Women And Mess In Her House

Let us talk about women and messy houses.

First, why am I talking about women only if men are messy too? The research on this is specifically about women, and for women it runs much deeper psychologically. Men and mess is a different story. We can have a discussion about them another time.

There are real reasons why a woman's house turns into a mess. Different reasons. Let me name them.

The first one is depression. Deep, heavy depression. When you are in it, you have no energy for anything. Getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain, let alone scrubbing floors. I understand this. But I will say this. Depression explains the mess. It does not give you permission to live in it forever.

The second one is habit, and I want to be very clear here. A messy woman is not necessarily deeply depressed, has children, or busy. She does not necessarily have an excuse at all. Sometimes it is just habit. Nobody ever taught her, or she simply never cared, and comfort became a lifestyle. That is a trap too. I've heard women actually fighting for this position and saying, there is no reason wasting life for cleaning the house if it will get messy anyway. They would even go into philosophy about it, and some of you might be that woman. And this is OK. Whatever makes you happy, but please keep reading because this is all not as simple.

The third one is childhood. A lot of women got used to mess when they were little, because that is how mom lived. Maybe mom was depressed. Maybe mom just never cleaned. You grew up in it, your eyes adjusted before you were old enough to question it, and now you really do not understand why anyone makes a fuss about cleaning up. You are not lazy. You are programmed.

The fourth one is overwhelm. It starts small. One messy week, then a messy month, then you look around and a year has passed. No system, no habit of putting things back, kids adding to the chaos faster than you can fight it. The mess grew while you were busy surviving.

The fifth one is blindness. When you live in a mess long enough, you stop seeing it. Guests walk in and see everything. You see nothing. Your brain decided this is normal.

Now here is the part I need you to hear. If you allow yourself to live in mess, it will pull you into depression guaranteed. Sometimes you are not depressed because of what is happening in your life. You are depressed because you built yourself an environment that makes you feel depressed. The mess is not the result of your mood. Your mood is the result of your mess.

Researchers found that women who described their homes as cluttered carried much higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol through the day, and their mood sank as the day went on. Women who are depressed but described as still cleaning, showed much less cortisol levels. If you are living with piles everywhere, nothing organized, nothing beautiful, slowly the outside starts to match the inside. Disorder outside feeds disorder inside. That is the pattern I keep seeing. Some women stay stuck for decades. Some for their whole life.

And I would like to offer you the way out. You have to do exactly what your body does not want to do. Give yourself a day to fall apart if you need it. Three days maximum. That is the absolute maximum to sit in it and stare at the wall. And then get up and start cleaning.

I am not talking about truly critical situations, like losing someone you love or something very serious affected you and you stopped seeing the rest of your life. That is a different level of pain. But hear me on this. Even in the worst distress, sitting still and doing nothing works for your destruction. Getting up and putting things back in their places starts helping you, I promise. Movement is never the enemy. It heals.

Force yourself. You do not feel like going outside? Go outside. The rule is simple. Whatever you do not want to do, do exactly that. Depression tells you to stay still, and stillness feeds it. Movement breaks it. Clean one corner of one room and notice what happens in your head. Start with the smallest action your body resists. Most of the time, your mind will follow. Even break your house into small areas, put that plan on paper, and start organizing one area a day. Then scratch it when done. Stand there and enjoy the look of the organized piece. Pay attention to how you feel at that moment. You will be very surprised. I promise you this one too.

Now let me give you the habit that keeps my own house clean, because I will be completely honest with you, I hate cleaning. I cannot tell you how much I hate it. I hate cleaning the house, I hate cleaning the backyard, I just hate it. And still, if you walk into my house right now, you will find it perfectly clean and organized, ready for guests at any moment. Here is the whole secret. I never touch another thing until I put the previous one back in its place. I took something, I used it, I need to rush to the next thing, I quickly put this one back first, then I grab the next. No excuses about how busy you are. Do not let more than three or four things pile up on the table, because that is where it starts growing, and growing, and then you need a whole day or a week to clean the house. Do not clean the house. Just keep it clean. It's much easier. My closet looks like a store with everything perfectly folded. I change clothes before bed and every piece goes straight to laundry, or folded, or on a hanger. Handling one or two pieces takes seconds. Reorganizing the whole closet takes a day. You choose.

And no, it is not another way of mental disorder in my case. In my case it's a habit that I had to learn. I didn't grow up learning it from someone. I don't even remember doing any chores as I was growing. This is something I realized one day as destruction, and retaught myself. Today, I do have bad moods and disappointments at times. Sometimes I am hurting really bad, yet, I don't ever have it to the extent that I feel depressed or disrespect myself. Mess is also a form of disrespecting yourself, if you think about it.

And here is what research says about building a new habit. It takes on average 66 days of forcing yourself before a new behavior becomes automatic. That is the finding of a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Some people need less, some need more, and missing a day does not ruin it. But around day 66, you will catch yourself putting things back without thinking, and you will not even recognize the person you were before.

One more thing, and I mean this. If that heavy feeling has been sitting on you nearly every day for weeks and it is not lifting, please talk to a professional. Cleaning and movement help, but deep depression deserves real support too.