Cultivating a Home Environment that Benefits Your Mental Health

If you constantly feel on edge or are riddled with anxiety and don’t know why you may need to take a minute to look around your own home. You may not realize it, but how you decorate, use your space, and interact with your housemates may be what is causing your anxiety to go through the roof. If you feel this is the case, you need to make a change because untreated stress can cause sleepless nights, fatigue, and numerous mental health issues.

While your home may not be the only source of your unease, you can make changes that are sure to put you in a better mental place. Let’s talk about small adjustments you can make to feel happy and comfortable in your home.

A Clean House Makes All the Difference

If you get home from work and immediately feel that grip of anxiety, it may be that your home is a bit disorganized. When your house is messy and full of clutter, it can cause tremendous strain because subconsciously, you feel like you are losing control of your surroundings, and it can be hard to rein it in. On top of that, when you can’t find what you need when you need it, that can also cause irritation which is bad for your mental health.

You can start to put your mind at ease by decluttering your home. Take it one step at a time and go room by room. Look at everything you have and ask yourself if you have used it over the last year. If you haven’t, then consider donating what you don’t need. This is particularly great for the closet where you probably have many outfits you haven’t worn recently.

While decluttering will ensure you have fewer messes and things you don’t need, you also want to organize your space so everything has its place and you can find something when you need it. That means placing items on dedicated shelves or storing them out of sight in an ottoman that doubles as a storage space.

Even if your home is relatively free of clutter, you could still feel anxiety if you don’t regularly clean, vacuum, and dust your space. Set a time each day or week to dedicate to cleaning, and you’ll be amazed at how you transform your space. One way to avoid clutter and keep a clean home is to adopt a minimalist style. That means bringing decluttering to the next level and using storage to its full potential. When you take a quality over quantity approach, you will value what you have that much more and feel better overall.

Natural Touches

Once you have cleared the clutter out of your life, you can think about the simple touches you can make around your home to turn your living space into a happy place. Start with the color of your walls. Many colors, including yellow, sky blue, and silver-gray, help to make us feel happier and more at ease.

Green is another great option for our mental health because this color is particularly helpful for allowing us to think more clearly while also boosting our memory and creativity. That is why another touch that you should add to your home is the inclusion of live plants. Plantlife has a way of bringing us back to a more natural place where we aren’t so focused on the negative aspects of life. Plus, many indoor plants, including English ivy and gerbera daisies, help purify the air so you can breathe easier and feel better overall.

You should also arrange your home to allow the most natural light to fill your space. Sunlight is essential to our mental wellbeing because it helps our bodies produce vitamin D, which enables us to sleep better, focuses our minds, and makes us more productive and happier overall. Natural light can also help ward off seasonal depression. If you work from home, consider moving your desk closer to the window to take advantage of the effects of sunlight.

Get Along With the People You Live With

While the design and cleanliness of your home are important, if you constantly butt heads with your family or roommates, you won’t make a significant dent in your feelings of anxiety. First, you need to know some common environmental issues that can cause many people to feel stressed, including overly crowded spaces. If you are feeling particularly upset one day and there are many people around, it’s okay to ask them to leave so you can have some time alone to think.

Constant loud noises can be another issue that can lead to increased anxiety, especially when you have much on your mind. If you have roommates who constantly play the TV or music too loud, it is okay to ask them politely to lower the volume. Also, avoid putting yourself under needless strain by turning your own television down or off. The phenomenon known as noise annoyance has been found to contribute to depression, so make your life easier by keeping it at a reasonable volume.

Finally, even though you love your family, they may sometimes contribute to stress. Whether it’s financial tensions or health issues causing the rift, or you just aren’t getting along at the moment, you must find the source of the conflict so you can talk it out or discuss these feelings with a therapist. Either way, you need to clear your home of the extra anxiety.

As you can see, there are many ways that you can cultivate a home environment that benefits your mental health. The tips above will give you a good starting point so you can find your happy place.

About the Author: Dan Matthews is a writer, content consultant, and conservationist. While Dan writes on a variety of topics, he loves to focus on issues that look inward on humanity, and that help make the surrounding world a better place to reside. When Dan isn’t working on new content, you can find him with a coffee cup in one hand while searching for new music with the other.

July is BIPOC Mental Health Month

Observed each July and formerly recognized as National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, BIPOC Mental Health Month highlights the unique mental health challenges and needs of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). Please join us in recognizing the struggles of BIPOC and bringing awareness to the need for adequate, accessible, culturally relevant mental health treatment, care, and services.

www.rtor.org and its sponsor Laurel House are committed to the advancement of racial equity and social justice and to making mental health services available to all.

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The opinions and views expressed in any guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of www.rtor.org or its sponsor, Laurel House, Inc. The author and www.rtor.org have no affiliations with any products or services mentioned in the article or linked to therein. Guest Authors may have affiliations to products mentioned or linked to in their author bios.