Ideally, our homes should be places where we feel comfortable, relaxed, and productive, not stressed, anxious, and unfocused. Organization plays a large role in how our spaces make us feel, as clutter and disorganization create stressful environments. Beyond appearances, chaotic spaces can make daily life more challenging and can even affect your mindset. We want to shed light on how organization can contribute to our mental well–being.
A Cluttered Space Creates a Cluttered Mind
When you look around and see a bunch of stuff strewn about your home without any intention, it’s easy for your brain to become overwhelmed. Your messy surroundings may take your attention away from what you need to focus on, even if it’s happening subconsciously. This sensory overload can lead to mental fatigue, which can create irritability and brain fog. Essentially, a clean, organized environment contributes to a clearer, calmer mind. Your mind reflects your surroundings.
How Clutter Affects Your Working Memory
Imagine you’re working from your home office, with a desk scattered with papers, books, and old mail. You just had a meeting with your boss, but you can’t remember the next steps they just told you to take. The disarray of your office created a distraction, which caused you to forget what you need to do. Now, you need to either try to recall your instructions, or reach back out to your boss, in the hopes they’re available. This adds extra stress and steps to your day, which possibly could’ve been avoided without the clutter taking up space in your brain.
This is an example of how clutter can also affect your working memory. Because clutter can distract and overwhelm the brain, it makes it harder to remember important things you need to at a given moment. A sense of disorder can cause you to become forgetful of things you’re actively working on, making tasks even more difficult and frustrating.
Disorganized Spaces Can Cause
Stress and Anxiety
The extra stress created by disorganization can spike your levels of cortisol, also known as the “stress hormone.” This hormone is released in response to stress to help regulate your body. Typically, your levels will return to baseline once the sensed threat has gone away. In constant states of stress, however, your levels remain spiked. If your home is constantly in a chaotic, disorganized state, it’s likely your mood is too. Consistently high levels of hormones such as cortisol can lead to various issues in the body, and create a risk of health issues such as anxiety, depression, and even heart disease, among others.
Poor Sleep
If you find yourself tossing and turning as you try to fall asleep, or waking up in the middle of the night, there’s a chance the reason is related to disorganization. Messy homes don’t simply affect how you feel during the day. Unfortunately, clutter can impact sleep quality as well. When your environment feels unsettling, it can become more difficult to wind down at bedtime. If your room is messy, it may be harder to view it as a place for rest, making it more difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. Like organization, sleep affects our mental health, making it an especially important part of our routines. To promote quality sleep, it’s helpful to ensure your room encourages you to mentally switch off and relax, and proper organization is a great way to do so.
It’s a Cycle
One of the most frustrating things about clutter is how challenging it can be to solve the problem, as it can often lead to a cycle of stress and mess. Because clutter can create anxiety and overstimulation, and can deplete your energy levels, it may be quite difficult to clean up and organize your space. Your space may even become more cluttered, causing further stress, which once again leads you to let the clutter continue to sit there. This can easily become a seemingly endless cycle that can put you in a constant state of stress, which isn’t fun for anyone. Luckily, this cycle can be broken.
Set Yourself Up for Success
Cleaning and organizing messy spaces can be a daunting task. With the right approach, however, you can greatly improve your daily life. The proper approach may vary depending on the person, but it’s helpful to have a plan. One tip is to tackle the chaos one step at a time. If you make a plan to spend a dedicated amount of time each day organizing a certain area, it becomes less overwhelming. You may even want to speak with a counselor or therapist, to get personalized advice based on your individual struggles and behaviors.
It also helps to have intentional organization systems set up that make it easier to maintain clean, ordered spaces. Closet Factory designers can help implement these systems and transform your home organization, thereby transforming your daily routine.
Ultimately, the state of our homes has many effects on our overall well-being, both during the day and at bedtime. Home organization is truly about much more than visual appeal. It’s about setting yourself up for success in your daily life by promoting a more positive mindset and mental health.
As Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, it’s important to continue paying attention to how you’re really doing mentally and discover what you can do to feel your best. You may realize that cleaning and organizing your bedroom or office space is an overdue task that’s been negatively impacting your mood and routine. Maybe you need to release stress through physical activities like running or cycling. Perhaps you discover you need to spend more time slowing down with peaceful activities such as reading. Most importantly, throughout the year, remember to take care of yourself.
