When you think about organizing your closet, kitchen or even your desk at work, you picture clearing out clutter and putting everything in its spot, right?
Did you know that organization has a major impact on your emotional, mental and physical health?
Being well organized deserves a greater priority at home and at work.
After you learn more about the many ways organization can help you lead a healthier, happier life, you may be ready to focus your attention on improving your techniques in this area.
The Link Between Organization and Mental Health
Many of us feel more relaxed and at peace when our home is clean and organized as opposed to seeing clutter and mess everywhere you work.
The stress you feel when you are in a messy area can lead to anxiety and depression if you stay in such an environment for an extended period of time.
Organization plays a major role in your mental well-being, and it also can help you to feel more accomplished, focused and energetic.
A cluttered, messy area can cause you to feel scatterbrained and confused. It’s difficult to focus on work with other things in front of you until you take the time to clean your space.
The situation goes both ways – the state of your work area, the car of your home reflects your state of mind and your inner self.
If your head is a mess, physical stuff tends to pile up, too. Your setting affects you, but you also unintentionally modify your environment.
The Benefits of Organization on Physical Health
Just as organization affects mental health, it also affects physical health. The stress reduction associated with an organized home or office carries over to the quality of sleep.
Sleep is essential for weight maintenance, a positive mood, excellent focus and more. More than that, sleep will affect how energized you feel, and this may be a contributing factor to your desire to exercise and be more active.
The organization level of your kitchen and pantry can impact your desire to cook healthy meals versus to grab a quick snack. Stress associated with a cluttered kitchen may lead you to eat unhealthy comfort foods rather than to make healthy choices.
The Impact of Organization on Personal Relationships
Clutter around the house can create unnecessary stress, tension, and unhappiness.
Couples may find that they argue or bicker more frequently in a messy, disorganized area than they do when their home is organized. Rather than invite friends and extended family members into your home, you may prefer to isolate yourself in this space.
In this way, a lack of organization has a direct and negative effect on your social life and on this aspect of your health.
Disorganization transfers into being late for appointments, forgetting stuff and similar, which causes additional social problems. No one likes waiting and they feel disrespected if you keep being late just because you couldn’t find your keys.
The Effect of Organization on Your Professional Life and Career
Many of these factors have links to your professional life and career.
Being late for drinks is less severe than being late for a client meeting. Imagine you are a business owner trying to close a deal with your new lead, and you misplace the brochure you wanted to show them.
Poor organization skills lead to sloppiness, and people around you get the message you are not in control.
Disorganization can proliferate your work area and can impact focus, productivity, stress and more. This clutter may include piles of paperwork and files on your desk, disorganization in your email account, poorly-organized work files and more.
Work itself can overwhelm you, but striving to get more organized is the first step on the road to success. Organizational issues impact all trades yet they are most noticeable in home-based businesses.
From thin boundaries in professional and personal life to a limited workspace, those that set up their office at home have more difficulties in organizing their work day and setting up great practices.
There are many ways to boost productivity and to stay organized. For example, store files in the cloud at work so you only have one working copy of all files. By doing so, you eliminate the need to tote extra items around, such as work files or disk drives.
There are also online scheduling tools, productivity apps, project management tools and more that may benefit different aspects of your professional life.
What You Can Do
You may feel challenged by the thought of organizing your space if almost all areas of your life are currently in a state of cluttered chaos.
Begin by organizing one small area, such as a linen closet at home or a drawer at work. You can then extend your efforts beyond these small areas slowly until you are completely organized.
Remember that you will need to spend a few minutes each day straightening up to avoid falling into a state of disorganization again.
It can take time to completely organize all aspects of your life and change certain habits. However, the benefits can be tremendously beneficial.
Now is a great time to find that one drawer or folder that needs an organizational makeover and to take baby steps toward achieving your goals.
