Want to know what causes the most home-related anxiety? Clutter, clutter, clutter…
Clutter can affect your health and mental wellbeing in many ways:
● When you can’t find things, the frustration can cause your blood pressure to rise and your heart to beat faster.
● Navigating your way around a messy house can lead to tripping or falling over things and hurting yourself.
● Paper clutter can present a fire hazard. Think of all those magazines and newspapers piled up in the garage, for instance.
● Clutter collects dust and mould and this can aggravate allergies and asthma symptoms.
● Clutter may even be making you fat, says Peter Walsh, author of Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? He’s noticed a connection between the amount of clutter people have and their excess weight.
● Clutter affects your ability to be fully present with your friends and family. Maybe you don’t have friends over because you’re embarrassed. Or maybe you do, but only after you’ve frantically crammed stuff inside cupboards and under beds!
● ‘Memory’ or ‘sentimental’ clutter can leave you stuck in the past, so ask yourself just how many boxes of Christmas cards, love letters, ticket stubs, children’s art, etc, you’re truly going to look through again.
● Clutter is a waste of time – time spent accumulating the clutter in the first place; then time spent cleaning and de-cluttering, or time spent looking for things.
● Cluttered and dirty kitchens act like Petri dishes for bacteria. How you care for your kitchen points to how you care for your own nourishment.
● A disorganised home office can lead to scattered concentration, procrastination, as well as back and neck pain if you can’t position your chair comfortably and enjoy freedom of movement around your desk.
● A chaotic bedroom can cause anxiety and sleepless nights when it should be a place of rejuvenation.
● Cluttered playrooms leave no room for actual playing. They often result in tears when your child discovers that his favourite toy is broken or lost; avalanches when taking something off a shelf results in ten other things coming down with it, or injuries when a bare foot meets a stray building block.
● A cluttered car not only prevents us from having a comfortable ride, it can also be dangerous with items rolling around that can distract or impede the driver.
So, we know now that living in a messy and disorganised environment can leave us feeling drained, stressed and overwhelmed. De-clutter and organise one room at a time and you’ll soon have a tidy, safe and sane home to live in.
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