Introduction
A messy home can affect your physical and mental health and overall well-being in adverse ways. It can bring down your productivity, ruin relationships, and prevent you from achieving your full potential. If you have a dirty home, you should start cleaning it as soon as possible or hire a professional to do the job for you by searching “home cleaning services near me”. Let’s check out how a dirty house affects your well-being:
The Details
- Elevated stress levels – According to several studies, people with a messy home are more likely to suffer from depression and fatigue. People with a messy home have high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Unlike people with a restorative and clean environment, someone who lives in a dirty house has trouble bringing down their cortisol levels.
This constant high level of cortisol keeps you anxious, depressed and can also be the cause of many chronic diseases. It puts both your physical and mental health at risk.
- Unhealthy diet – A messy home with a dirty and cluttered kitchen discourages you from cooking fresh and healthy meals. You’re more likely to order fast food and choose unhealthy alternatives.
Moreover, when you live in a stress-inducing environment like a dirty home, you experience high levels of stress. This compels you to choose greasy and carb-rich comfort foods as a coping mechanism. You may also end up overeating.
- Respiratory problems – A messy and dirty home is full of dust and debris. Clothes, bottles, cans, and other things pile up and become perfect mediums to attract dust and dirt. Moreover, a dirty home has a lot of damp areas that are the perfect breeding grounds for mold and bacteria.
When you live in a dust heavy environment, you’re more likely to develop respiratory issues and other health problems. The spores from molds and the harmful airborne bacteria get into your lungs and can also bring down your immunity, further increasing your exposure to diseases.
- Safety issue – When you have a messy home you have piles of clothes, paper, cardboard boxes, and dry lint in your home. All of these are highly flammable substances that can catch on fire very easily. Moreover, they become obstructions that prevent easy access to doors and windows. That means you would be unable to escape your home in case of fires and other emergencies.
- Broken relationships – A dirty house is usually the sign of a hoarder. If you live in a messy home, you may have a hoarding disorder as well. You’re unable to get rid of things and feel distressed at the thought of parting with those things.
This can take a toll on your love life and other relationships. Even if you don’t have a hoarding disorder, an unhygienic environment would always keep you and your partner on the edge. That leads to a lot of pent-up negative emotions that come out in the form of disputes, name-calling, irritability, and anger.
Your relationship with your kids would be affected as well. Kids can pick up negative emotions very quickly and are always in distress. They are also unable to invite their friends into their homes and may be bullied due to their unclean living conditions.
The kids aren’t the only ones who don’t invite people over into their homes. You are less likely to invite people as well. You don’t want people to see the filth in your home and that’s why you’re more likely to isolate yourself from society. Research shows that homeowners who live in a dirty home aren’t keen on inviting friends into their living space.
That doesn’t mean you need to run in the opposite direction and become a cleaning bug. Becoming too obsessed with anything won’t do you any good. Just make sure to regularly clean your home and maintain a hygienic environment.
- Reduced productivity – Imagine working from home on your bed with the laptop in front of you. However, you aren’t able to focus on your work due to the smelly and dirty sheets, clothes all over the floor, stains on the carpet, and things cluttered everywhere.
When you aren’t able to focus on your work and are unable to meet your goals, you’re less likely to receive a promotion. A messy home also gets in the way of your schedule and makes you miss important appointments. It can derail your career and make you lose your job.
As mentioned above, a messy and unclean environment also keeps you in a bad and easily irritable mood. You may be easily agitated due to a mistake and ruin your relationships with your coworkers. When it’s time to collaborate on projects you may have a hard time communicating with them and may be unable to come up with concrete results.
- Bad spending habits – A dirty home can also ruin you financially. It’s easy to lose things in a messy home. Searching for your dog’s favorite toy or wireless earbuds in a room full of cardboard boxes, dirty socks, unfinished snack packets and cans of beer is a daunting task. That makes you buy more things and eat into your disposable income.
People who live in dirty homes also keep buying things as a coping mechanism. You develop terrible spending habits that dry up your wallet.
- You’re perpetually in debt – A dirty and messy home also makes organizing and locating your bills very difficult. That means, you rake up late payments on your name and harm your credit score. As your credit score tanks, the banks increase their interest rates and make it more difficult for you to wipe away your debt.
Conclusion
Now that you know about the adverse effects of a dirty home on your well-being you should start getting rid of the clutter, clean the mess and make your house more habitable. If things are too messy, you can leave the job to the pros. You can easily hire the services of a cleaning company by searching for “home cleaning services near me”.
