5 Effects of Clutter on the Mind
The mountain of clutter you have in your home often parallels the mountain of problems you potentially face in your life including these 5 effects of clutter on the mind:
- Clutter causes anxiety and stress
- Clutter decreases productivity and focus
- Clutter inhibits creative thinking and problem-solving
- Clutter contributes to mental health issues
- Clutter affects your quality of life
The cost of clutter and how it affects our minds is limiting at best and detrimental at its worst.
Learning about the effects of clutter can help to motivate you to address the piles before it becomes a bigger and harder to solve problem.
Looking to jumpstart your journey to organization? Organize with a proven plan using the new Tidying Checklist. Use this free printable plan to get organized this year.
1. Clutter Causes Anxiety and Stress
The visual clutter that surrounds you in your home can trigger anxiety or increase the anxiety you already experience on a day-to-day basis. This anxiety induced by clutter surfaces because your environment is disorganized with chaos lurking in dark corners in your home.
On any given day the human brain is bombarded with a constant influx of information.
To make sense of all the inputs of information, our brains attempt to organize and categorize the inputs in meaningful ways.
But if there are too many inputs and confusion on how to organize and sort the bits of information, we experience mental overload which feels like overwhelm and confusion.
Both of these feelings can trigger and contribute to anxiety and stress.
For example, the junk drawer that nearly every household in America has, is stuffed with a large number of odds and ends. From loose change, takeout menus, and safety pins, the junk drawer is a hodgepodge of randomness contained to one drawer.
Let’s say that there are 100 items in the junk drawer.
When these 100 items are scattered about without any meaningful categorization, the drawer feels cluttered and overwhelming.
But if we organize the same 100 items in a drawer using some logical and meaningful sorting method, our brains are able to process what is contained in the drawer.
Instead of experiencing anxiety and stress, our minds are put at ease because we are better able to process the information before us.
Expand this example to the rest of your house by imaging your home as one big junk drawer. If the items are all scattered about with no means for categorization, we are setting ourselves up for perpetual anxiety and stress from our physical environment.
If this is a familiar scene you might already be experiencing some of this.
2. Clutter Decreases Productivity and Focus
Clutter decreases productivity and focus by
- increasing procrastination
- decreasing efficiency
- reducing sense of accomplishments
Increased Procrastination
Clutter is known to increase procrastination because the presence of clutter can make it harder to start tasks and projects. One major contributing factor for false starts or difficulty starting is distraction and distractibility.
Clutter, or the overabundance of clutter is a cause for distraction.
Our brains are not sure where to focus our attention. Instead of narrowing in on one topic or one task, the clutter causes a jumbling of our thoughts.
Our brains hop from clutter to clutter in an endless sea of distraction rather than firmly plant our feet onto one large mass.
Without a point to focus our attention, our minds are scattered and we stop before ever getting started.
Decreased Efficiency
If you are able to get started on a task by way of a small miracle despite the clutter, the abundance of clutter may contribute to decreased efficiency in tackling your tasks.
With items strewn about your home, you’re left sifting through the piles, taking longer to accomplish the main task at hand.
A task that might have taken five minutes of your time, can take far longer, maybe even 20 minutes longer because you’re spending your time looking for something.
I’ve been there before, second guessing which pile that one pink sticky note that has important information scribbled on it, is hiding.
Reduced Sense of Accomplishment
When you are surrounded by clutter, it can be difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment or pride in your space.
With all the items out of place, your to-do list never feels complete.
Rather, the action items that you feel compelled to address are a mile long and you lose any sense of accomplishment for the tasks you are able to complete.
In relation to the endless open tasks, your completed tasks are under appreciated and decreases any pride you might have otherwise felt from checking some items off your list.
3. Inhibit Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving
A cluttered environment can inhibit creative thinking and problem-solving in a few different ways.
First, physical clutter can be distracting and make it difficult to concentrate on a task which was discussed in the previous point above. This can make it harder to come up with new ideas or to find solutions to problems.
Second, a cluttered environment can make it difficult to relax and feel calm, which is often necessary for the mind to wander and generate new ideas.
Finally, a cluttered environment can create a sense of disorganization and chaos, which can make it harder to think clearly and logically.
All of these factors can contribute to a reduction in creative thinking and problem-solving ability.
4. Clutter Contributes to Mental Health Issues
One way that clutter can contribute to mental health issues is that overwhelm and stress felt from clutter is compounded into feelings of sadness and hopelessness.
The amount of clutter feels unmanageable causing you to feel stuck and unable to get out from under the piles.
With the clutter making it difficult to find things, the frustrations can spiral into feelings of being out of control.
The clutter also represents visual reminders of tasks that have not been completed, which can contribute to a sense of failure and low self-esteem.
All of these factors can add to mental health issues from the presence of clutter.
5. Clutter Affects Your Quality of Life
Your home is meant to support you and be a place of comfort and relaxation.
Except comfortable is not how you would describe your home. Instead of a place of refuge and recharge, the clutter awakens feelings of resentment of your environment.
With each piece of clutter, the joy for your space diminishes and you start to feel as though you experience a reduced quality of life.
But if you could alter the quality of your life by clearing the clutter in your home, wouldn’t you? It’s hard to say because it depends on a lot of different factors. Time, energy, and priorities all affect whether you make the shift to experience an increased quality of life.
And just because something is important to you, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are able to put the actions forth to make a change.
Change is hard and the resistance that goes along with it makes it harder. But knowing these 5 effects of clutter on the brain is a good first step towards making improvements on your quality of life.
Conclusion
Clutter is far from harmless and the cost of keeping it in your home is high.
You pay with your well-being, mental health and quality of life.
Before clutter piles turn into unmanageable mountains consider taking advantage of this free tidying checklist.
It’s a simple project plan for tidying up your home.
If you’re interested in the free printable pdf I invite you to download the tidying checklist today.
Southern California based Professional Organizer, Sandy Park, owner and founder of Tidy with SPARK shares her joy of organization with her clients.
She serves clients in Orange County as well as the hundreds of thousands of followers on her combined social media platforms.
Connect with Sandy through her website or by connecting through her social channels.