How To Declutter Your Home To Reduce Anxiety
Decluttering and organizing your house can help to reduce your anxiety levels and dramatically improve your well-being. Restoring order and space to the home after living with clutter building up each day is achievable to everyone.
The accumulation of jumbled clutter can harm your mental health and well-being and increase your anxiety, especially if nothing is actioned. Decluttering your home doesn’t need to be an unattainable dream.
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Declutter And Organize Your Home To Remove Negative Energy
Clutter and mess slowly creep into your home. And can take over into all areas of your life, your car, your workspace, as well as the rooms in your home. It becomes intimidating to begin, even thinking about taking control of the mess before you know it.
Knowing where to start decluttering your home and having a plan to stick to is the first step. Thinking about decluttering without feeling overwhelmed and putting into place actionable strategies is when the stress starts to lift.
Household chores can sometimes feel never-ending. With so many checklists to tick on your to-do list, it’s often the clutter that gets missed.
Beginning with one room, one area, even one drawer or cupboard to organize, tidy and declutter can be the best way to get started on a decluttering mission.
By ridding yourself from the unwanted and unneeded household mess, you also benefit from removing the negative energy that surrounds clutter.
Clutter Can TakeOver Your Home (If You don’t stay In Control)
Does it sometimes feel like the constant clutter and mess is taking over your whole life?
Does every day bring on a new stream of clutter adding to the already mounting pile?
Overflowing children’s toys, bulging kitchen drawers and cupboards, mountains of paperwork, overcrowded sheds and garage spaces. All the clutter builds up and takes over, creating unwanted feelings of disappointment and inadequacy.
The stress and anxiety that a jumble of clutter brings can block any positive progress as you feel trapped and motionless to move forward.
Taking the first clutter busting step and achieving the small wins helps to motivate you to carry on through the clutter and create an organized and harmonious space.
Take The Decluttering Challenge And Unclutter Your Home in 30-Days
Taking on a timed challenge such as the FREE 30-Day Decluttering Challenge can positively impact clearing and dejunking the home. Getting the whole family involved will also have a tremendously positive effect. Having support when you are tackling decluttering is essential and helps you reach your goal faster and more positively.
The psychological benefits of decluttering create order and reestablish your control within the home. As each item is trashed or donated, anxiety lifts as control is restored. It’s incredible how decluttering your home has a direct effect on your mental health as well.
In this guide I am going to look at:
- What decluttering is.
- The Process of decluttering
- How clutter and mess can take over your home
- How clutter affects anxiety
- Why clutter promotes high stress and anxiety
- If decluttering helps with anxiety
What Is Decluttering?
We have all heard the words “declutter” and “decluttering,” but what do they mean?
Looking at the dictionary definition of clutter and decluttering (below) helps to see why going through this process can positively affect your home environment.
Clutter Definition
(a lot of objects in) a state of being untidy: A collection of things lying about in an untidy state.
“The attic is full of clutter.“
“Sorry about the clutter in the kitchen.“
“My Desk is covered in/full of clutter.“
Synonyms
Litter, jumble, bestrew, confusion, chaos, disorder, make a mess of, mess, muddle, be strewn about, disarrange, make untidy.
Decluttering Definition
To remove things you do not need from a place, in order to make it more pleasant and more useful:
To remove unnecessary items from (an untidy or overcrowded place):
To remove clutter from, to tidy.
“There’s no better time to declutter your home.“
“Decluttering your home to give yourself more space.“
“Moving to a new house is a perfect time to declutter.”
Synonyms
Replace, throw away, discard, remove, reorganize, unjumble, tidy up, sort, reorder, dejunk, categorize, neaten, clean, arrange, put in good shape.
The Process Of Decluttering Your Home
When you are planning on decluttering and organizing your space, no matter how big or small, it is useful to know the definitions (see above) to understand it all starts with a process of:
- Acknowledging you have an area in your home which needs reordering, reorganizing, and tidying.
- Committing to make a schedule to work through the clutter.
- Being kind to yourself, taking it one step at a time as your physical clutter affects your mood and mindset.
How Does Clutter Build Up and Take Over the Home?
Clutter builds up over time. You have life changes, moving to a new house, having a baby, getting married (double the chaos!) It builds up over days, weeks, months, and years. And before you know it, you have a house and garage full of belongings that you don’t believe you have the time or ability to get stuck in and declutter. It becomes overwhelming, and you don’t know where to start.
You may free up a little space now and then and reduce the clutter, but inevitably with everyday life, birthdays, holidays, and Christmas, the junk gets added to, and bam, you have more than you started with in the first place.
Decluttering your home doesn’t need to be an anxiety and stress-inducing task. Be kind to yourself and take it one day at a time. One unwanted object at a time if necessary.
How Clutter Affects Anxiety
Clutter can trigger anxiety as every day, faced with the reality that you are not addressing the mess and disorder.
It becomes very emotional, and you can find yourself creating avoidance strategies, so you don’t have to face the clutter. The feelings of guilt and overwhelm can create crippling anxiety that causes roadblocks to begin a plan of action to tackle the mess.
The mess and clutter in our home can directly affect how we feel about the space we live within. Living in a messy home can leave us feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed, with no end in sight. Decluttering the home doesn’t need to go hand-in-hand with overwhelm or anxiety.
Take a look at the 7 Top Decluttering Fears And How To Overcome Them for some more inspiration on ditching the clutter so that you can relieve the anxiety that goes hand in hand with a cluttered home.
Having High Anxiety And Stress in a cluttered home is common because:
- Physical clutter stops you from making decisions about the space in your home
- Clutter makes it extremely hard to relax or switch off emotionally and physically
- Constant clutter makes you feel guilty or embarrassed and can isolate you if you feel ashamed about your home.
- Your problem solving and productivity will be reduced in a cluttered house as you feel you can’t focus on the “now.”
- Clutter causes stress and anxiety as quickly finding simple possessions becomes a hugely frustrating task.
- Anxiety increases as the constant clutter becomes so overwhelming; you never know how long it will take you (or how much clutter you will find) to reach the bottom of the mess.
- Although physical clutter can take over the house and affect your stress levels, mental clutter can be just as stressful. Finding coping strategies can help you so much, such as having a technology ban to clear your mind and avoid distractions. Decluttering the home is the first step, but clearing the mental clutter can have a truly positive, uplifting, and transformative effect.
Does Decluttering Help With Anxiety?
Lots of people (me included) have an incredible feeling of personal accomplishment by decluttering their homes. It’s a stress-busting experience as the mess is cleared and clutter is gone out of our space; your mood lifts as each item is removed.
Eventually, as you do a full sweep of the house, your anxiety levels drop as you gain more control of your clutter.
Having more control by decluttering your home helps to reduce stress and make you feel less overwhelmed by the mess. It may feel like you don’t have the time or inclination to start your plan to declutter the chaos, and even the decision to begin the declutter creates a roadblock and makes you feel emotional and stressed out.
The overwhelm is stopping you from moving on. Be kind to yourself and know it’s not your fault; you are self-sabotaging because the clutter has taken over physically and emotionally.
So much so that you no longer feel in control of your environment. By creating a plan, you can take back control, action a list, and go through the decluttering process. It’s doable even if you feel anxiety creeping in.
Take Action To Declutter your Home Today
Having a structured method to declutter your home is the ideal way to kick start your new regime. Try our 30 Day Decluttering Challenge, which will help you remove 300 unwanted items from your home easily over 30 days.
Conclusion
Decluttering your home can help you stop worrying, relieve anxiety, and stop negative thoughts surrounding a cluttered home. The most important step to take is the first step.
By beginning your decluttering journey, you will on the first step to a tidy, ordered home. Not only will you be proud of your decluttered space, but you will also find it has a positive effect on your mental health too.
Once you have a strategy for decluttering and organizing your home, you will start to notice your anxiety levels change and improve as each item is re-organized or removed from the clutter. Be kind to yourself during this process.
Take breaks and tackle small areas for big wins. You will start to notice anxiety and stress triggers if you begin to re-clutter your new clear rooms in your home. If you find this happening, make sure you take immediate action to fully control your home organization instead of the clutter controlling you.
