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People experience plenty of stress from jobs, finances, and other areas of their lives. When we come home, we want to feel like we’re entering a refuge, safe from the demands of life. But does your home provide a safe harbor from stress, or is it causing you additional stress that you might not be aware of? If you have a cluttered, poorly decorated, or somewhat disorganized living space, home relaxation can be virtually impossible. Reasons Why You Should Organize Your Home to Reduce Stress With a little work, your home could be another stress management tool at your disposal. Here’s why. How Clutter Affects Your Time, Money, and Stress Clutter Causes Stress Just sitting in a cluttered room can create stress. Whether you view it in feng shui terms as "stagnant chi," in cerebral terms as too much information for the eye to process, or in practical terms as a visual reminder of how much work you need to do to get your house clean, you probably already know that mess means stress. Living in a cluttered home can create constant low-grade stress and subtly but steadily drain your energy. Soothing Surroundings Are Nurturing Being in a space characterized by order, tranquility, and a physical manifestation of your tastes, on the other hand, can soothe you and help release stress. This is how marketers sell products from catalogs so efficiently. They are really ‘selling’ the sense of peace that comes from the beauty of the picture as much as they’re selling the products contained in that picture of a beautiful room. Coming home to an orderly home can help you feel like you’re entering a sanctuary away from the stresses of the outside world. How to Make Your Home More Peaceful Organization Saves Time, Money, and Other Resources A messy, disorganized home can cost you more than just your inner peace. If you don’t have a ‘home’ for all of your belongings, you spend more time trying to put things away when you’re cleaning up, and waste time looking for items when you need them. If you don’t have an organized system for filing your bills and other important papers, you may end up paying things late, which results in fees and additional stress. There are many other ways that you don't even realize your mess may be draining your resources. What Does a Messy Room Say About You? Order May Bring More Good Things Followers of the Chinese discipline feng shui believe that a well-ordered home aligns vital energy in your life to bring good fortune in other areas of your life. Others simply enjoy the soothing surroundings and pleasing aesthetics that come with the balanced decorating style that feng shui espouses. Whether or not you believe that feng shui brings special good fortune, it’s hard to argue that an organized home wouldn’t bring additional benefits, chief among them being reduced stress. A Word From Verywell Any time is the right time to create an organized, soothing home atmosphere. You can simplify your life and reduce the daily stress you experience by putting in relatively minimal effort to de-clutter, organize, and decorate your home. Let your home be your sanctuary.

When looking for ways to manage stress, people often overlook one of the simplest and most effective strategies: Create a peaceful home. Because most of our days begin and end at home, having a peaceful home as your base can help you launch yourself into the world from a less-stressed place each day. (Children appreciate this, too!) Barriers to a Peaceful Home Because this seems like such a given, why don’t people put more focus on discovering and assembling the elements of a peaceful home? It’s a paradox that many of us experience. Even though home is important, the need to take care of the structure and workings of our homes may not seem like as pressing of a need as others we experience day-to-day. When we’re rushing to get out the door in the morning, or collapsing on the couch after a long day, cleaning and organizing may seem like a ridiculous pursuit. Reasons to Make Your Home Peaceful However, when you consider the value of creating an inspiring place to wake up to, a soothing place to come home to, and a relaxing place to live, it becomes apparent that time and energy put into creating a peaceful home can translate into energy saved and stress relieved. The Toll of Clutter In ways many people don’t realize, clutter has hidden costs. It drains us of time, energy, and even money. Many people describe feeling disorganized or chaotic when they are living in clutter or items seem disorganized. Fun With Friends and Family One clutter-clearing expert, FlyLady, refers to a cluttered environment as living in CHAOS: Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome. We love this acronym because it’s so true—who can relax with friends and family in a messy home? Probably not you or your guests. Because of the benefits of social support, and the stress-relieving benefits of having fun with friends, it’s even more helpful to have an environment where everyone can relax and have fun. Energy Levels The eastern practice of feng shui—the ancient art of placement—is gaining popularity all over the globe, as people notice that their surroundings can influence the way they feel and the energy that they have. Feng shui holds that the placement and type of objects in our surroundings can affect our energy, or chi. Whether or not you are interested in feng shui, you have probably noticed that cluttered environments can be an energy drain—even if just because there’s so much to look at (and everything you see is a reminder of cleaning that should be done). Maintaining an uncluttered, peaceful home can make you feel more energetic and relaxed at the same time. 5 Steps to Create a Peaceful Home Including several peace-promoting elements in your home can make it a more soothing and enjoyable place to be. When trying to convert your home into a more peaceful space, consider the following strategies. Pare Down, Organize, and Decorate These are the classic activities people think of when they think of home makeovers. Getting rid of clutter can help you plug up energy drains all over your home. Organizing your things can help you to know where everything is, and have a place to put everything in your home so that clean-up goes very quickly. Decorating, using colors and themes that truly speak to you, can help you feel relaxed and energized at the same time as you look around and take in the beauty, order, and style of your home. Create a Space for Stress-Relief Activities One of the challenges of maintaining stress-relieving habits is that we get busy and let other activities in our lives come first. If we build in a physical space for our stress-soothing habits, we have a physical reminder, as well as a facilitator, to help us maintain the motivation to keep these habits in our lives. Improve Feng Shui Many people have reaped the stress relief benefits of feng shui and swear by the practice. As you're making changes to create a peaceful home environment, factoring in a little feng shui (or a lot) can bring long-term benefits, as once you incorporate the stress-relieving elements of feng shui, you don't have to constantly maintain most of the changes—they're just part of your decor. Try Aromatherapy Because aromatherapy is getting a lot of buzz these days, it's easy to find products that provide a wonderful, soothing scent for a room. And the hype isn't unwarranted; aromatherapy research shows that there are real stress-relief benefits to its use.1 Aromatherapy can help create a peaceful home that subtly offers passive stress relief, making it a recommended element of a peaceful home. How to Use Aromatherapy for Stress Relief Play Music Music is another of those wonderful stress relievers that, like aromatherapy, offers passive stress relief and can energize or relax you (depending on the type you use). It can offer benefits that are better than you might imagine. Incorporating music into the background can help contribute to a peaceful home environment—it's a great way to relieve the stress of those you're with, and relieve your own stress at the same time, without much effort.