Does it take you five minutes to find your car keys because there are heaps of mail, bills, and newspaper on the kitchen table? Are you late to work daily because you can’t easily find your shirt? Is there so much stuff in your garage that you can hardly park your car there anymore? If yes, then it’s obvious that you have stored too much clutter in your house, and it’s becoming a serious problem.
Clutter is not just about a messy house or lack of organizational skills. It’s much deeper than that. Clutter can indeed be a detriment for you and your family. Excess, unorganized, scattered things in your house can cause physical and mental harm.
But it’s fairly easy to get rid of clutter. The easiest way is to use a self-storage unit to keep your things safe yet away from the house. You can easily find self-storage units in every city. For instance, in Memphis, TN, alone, there are 194 storage facilities. Getting rid of clutter is necessary to improve the overall well-being of you and your family.
In this article, we highlight four detriments of storing clutter.
- Makes Cleaning Difficult:
Cleaning the house is already a draining chore, and if there is clutter, it seems impossible to clean such a space. With so much stuff in the house, it’s difficult to lift and move everything in your way so that you can get to the floor or the surface of anything to clean it. Not only the surfaces but the cluttered items also need your attention and require cleaning.
To avoid all this, the best solution is to use a self-storage unit in your area. If, say, you live in Memphis, TN, you can contact a self storage Memphis company that will provide you with self-storage units. For instance, Strong Point Self Storage offers storage units of all sizes at very affordable rates. The self-storage units are climate-controlled, and you can access your stuff 24/7. When there is more stuff lying around, it means there will be more dust.
Since you will find it so difficult to clean, there are chances you will completely give up on it. Thus, by transferring all your extra stuff into the self-storage unit, you will free up space in your house that will not only make it easier to clean but also make a decluttered space itself look tidy and organized.
- Harms Your Physical Health:
Clutter is the favorite spot for pests and bugs of all kinds. Because of the dirt and dust that collects on and under the clutter, it becomes a habitat for bugs. They find such places perfect to lay eggs and grow their communities, and before you realize it, the problem will get out of hand. These pests spread different germs in your house.
Similarly, if you have pets, they will also love to bring trashy, dirty things from outside and hide them somewhere under the clutter. All this puts your and your family’s health at risk because there are higher chances of spreading germs and diseases in the house. And even if there is no such issue related to bugs, the dirt and debris that collects on the clutter is enough to harm one’s physical health. You can get infections, develop allergies, get asthma, or get any respiratory disease due to clutter.
And if you or someone in your house already has a respiratory illness, it can become chronic due to clutter dust. The clutter can result in injuries and falls. You can trip over, say, stuff on the stairs and get seriously injured. A lot of things have sharp and pointy corners that can give you cuts if you are not moving carefully.
- Makes You Gain Weight and Affects Life’s Quality:
It’s common for people living in cluttered spaces to develop unhealthy eating habits. Firstly, it’s obvious that clutter means more things in your house, and thus you have more to consume. And without even realizing it, you overeat. Secondly, research shows that people who live in cluttered houses find it difficult to control their impulses. When there is clutter around you, it means your environment is chaotic, which affects your mental health. Thus, a cluttered space and an “out-of-control mindset” can lead you to indulge in unhealthy eating habits.
Moreover, clutter makes it difficult to freely move around the house or to work out at home because there is not much free space. All this results in unnecessary weight gain. And being overweight means you are at risk of developing many other health complications, too. Clutter also results in a lower quality of life. Due to clutter, it takes you longer to find things you need, and you struggle to complete basic routine tasks.
It takes more time to organize and find things than to do the task at hand. All this time wasted due to clutter can be used in productive activities, exercising, spending quality time with your family, engaging in self-care activities, relaxing, etc. A study suggests that clutter leads to a decrease in life satisfaction, especially in older adults. Another research depicts that helping older adults declutter and tidy up their space makes them feel in control and more accomplished. This highlights the importance of decluttering to improve well-being.
- Leads to Mental Health Problems:
When your living space is always unorganized and chaotic, it can have severe mental health implications like anxiety and depression. Clutter increases stress, which results in developing such mental health problems. A study showed that women who live in cluttered spaces experienced higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol as compared to women living in less cluttered spaces. The household chaos that results from clutter contributes to negative emotions, poor parenting practices, and stress.
Teenagers and kids who grow up in cluttered houses have higher chances of developing generalized anxiety and depression as they age. The negative effects of clutter are not limited to your house; these negative effects show up in one’s academic and professional life, too. Living in a cluttered space increases your visual stimuli, which causes trouble with focusing abilities and lowers productivity.
Conclusion:
Your house is supposed to be a place where you relax and spend peaceful and quality time and just decompress. But a cluttered living space steals the element of comfort from your home, making you feel frustrated and overwhelmed. Not only that, but clutter affects your physical and mental health negatively.
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