Clutter & The Negative Impact on Your Health
Cluttered homes play a significant role in how we feel about ourselves, yet clutter is rarely recognised as a significant contributor to our stress levels. It can lead to anxiousness and overwhelm and ignite a general malaise for life. Not surprisingly, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that clutter and chaotic homes can negatively impact mental well-being particularly amongst women and can contribute to anxiety in children.
The Stress of Clutter
Disorganisation and clutter have a cumulative effect on our brains. Our brains love order so the constant visual reminders of disorganisation drain our cognitive resources and, reduce our ability to focus.
Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what we should be focused on. Instead of focusing our attention on the task at hand, our mind is overly distracted by the clutter that surrounds us. The visual distraction of clutter causes our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren't necessary or important.
When clutter invades every square inch of our environment, it inhibits creativity and productivity, stifling our ability to think, brainstorm and problem solve.
Clutter also makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally. It can increase our levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, which can cause anxiety and disrupt our sleep. It can also make us less productive, triggering copying and avoidance strategies that make us more likely to snack on junk and watch TV shows. Dr. Rick Hanson, author of Hardwiring Happiness and speaker at this TED Talk, explains how cortisol can result in actual structural changes to our brain that cause long-term sensitivity to stress.
The disorganisation of clutter makes us anxious because we’re never sure where to find things we need, or how long it’s going to take us to get though the pile to find it.
Clutter manipulates our brain into thinking that work is never done. An untidy or messy environment will never give our mind any sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. It tricks us into thinking that we have not accomplished anything.
When we’re surrounded by the chaos of clutter, a myriad of negative emotions could inevitably rise to the surface more frequently. It may provoke anger, frustration or could lead to bouts of depression.
Clutter creates feelings of guilt and embarrassment. When unexpected visitors drop in, you might feel you should be more organised, or feel embarrassed at the clutter in your environment.
There’s a part of our brain (anterior cingulate cortex and insula) that creates conflict whenever we try and let go of possessions that we’re emotionally connected to. The stronger the emotional connection to the item, the more difficult it will be to let go because it’s more painful.
While there are exceptions to every rule, such as hoarding, the good news is, unlike other more common sources of stress (e.g., our jobs, our relationships), clutter can be one the easiest life stressors to fix.
Clutter & the Psychological Impact
Our environment is a feedback loop. We build our clutter around some psychological component- impulses, sentiment, memories, fear, guilt, or an ideal version of ourselves.
Then the clutter itself results in negative psychological effects of stress, feeling bad about yourself, crappy attention span and focus, and undesired behaviours…which encourages us to buy more “comfort items” or cling tighter to the ones we currently have!
Lucky for you, you have the total ability to interrupt this feedback loop and up-level your experience right there at home with our 7-Day Declutter Dash!
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Never give up on becoming the best version of yourself because you deserve amazing peace and clarity.