How Clutter Affects Your Mental Health
Is it really that terrible to have a messy home?
Psychology Today reports:
“Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli, distracts us, makes it more difficult to relax, makes us anxious, signals our brains that our work is never done, creates feelings of guilt, inhibits productivity, and frustrates us.”
It distracts us.
You want to focus on doing one task, but see the clutter from the corner of your eye, calling for your attention… Next thing you know you’re cleaning up instead of doing the task you wanted to do.
DO THIS: Clean your space after every use so you start a new day, clutter-free!
It makes it difficult to relax.
Our environment affects our mood. Clutter is not conducive to a relaxing environment. This frustrates us and stresses us out because we have a visual reminder that our home is not the way we want it to be.
DO THIS: Designate your room of relaxation as a clutter-free zone. Make a house rule that any other room can get messy except for this one.
It makes us anxious.
Clutter can make you feel like you’ve lost control of your home because you’ve “let things get away from you,” and now there’s this huge pile of things out of place. It would have been easier to sort through a few items here and there over time, but now you have one giant pile haunting you.
DO THIS: Ask someone for help to categorize the clutter into groups that you can tackle one by one.
It creates feelings of guilt.
Do you often criticize yourself and think, “I should be more organized?” That’s the guilt talking. Not everyone is born with the gift or taught the skill of organizing so you can’t expect to magically be organized without first developing the skill.
DO THIS: Allow yourself to improve your organization skills over time, and to create an organized system for one room at a time.
It inhibits productivity.
Instead of getting through our to-do lists, we add clutter to the list and create more work for ourselves.
DO THIS: Give your items a home and be sure to put things back in their homes after use so you don’t waste time looking for them or putting them back at a later time.
If you feel like your clutter has been affecting your mental health, let’s have a conversation.
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