Stress is one of the biggest causes of illness, sadness and sick days in the UK and USA and managing stress is one of the hardest challenges people in their 20s and 30s have to face. With the world an increasingly threatening place, it’s easy for disastrous and apocalyptic thinking to infect your thoughts: political tensions haven’t been more pronounced in the last 30 years, and Brexit looms on the horizon as anxiety inducing uncertainty.
On top of this, the growth of networking technology doesn’t just connect us to our families and farflung friends. An unintended side effect has been to shackle us all the more effectively to work. If you’re chasing promotion, looking for a raise or simply trying to create a good impression you are expected to be available at the weekends, answering emails long after the working day has ended and logging on your commute to make an early start on answering emails. The mobile phone is a tyrant as a well as a liberator.
Finding a way to reliably relax is one of the most important ways to maintain your physical and mental health. If your home is cluttered, with draws and shelves overflowing with the sheer pressure of stuff you will find it difficult to switch off and recentre yourself in the small amount of time you have available. Even benign clutter like collections of books and records can be a source of pressure – meaning you can’t find things when you need them and quite simply overstimulating the visual portions of your brain while you’re trying to relax.
Creating space is the unspoken secret of calm, even if it’s only a single room to which you can retreat when the world becomes too much. If you’re not able to reorganise or rehome the clutter filling up your house then simply remove it! If you search London, storage companies will appear almost everywhere you look – finding the right deal for you isn’t challenging and it means you have somewhere dry, safe and secure to keep your collection so it’s still accessible to you and you can relax in your home while still having access to the books you’ve spent a lifetime collecting.
Once you’ve cleared the space you need, make sure you set a helpful rota to share the burden of cleaning fairly and ensure your haven is the pristine place you need it to be.
