To prevent the clutter entering your household, you need to create supportive habits to achieve this.
This article describes some ways for you to handle the clutter proactively.

Don't buy stuff you don't need

Prevent the clutter entering your home by not buying everything you want. Think carefully before making a buying decisions.
For example, in my trip to New York, I was tempted to buy lots of clothes, but one by one I decided that I don't really need most of them. So I just bought the ones I really needed. Also, I decided to get rid of similar amount of clothing than what I bought. So, whenever I buy something new, I decide what I'm going to get rid of at the same time.

Take care of the small things immediately

It's easy to neglect the small things that eventually create lots of clutter later on. For example, you decide to read a magazine and leave it on a kitchen table. Eventually you realize that your kitchen table is full of magazines, papers and reports. In order to stop this right in the beginning, create a habit of taking care of things like that immediately. In this case you might have a place where you put the magazines after reading them.
After doing this for a while, it becomes a second nature and you do it automatically.

Process it as soon as possible

One thing that I do as soon as possible are taking care of bills and cleaning.
For example, if I receive a bill in a daily mail, I take care of it as soon as it's possible. Otherwise I might have bunch of other paperwork floating around whereever I put my bill.
Pay the bill, mark it as paid (for example by writing a date when you paid it) and put it in your filing system. Sooner I have processed the better. The bill is then where it belongs and I can concentrate to other things I have to do.