Decluttering for Self Care

Need a pep talk to kick-start your next organization spree? Find out the mental health effects of mess and 10 research-backed ways tackling your physical space can yield wellness benefits.

November 16, 2021

By: Lauren Oster

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Physical Clutter Can Change the Way We Think and Feel

As wildly successful organizational gurus demonstrate, the way we feel about our homes is a big deal (and big business). In a survey conducted this June by home warranty provider Cinch Home Services, 70.3% of respondents reported going on a cleaning spree since the beginning of the pandemic, and 62.6% said they were now “very or extremely” committed to keeping their living spaces clean. That said, 45.9% said they still felt embarrassed by the current cleanliness of those spaces. And that feels lousy.

The good news? When you can put a dent in your home’s disorder, you’ll change both it and your mental landscape. Decluttering deserves a priority slot on your to-do list because it removes roadblocks to doing everything else — and we’ve got the science to prove it. Here are 10 ways clutter can steal your thunder (and 10 ways you can expect to get it back).

1: An Orderly Environment Encourages Healthy Eating and Charitable Giving

In a fascinating Dutch study, subjects were assigned to both clutter-free rooms and “disorderly” ones scattered with papers and office items. They were then asked to donate to a charity and choose a snack, and those who had spent time in the more organized spaces made larger donations and chose healthier snacks (that is, an apple versus a chocolate bar) than those who had been in the more chaotic rooms. As the researchers noted, an orderly environment is conducive to “more desirable, normatively good behaviors.”

2: Decluttering Could Reduce the Urge to Space Out and Snack

Research published in Environment & Behavior, in turn, reveals that a disorganized kitchen can have an even more pronounced effect on what we consume. In this study, female undergraduates completed “taste-rating tasks” in kitchens that were either organized or chaotic (with out-of-place furniture, piles of paper and pots and dishes in haphazard places). They were required to try several types of foods, then told that they could continue eating as much as they liked — and some of the subjects in the chaotic kitchen environments consumed more cookies than those in more regulated spaces. The ones who didn’t consume more cookies had been instructed to think about a time when they had felt particularly in control of themselves. Lesson one: Removing distracting clutter from your kitchen can help curtail mindless snacking. Lesson two: In the meantime, having a proactive mind-set can counteract that clutter’s ability to trigger the munchies.

3: Tidying Your Bedroom Could Help You Sleep More Soundly

To explore a potential relationship between decluttering and sleep hygiene, researchers from St. Lawrence University in New York studied more than 1,000 subscribers to a housekeeping website. Those who reported they’d developed a weekly habit of tidying and discarding objects in their bedrooms had better sleep quality and fewer sleep-related problems than those who did not — and while those effects were more pronounced early in the study, they were still noticeable three years later. In other words, if you’re having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, what goes on around your bed could be just as important as what’s going on in your bed.

4: Even If You Manage Clutter Well, It Can Impact Your Quality of Life

A recent study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology considered how “home-extension variables” — like how much clutter we have, how much clutter we think we have and how we consider our homes a form of self-expression — affect our overall well-being. Researchers found that among subjects with a significant amount of clutter in their homes, 97.1% reported it had negatively impacted their quality of life. Among those with a so-called “healthy” amount of clutter in their homes, 47.3% still reported negative impact on their quality of life. Our relationships with our stuff are complicated ones, but as the authors speculate, the more we can do to untangle unhelpful connections between our possessions and the way we think about ourselves, the healthier we’ll be.

5: Procrastination Is Associated With Clutter

Yes, yes, putting off tidying up or getting rid of unnecessary stuff would of course lead to clutter — but that’s not quite what we’re talking about here. Researchers in Chicago studied more than 300 male college students and found that among self-reported variables like negative emotions, impaired social abilities and clutter, clutter was the strongest predictor of high procrastination scores for any tasks. Though the team can’t make definitive statements about cause and effect, they can say that procrastinators “report excessive clutter and they find their overabundance of possessions negatively impacting on their identity" — which implies that if decluttering isn’t on your to-do list, the list itself could suffer.

6: Clutter-Related Life Dissatisfaction Worsens as We Get Older

For a study published in Current Psychology, researchers surveyed American adults in their 20s, 30s, and 50s. Links between procrastination and clutter problems were apparent in all three of those groups, but frustration with clutter increased in the older two groups — and among the fiftysomethings, clutter problems were also associated with life dissatisfaction. Moreover, indecision didn’t contribute to clutter among the youngest group but became an issue with the older subjects, which suggests that we get worse at making decluttering decisions as we get older. The takeaway? There’s no time like the present to tackle built-up stuff, because getting rid of it will only get harder.

7: Clutter Compromises Our Ability to Focus

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other brain-mapping tools, researchers at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute found that when there are lots of objects in our visual fields, our brains have a harder time processing the information they present. Outside of the laboratory, that means that the distraction of stuff quite literally restricts your ability to perform the task at hand. Could that jam-packed inspiration board in your home office or the tchotchkes crowding your desk at work be hurting more than they’re helping? If distraction is a problem, a workspace "makeunder" could be the solution.

8: Clutter Can Also Affect Our Working Memory

If you find yourself wandering around the house wondering where you put your keys or why you went upstairs, your overcrowded environment itself could be to blame. In a study published by the National Academy of Sciences, researchers in Canada found that while subjects with a high capacity to suppress visual distraction could remember the features of three or four objects for a short period of time, those with lower capacity had diminished visual working memory. Put simply, having an uncluttered space could actually make it easier to remember where you put something in the first place.

9: How You Feel About Clutter Affects Your Mood and Stress Hormone Levels

Scientists in southern California dug into how our homes affect us by asking 30 dual-income couples to give individual, self-guided tours of their spaces, then categorizing the descriptors they used as stressful, restful and so on. They also measured their subjects’ cortisol levels — and they found that wives in particular with higher "stressful" scores had increased depression. Furthermore, they didn’t register the natural decline in cortisol production that most of us experience throughout the day. The study authors observed that when coming home means noticing piles of stuff and undone projects, it’s no wonder that the end of the day doesn’t feel more restful — and that our feelings about those piles of stuff can have a very real effect on our health.

10: Clutter Can Lead to Relationship Friction — and Getting Rid of It Is Sexy

If you’re the kind of person who would use stressful descriptors while offering a tour of your home, having a partner who’s oblivious to clutter in that same home can be yet another source of stress. (In a 2019 survey of 2,000 Americans, one third of respondents said they’d ended a relationship because of disagreements over chores.) Clutter is a relationship issue, and the dissatisfaction we experience in our spaces can crowd other areas of our lives. That said, addressing it has the potential to make our relationships better. In a 2020 survey of 1,035 Americans, married couples with cleaner homes have 39.1% more sex than those with dirty homes — and couples who split cleaning tasks have 34.5% more sex than those who don’t.

Decluttering for Self Care

Related To:

Shop This Look

Physical Clutter Can Change the Way We Think and Feel

1: An Orderly Environment Encourages Healthy Eating and Charitable Giving

2: Decluttering Could Reduce the Urge to Space Out and Snack

3: Tidying Your Bedroom Could Help You Sleep More Soundly

4: Even If You Manage Clutter Well, It Can Impact Your Quality of Life

5: Procrastination Is Associated With Clutter

6: Clutter-Related Life Dissatisfaction Worsens as We Get Older

7: Clutter Compromises Our Ability to Focus

8: Clutter Can Also Affect Our Working Memory

9: How You Feel About Clutter Affects Your Mood and Stress Hormone Levels

10: Clutter Can Lead to Relationship Friction — and Getting Rid of It Is Sexy

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