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verywellmind.com
article
https://www.verywellmind.com/how-mental-health-and-cleaning-are-connected-509…
When your home is cluttered, messy, or exceptionally dirty, the chaos that the mess creates can impact your ability to focus. The clutter also limits your brain's ability to process information. Visual attention and performance on visual tasks is better in situations where there is less distracting clutter. [...] Other research suggests that lower housing quality, including how clean the home is, can have an impact on mental health.
### Clutter May Lead to Decreased Focus, Confusion, and Tension
Meanwhile, researchers have also found that clutter can make it difficult to focus on a particular task. More specifically, they discovered that a person's visual cortex can be overwhelmed by objects not related to a particular task, making it harder to focus and complete projects efficiently. [...] Research has found that cleaning can have a number of positive effects on your mental health. For instance, it helps you gain a sense of control over your environment and engage your mind in a repetitive activity that can have a calming effect.
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nuvancehealth.org
news
https://www.nuvancehealth.org/health-tips-and-news/how-clutter-affects-your-b…
Studies have found people living in cluttered homes are more likely to experience insomnia and poor sleep quality. Stress and mental stimulation from clutter can keep the brain alert and uneasy, even at night. It’s hard for your mind to power down when it’s bombarded by signs of chaos or by racing thoughts about things you haven't done yet. [...] Research confirms people think more clearly, and even become less irritable and more productive, in an organized setting than in a cluttered one. By decluttering, you free up mental bandwidth. Decisions — even simple ones like what to have for dinner or which task to do first — come a bit easier when your brain isn’t constantly managing the excess stimuli and mental load that clutter creates.
Related content: How to achieve physical, mental and emotional wellness for better overall health [...] When your surroundings are messy, your brain is constantly saying, “Look at this! And this! And don’t forget that!” — even if you’re not consciously paying attention to all of it. Over time, this constant sensory overload can increase mental fatigue. You might feel mentally fuzzy or irritable in a messy room, which is your brain’s way of signaling it’s overworked by the disorganization.
Related content: Tennis for brain health? The neuroscience of precision, strategy and flow
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sbtreatment.com
article
https://sbtreatment.com/blog/the-impact-a-clean-and-tidy-home-can-have-on-you…
The above study is not the only report linking clutter to reduced psychological wellbeing. In fact, it is part of a growing body of research showing that clutter can contribute to stress, increased cortisol levels, and depression. Among teens and adolescents who live in clutter, the disorganized home environment is associated with lower academic performance and behavioral problems. Based upon the available research, it’s pretty clear that when a home becomes too untidy, it can negatively affect [...] If you’re not yet convinced that cleaning should be a part of your self-care routine, you might be interested in what the research has to say. A recent study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that clutter not only reduces psychological wellbeing but also decreases the feeling of psychological home, which can be described as the sense of belonging associated with your living space. Study authors described clutter as being an overabundance of physical possessions, which makes the [...] which makes the home environment seem chaotic. Given this description, it’s no surprise that clutter can be damaging for mental wellness.
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oxfordcbt.co.uk
article
https://www.oxfordcbt.co.uk/stress-management-cleaning
This one is particularly true if you share your living environment with other people. Whether you are sharing with a partner, friends, housemates, there is always a chance that you won’t all feel the same way about cleaning. Seeing someone’s dirty clothes around, unwashed plates or a messy bathroom can cause negative feelings of resentment towards the person responsible, and the negative feelings then in turn will have an impact on your mental health. You must discuss your shared responsibility [...] yet to complete. Keeping clutter and mess at a minimum will have a positive effect on your focus, stress and mental health. [...] There is a well known and long-established link between smells and scents and mental health, such as aromatherapy helping to reduce anxiety and stress. Particular smells can have a specific impact on your mind as well as your body, for instance, lavender is known to act as a sleep aid and would be a perfect scent for use in bedrooms. A musty and dirty smelling room is not going to have a positive effect on your mental health. Other scents that are linked to mental health are:
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elevaterecoveryhomes.com
article
https://elevaterecoveryhomes.com/cleaning-as-self-care
## The Science Behind Clean Spaces and Mental Health
Numerous studies have demonstrated the connection between a clean environment and improved mental health – one study found that individuals who described their homes as cluttered experienced higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, throughout the day.
Your brain responds to your environment. When you’re surrounded by mess, your mind struggles to process information and make decisions. [...] Your home reflects your mental state. When your space is cluttered, your mind feels the same way. Research shows that messy environments increase stress hormones, make it harder to focus, and contribute to anxiety and depression. But cleaning isn’t just about having a tidy house – it’s an act of self-care that directly impacts your emotional well-being. Understanding this connection can change how you think about household chores and give you a practical tool for managing your mental health. [...] Clutter can be harmful to your mental state, contributing to depression, trouble focusing, confusion, and stress—not only can clutter be distracting, but it has been shown to actually make it harder for your brain to think clearly.
### What Happens in Your Brain
When you look at a messy room, your brain sees unfinished tasks. Each item out of place represents something you need to do. This creates mental overload.
Elevate Recovery Homes · Denver Metro · CARR Certified
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anzmh.asn.au
article
https://anzmh.asn.au/blog/the-connection-between-our-environment-our-mental-h…
Jan 18, 2022 — A messy, stressful environment can have a cumulative, detrimental impact on our mental health, and research finds that these negative environments can raise ...Read more
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pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
official
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11925691
others; Tesser, 2000). Paralleling such mental mechanisms, we observe that cleaning can attenuate the effects of psychological threats to one’s self—as moral (West & Zhong, 2015), as rational (Lee & Schwarz, 2010), as competent (Kaspar, 2012), and as socially accepted (the present findings). This opens up a broad and exciting avenue for future research: Daily cleaning behavior, mundane as it seems, may serve supplementary coping functions that not only attenuate stress but also sustain positive [...] Such attenuation effects were found even though cleaning would not actually resolve or reduce any of the stressors per se, which had nothing to do with contamination or disease. The absence of disgusting or immoral elements from the stress inductions also suggests that the results cannot be attributed to common theoretical accounts for cleaning effects, such as the emotion of disgust (Chapman & Anderson, 2013; Lee & Ellsworth, 2013; Oaten et al., 2009; Rozin et al., 2008; Rozin & Fallon, 1987; [...] Our work also provides the first physiological evidence for the attenuation of stress-related effects by cleaning, extending the hitherto mostly experiential evidence to a new level of analysis. An additional nuance is that cleaning effects in some of the present experiments were evident for indirect measures, including pictorial assessment of basic affective dimensions and physiological markers, but not for direct verbal measures that used specific emotion terms, which can operate
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newporthealthcare.com
news
https://www.newporthealthcare.com/resources/in-the-news/clean-home-benefits
:327-336.
2. Evans GW, Wells NM, Chan HY, Saltzman H. Housing quality and mental health. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2000;68(3):526-530.
3. Park GR, Seo BK. Revisiting the relationship among housing tenure, affordability and mental health: Do dwelling conditions matter?. Health Soc Care Community. 2020;28(6):2225-2232.
4. Gu J, Ming X. The Influence of Living Conditions on Self-Rated Health: Evidence from China. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(17):9200. [...] 5. Ferrari JR, Roster CA, Crum KP, Pardo MA. Procrastinators and Clutter: An Ecological View of Living with Excessive “Stuff.”. Curr Psychol. 2017;37(2):441-444.
6. McMains S, Kastner S. Interactions of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Mechanisms in Human Visual Cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience. 2011;31(2):587-597. [...] What We Treat
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