The Psychological Effects of a Messy Room

          Have you ever been studying in your room or doing your homework, and your brain just can't grasp anything? If you have, take a look around your room. Is everything clean and organized, not even a sock out of place? Or is it messy, your sheets rumpled, half strewn across the floor, dirty laundry spilling out from your closet. That one dirty plate in the corner of the room, you ate pizza on a week ago. It may not seem that these little details could affect anyone, but they can affect you.

Having a messy room is not only aesthetically unappealing, it can also affect the brain of anyone living in it. When you're constantly surrounded by many things, your brain can develop a mental fog. This fog can overwhelm your brain, impair your focus, and increase anxiety and stress. It can even disturb your sleep and dampen your memory.

Our brain only has a limited amount of information it can process at one time. So, the more things you add to your surroundings, the more your brain has to process. Add the clutter to the amount of information you're taking in while studying or doing homework, and the brain can get easily overwhelmed. Think of it as your brain constantly working overtime. 

Your brain is registering everything surrounding you on a subconscious level, so you may not even realize it’s happening. Everything your brain registers is constantly fighting for your attention. The fog or fuzziness you feel after working your brain in a messy room is your brain signaling to you that it is overworked. 

When your room is constantly messy, you are in a constant state of stress. It’s so constant, in fact, that you may not even register the stress. The sort of fight or flight instinct that is triggered when you are in danger is also triggered when your room is messy. You are subconsciously walking on eggshells in your home.

One study conducted by Yale researchers showed that women who had messy homes showed a higher level of cortisol, a stress hormone, than women with well-organized homes. You may be thinking that if someone's messy room is affecting them that much, why don’t they just clean it? To answer this question, people who have become accustomed to messy rooms and the side effects that occur with them often cannot muster the energy to clean their rooms. This is because the stress that is created from the clutter further prevents you from getting rid of said clutter. 

Clutter triggers emotions of frustration and shame, which can prevent you from even getting things done because you don't see the point in doing them. 

Although it may be difficult to start changing your habits, there are many great tips to help you manage your surroundings. When you're first starting, don't aim to clean and organize everything in one day. Start small and work from there. Even the smallest changes can help motivate you to do more. Keep everything controlled and simple. If you do too much too soon, you can get overwhelmed and feel even more lost than before.

In order to keep yourself from falling back into these habits, you need to set up a system. Assign certain things to specific places and keep them there, like having a jar on your nightstand for hair ties or labelled bins for certain things. One bin for school supplies, one bin for self-hygiene, and so on. Another thing you can do is be mindful of your consumption. When you're out buying something, make sure to ask yourself if you really need it, or if you could do without it.

When your environment is messy, your brain can’t handle it. You may not even realize what is happening, but when you do, you must try and fix it so you can continue living with a clear head. In the end, what’s at risk is your mental and physical health.