A messy space could indicate creativity or someone who is too busy but a messy space could also indicate further issues like anxiety or ADHD. Clutter and mess can consciously or unconsciously affect you mentally,' warns Jamie Hord, CEO, and founder of Horderly Professional Organizing.
Clutter in the living room might suggest blockages in your social life, as well as your relationship with yourself, while a cluttered bedroom might relate to issues surrounding your sexual self, fears of intimacy or gender roles.
Emotional attachment to items
This is undoubtedly the most common reason for clutter buildup. People can become overly attached to items, often due to sentimental value, and are unwilling to part with them even when they no longer have any use or purpose.
A messy room can be a sign of depression or another mental health issue. Clutter affects your mood and can cause more anxiety or stress. Your child can get caught in a cycle of messiness that worsens their mental health and vice versa.
Some people simply do not place a high priority on having everything clean, organized, and in its place. In this case, messiness is simply a normal state of affairs. If the house is cluttered and it's just fine with you, then it's probably more a sign of your personality and preferences.
Excessive clutter and disorganization are often symptoms of a bigger health problem. People who have suffered an emotional trauma or a brain injury often find housecleaning an insurmountable task.
Clutter and mess can create more stress and anxiety, but by cleaning, organizing, and reducing the clutter, people are able to take control of their environment and create a more relaxing environment that helps them focus better on the more pressing issues in their lives.
A messy space could indicate creativity or someone who is too busy but a messy space could also indicate further issues like anxiety or ADHD. Clutter and mess can consciously or unconsciously affect you mentally,' warns Jamie Hord, CEO, and founder of Horderly Professional Organizing.
Clutter can affect our anxiety levels, sleep, and ability to focus. It can also make us less productive, triggering coping and avoidance strategies that make us more likely to snack on junk and watch TV shows (including ones about other people decluttering their lives).
Posted: February 2019. Mental clutter refers to times when our mind has too many thoughts which makes it difficult to process and focus. A cluttered mind is disrupting and it hinders our productivity, balance and even our mental health.
People with depression can often find themselves living in messy spaces. This is because feelings of hopelessness, low energy, and lack of motivation can make it hard to keep on top of everyday tasks, such as tidying.
It is possible to declutter too much, and this can be a sign of an anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are situations where people declutter to the point of only having furniture left in their house. This can come about from feeling the need to get rid of everything that seems to be cluttering up the house.
While the physical stuff is obvious, most of our clutter is invisible, says Barbara Hemphill, author of Less Clutter More Life and founder of the Productive Environment Institute. “There are four types of clutter: paper, digital, emotional, and spiritual,” she says.
Albert Einstein. “Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
“Cluttering is another behavior typical in folks with ADHD. Leaving items out as visual cues is a common way of compensating for an unreliable memory or inadequate time-management system, but to the untrained eye it can resemble hoarding,” she says.
Many adults with ADHD have cluttered workspaces and homes. If you work well in those surroundings, then it's time to make peace with your organized chaos. If not, learn how to prevent clutter from overwhelming you.
If you feel bad for not getting on the Marie Kondo bandwagon, don't. Having a messy home can actually be a sign of intelligence and creativity. According to research people who live in an untidy environment tend to be more open minded and clever.
Almost everything about how we feel boils down to perception and brain signaling. When you see your cluttered home or workplace, a signal is sent to your brain that work isn't yet done. You become anxious as you're overwhelmed with so many things to do to put things in order.
While some chalk it up to laziness, there's actually underlying psychology of clutter and disorganization that keeps people from tidying up. Potential reasons people hold onto clutter include: They feel overwhelmed: It's often a huge job to get rid of things, which can be both physically and mentally exhausting.
Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally. Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done. Clutter makes us anxious because we're never sure what it's going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.
So why is it so common for people to find themselves burdened by clutter? “It's a one-two punch of over-acquiring, buying because we think the stuff will fix us and then not being able to let go because we've created an attachment (emotional, sentimental or economical) to our stuff,” McCubbin says.
When one is exposed to trauma, people build guards around themselves and everything around them. If they start losing the stuff or declutter, they feel a void inside of them, so it's tougher for them than other people. Clutter acts as an unconscious barrier.