How Can Tidying Improve Your life?

Does tidying mean more than just having a clear and ordered environment? The answer is absolutely! Tidying up your home has a positive impact on your life. You may have heard the phrase ‘Tidy home, tidy mind’ and for or anyone who experienced the art of tidying, you know that the after effects are transformative and liberating. Today, I want to share what the benefits are when you take tidying seriously and start to transform your home, one category at a time using the KonMari Method or other traditional decluttering approaches. I want to answer the question: ‘why should I tidy?’ This is something I discuss with clients when they book their initial consultation and we further explore the answers to this question as we complete tidying sessions together. Whenever I present corporate workshops, I devote an entire section of my presentation to exploring the scientifically proven benefits of tidying.

There are eight key benefits I want to share with you all…

Benefit No. 1: Tidying increases your productivity

A Princeton Study in 2011 found that a clear desk space improves your ability to focus as there are less items competing for your attention. And with less distraction, your mind can process at a faster rate making you more productive and more able to focus on the task at hand. If your environment is a tidy, you also feel more comfortable so you’re more motivated to get started in morning and you are able to maintain that motivation throughout the day.

Benefit No. 2: Tidying improves your efficiency

Suppose each time you ran low on an item in your kitchen – butter, milk, kitchen roll – your instinctive response was to drop everything and race to the shop. How much time would you lose? What would happen to your productivity? We can all recognise the inefficiency of this approach, yet we often work in ways that are equally wasteful. Shifting our attention from one task to another, as we do when reading an email while working on a report or project, or looking for an item, disrupts our concentration and saps our focus.

Furthermore, a study on the effects of clutter in the home found that individuals who felt overwhelmed by the amount of “stuff” in their homes were more likely to procrastinate. Tidying supports you in making the best use of your time - you know where to find something when you need it - and helps to reduce feelings of overwhelm, making us less likely to put off the things we need to get done. This is particularly important if you are continuing to work from home due to Covid 19. For more information on successful working from home, please refer back to Building good Habits when Working from Home and Tidy Desk, Tidy Mind.

Benefit No. 3: Tidying reduces your stress and anxiety

Physical clutter causes mental clutter. With so many things today vying for our attention in our modern world, our stress levels are at an all time high. Clutter is more noise to our brain. When our environment is clear, we process information differently. In 2012, a study in the Journal of neuroscience confirmed that our brain is able to absorb 1% of the visual information it receives. Information overload is real. And studies show it has more of a negative impact on women. Researchers at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families (CELF) discovered a link between high cortisol (stress hormone) levels in female home owners and a high density of household objects. The more stuff, the more stress women feel. Men, on the other hand, don’t seem bothered by mess, which accounts for some of the tensions that arise between tidy wives and their untidy hubbies.

Decluttering, tidying and organising can help us create spaces that help us to relax, restore and rejuvenate.

Benefit No. 4: Tidying can improve your mental wellbeing

The simple act of tidying does more than just clear a physical space, it offers clarity and a fresh start. The sense of accomplishment you gain from discarding items and surrounding yourself with items that add value to your life, puts your mind in a different space. When I completed my tidying journey, I was able to reflect on other aspects of my life such as relationships, friendships and ultimately my career, assessing whether they brought me joy. Going through the KonMari Method to transform my home gave me the confidence to challenge the areas of my life that no longer brought me lasting happiness. This was one the reason I decided to leave my primary school teaching career and train with Marie Kondo at the London KonMari seminar in April 2018.

Benefit No. 5: Tidying allows you to feel more in control of your life

Picking up an item one at a time and asking whether you want to keep it refines decision making skills over time. When you’re sorting through your things, you’re evaluating their purpose and usefulness to you. You’re getting to know yourself better because your possessions very accurately relate the decisions you have made in life. Tidying is a way of taking stock of what you really like and how they fit into your vision of how you want to live your life.

As you hone your sensitivity to joy and clarify your sense of value, you use that knowledge and ability to improve your decision making skills. You’ll be in a better position to answer questions such as ‘What am I looking for in my life that makes me happy?’

Benefit No. 6: Tidying can support healthier eating choices

This is one of my favourite tidying benefits! In 2013, a study at the University of Minnesota found that colleagues working with a tidy and organised desk space are more likely to eat an apple as a snack, over a chocolate bar. One of the reasons behind this is that your brain craves comfort food to cope with stress caused by untidy surroundings. Now, I’m not saying that tidying will help you conquer all of your 2020 dietary goals but it will definitely point of in the right direction!

Benefit No. 7: Tidying can improve your sleep

A study conducted by Pamela Thacher of St. Lawrence University in 2017 suggests that clutter and sleep loss are linked. More specifically, a link was found between hoarding objects and bad sleep quality. Lack of sleep is known to compromise cognition. It then follows that any existing risk for cognitive dysfunction, depression, and stress may increase with lack of sleep. If you live in a tidy enviornment, the study went on to reveal that you’re far more likely to go to bed earlier and through maintaining the self care that accompanies living in a clear and ordered space, your sleep quality will increase and you will experience fewer sleep-related problems.

Benefit No. 8: Tidying can open up opportunities for a brighter, happier future

We don’t call it the life changing magic of tidying for nothing! All the things we own are invariably attached to memories we have. When we look at them we often get a sense of nostalgia. Sometimes these memories are good memories, and this is okay.

But often our possessions are associated with bad memories. Holding on to such possessions only serve as a negative reminder of the past. It does not serve us at all; only holds us back from moving forward with our lives and creating a new, brighter future. Decluttering can help you let go of the past. A lot of my clients want to work with me because they’re going through a transitional phase in their lives: living with someone new, downsizing, upsizing, preparing for a new baby, getting married, going through a divorce or trying to move on after a bereavement. Tidying is a complete audit of everything you own, and a chance to reflect on how you’ve reached the point you are currently at in your life. By going through your belongings, you critically assess what will stay with you as you enter the next phase of your life.

There is a host of problems associated with clutter, from increased stress levels to other negative psychological effects. Decluttering can be a chore, particularly as we often ascribe value to things based on associated memories. If you do not want to embark on this journey alone, please feel free to reach out to me. Decluttering and tidying can seem like a mountain to climb, and we are not all skilled in the ability to tidy and organise successfully. If we declutter what follows is a host of benefits, from greater well-being, improved productivity, reduced stress, and a peaceful mind. Ultimately, through tidying, we improve our lives.

Did any of the above resonate with you? I’d love to hear your main takeaways in the comments.

Wishing you all a wonderful rest of your week.

Katrina