My wife and I have a one year plan to get out of the townhouse I’ve owned for over 25 years and move to a single family home with some land. In advance of selling the townhouse, we have some serious work that needs doing including electrical work, plumbing, general upgrades and to completely remodel a kitchen and at least one bathroom. Add to that the replacement of all the windows and a great deal of painting and logic simply dictates some stuff needs to migrate out before we do so ourselves. There’s simply too much clutter in the way.

One tends to accumulate a lot of junk in 25 years and it’s easy to walk past the majority of it without paying it a second thought until faced with the prospect of relocating it or working around it (as I am now). As much of a nuisance as the weeks and months ahead will be, there’s a fringe benefit to sorting through all the accumulated clutter and making some honest decisions about the value it adds to our lives. When it comes to stress reduction, less is more.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your eyes and brain are constantly picking up queues from your environment. As you stare at the TV, the knick-knacks hanging from the walls, cluttering up shelves and gathering dust in corners subtly act on your mind and they’re sending a noisy message. Depending on how cluttered your visual space is, your brain can interpret that scene as a chaotic queue for stress.

I’m not advocating a minimalist lifestyle, though that certainly has merits, but I am suggesting you take a look around, inventory everything in view in the room you frequent most, and decide what it all adds to your life. What can you live without to reduce stress? Things you haven’t used or interacted with for over a year aren’t positively contributing to a calming environment. Sure, pictures and knick-knacks add a touch of personality, but there is such a thing as too much personality. Consider taking the following steps to reduce clutter in your life and your mind.

• Inventory the objects in a room
• Assign a number from 1-10 based on the value the item has to you. 1 = couldn’t possibly care less about it, 10 = I’ll die the instant it’s removed from my presence.
• Assign another number from 1-10 based on how often you use, admire or interact with the items. 1 = never, 10 = several times a day.
• In a third column, add the two numbers together. If your score for an item is 2-5, why are you hanging on to it? If it is 6-10, you really could live without it unless you can HONESTLY think of a good reason to keep it. 11-15 is probably worth keeping unless you foresee a near future in which the item will be in the way or decline in personal value. 16-20 feel no guilt and hang on to it.

It is often difficult to honestly recognize the worth of the objects in our lives. They are often comforting simply for their constant presence. But, you have to really think about what one more dust-collecting piece of junk adds to your life. If it didn’t cost much, never gets used and you forgot it was there until starting this exercise, toss it. Don’t fall into the excuse trap and justify keeping it by telling yourself you might want to have it around “someday.” Someday almost never comes and, if it does, you can probably run out and pick up a new piece of junk to fulfill the need if it really is an emergency.

Trust me, you’ll feel better surrounded by less as long as the essentials and the objects that truly add value to your life remain.