“Clutter is not just what’s on your floor — it’s anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living.” - Peter Walsh
Have you ever walked into a room full of clutter and started to feel stressed or anxious? That’s because clutter, whether it’s excess belongings or thoughts, can affect how we process and function. Clutter takes up more than just physical space, and it occupies more mental space than we realize. Research has shown that decluttering our physical space can have many positive impacts on our brains.
While everyone may have their own preferences about how organized their spaces are, some decluttering may improve your mental health in surprising ways. Let’s take a look at some of those positive impacts.
Confidence and Self-Esteem
Decluttering our environment instills a sense of control. We get to be in charge of how our space is organized and what stays or goes. This can give us a sense of competency and pride, which leads to improved self-esteem.
The act of decluttering also exercises our problem-solving and decision-making skills, improving our ability to handle future tasks. After decluttering, we feel a sense of accomplishment that can boost our feelings of self-worth and confidence.
Energy and Productivity
Having stuff everywhere can feel draining. Even the idea of cleaning up may be daunting, but once we get started, we’ll find it often gets easier as we go. After we get over the initial hump and start to declutter, we may find that this level of productivity cascades down to other areas of our lives. Maybe once we declutter our kitchen, we start cooking more, for example.
It can also feel like our space is new, different, and exciting, which provides a little energy and dopamine boost.
Reduced Stress
Living in a disorganized home can lead to increased levels of stress, according to recent research. Too many things in our environment can take up mental space, making it harder to concentrate and lead to feeling overwhelmed and tense.
Not only does decluttering help improve our mood and reduce stress, but it can even help us sleep better, which is a huge factor for our mental health. When it’s been weighing on us for a while, we start to feel a little lighter knowing we took care of business.
But How Do I Declutter?
If you’re having a hard time getting started, you’re not alone. Decluttering our space can feel intimidating. Here are a few tips that can help:
Start small. Pick a small area and just focus on decluttering that. Or we can make a deal with ourselves that we will get rid of five things today.
We should set ourselves up for success with an easy and attainable goal so we can build momentum and gain confidence.
Set some rules. Making individual decisions about everything we want to declutter can be overwhelming and unrealistic. We can set some basic ground rules like, “I will throw out anything I have not worn or used in two years.”
Ask for help. Tackling a big task with an extra set of hands is always easier. Even if the other person is mainly providing moral support, just having someone else there for company can make the task seem more tolerable.
Organize your space. We can set up a giveaway box and a throw-away box before we start, or designate a separate area for those categories. Once an item has been placed in a box or put in a location, we should leave it there and not second guess it.
Conclusion
During our journey of healthier living, we will need to protect the mental energy we have in order to be able to stick to our goals. Having a cluttered home to come back to at the end of an already difficult day could get in the way of that.
We can nurture a sense of calm and accomplishment by decluttering our physical space — and our mental space will follow.
Credit to Reframe by Glucobit Inc
Komentarze