Is your home driving you crazy with all the piles and papers? Is it impossible to find anything, let alone peace?
If you are tired of feeling anxious, depressed, and embarrassed by how your home looks and functions, this book is for you.
This Mess Is Making Me Stress will:
*Explain the link between clutter, stress, and mental health
*Identify the wrong stuff hiding in your cabinets and closets
*Train your decision-making muscles so you can declutter confidently
*Show you how to create rooms that work and maximize storage
*Give you practical step-by-step advice for maintaining “crap equilibrium”
Professional organizer Donna Barwald helps you work through negative emotions that derail you before you begin and guides you through the levels of the organizing process so you can get started and keep going.
By creating a healthy habit of organizing, you and your home will be transformed. You will feel calmer and better about yourself and be proud to invite people over. Your home will feel peaceful, and you will have room to breathe.
Is your home driving you crazy with all the piles and papers? Is it impossible to find anything, let alone peace?
If you are tired of feeling anxious, depressed, and embarrassed by how your home looks and functions, this book is for you.
This Mess Is Making Me Stress will:
*Explain the link between clutter, stress, and mental health
*Identify the wrong stuff hiding in your cabinets and closets
*Train your decision-making muscles so you can declutter confidently
*Show you how to create rooms that work and maximize storage
*Give you practical step-by-step advice for maintaining “crap equilibrium”
Professional organizer Donna Barwald helps you work through negative emotions that derail you before you begin and guides you through the levels of the organizing process so you can get started and keep going.
By creating a healthy habit of organizing, you and your home will be transformed. You will feel calmer and better about yourself and be proud to invite people over. Your home will feel peaceful, and you will have room to breathe.
I don’t have to tell you the benefits of an organized home. You know them. That’s why you’re upset you don’t have one yet. Your mess makes you stressed. You’re anxious and depressed by how your home looks and functions (or doesn’t), and you’re ashamed and embarrassed to have people over. You’re going crazy over all the piles and papers, you can’t find anything, and (even though you’ve read Marie Kondo) absolutely nothing “sparks joy.”
People say you have too much stuff and need to declutter. You feel silly bowing and thanking things as you give them away, but whatever works. With HGTV on, you're shopping at Ikea and the Container Store. Armed with a label maker, you can do this!
Except you can’t. You say to yourself, “If it’s so easy, what’s wrong with me? Everyone else can do it. I’m overwhelmed just thinking about it, and I need a nap.”
Guess what? There’s nothing wrong with you. It ISN’T easy. If it were, I’d be out of a job. I’m a professional organizer. No, I won’t make you throw out everything. I will ask you to look at everything and focus on how you feel when you touch each thing. Now I will tell you something that contradicts what our current culture tells you.
You don’t have too much stuff!
You are surrounded by the wrong stuff, and it’s affecting your mental health.
Stuff that:
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â makes you angry or resentful
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â makes you feel sad or hurt
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â reminds you of a painful past
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â belonged to a former friend or spouse
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â represents unrealized dreams
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â makes you feel inadequate or ashamed
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â you think was meaningful to someone else
â—ŹÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â you have two of them because you forgot you already had one
●        you have three of them because you couldn’t find the first two
By now, everyone knows how to declutter by sorting stuff into piles: keep, donate, sell, and trash. But our stuff is imbued with emotions, not all of them positive. When you look at your stuff, negative emotions derail you before you begin.
How can you decide anything when you’re stressed and depressed? I will teach you a method that helps you, starting with small decisions and building up to tougher ones. The goal is to let go of the wrong stuff and begin a habit of daily organizing and maintaining what’s left.
Letting go of the wrong stuff makes space for the right stuff to surround you: improved self-esteem, confidence, a calmer mind, a better energy flow – as well as rooms that function better and a home that brings you joy.
I’ve seen it work, and it will work for you too! Using the advice in this book will improve your mood, help you feel better about yourself, and give you the strength and the tools you need to start and keep organizing. Your home will be neatly arranged, but more than that, you will be transformed. Instead of your home driving you crazy, you will find peace (and your stuff, too!).
Twenty years ago, I started a professional organizing business called Neatly Arranged. My twin sister jokingly calls it Nearly Deranged because when we were growing up, our disorganized home drove me so crazy that I would wake up early in the morning before the rest of my family and rearrange the kitchen. I did not score points with them, but it was a way I could control my environment.Â
Over the years, I have gained much insight into the help people need to turn their living and working spaces, which are causing stress, into organized surroundings that give them peace. The help isn’t just practical; it’s emotional too. Listening, understanding, and working through your mental roadblocks are just as crucial as getting suitable containers and labeling. My goal is to improve your quality of life, not just make your home look better. Anyone can take “before and after” pictures of an organized room. I’m more interested in the “before and after” of your state of mind.
Psychological Implications of Clutter
I have a wonderful friend Monica who is an artist and therapist. She helped me put together a program a few years back called “Creating Peace by Creating Space,” where we discussed the psychological implications of clutter and the importance of organizing for mental health. Monica started the workshop with the following exercise, which helps you understand how clutter affects you.
ASK YOURSELF…
1. Where do you feel peaceful?Â
â—ŹWhat is it about that space that helps you feel that way?Â
â—ŹWhat does it look like?
â—ŹWhere are you in the space?
â—ŹWhat is the light like?
â—ŹWhat are the textures of the space and the colors?
â—ŹWhat are the things in that space, and how do you see them?
2. Where do you feel stressed?
â—ŹWhat is it about that space that makes you feel that way?Â
â—ŹWhat does it look like?
â—ŹWhat is the lighting like?
â—ŹHow much room do you have to move?
â—ŹAre you alone or with others?Â
â—ŹWhat are the things in that space, and how do you see them?
3. How does your environment, the space you spend the most time in, affect your well-being?
If you are like most people, the places where you feel stressed are cluttered. That isn’t to say that your environment needs to be minimalist to be peaceful. Peace comes from carefully curating your environment, so it is filled with things you love rather than things that randomly land there and arranging it in a harmonious way that leaves enough space for energy to flow.
During the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown in Los Angeles, which closed schools and many businesses for more than a year, my organizing business (like many other businesses) disappeared because people couldn’t invite me into their homes. How ironic since people suddenly had plenty of time and opportunity to organize. Some people took the opportunity to declutter their closets and get rid of old clothes and toys. Some cleaned up the backyard or tried to tackle the dreaded garage. Being at home forced people to look at what was there. But for many, looking at what was there was depressing, and it was easier physically and emotionally just to shut the door and watch Netflix. Sound familiar?
How Clutter Affects Us
During our workshop, Monica shared that not only is she affected by clutter, but she is also affected by anything being in the wrong place where it doesn’t belong. Her family does not experience the environment the same way. She calls them “collectors,” and they leave “trails.” To escape the anxiety of clutter, she created her own retreat which started as a corner of the living room in which to have coffee in peace and now has become a full-blown artist studio built in her backyard. What is it about clutter that gives us anxiety and makes us stressed?
Clutter makes us anxious because the piles seem never-ending. Relaxing is more difficult because it signals to our brains that our work is never done. I often feel guilty when I want to watch something or work on my hobbies because there is so much to do.
Clutter pulls focus and reduces productivity. It draws our attention away from what our focus should be because our brain needs to work overtime to respond to excessive, unnecessary stimuli. Clutter invades the space we need to dream, create, and problem-solve.
Clutter affects our relationships. It impedes our ability to find things quickly, so we arrive late, miss deadlines, and inconvenience people. We tend to apologize a lot. We feel ashamed because we think we should be more organized. We have this idea in our head that our self-worth depends on the tidiness of our home, so we feel “less than.”
Clutter hurts our social life. Our home should be a place to feel pride. Instead, we are reluctant to invite people over because we don’t want people to judge us by our clutter, and we are embarrassed when people drop by.
Clutter leads to unhealthy eating. Research at Cornell University showed that people would eat more cookies and snacks if the environment in which they’re offered a choice of foods is chaotic, and they’re led to feel stressed.1 When the experimental kitchen in which participants were tested was disorganized and messy, and they were put in a low self-control mindset, students in the lab ate twice as many cookies as those in a standard, non-chaotic kitchen. In other words, when you feel out of control, you’ll reach more for the sweets in a cluttered setting.
Clutter makes it harder to read people’s feelings. In examining the impact of clutter on perceptions of scenes in movies, researchers in a 2016 study at Cornell University found that when the background of a scene is highly cluttered, viewers find it more challenging to interpret the emotional expressions on the faces of the characters.2 Applied to daily life, you’ll be less accurate in figuring out how others feel when you see them amidst a clutter-filled room. I imagine that’s why it’s easier to “read the room” in a conference room or lecture hall, and people who have trouble with social cues do better in a less crowded and uncluttered environment.
Clutter contributes to memory problems. I’m not just talking about losing your keys because they’re hidden under a pile of papers. University of Toronto's Lynn Hasher’s research suggests that mental clutter is a leading cause of age-related memory loss. The visual distraction of clutter increases cognitive overload and can reduce working memory.3
I was a computer teacher, so think of it this way: Your brain is like a computer. If too many tabs open simultaneously (visual clutter), your processor will run slower. Plus, all those extraneous tabs take up storage space, so there is less space to move around and access the necessary files you have stored.
Your Brain on Clutter
Picture this:
You are home, and instead of feeling safe and peaceful, your senses are working overtime, taking in a mess. The amygdala (the part of your brain that processes emotion) perceives a stressor (clutter). It signals the hypothalamus to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares the body to respond to the threat. The adrenal glands release stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream, forcing you to stay tense and alert and causing the reaction to Fight, Flight, or Freeze.
•Fight - you “tackle” the clutter, or you get angry and argue with the people making the mess
•Flight - you shut the door, avoid the job, and distract yourself with something else
•Freeze - you are paralyzed and overwhelmed - you don’t know how to start, so you take a nap, and nothing gets done.Â
Stress Changes Your Brain
Imagine being in a chronically cluttered environment and constantly in that tense, high-alert state. There has been a lot of research into the harmful effects of stress on your brain. As if you weren’t stressed enough before, check this out:
â—ŹStress Changes Brain Structure. It upsets the balance between gray and white matter, which can result in long-term changes to brain structures and function.
â—ŹStress Kills Brain Cells. It produces high cortisol levels, killing new neurons in the hippocampus – an area associated with learning, memory, and emotion and where new brain cells are formed.4Â
●Stress Shrinks the Brain. It reduces grey matter in the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain associated with memory and emotional regulation.5
â—ŹStress Increases the Risk of Mental Illness. People who undergo prolonged periods of stress are more prone to suffer from mood and anxiety disorders later in life because of long-term changes to the brain.
 Key Takeaway
Mess causes stress which adversely affects your physical and mental health. An ongoing practice of organizing is just as important as meditation, exercise, and diet for your overall well-being.Â
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This Mess Is Making Me Stress by Donna Barwald is a wonderful guide and inspiration for finally getting your house in order and your stuff under control. She answered questions I didn’t even realize I needed to be answered!
To kick things off, the author discusses the impact of clutter on a person’s well-being, citing relevant studies to back up her points. There are some pretty prestigious institutions examining the effects of having too much stuff, and there are even theories developed about why people accumulate things and then can’t bring themselves to part with them long after their purpose has been served. And this is not about hoarding behaviors but regular everyday individuals keeping things too long. The explanations and examples were fascinating.
The author introduces the basics of how to tackle the job, too. The goal of de-cluttering an entire house is daunting and depressing, which keeps many people from even starting, so she emphasizes doing small jobs at a time, in small increments of time. It’s the whole “How do you eat an elephant?” idea. (One bite at a time.)
Deciding what to keep and what to get rid of is also a big, tough process, and Barwald recommends the method of making three piles: Keep, Let Go, and Maybe. She even has a trick for keeping this possibly agonizing decision-making process from bogging down your efforts.
The area of advice I found most surprising, and one vital to all of us eventually, involved readying a notebook of important documents and organized information about our lives for after we are gone. This notebook provides our loved ones, estate executor, or whoever is tasked with dealing with our end-of-life business with the necessary information to do this final act for us. There is an excellent list of what the notebook should contain, and having this prepared would be the greatest gift you could behind.
I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a book where I close with the following: I recommend THIS MESS IS MAKING ME STRESS to everyone.