The state of our home can play an important role in our mental wellness, and a clean home can assist in keeping your mind happy as referenced in the practice of feng shui
The environment we live in can play an important role in keeping our mental wellness in good shape, and making some very small changes around your home can be one way to improve your well-being.
When our minds feel overwhelmed, our living spaces can end up cluttered. In turn, a messy space can lead to a variety of negative mental factors such as increased stress, anxiety, and difficulty concentrating. This is seen in the practice of feng shui in interiors, which is the idea that our homes mirror what’s happening inside our minds.
To help people improve the home’s feng shui in just 24 hours, Forbes Health worked with Interiors Therapist, Suzanne Roynon, on some simple changes you can make around your home in a day to improve your mental wellness.
1. Remove Any Triggers
As irrelevant as some items in your home may seem, they may be impacting your well-being every day in more ways than you could imagine.
Perhaps a particular coffee mug results in a flash memory of an ex-lover. Maybe it was a gift, or you can visualize them using it. This unsettling moment might seem fleeting, but it reopens sensations attached to that person along with a brief, unwelcome connection with the past. It’s good to start by removing these items with certain negative triggers from your home so they won’t ever discomfort you again.
Have a look around your cupboards, drawers, and shelves to remove anything from your home which reminds you of a time of sadness, disappointment, guilt, or pain.
As you remove these items, why not turn to cosy lighting to bring a relaxing vibe into your home? We love the lanterns and lights from lights4fun. With a gorgeous webshop full of beautiful styles that will light up any room (or outdoor space) during different times of the day, lights4fun is a decorative lighting business based in Yorkshire.
2. Sort out the junk drawer
We are all guilty of having a space where the random bits and pieces end up rather than being dealt with immediately. This jumbled mess can have a detrimental effect when you glance at it, and even when you don’t! If you can create a space in your home so everything has its place and is routinely put there after use, you save yourself a mountain of time and effort.
Take ten minutes to review the contents of your bits and bobs drawer, throw away anything unnecessary, and then organize the rest so it makes sense, and you’ll know precisely where to find anything in your home. This quick hack will restructure and bring a little clarity of thought.
3. Clean up cluttered surfaces
Busy counters and surfaces, regardless of the room, are a visual and practical stressor. Whether it be bottles of oil left on the kitchen counter or make-up items scattered across a desk, the mind struggles with disorder, it needs space to think clearly and rationally.
Clear and clean all surfaces in your home. Check all products for use-by dates and respect yourself and your body by storing everything neatly in a designated place. Clutter-free countertops will help you start each day feeling more focused!
4. Give everything a dust
In both Feng Shui and Interiors Therapy, a proliferation of dust, debris, and cobwebs is used to identify problem areas in the lives of clients. They are clear evidence of things going wrong for you! The metaphysical process of Feng Shui emphasizes the importance of an unrestricted flow of energy (Chi) throughout the home in order to support the people who live in it, which the likes of dust, debris, and cobwebs can get in the way of.
Invite a positive flow of energy into your home by simply giving your home a quick dust to wave the cobwebs and dust bunnies goodbye.
5. Sort under the bed
It’s extremely easy for us to build clutter up under beds and in most homes this square footage below our beds is premium real estate for storage, but this space can also quickly build up with dust. Furthermore, unfortunately, some possessions can also contribute to sleepless nights and in turn ill health.
Take a few minutes to review what’s under the bed and whether it’s antagonistic or supportive of well-being.
Relocate items such as books, old tech, paperwork, footwear, electrical, fitness and hobby equipment, photos, mementos, and foodstuffs. These can be energetically stimulating and will compromise the quality of sleep.
Store items such as clean bed linen, towels, and out-of-season clothes (not shoes). These tend to be energetically neutral and less likely to result in wakefulness.
6. Reassess your artwork and photos
At a conscious level we may not notice the art, photos, and messaging around us, however the subconscious mind compromises and controls 95% of our thinking and aims to make sense of absolutely everything in direct and peripheral vision. There are multiple ways décor items can accidentally poke an old emotional wound or provoke behaviors unhelpful to well-being or peace of mind.
Take some time to look at your art and photos on walls and shelves and notice your emotional reaction to it. If it’s positive or neutral, that’s great. If it’s negative in any way, remove it permanently.
You can easily turn those photos that evoke happy thoughts and memories into beautiful wall art with Mixtiles. Design a wall in your home using your favourite photos instead of having them scattered around the house.
Further information on how our homes impact our well-being can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/mental-health-clean-home/
