When feeling stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, it’s easy to lose motivation and want to just sit on the couch and binge-watch your favorite Netflix series. As a consequence of feeling sluggish, dishes start to stack up, laundry sits in piles for days, and the trash might be spilling over. Now your cluttered home has you feeling even more overwhelmed than you were to begin with.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you are not alone. Research suggests that being in a cluttered environment can have negative impacts on your mental health. The good news is that the cleanliness of your home is part of your environment that you have control over. Especially since spring is officially here, now is the perfect time to learn the benefits of spring cleaning for your mental health and how you can incorporate more cleaning into your life.
The Negative Impacts of a Messy Home
The bottom line is that cleaning is good for you. As much as you may not enjoy doing household chores, neglecting cleanliness can take an alarming toll on your mental health. Clutter might lead to more feelings of depression, lack of focus, increased tension, stress, and anxiety.
Depression
A study done in 2010 by the University of California found that people who described their households as “cluttered” or full of “unfinished projects” were more likely to suffer from depression than people who described their homes as “restful and restorative.” Being surrounded by clutter can increase your cortisol levels and put you in a bad mood, whereas the act of cleaning is actually known to release endorphins and make you feel happier.
Lack of Focus and Increased Tension
Have you ever tried to study in a messy room? Have a meeting in a cluttered workspace? Or cook in a dirty kitchen? Think about how you felt the last time you tried to accomplish something in a cluttered and disorganized environment. Was it difficult to focus?
A study done by Princeton University discovered that a person’s visual cortex can actually become overstimulated if there are too many objects around you that are unrelated to the task you are trying to focus on. What this means is that if your home has a lot of clutter and displaced objects, your brain can become overwhelmed and have trouble focusing.
Stress and Anxiety
If you let your household go too long without being cleaned, you may become overwhelmed with the amount of work that it will take to make it clean again. Clutter will add unnecessary stress to your life. It could make it difficult to find objects like your car keys, or shoes. Too much added stress in your life can lead to mental breakdowns. For people with mental health disorders, living in a messy home can trigger anxiety and panic attacks.
For additional ideas on how to reduce stress or alleviate anxiety, check out our blog post: Alleviating Anxiety at Home
The Benefits of Spring Cleaning for Mental Health
Tidying up your home is a great way to kick off the start of a new season. Having a clean home has many obvious benefits like having your house ready for company or being able to find previously displaced objects with ease.
A clean home also has many benefits to your mental health including:
- Gaining control of your environment: Living through the pandemic for the past 2 years left many people feeling like they have no control over their own lives. Gyms, parks, and businesses were closed down, there were mask mandates and additional rules that compromised our daily routines. Focusing on the things that you have the power to control can help you feel like you are the one calling the shots again. You have control over your home environment, so tidy up, get that home decor you’ve been dying to have and make your home your happy space.
- Boosting your mood: When you clean or do any physical activity that gets your body moving, your body releases endorphins that can put you in a better mood. You’ll also be relieving all of the stress that you had from thinking about how messy your house was prior to cleaning. There’s just something about being in a clean, liveable space that leaves you feeling more at peace.
- Find motivation: When you declutter, you get the opportunity to look through all of your “things” that have been sitting around your home. Some of the things you find might be related to old hobbies or projects that you had set aside. Being reminded of your hobbies or unfinished projects could inspire you to want to pick up where you last left off. That old guitar may finally get played, or maybe you have some paintbrushes that have been collecting dust for decades. Either way, finding the motivation to pick up a new or old hobby is great for your mental health. Research shows that people who have hobbies typically are less stressed and suffer less from anxiety and depression.
Where to Begin With Your Spring Cleaning
Spring cleaning can sound intimidating. Don’t let those childhood memories of grandma dusting every square inch of her home worry you. You do not have to achieve perfection to have a clean home or improve your mental health.
Clean Room by Room
If you don’t know where to begin with your cleaning, that’s okay. It’s best to start small, and it can be helpful to go room by room. Choose the room that you spend the most time in. This way, if you don’t have energy to clean the whole house, at least the area where you hang out the most will be clean and peaceful.
Make Lists
Have you ever lost focus while cleaning? You go to declutter one room and when you go to put something away in a new room, something distracts you and eventually, you are working on 5 different projects all at once. If this sounds relatable, then you are someone who can definitely benefit from keeping lists of what tasks need to be completed first. Before you get started with your cleaning, make a list for each room of all of the tasks that will need to be done. Make sure to regularly check your list and stay on task.
Organize and Declutter
Before stressing about vacuuming, mopping, dusting, and deep cleaning, start by going through your belongings in each room and organizing them. Determine if items are in their proper place, if you intend to keep them, donate them, or trash them. Once you have determined which items actually belong in that room, find a home for each item before moving on to another task. Decluttering the room to begin with will make the room feel cleaner and more organized, which will make the rest of your cleaning feel more relaxing.
Ask for Help
You do not have to do all of your cleaning alone. If there are other people in your household, reach out to them and see which chores they are willing to help out with. This will help ease your stress and lighten your workload.
If cleaning is an activity that is too overwhelming and puts you in a bad mood every time, consider hiring outside help. Look for someone who works as a cleaner and have them do your spring cleaning for you. There is no shame in outsourcing the work. You will be able to feel good about contributing to someone else’s livelihood and reap the benefits of a clean home.
Don’t Let Cleaning Become an Obsession
Cleaning is a great activity that you have complete control over in your life. Tidying up should help you feel less stressed and more calm. However, for some people, cleaning can become a compulsion.
Signs that cleaning has become an obsession for you:
- You have a fear of dirt or clutter in your home.
- Displaced items make you unusually distressed or angered.
- You cancel plans because you feel a compulsion to clean more.
- Cleaning interferes with your schedule such as making you late for work.
If you think your cleaning habits might be a compulsion, or if you have any other mental health questions, you can consult our mental health professionals at Alvarado Parkway Institute today by giving us a call at (619)-333-7050.
Now that you have learned some of the benefits of decluttering your home, put your knowledge to the test and see if cleaning will help transform your mood. Be mindful of your thoughts and attitudes prior to cleaning and see if they change afterward. Hopefully, you will find that your mental health and overall mood are much improved when you are in a clean environment.
