How Excessive Clutter Affects Your Mental Health


Doing everything we can to take care of our mental health can take a lot of effort. Unfortunately, there are many things we do that can harm us in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Many people struggle with clutter in their homes and don’t realize how much it affects their mental state. It may seem harmless at first glance, but I’ll show you how excessive clutter affects your mental health so you can start to take steps toward making it better.

Increased Stress

One of the primary ways that clutter affects your mental health is that cluttered spaces make you feel more stressed. Studies show that people who describe their house as cluttered tend to have higher levels of the stress hormone known as cortisol. When your home is somewhere you dread going to because of all the clutter, it’s hard to relax.

Mental Clutter

Physical clutter can lead to clutter in your mind as well. This mental clutter can make certain things more difficult, especially when you deal with it every day. It can make it harder to focus on one thing at a time because your brain is stretched in so many different directions. This can even affect your sleep quality, which has the unfortunate effect of creating a negative feedback loop from lack of sleep and the clutter problem.

Overstimulation

Our brains can only handle a certain amount of stimulus at one time or in one small period. When you live in a cluttered home, you constantly overstimulate your mind with the junk surrounding you. Overstimulation can affect things like your memory and cognition skills negatively. Taxing your brain like this every day becomes exhausting and can take a serious toll on your well-being.

Social Isolation

Another problem that many people deal with when they live in a cluttered home is they can become socially isolated from the people around them. This stems from a sense of embarrassment or shame about the state of their home or life in general. To stay mentally healthy, we all need a certain amount of social stimulation. Locking yourself away for long periods because of shame won’t fix the problems; it will only make them worse.

Take that initial step to reduce stress by removing the clutter from your home and donating all that is re-useable. Excess clothes and household décor items can really contribute to a cluttered home, so if you have clothing donations thrift stores in Panama City Beach, FL can take them off your hands so you can regain control and organization in your home.

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