize that if you skip cleaning out the junk drawer or dropping off those bags of used clothes to the Salvation Army, you also could be setting yourself up for some unwanted inches around your waistline?
According to a recent survey by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, people who live in homes with extra clutter are 77 percent more likely to be overweight or obese
“I find the problem is that homes are littered with broken promises and way too much stuff. It causes us to feel sad and stressed, and the link between those emotions and being overweight is now a scientific given,” says Peter Walsh, a longtime organizer, TV personality and author of “Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight.” “We’re constantly bombarded with messages that tell us that we can be living the life we want if we just acquire the right stuff. The messages show us that if we just buy product X, we will be happier, skinnier, sexier, smarter, faster. Our kids will do better. Our relationships will be better. We end up buying the product but really what we’re doing is investing in the promise the product offered. My goal with this book is to help you break that cycle, so that your own home isn’t causing you stress.”
We asked Walsh about how tidying up at home can lead to a healthier life:
Q: What made you realize that cleaning the clutter aids in weight loss and better health?
A: I’ve been working as an organizer on TV for the past 13 years. One of the amazing things that started happening early on was that people who I helped would write me telling me how many aspects of their lives had improved as a result of getting their home organized. The biggest area that people referred to was with their general health and wellness … and, more specifically, their weight. So, I decided to test it.
With the help of Rodale, we assembled a test panel of 25 people who had both clutter and weight issues and run them through my six-week program. We found that getting organized can have a big effect on your weight. In fact, the average weight loss in the panel was 10 pounds. The average waistline reduced by 3 inches, and the average hip size reduced by 2.5 inches. That’s a major accomplishment in just six weeks.
Q: How does this six-week program work, and where do we begin?
A: The program focuses on four main areas: organization, diet, exercise and mindfulness. In each week, I focus on a different area of your house to get organized. The decluttering and organizing assignments are very specific and are based on my years of helping people clean up the areas of their home that I often see are disorganized. Also, in each week, there are easy-to-follow diet and exercise assignments (which were put together with me and diet and exercises experts).
The goal here is to have you use things in your house already and not go out and buy new sets of equipment (clearing clutter is terrific physical exercise). And, a key to the program is a daily mindfulness exercise. Key to making permanent and effective change with your clutter and your weight is a new mindset.
The program begins in the kitchen. It’s probably obvious that we’d start there, but the idea is that I want to help you be able to make healthier food choices. And you can’t do that in a disorganized cluttered kitchen.
Q: Is there a difference between clutter and being unorganized?
A: There are different types of clutter:
- Lazy clutter: Often just the mail or the laundry. These are things that just pile up that you plan to get to “later.”
- Memory clutter: These are objects which remind you of an important person or event in your life. The fear of letting go of these things is that by discarding them you’ll lose the associated memory.
- I Might Need It One Day clutter: This is the stuff that you hold onto in the event that either you or someone you care about will need it. This might be the old coffee machine that works perfectly well but wasn’t as good as the brand new one you just bought. It’s also the basement or attic full of furniture expecting that your teenager will use it for his first apartment.
- Malignant clutter: This is hard stuff that people have trouble letting go. I call it malignant, because it reminds us of a darker, rougher, sadder time in our lives. It might be the stuff from a broken relationship, a past medical procedure, the death of a loved one.
Lazy clutter and malignant clutter shouldn’t be around at all in my opinion — and in the book I help you tackle those. Memory clutter and I Might Need It One Day clutter can both be good and important, of course, unless the volume of each of them is so high that it’s impacting the life you’re living today. The book helps you figure out how to deal with each of these issues as you encounter them.
Q: We’ve decluttered, perhaps lost some weight. Now what do we do, and what if the mess starts creeping up?
A: Hopefully, you’ll have changed the way you look at your stuff along the way of these six weeks. But this is the kind of book that you can refer back to easily when you feel that things are maybe slowly going off the rails a little bit. The good news is that the test panel lost an average of 10 pounds in six weeks (and every single person lost weight). The better news is that they’ve continued to keep the weight off, and one person has even gone on to lose an additional 40 pounds since the program ended a few months ago. I truly believe you can, too — it just requires a little change in the way you think about your clutter.
(Bonus questions not in print:)
Q: Mindfulness and visualizations seems to be the key to the success of this program. How do we do this?
A: Anyone can go on a diet and lose weight. But if there isn’t a change in your mental outlook it’s doubtful that the changes will stick and the weight will stay off. “Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight” helps you look at your own patterns for acquiring and holding onto things – and helps you make small but important changes. The exercises aren’t just about clutter or weight, they focus on your life overall and where you’d like to be.
Q: The heart of the home is the kitchen. How do we set this room up for healthier eating success?
A: The basic premise in the kitchen is you can’t make your best, your healthiest choices in a cluttered disorganized environment. When you come home from a busy day and you can barely open the cabinet holding the pots and pans without them all falling out, you may be more likely to give up on preparing dinner and instead just order take-out. Similarly, if your pantry is crammed with foods which are unhealthy or expired, you may be grabbing foods which aren’t helping you live the life you want — they’re just the ones you could access. I spend a fair amount of time in the book looking at how to organize your kitchen so you can easily make healthy and nutritious meals that fuel the life you want to be living.
Q: Does this mean we have to get rid of our shoe collections, the kids baseball cards or great-grandma’s antiques?
A: Again, if you have the room for these things and they’re not causing stress then I’m the first one to say keep them. But I will press you by asking you what’s the right amount? Is your shoe “collection” (is it really a collection or do you just have a lot of them?) appropriate at 20 pairs? 200 pairs? 2000 pairs? Certainly you can see that there needs to be a limit. And, great-grandma’s antiques… are they being used or showcased in a loving respectful way or is the basement stacked floor to ceiling with them? Again, if the amount of stuff you’re holding onto is stressing you out, something has to be done.
Author Peter Walsh
Here are the goals of the book after going through the 6-week program:
- Be surrounded by objects in your home that you value and cherish
- Have a home that meets your needs, not a home that serves as your boss
- Feel a deep sense of gratefulness for all the good parts of your life
- Feel good about how you look and feel
- Have strong relationships with your loved ones that bring you peace and security
- Think and act in ways that move you closer to the vision of the good life you’ve set for yourself – and no longer make choices out of sadness, stress, boredom, or inattention, or under pressure from the media or people around you.
