Why a spring clean in 2025 is good for you

A cluttered home does more than simply look bad; according to studies, it can harm your mental health.

‘No, don’t come over,” said my friend, “the place is a mess.” Having been locked out of my flat, I needed somewhere to go, so I pleaded. “Oh, don’t be silly, I’m sure it’s fine.”

As soon as I stepped inside, I was confronted with the most extraordinary and overwhelming jumble of papers, boxes, and “stuff” that I have ever saw in a human habitation. At the end of the hallway, there was only a dangerous queue to travel along because the items were stacked up down the length of the hall. There were heaps of papers that tumbled out of every surface. The entire bathroom, including the shower cubicle, was being utilised for storage on a regular basis.

It did, however, explain why my ordinarily outgoing friend did not entertain visitors or host parties: he couldn’t. The living room was a firetrap, stuffed with magazines, novels, and other useless clutter that a mother might lovingly pass off as “treasures” but the rest of us would send right to the trash. I felt bad for him. If his home reflected his mental state, the poor man’s life was undoubtedly chaotic.

Hoarding, I didn’t have the heart to tell him, can be fatal. Remember the 59-year-old hoarder in Washington? She was found dead in after one of the mounds of clutter and clothes that filled her home had collapsed. It took two searches by her husband to find her body. Excessive cluttering can be symptomatic of a range of psychological disorders including attention deficit disorder, depression, chronic pain and grief.

A recent study conducted by David Tolin, founder of America’s Anxiety Disorder Centre at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living in Conneticut, confirms what most of us knew instinctively: clutter is not only bad for our physical health – breeding mould and bacteria – it also plays havoc with our mental health.

Tolin, an expert in the treatment of hoarding, and his team carried out brain scans on compulsive hoarders who were unable to rid themselves of seemingly useless possessions. The tests were exceptionally harsh: the hoarders were asked to make a decision between throwing each item away or keeping it – before their possessions were shredded right in front of the them.

During the Tolin study, the most obsessive group showed increased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a section of the brain involved with cognitive processes such as decision-making. Their brains were, in his words, “stressed to the max”, and showed signs of being impaired by their clutter. However, the “normal” group – those whose homes didn’t require an anonymous call to environmental services – showed no such brain activity, nor any impairment of their general decision-making skills.

People’s lives get cluttered for a variety of different causes. Hoarding can be the result of a simple lack of organisation, but in more extreme cases, hoarders have developed an emotional attachment to the things they have accumulated. It is highly likely that these individuals are unconcerned about the fact that their mess infuriates other people or places a needless pressure on their relationships.

“Clutter can stem from erroneous beliefs about possessions,” says Dr Liz Forrester, a consultant clinical psychologist at the South London and Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry. “Some people believe that if you discard something, it reflects on your feelings for someone. An example would be keeping a bus ticket you used to visit someone. The person may feel that if they discard the ticket, it means they didn’t respect or love the person they’d visited with the ticket.”

While merely being disorganised is not a medical condition, it can weigh down on a person’s wellbeing. “I’ve seen people in depression because they feel they can’t even do the simple task of keeping their house clean,” says Sue Kay, spokeswoman for the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers and author of clutter-busting books like Hoarder To Order (www.nomoreclutter.co.uk). “It is why a thorough spring clean has a definite feelgood factor. It not only clears space, it helps wipe that ‘to do’ list that constantly accumulates in your head and keeps you awake at night.”

Kay sees something particular in the British psyche that embraces the idea of the perfect life, complete with the perfect home. “People set very high standards for themselves, and when that slips, they feel they’ve failed somehow. It gets into a vicious cycle.”

When it comes to tidying behaviour, we all feature somewhere on the spectrum that runs from clutter-bug to obsessive-compulsive tidier. According to behavioural coach Dmitri Bilgere, we reach a tipping point early in adult life. “For many people, until they are in their mid-20s, the problem is that they have ‘not enough stuff’. After that, the problem is ‘too much stuff.’?”

Dr Cosmo Hallstrom, fellow and spokesman for the Royal College of Psychiatry, reasons that decluttering must be good for you – but congenital hoarders have to be handled carefully. “Brain imaging has shown that there is a mechanism for such obsessive compulsive behaviour, which is why some people find it extremely distressing to declutter – they fear if they throw something away, they’ll want it later.”

Those who are disorganised or untidy need not worry, says Tolin. “A lot of people are messy,” he has said. “Where it becomes a problem is when the person is not just messy, but impaired by their clutter. When significant portions of a home cannot be used for the purpose intended, the person’s quality of life is dramatically reduced.”

For genuine hoarders who apologise when visitors come round about “the state of the place” – and yet who are actually quite comfy in their own mess – a course of cognitive therapy can calm their clutter addiction. That, by extension, brings a reduction in stress, freeing up the brain for more essential decision-making.

There’s one more benefit to spring cleaning. The promise of a sharper brain is surely a line worth trying on your teenager the next time she refuses to tidy her room.