Self-Care 101: How Your Closet Affects Your Health
The idea of self-care has become more and more popular these days. Every day, there seems to be a new way to do it.
When you think of self-care, face masks and yoga might come to mind. Or even a day spent at home just relaxing.
The idea of self-care has become more and more popular these days. Every day, there seems to be a new way to do it.
When you think of self-care, face masks and yoga might come to mind. Or even a day spent at home just relaxing.
What you may not think about is organizing the clutter that’s slowly taking over your home.
Here’s how organizing your home can be just as helpful and just as crucial to your mental health as a day spent doing your self-care rituals.
When you think of self-care, face masks and yoga might come to mind. Or even a day spent at home just relaxing.
What you may not think about is organizing the clutter that’s slowly taking over your home.
Here’s how organizing your home can be just as helpful and just as crucial to your mental health as a day spent doing your self-care rituals.
It Reduces Stress and Anxiety
Coming home from a long day of work isn’t always relaxing when you open the door and find that your safe haven has turned into more of a warzone.
Nobody wants to relax on the couch when it’s covered in clothes. And moving around your house shouldn’t be an adventure, but it becomes one when you have to maneuver through the mess that you don’t even remember making.
Studies show that unorganized homes cause stress and anxiety in many people, but we often don’t recognize it as an anxiety trigger or a possible source of stress.
Until we clean it up.
Clutter offers more distractions. Without even realizing it, the mess in our homes makes us less productive.
Think about trying to do work in a crowded coffee shop. Think about all of the stimuli and the noise. Can you focus? Probably not.
Keeping calm and relaxed while surrounded by clutter is the same thing. For your brain, at least.
If you feel like you’re under pressure or more frustrated than usual, you may want to take a look at your home.
It Can Improve Your Mornings
Mornings don’t have to be stressful, but they often turn out that way when you can’t find the sweater you love wearing in the cold office or your only comfortable pair of work shoes.
When you start your morning off wrong, your whole day might follow the same trend. Suddenly, it’s a bad day at work instead of just a busy one.
Your typical morning routine may be rushed because of clutter. But when you organize your space, you also maximize your time.
With more time, you can eat breakfast, enjoy your commute to work, and look forward to the day ahead. It might even make a Monday feel less like a Monday.
It Can Boost Your Social Life
Being unorganized can cause you to miss out on social interactions. You’re not as likely to invite someone over or host a party if you’re embarrassed about a mess.
When you host, do you stress yourself out trying to clean up? Or feel insecure if you don’t?
This doesn’t have to happen. When you change the way you organize, you tailor your cleaning habits to your personal preferences. You clean the way you want to.
Cleaning up your space allows for more freedom in your social life. Now you can be the source of the party instead of just a participant.
You’ll Stop Being an Accidental Hoarder
Have you ever cleaned your home and stumbled across your old high school chuck taylor collection, in every color of the rainbow? Let’s face it, you have definitely switched your style up since then. What about this old backpack with sewn in cat patches? Or the sweatband you wore back when you still played sports?
Cats are cool, but did you really keep all that?
We all hold onto things we don’t need. Whether we think we’ll use them eventually and then never do or have assigned some kind of sentimental value to them, our homes are full of junk that serves no other purpose than to take up space.
When we do come across it, we tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later. And then later never comes.
The truth is, sorting through these things can be therapeutic. When you give an item sentimental value, it has the power to weigh you down. You may not even recognize this until you let something go.
Suddenly, you feel much lighter, and all because you finally threw out that old sweatband.
(Seriously, that probably should’ve happened a long time ago.)
Often, our sentiments are misplaced. Studies show that the more we touch something, the more likely we are to assign a sentimental value to it. That doesn’t mean it really means something to you. It just means you held it for a while.
Examine why you think an item is important. Is it a good reason? If not, throw it out.
You Can Make It An Act of Service
Think back to the last time you donated something. How did you feel? Good?
Organizing your home can change your life and give you that feeling again. When you tackle your clutter, you’re bound to find some things you don’t use anymore.
You may think, “I don’t want to be wasteful and throw this out.”
Good. Don’t be wasteful. Don’t throw it out. Donate it.
You may not be able to use it anymore, but someone else can. You know what they say about one man’s trash.
This can help you to part with the more sentimental items, too. (Seriously, you don’t need that sweatband anymore.) When you remind yourself that someone will get better use out of something and appreciate it more than you’ve been able to, donating becomes easy.
And look at it this way – donating is all about putting others before yourself. But it makes you feel good, too. And that’s one of the best forms of self-care out there.
You Can Make A Change
Everyone needs a reset sometimes. It’s great to analyze our wardrobes, and our home.
Perhaps you feel like you’re stuck and haven’t moved forward in a while. Or maybe you keep tripping over the side table on your way to the fridge in the middle of the night.
Either way, rearranging your furniture can be a healthy way to reset your life.
You may not think you have space for it, but you’d be surprised how reorganizing can open up your house. And with more space, you have room for other activities – like yoga, or meditating, or napping on the floor when the couch is just too far.
A small change is the first step to a better life. But it can be hard to figure out where to start.
Lucky for you, 180 Closet Design has been doing this for a while. So give them a call, and they will help you take the first step to a better life.
