How Does Clutter Affect Your Mood?

Clutter - things strewn haphazardly around your home, or, maybe clutter arranged neatly on your desk or bookshelf. The point is, you have a lot of stuff and it’s hard to find new places to put new stuff. You might wonder how you’ve come to accumulate so much, but it slowly (and silently) seems to add up over years and years of buying things. How might clutter affect you? How it affects your mood is different for everyone, but may end up having similar outcomes. Let’s explore more about how it affects you below.

Clutter is a distraction. It is proven to make you work less effectively. Why? simply because it’s there and pulls your attention away from important tasks that you actually need to do. Maybe you think you’re working effectively on an important task, and then the next thing you realize you’re cleaning out your drunk drawer because you can’t find that pen that you usually keep in there.

I don’t know about you, but when I get sidetracked from doing my important tasks, I get grumpy. Sometimes I find myself placing blame on other people (i.e. my kids), or for the situation. When it comes down to it, it’s really me. I know that I let my clutter distract me from what I should have been doing.

Then, when I realize that I didn’t get anything done, I feel guilty about not using my day and my time effectively. I think about what a waste it all was. Sometimes, this will affect the next day, and sometimes even the day after that. If I feel like I was unorganized, and it made me procrastinate, that unmotivated feeling follows me around for awhile. I might think, well, what’s the point? The same thing is just going to happen today too, so I may as well not even start. Or, it will just turn into an unmotivated tired feeling.

Instead of sitting at my desk and looking at my distracting clutter, I would rather lay down and cruise around Facebook or TikTok, wasting even more time, and then the cycle continues until I have a serious deadline that I need to make. Then I get anxious, upset and I stress that I might not get my project done in time.

Another way clutter can affect you is simply by bringing down your mood. It’s weird how it can actually change the feeling of a room. When you imagine a place filled with “things”, it might be dark, crowded, have bugs, etc… When you imagine a space free from clutter, it might look open, bright, clean, tidy, etc… These ambiances about a room will definitely have an effect on your mood.

If clutter seems to be a negative thing then, why might someone have a cluttered space? Well, Maybe they have a small space and they don’t want to part with their stuff. Maybe they need their things for work, a hobby or project. Another reason might be that they are too defeated or tired to clean it up. When you watch those hoarder shows on tv, you just want to get in there and help them. Perhaps they are at a point that they feel their clutter has won and nothing they can do will change the bad habit of cluttering their space.

I would love to write a blog on how to start tidying up your space. Please feel free to check out my blogs on tidying and organizing to get more ideas on how to deal with a space that feels cluttered. I have been on a minimizing journey for a few years now and I can definitely tell you it’s a process; more of a habit than a one time event. You need to actively participate in keeping your space clean if you want to see change happen.

Thanks for reading and we will see you next week!

❤️ SAN