Photo by Pixabay from Pexels
The bedroom is a place where you should always feel happy and able to rest. Unfortunately, for some men that can easily slip into allowing their bedrooms to become a mess of clutter and rubbish.
That is counter-productive, as a messy bedroom has a negative effect on your mental health. The now famous advice of Jordan Peterson to ‘clean your room’ resonated with young men because it identified the scientifically proven link between an organised personal space and a mind that is focused and ready to accomplish goals.
Here are some useful tips for keeping your room clean and why it is so important.
Only Relevant Furniture Allowed
One of the big reasons that many men end up with messy, cluttered bedrooms is that they use them as glorified storage spaces. Your bedroom is not the place for putting cardboard boxes full of stuff that you hardly use.
It is a room for relaxing and sleeping and only things that help you with that should be allowed. If you are wise enough to have bought a high-quality bed from somewhere like Divan Beds Centre then that should be the focal point of your room.
Other suitable items will include a wardrobe and drawers, as well as possibly a television. Try to keep it minimal, to give the room a spacious feel.
Avoid Surface Clutter
Even if you get rid of unwanted storage stuff, the room can still look untidy if the surfaces of dressers and nightstands are covered in clutter. These places should be strictly for things that you really need, like a bedside lamp, as well as the odd personal item.
Cutting back on surface clutter also makes bedroom cleaning easier, allowing you to dust and polish much more quickly.
Put Clothes Away
At the end of a long tiring day, it is tempting to just throw your clothes over the nearest available piece of furniture. Doing so will leave the room looking like it belongs to a teenager and will get you down as the mess builds up.
A simple but effective way of keeping a clean room is to take the little bit of extra time needed to fold clothes properly and put them away in your wardrobe.
Do It Once a Week
Cleaning and tidying your bedroom once every week will ensure that the mess and dirt do not get out of hand. In turn that will make the job easier and less daunting to face than if you leave if for months at a time.
How Keeping Your Room Clean Will Help Your Mental Health
These tips have a serious purpose, because the connection between a clean and tidy room and better mental health has been clearly established. Research carried out by scientists from Indiana University uncovered hard evidence that people who live in clean houses have better mental health and perform more physical exercise than those who do not.
Elsewhere, a study from 2010 that looked at the psychological effects of cleanliness found that women who talked about their houses as disorganized and cluttered had higher levels of stress, exhaustion and depression. It would seem to be clear that the state of our personal living spaces reflects and amplifies the state of our minds.
These examples of studies that have found a direct connection between the two are just the tip of the iceberg. However the plus point to all this is that it is relatively easy to improve your mental state by cleaning and tidying your bedroom and the rest of your home – as Peterson has reminded young men.
In conclusion, research shows that having a bedroom that is clean, tidy and well ordered will enable you to relax and sleep better, as well as helping you to be happy and productive. These are things that any man would want for himself.