How A Messy Room Ruins Your Mind
Because it ruins your mind, it can ruin your life. So clean it
Do you have a messy room? Have you been putting off clearing the clutter? The fundamental question is,
how does your living space make you feel?
According to Kendra Cherry on verywellmind.com,
those who describe their living spaces as being “cluttered” and full of “unfinished projects” were more susceptible to depression and fatigue, when compared to women who describe their living spaces as “restful” and “restorative”. Says Cherry.
It's clear there's a correlation between our living spaces and our emotional state. This makes sense since we spend so much time in our rooms.
Cleaning our rooms has numerous benefits, mentally and emotionally. I’ll be exploring some super simple tips to clean and maintain your room, how to make it a consistent habit even if you're super busy like me.
Firstly, let's cover how a messy room affects you, hopefully, you'll be able to relate to my experiences too.
Exactly how a messy room affects you.
When a cousin walked into my once messy room, I remember them saying.
Gosh!! It looks like a volcano erupted in here. Your room looks like an explosion.
Looking back in time, I can definitely understand why they said that. This beautifully leads me to my first point.
1: When people entered my room, their first impressions of me weren't the greatest.
From just looking at my room, I'm sure that they would think that I'm
- Incompetent.
- Disorganized
- Lacking in orderly thinking.
- So much more, not so positive thoughts
It seemed like I lived a chaotic life with no order, and I can certainly empathize with them for saying that.
When someone enters your room for the first time, they build a mental image of what you'd be like on a day-to-day basis, what you love, what you hate, your temperament, and many other things.
Certain people resonate with certain energies and surroundings. I know that in my case, I certainly don't like a room that’s overly neat. This is because it just doesn't reflect any personality or character.
It's your room and there's no right or wrong, it all depends on what you think is right for you and how you feel you want to be perceived.
Your room should be a safe space for you to express yourself and find inspiration, instead of it doing the opposite.
This leads me to my next point.
2: I could never think with clarity and focus with all that clutter around me.
When you compare my old room to my grandma’s room, you'll see a vast difference. My room would be messy and disorderly, whereas my grandma's room would be minimalistic, simple, serene, and organized.
I remember her saying:
How can you think clearly with your room in such a state?
I couldn't agree more with her. In fact, I would actually go to her room just to feel more clear-headed and do my homework.
I know now for a fact that a messy room can make it difficult for us to find clarity in thinking, staying focused, and maintaining a state of emotional wellness. This is also true according to Sarah Sitton from Taylor and Francis Online, goes to say that,
“his ratings for sincerity, intelligence, ambition, warmth, and calmness improved when his desk was tidy.” Says Sarah.
3: When the mess stayed, so did my habits.
I mention this because when I had a messy room, hardly any of my habits changed.
To give you an example, I had a habit of piling up clothes on my bedroom desk (as weird as it sounds). I had kept that habit for years. Why? because i was simply too lazy to take my clothes downstairs to be washed. I’d only do so when I had run out of clothes to wear.
This habit also had a knock-on effect on my emotional well-being to, as I never really felt comfortable and good in my own clothes. My self-image took a toll until I made a commitment to revitalize my living space.
Each one of us has a unique reason, However, what I'm trying to say is that, when we maintain our mess, we don’t get the inspiration to change our habits and invite a new perspective into our lives.
Moving on, I was highly disorganized when I had a messy room.
Can you relate?
4: Disorganized beyond measure.
With a messy room, follows disorganization.
Think about it. If your books are all over the place, clothes piled up in the corner, papers scrunched up on the floor. How can you possibly stay on top of things?
Because I never really kept a habit of cleaning up, this lead to me not completing homework on time, missing equipment, assignments, forgetting things and so much more.
I’ve learned that with a messy room, falling off and slacking becomes an ingrained habit.
It was only when I dedicated myself to a rigorous cleaning habit that I was able to stick to a schedule, build habits and maintain an optimistic mental state.
How maintaining my room changed my life, simple tips to get you going.
Now that I've given you my insight on how not cleaning my room affected me, I'll go over what worked for me. I’m sure it'll inspire you to get going too.
> First, make a plan for where everything will go.
When your room is a mess, it's difficult to organize everything amongst the chaos. In my experience, I've found that when I started clearing up, I was confused about where exactly I wanted to put things.
I got frustrated because of this, and it was one of the reasons why my cleaning up would take so long. So before you start clearing, plan out your room and figure out where everything will go.
Save yourself a headache.
> Don't change where you put things, just organize and order them.
I actually made this mistake way too often, which is why I'm mentioning it to make you aware.
When we change the structure of our room, it's great. However, when we place something and we’re not used to it being there in our daily lives, it can cause inconveniences.
On the contrary, if you keep things in awkward places and they clearly aren't supposed to be there, then of course it needs to be placed somewhere appropriate.
For instance: Clothes shouldn't be on the chair, on the floor or on the desk. Ideally, they should be on a hanger in a wardrobe or folded away in a cupboard.
About a couple of months ago, I set out a mission to revamp my room and in the process, I created a new space to place my keys. The next morning, I was in a rush and I couldn't find my keys. I kept looking for them for a good 15 minutes, only to realize that I had created a new place for them.
I now simply keep things in places that I’m habitually familiar with, I just make that spot nice and neat.
> Make it fun, music can help.
There’s no need for room revamps to be boring. There's just nothing better than a nice hip-hop track paying in the background whilst in the process of creating a new environment.
I also believe that it fosters more creativity, and enables us to think out of the box. I often find new and unique ideas with the resources that I have. With music,
I've created a room space that I could have never imagined. This then has a knock-on effect on my daily mental state.
So the next time you're considering clearing your room, charge up your speaker beforehand.
> See it as a time to change your life drastically.
I actually get excited about cleaning my living space, and so should you.
If you're cleaning your room, you might as well take the time to fix other areas of your life too. I really believed that they go hand in hand together.
Before setting out to clean your room, ask yourself.
What is the fundamental purpose of me cleaning my room? How can I use this as an opportunity to shift my life?
> Every so often, switch up.
If you're ever feeling bored with the same setup and feel as if you'd like to drastically change your surroundings or even your thinking.
Be brave to change up your living space or room.
Get some new curtains, bedsheets, perhaps a new theme to try out, whatever it is. Break the pattern and go against the grain.
With that, you'll be much more inspired to make a change in your life on a grander scale.
It's always good to set certain mindset habits. However, when we change our environment, we start inviting a whole new dimension of positivity and change into our lives.
You really feel a positive change coming on when your room looks different, you feel that much more motivated and inspired to make a move in your life.
That's all I really had to say. If you're looking at your room and you're happy with the way it is, then keep it that way. If you feel the importance of a change in not just your room, but if you'd like to change your life as a whole, maybe it's time to start moving things around to your taste.
Our environment can tell us who we are. Change in our environment is where the seed of transformation is sowed.
Closing notes.
Throughout this story, I hope you're able to see how a messy room can affect you. Of course, we all have different definitions of what messy might look like.
I would define a messy room as being a room in which you're simply just not happy or inspired by. A room that doesn't bring about a feeling of positivity, joy, and optimism into our lives. This is what a room should do.
If you'd like to start changing around your living space, I've included a handset of tips that are fairly easy and simple to follow. I'm sure that you'll enjoy the process of changing up your living in space and as a result, I'm certain that you’ll be able to bring about a positive change into your life.
That's all I've got to say for this story and I hope you've found it valuable to your life in some way.
Thank you for being here and reading, id love to read your responses so feel free to share them.
