It’s August, and it’s not just ‘happy month’ because many will be taking holidays. It’s International Happiness Month: Happiness Happens.

Watching the news, it’s easy to feel we’re all doomed. The cost of living is rising. So are temperatures around the World. Politicians and priests find themselves in trouble and public services like schools and hospitals face increasing challenges.

International Happiness Month

Pamela Gail Johnson had an innate feeling that we all fail to express our feelings and suppress talking about happiness. In August 1998, she founded a group called the Secret Society of Happy People, a group with two mottos: “Happiness Happens”, and “Don’t Even Think of Raining on My Parade”. 

Members started noting that sharing their joyful moments, their joyous stories, not only gave them (the teller) happiness. Hearing these stories, people began to recognise and celebrate the things in their own lives that bring them happiness.

Come the year 2000, the secret society decided to ’go global’. They declared August 8 ‘Happiness Happens Day’, and all of August ‘Happiness Happens’ month.

easy(and Happy) Storage

Here at easyStorage we stopped to think about how we what we do can help spread a little happiness.

‘Decluttering’ came up repeatedly. Tackled with gusto, it can bring happiness in lots of ways – we found ten to share here:

10 ways to declutter for Happiness

1.       Too much clutter can make us unhappy. Clearing it can help us clear our minds, making us happier and healthier. 

2.       Going through old things or things we’d forgotten can bring back happy memories. (If they bring back bad memories, definitely time to get rid!)

3.       Selling on old things that no longer bring us joy not only puts a little money in our pockets to enjoy life with, it also brings happiness to the new owner. 

4.       Taking good quality items to a charity shop not only helps them and their beneficiaries. Research has shown that being charitable improves our self-esteem, increases our sense of connection to the world, and makes us happier and healthier. 

5.       Involving children in decluttering can help acknowledge a child’s stages through life as they grow out of old toys and clothes, and set healthy habits for them as they go through the new stages of their life. Of course, this may need to be done in small steps – young children’s attention spans are notoriously short!

6.       Decluttering has been shown to remove stress and help our mental wellbeing. 

7.       Decluttering can help you create more space, without the stress and uncertainty of having to move home! More space means more space to entertain the people you love, which, in itself, can bring happiness.

8.       If you downsize, decluttering will help you start afresh surrounded only by the things you most love and value, bringing you joy – you can actually see them rather than the clutter.

9.       Decluttering makes cleaning easier, which in turn can contribute to feelings of happiness, accomplishment and calm. Feeling relaxed, accomplished and stress free can help with mental health conditions. However, messy or dirty homes can trigger feelings of anxiety, low mood or agitation. 

10.   The Marie Kondo (KonMari) method of decluttering comes with inherent joy – remembering why you had an item in the first place and the joy it brought you. 

So there you have it.

We can help declutter & add a little more happiness

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We know our teams contribute in a million other ways to people’s happiness, with their positive ‘can do’ attitudes to helping people move their things into storage. We know that our self-storage service, allowing people to keep things of value without having cluttered homes, offers people peace of mind and takes off a massive strain.

So yes, we like to believe that we can help make peoples’ day a little brighter – especially with our happy, bright, easyOrange coloured vans. What’s not to love?