Living in a cluttered environment can affect your mental health by making you feel overwhelmed, giving you cognitive overload, and increasing stress and anxiety. Clutter leads to psychological stress, decreased life satisfaction, and negative emotional states, ultimately affecting your overall mental health and productivity. I shared my personal journey from clutter and depression and I was blown away by the number of people who are in the same place or came from that same place of clutter and emotional turmoil.
Clutter can have a significant impact on mental health, contributing to feelings of anxiety, stress, and overwhelm. When you live in a cluttered environment, it can be challenging to focus and process information, leading to cognitive overload. Research in environmental psychology has shown that clutter can decrease productivity, increase irritability, and lower your overall sense of well-being. When we are surrounded by clutter, our brains are constantly processing visual information, trying to make sense of the chaos.
This can lead to cognitive overload, making it difficult to concentrate and make decisions. Clutter can also trigger the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol , which can have a seriously negative impact on mental health. Clutter and a messy environment are shown to directly worsen or cause depression, anxiety, depleted cognitive resources, and other mental health issues by increasing stress and anxiety levels.
And mental health issues spread into your physical healthβchronic pain, fatigue, racing heart, TMJD, migrainesβ¦. So it makes sense that clearing all of that clutter can improve your mental health and well being. Parents purchase more for their children because they work more to maintain their quality of life and therefore feel guilty about not spending time with their children. Feelings of guilt and also knowing deep down that material goods are a poor substitute for time together add to depression and anxiety.
So even without clutter, participating too much in consumerism can affect your mental health negatively. An average room has over 2, visible objects, particularly the office or work space where we tend to spend the most time. With all of those items laying around, the yearly decluttering challenge is easy to complete! Decluttering reveals that to us. It can be difficult to begin decluttering, because it involves a lot of emotions.
