What Clutter Does to Your Brain

Why Mess Causes Stress

What is clutter? Looking clutter up in the dictionary we come up with that clutter is a disorderly heap, litter. In our society of more is better the thought of decluttering your space whether your workspace or home is a pretty radical thought at times.

What Does Clutter Do to You Health?

These are some surprising facts gathered from different physical and mental health articles about the affects of clutter on your life. It’s amazing how clutter can effect us both mentally and physically.

Clutter Creates Lack of Focus

Clutter can keep you distracted and limit your brain’s ability to process information. When you have too many things stimulating your brain visually, they are all competing for your attention at the same time and can overload your brain’s ability to focus and use executive function–our brain’s prioritizing ability of  what you should do first. You have a harder time knowing what is urgent and what is important and choosing what will create the best outcome.

Basically you have a bunch of stuff competing for your attention at the same time and it wears down your brain’s ability to focus. To give your best performance at work or at home, take away the clutter first and see the difference.

Clutter Can Increase Stress

Clutter can make your stress hormones spike, your cortisol can go up. Just think of how many families don’t park their cars in their garages because there just isn’t the room; the garage is stuffed with stuff. Clutter also can overload your senses, just like extreme multi-tasking can overload your brain, too much stuff and the clutter that comes with it can cause you to be anxious or stressed.

Clutter Can Cause Procrastination

It is so much easier to deal with mail to email or putting away tools once, instead of just laying things down and coming back to them. Standing at your garbage or recycling  can and going through your mail once is a great way to cut down on clutter. Using an email program to unsubscribe from all the emails you don’t want to recieve is another great way on cutting down on clutter and time wasters. It is better to be well organized so you can find things when you need them and not waste the time endlessly looking for something you need.

Clutter Can Increase Allergies

More stuff equals more stuff for dust and dander to land on, which in turn can mean more allergies. Dusting lots of stuff takes time, so streamlining your stuff to the things you love will have so many benefits not only to your health but the amount of time it takes to keep your house clean.

Clutter Can Cost You More Money

When you can’t find things, humans tend to buy what they need and then later find that they already had the item, but they couldn’t find it. How many times have you looked in your drawers or closet and couldn’t find something or felt you had nothing to wear. Time to do a closet purge! It’s also probably time to organize.

We recently came across nifty drawer dividers for lingerie that makes finding the right bra or underwear a so much easier. Also there are some great shelf dividers on Amazon and places like Bed Bath and Beyond that keep your sweaters and jeans from being a leaning Tower of Pisa. Organizing refreshers your look and you find that you have some great clothes to wear in the process. Some ideas on clothes organization in our next blog!

How Clutter Gets Created

Everyone collects thing for many reasons; you’ll need it later, it brings back memories of that incredible vacation, you spent a lot of money on that item, even if you haven’t used, look at for weeks, months or maybe years. From books to investment shoes that haven’t been worn, maybe they need to find a new home and not clutter yours. Many times impulse purchases get shelved and it’s catching yourself before your whip out your credit card and ask these questions. Do I love it, do I need it, can I afford it, will it end up in landfill?

Finding your perfect balance of having things you enjoy while not creating clutter–each of us has own balance that works for us. But try an experiment in just one area of our life–take on an area with not much emotional attachment, such as your computer desktop and organize it, so it isn’t file after file after file. Create master files for the different areas of your life and put them in the file called Desktop on you computer desktop, and then make sure you put the proper items in their file each day and suddenly your computer is better organized, you can find things faster and you aren’t staring at a mess when you look at your desktop.

When you are feeling brave, take on your closet. No, wait for next month when we give you some great tips on how to organize your personal drawers and closet. Staying organized and keeping clutter reduced is about being happier, more relaxed and not adding to landfill and climate change. Also if you need help with the process of cleaning your home, be sure to give us a call at Crystal Clear Home and we will help take house cleaning off your list freeing you to enjoy the dog days of summer.