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Introduction
Time and time again, others have tried to say that when your space is cluttered, so is your mind. However, that can also go the other way. As your mind becomes cluttered with things to do, meetings to go to, and all the stresses you experience, your space will become cluttered as a result.
A cluttered workspace may say that you are in the middle of a project and need lots of information present at once. However, this same workspace will stress out your mind and hurt your work performance.
Clutter creates a negative impact and our lives. The clutter in the world around us indicates lots of clutter in the mind. When you experience stress and anxiety for long periods of time, take a look around you. Are you seeing clutter that matches the state of your mind?
The first step to bringing your chaotic world down to a calm one is to recognize the clutter around you. Knowing both the physical clutter and the clutter of your mind will let you know what you need to clean to bring you back to peace.
What is Clutter: Identifying What Triggers Your Stress
Clutter can be found anywhere. It can be seen in your home with the junk drawer or with dishes piling up in the sink. It can be seen at work with the cluttered state of your desk. Clutter can be seen through piles of clothes on your floor or the stack of mail you’ve yet to go through. It can even be seen in your mind with all the stressful thoughts you have.
Simply put, clutter is the mess of items that are strewn across your space without any sense of order. Some may associate the word clutter with trinkets and lots of decorations around your space. While this is true, that isn’t the kind of clutter we are talking about. Instead, we are talking about the clutter that causes messes and therefore, a chaotic mindset.
Clutter builds up over time as more and more objects are added to the piles.
Clutter can look like:
- A junk drawer that is filled with things you haven’t seen in ages
- Piles of clothes that keep building up from you not doing your laundry
- Items that you don’t use anymore being shoved in different spaces of your house
- Having several items because you must replace the item after “losing it”
- Dishes that pile in the sink until you no longer have any
- Your house is so messy that it would be difficult to straighten up before guests come over
If your house resembles any or several of the points on the list, that is a good indication that your space has become quite cluttered and that your mental health may be suffering because of it. We are not judging if your house or workspace looks like this. Everyone has experienced a cluttered space at least once in their life and there are many reasons why your space may get to this point.
When your mental health is not the best, it makes it so much harder to prevent and remove the clutter from your space. This creates a vicious cycle where clutter builds up in your house which makes your mental health worse but because your mental health is worse, you have less motivation to clean the clutter, instead, it continues to build.
This leads to a sense of losing control. For many, not having control is a huge stress trigger. People like having control of their lives and space. With lots of clutter and not knowing where everything is, that becomes stressful. Also, it can be quite stressful when you are trying to make your way through a cluttered house but end up stepping on some painful clutter left on the floor.