Note: This is a guest post by Julia Ubbenga of Rich In What Matters
Recently, in an Instagram reel, I outlined why living in an uncluttered home can boost happiness.
A week later, the reel had gone viral—to the tune of over 12 million views.
As I considered readers’ comments, I wondered: Why is this message so popular?
Perhaps it’s because “the pursuit of happiness” is an inherent part of being human. And, perhaps we’re beginning to re-evaluate our relationships with our possessions, realizing they often bring more stress, anxiety, and work than happiness.
This stuff-re-evaluation—one I underwent six years ago when I embraced a minimalist lifestyle and let go of 75% of our possessions—is needed.
Why?
In America stuff-ownership is at an all-time high, while happiness levels are hitting record lows.
We’re living out a counterintuitive scatter plot: as the number of possessions owned has increased over the years, happiness levels have decreased. You could debate causation versus correlation, but it still wouldn’t change this fact: we own more personal possessions than any society in history and we aren’t happier for it.
Data from the General Social Survey, which has been tracking American’s happiness levels since 1972, indicates that 19% of Americans were very happy in 2022, which is the lowest number recorded in the past 50 years. In 2018, the number of “very happy Americans” was 31%.
Yet many of us continue to believe the lie that the more we have, the happier we’ll become. The average American home now contains over 300,000 items, but 80% of the items people own are rarely used. Fifty-four percent of Americans are overwhelmed by the amount of clutter they have, but 78% have no idea what to do with it.
If your own story reflects these trends like mine did, take heart. You can reject the low-grade stress and reduced happiness that can come from living in a home overflowing with unused and unloved stuff.
Living in an uncluttered home has the power to change your physiology and brain chemistry in ways that boost happiness.
Here are 5 ways that living in an uncluttered home can boost your happiness:
1. More dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that causes feelings of happiness and motivation when released in the brain. One way to increase the amount of dopamine in your brain is by completing a task—such as decluttering.
An uncluttered home requires the initial “stuff-purge” plus ongoing maintenance decluttering. Every decluttering task you complete ups your dopamine and boosts your happiness. (Increased dopamine will also increase your motivation to tackle your next decluttering project).
Action step: Complete a 15-minute decluttering win today (your purse, the front of your fridge, your car, a kitchen drawer). Then, observe how you feel after completing the task.
2. Fewer sleep problems
Sleeping in an uncluttered home promotes better sleep. And good sleep leads to increased life-satisfaction ratings.
A study by Pamela Thacher, psychology professor at St. Lawrence University, found that, “People who sleep in cluttered rooms… are more likely to have sleeping problems. This includes having trouble falling asleep at night and experiencing rest disturbances.”
Conversely, those who slept in uncluttered rooms exhibited fewer sleep problems. People who made their beds every morning were also found to experience longer, more restful sleep.
Action step: Declutter your bedroom this week (start by making your bed) and observe the quality of your sleep.
3. Reduced ADHD symptoms
Surrounding yourself with less stuff in an uncluttered home can reduce ADHD symptoms.
More than half of adults with ADHD say disorganization is a serious problem, and 40% of women over the age of 40 say disorganization is their most urgent ADHD issue.
Research shows that people with ADHD are prone to clutter for a number of reasons: reduced working memory, reduced impulse control, and access to services like Amazon that instantly fulfill whims.
“When the sheer physical and emotional space consumed by clutter becomes unmanageable, it can get in the way of relationships, work, and mental health,” says ADHD expert Linda Roggli.
Action step: If ADHD contributes to your clutter, read this article and implement the decluttering steps.
4. Lower stress and anxiety
Being in an uncluttered environment lowers stress and anxiety.
A study out of UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) suggests that the stress women feel at home is tied to the amount of belongings they and their family have collected.
Two of the CELF team’s psychologists, Darby Saxbe, PhD, and Rena Repetti, PhD, measured levels of cortisol in study participants’ saliva. The researchers found that higher cortisol (the stress hormone) levels were more likely in moms who used words like “mess” and “very chaotic” to describe their homes and who had higher “stressful home scores.” Lower cortisol levels were more likely in moms who had higher “restorative home scores.”
Participants with higher cortisol levels maintained these higher levels throughout the entire day (instead of tapering off in the evening), leading to poorer sleep and increased anxiety.
Action step: Declutter one space in your home (a corner of a room, a countertop). Then, commit to keeping it clutter-free (elevate the space with flowers or a meaningful photo). When you feel stressed, go to this “sanctuary like” area of the home and practice mindfulness or deep breathing. Use the way you feel in this decluttered space as motivation to declutter the rest of your home.
5. Improved productivity, focus, and mood
Spending time in a clutter-free space improves your productivity, focus, and mood.
In a study by the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, researchers placed individuals in organized environments and monitored their task performance. Then, they did the same in disorganized environments.
Overall, participants were more productive, less irritable, and less distracted in the clutter-free environment versus the disorganized environment where their stress levels increased.
Researchers concluded that physical clutter in our environment can overload the visual cortex, competing for attention in our brain and interfering with our ability to focus and process information.
Action step: Declutter the area of your home where you do most of your work. Observe how your focus, mood, and productivity change.
In conclusion
If you’re looking to boost your happiness, choose one of the points above. Then, complete the associated action step, and observe how you feel in a clutter-free space. Check out my new book Declutter Your Heart and Your Home: How a Minimalist Life Yields Maximum Joy for more practical decluttering tools to help increase your happiness.
While science shows that living in an uncluttered home can boost your happiness, in my experience, lasting happiness doesn’t come from the state of your outer environment.
French physicist and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”
An uncluttered home creates space in our lives to pursue the One who promises true and lasting satisfaction and inner peace.
So in our search for happiness, let’s create living environments that boost our joy.
And remember that true happiness has never been found in our newest possession or purchase.
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Julia Ubbenga is the author of the new book Declutter Your Heart and Your Home: How a Minimalist Life Yields Maximum Joy, creator of the blog Rich in What Matters, and mom of five. She helps people let go of inner and outer clutter and reorder their lives around what matters most.
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