It’s easy to think of a house as being either cluttered or uncluttered. But the reality is that we often vary the amounts of clutter in the rooms of our homes depending on our needs.

For instance, back when we were raising children, we allowed them to decorate their rooms as they wished, and we only intervened in reducing their clutter level when it became difficult to walk across the room. Yet through all those child-rearing years, our living room remained uncluttered because we felt there should be one room that was always nice and clear, for us and for visitors.

Today, we try to keep most of our house uncluttered. The exception is the storage area of our basement, which is packed pretty tightly with things we need, but not right now.

Your purposes for creating an uncluttered home may vary. Perhaps you have toddlers or small children, and keeping the house uncluttered means fewer broken items. Or maybe you just love having clean, uncluttered rooms even though you have to work hard to keep them that way.

Another reason is that you’re going to put your house on the market, and you want it to look clean and roomy. When we put previous homes on the market, our realtors told us to pare down everything because potential buyers want to picture themselves in the house, and too many personal items will make that unlikely. I never agreed with that, arguing that it’s easy to judge a house on its own merits whether or not there are family photos on the wall.

But these days many people are selling vacant homes, or else they’ve stripped their homes of not only personal effects but even extraneous furnishings and décor. This is the result of the popularity of staging, which has been in vogue for at least 10 years. And I find that when I look in homes at realtor.com (not because we’re moving, but because I’m nosy and I like to see what people do with their homes), most have been stripped of everything but basic furniture and a few decorative pieces.

I didn’t realize how much I prefer this look now until I hit upon the occasional house that has not been cleaned up, much less staged, and is instead teeming with everything: walls covered with photos, framed pictures, bric-a-brac and those big decals that say things like “Live…Laugh…Love,” sofas covered with afghans and pillows, side tables with a lamp surrounded by clutter, bedrooms with exercise equipment surrounding the bed…you get the idea. It’s almost claustrophobic, and now I know what the realtors meant: you can’t really see the house because it’s so full of everything.

So whether you prefer a completely decluttered home, or just the main areas looking clean and open, it’s your choice. Speaking only for myself, I’ve found that as I’ve aged, I prefer every room to have open space and only our very favorite items on the walls. It just makes me more comfortable.