Got a lot of stuff lying around your house or maybe the clutter seems to be piling up with no end in sight? Small tweaks to your home organization can make a huge difference in the quality of life you are experiencing. Feeling happy in your own home can make a huge impact on your overall health and happiness. Now that you have some extra time on your hands from today’s Covid-19 pandemic, it’s the perfect opportunity to clean up and declutter your home. A little cleanliness and organization can make a world of difference in making your home happier and healthier. 

Clutter’s Effects On The Brain and Body

Clutter is an overabundance of material possessions that creates chaos in a person’s home. When clutter becomes excessive it can interfere with a person’s everyday life causing stress and other health problems.

Being around clutter can cause anxiety, sleep difficulties, and inhabits a person’s ability to focus. It makes you less productive, triggering coping and avoidance strategies. When a person sees clutter lying around their house they might say to themself, I am too busy to clean or don’t have time today. Or they might even tell themself that they might one day use a particular item. These avoidance strategies prevent a person from decluttering their house. A person might even cope with their clutter by drinking alcohol or engaging in other maladaptive coping strategies.

Clutter is distracting, which increases your cognitive overload and reduces your working memory. Having a lot of things lying around is bad for your brain because it drains your cognitive resources, which reduces your ability to focus. Clutter tends to make people feel stressed, anxious, and depressed. According to the Journal of Environmental Psychology, clutter negatively impacts a person’s life by causing tension between family members, social isolation, depression, and even is a safety hazard. 

Declutter

All of these negative health effects associated with living in a house full of clutter point to the need to declutter your home to make it happier and healthier. Decluttering your home is simply getting rid of items that you do not need anymore. This will free your mind from the cognitive overload it was experiencing from clutter and cause you to feel more relaxed and satisfied with your home environment. The kitchen or places that you frequent often are great places to start. While you are decluttering you can donate things you no longer need or are using. This is a great way to give back to your community and help someone in need.

Throw Out the Waste

While you are decluttering it’s time to throw out waste such as empty bottles or garbage you have laying around. Having garbage lying around the house not only causes clutter and stress but can also cause health problems as well. Clutter has been shown to contribute to unhealthy eating and overeating. Large amounts of clutter in the kitchen result in people ordering take out because they have no room or motivation to cook. 

Organize

Once you have gotten rid of items you no longer use and have thrown out the waste lying around your house, you are ready to start organizing. Start by straightening up bookshelves, tables, and countertops. Also, find places for items that don’t need to be lying around in your visual spaces. You can finish by cleaning the house to get rid of any dust and debris and make your house smell clean and fresh. 

Prevent Incoming Clutter

The best way to prevent incoming clutter is to give everything in your house a place and tidy up daily. This will prevent you from letting little things slide and clutter slowly building up once again. Also, be sure to go through your items often to make sure you don’t have things lying around that you don’t need anymore such as old receipts, mail, or pieces of paper that can easily result in a cluttered environment. 

Avoid Alcohol

One final way to make your home happier and healthier is to avoid bringing alcohol into the home. As stated above, clutter can trigger coping strategies in a person. One maladaptive coping strategy that clutter can trigger is drinking alcohol.

When people drink they tend to experience mood swings. This can range from depression to anger. Being around someone with an unstable mood can make it difficult to feel comfortable in your own home. Also, seeing bottles laying around the house can trigger a person to experience the urge to drink. The best way to avoid clutter or alcohol cans or bottles is to avoid bringing alcohol into the home altogether. If you or someone you love is suffering from alcohol addiction, finding an alcohol rehab can help you get back to a happier and healthier home life. 

Author Bio: Patrick Bailey is a professional writer mainly in the fields of mental health, addiction, and living in recovery. He attempts to stay on top of the latest news in the addiction and the mental health world and enjoy writing about these topics to break the stigma associated with them. 

References: 

• Emotional up and down, behaviorally to and fro: Drinking motives mediate the synergistic effects of urgency and emotional instability on alcohol outcomes. Journal of Drug Education.
• Inpatient Alcohol Rehab Options. Sunshine Behavioral Health. 
• The dark side of home: Assessing possession ‘clutter’ on subjective well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology.
• What does clutter do to your brain and body? NewsGP.