02 mars 2023
Storage and organization contribute to better emotional and psychological well-being. The reason ? They prevent clutter, a source of stress and ill-being.
Tidying up your room, your house or even your office seems to be a matter of common sense. This allows you to find your belongings, not to forget to answer an important letter or even not to buy anything twice. Well know that a minimum of organization will also benefit your mental health.
Anti-stress
Indeed, if you never tidy up your space, whether at home or at work, you risk seeing your stress soar. And “in the medium or long term, this can harm our psychological well-being”estimates David Vellut, psychologist in Belgium on his site.
To illustrate his point, he relies on several studies. One of them, published in 2010, focused on 60 mothers. Their feelings and their level of cortisol, the stress hormone, were measured. Result, “compared to women who perceive their environment as ‘orderly’, those who perceive their environment as disorderly indicate lower levels of well-being, (and they have) higher cortisol levels”reports David Vellut.
Other works support the fact that disorder, by complicating our daily life, generates negative feelings.
Feeling of ineffectiveness
Another aspect, the disorder would give us the feeling of not being efficient. To prove it, researchers at Princeton University studied this phenomenon in 2011. Specifically, they compared the responses of participants who performed an activity in either ordered or disordered environments. And it turns out that disorder limits the ability to concentrate and take into account external information. At work, this observation can lead to more errors being committed when the environment is disorderly.
Therefore, regular tidying up is recommended to avoid letting clutter set in. Thanks to this, you will take care of your psychological well-being.
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Source : site de David Vellut, psychologue en Belgique – Saxbe, D.E. & Repetti, R. (2010). No place like home: Home tours correlate with daily patterns of mood and cortisol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(1), 71-81
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Written by : Dominique Salomon – Edited by: Emmanuel Ducreuzet
