"You know that feeling when you walk into a cluttered room and your shoulders immediately tense up? Or how about the instant relief you get when you finally clear off your desk after weeks of letting papers pile up? There's something deeply unsettling about living in chaos, and equally calming about clean, organized spaces. For years, I thought this was just me being particular about my environment."
"And here's the thing: the mess doesn't just reflect the stress. It actually makes it worse. Your brain on clutter Have you ever tried to focus on something important while your peripheral vision keeps catching glimpses of that pile of laundry or stack of bills? Psychologist Sherrie Bourg Carter explains that "clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli, causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren't necessary or important.""
Clutter creates excessive sensory input that forces the brain to filter irrelevant visual stimuli, draining mental energy and reducing focus. Peripheral distractions such as piles of laundry or stacks of bills repeatedly capture attention and impair concentration. Messy environments correlate with increased stress and can exacerbate anxiety rather than merely reflecting it. Tidying and organizing workspaces lowers sensory overload, frees cognitive resources, and provides relief and improved capacity for tasks. Personal experiences of anxiety often manifest in disordered surroundings, creating a feedback loop where stress produces clutter and clutter intensifies stress.
Read at Silicon Canals
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]