How Your Surroundings Are Running (or Ruining) Your Life
- Megan J. Hall, Ph.D.
- 37 minutes ago
- 6 min read
I don’t think we talk enough about the value of a peaceful, streamlined environment for combatting overwhelm. We might talk a good game about how nice it is to have a clean house and the laundry done and no piles on the kitchen counter. But we don't do (or don't know how to do) the work to get us there. We justify staying in an environment that's actually eroding our sense of well-being by minimizing it: it's not a big deal, it doesn't really stress me out, I'm doing fine. Or maybe we put up a Home Goods sign that papers over our distress: "Please excuse the mess; we're busy making memories."
I'm not here to slam a relaxed vibe of home organization. There's a wide middle ground between insane restock reels and "Welcome to our beautiful chaos" (cause is it really, ahem, beautiful? or is it actually stressful but you don't know what to do about it?). I want to cheerlead a little for you from the sidelines and encourage you to really, really consider if your environment is as neutral as you claim. (You don't have to go on a shame tour if you realize it's not and you want tweak something about your home or your office. Your secret is safe with me!)
This hit me recently when I went to a party at a friend's house. As I was helping her clean up afterwards, I noticed she kept dragging her feet about taking the garbage out. I wasn't sure what the heck was going on—getting the garbage out feels good, right?—so I observed for a little bit. Finally I realized that going outside to take care of even this very basic need wasn't an easy feat. To reach the trash cans, she had to cross a deck and walk down some rickety stairs in the dark. It was winter. The deck hadn't been shoveled or salted—it was all hills and valleys of ice, treacherous and scary to walk on. No wonder she put it off as long as possible!
That got me thinking back to how much I struggled to keep up with the basics in my first apartment. I called it the Crap Shack: a bizarre, haphazard addition that wrapped in an L-shape around one side of a cute 1920s bungalow—a way for my slumlord landlord to make more money off broke university students. I found cockroaches in my pillowcase. I heard animals running up and down between the siding and the plywood walls. The heating came courtesy of an ancient radiant gas heater that I had to light with a match like a gas stovetop. I thought it was charming until it singed off my eyebrows and eyelashes the first time I lighted it.
The kitchen was rough too: cracked linoleum floors, a rickety old stove with a pilot light that liked to go out, about two feet of worn counter space and a small metal sink with one small dish cabinet above it. God help you if you wanted to rinse the sink: it had only the cheapest faucet available, no sprayer in sight. Oh, and I don't think the kitchen had a light fixture of any kind.
And boy, did I struggle to keep that kitchen clean. I will never forget the time my mom came to visit and froze in horror when she walked in. I had dirtied every dish I owned over the past week. In an effort to motivate myself, I had previously filled the sink with hot soapy water—but by the time she arrived it was a frigid cesspool ringed by orange grease. And of course, with each passing day, the last thing I wanted to do was touch that revolting water.
I had fallen into a vicious eddy: the kitchen was scary and barely functional, but I needed to eat. So I ate, put the dishes in the sink, and left them there. And then the dish pile grew, until it was also scary. And I wanted to be in that kitchen less and less. Meanwhile I felt like more and more of a failure.
If I had hung a cheery Home Goods sign in there proclaiming the delights of the disorder it would have been an absolute lie.
For both my friend and me, our environments were making basic life maintenance impossible. I had a terrible kitchen space to work with, struggled with procrastination, and had no real sense of how to make either one better. I wasn't sure where to turn for help. My friend, I think, felt too overwhelmed by life to see that ten minutes to buy a snow shovel and a bucket of salt to put by the door, and two minutes to shovel a quick path (not the whole deck, for the love of God!) when it snowed, would pay her infinite positive returns. Instead, we blamed ourselves.
Thank the good Lord there is nothing my mom loves more than to clean. In the Crap Shack kitchen, the frozen horror on her face morphed into rabid glee in about three seconds, and she set to work like a whirlwind. That reset brought me so much relief.
In the many years since living in the Crap Shack, I've learned a whole lot more about easy ways to keep my spaces running smoothly (five minutes of tidying up before bed and spot-cleaning come to mind). I've cut waaaay back on what I think of as the daily non-negotiables (pretty much just dishes and tidying as I go). And I prioritize making my spaces cozy. And I am here to say with serious authority, my stress is so. much. lower. I have greater peace, a greater sense of stability, and a safe landing zone.
A messy environment tells your brain that things are out of control — and that creates real stress, real overwhelm, and real physical effects. Before I learned habits and systems that helped me maintain a calmer environment, I felt out of control in so many areas: money, health, well-being. I had high blood pressure, anxiety, tension headaches, spasming neck muscles. I'm not making a medical diagnosis here; I'm just telling you what I can trace in my own life to that messy, overwhelming baseline I didn't even realize I was living in.
I'm not advocating for an Instagram-perfect home. We are human, after all. But there is a real difference between creative clutter and an environment that's quietly working against you. Can you say your home supports you, calms you, and relaxes you on the hardest days of your life? I can say that about mine now. I couldn't always.
So how do you get there? A few things I've learned:
First, it won't happen overnight. Just like you learned to brush your teeth every day as a kid, building these habits takes time and practice. And you don't have to do it alone. Maybe your mom (or a friend, or a highly-organized teenager you know) would love to help you dig out. Maybe you just start watching YouTube videos on decluttering and easy cleaning (Clutterbug is one of my favorites for this). Maybe you hire a professional organizer (try NAPO) for a jump start. The point is to break the cycle, not to become a different person overnight. It took me quite a while of learning better ways to do things to go from the Crap Shack lifestyle to my present default of pretty effortlessly-clean spaces.
Second, every small effort compounds. Start with just one thing. Maybe you commit to doing all your dishes once every 24 hours instead of aiming for a pristine sink every night before you go to bed. That small win will give you energy to try the next thing: a laundry day, a cleared counter, a weekly reset? Each habit you build makes the next one easier. It's exactly like taking vitamins, or making regular plans with friends — you practice it until it stops feeling like effort.
Third, the goal is not perfection. The goal is a life that feels better. You don't need elaborate systems or color-coded anything. You need a few simple habits that keep things from piling up, and spaces where things have a home and can actually be put away. Declutter what you don't use. Put what you do use where you need it most. Spot-clean when you see something get dirty. That's really it. Simple maintenance beats elaborate systems every time, especially for us high-achievers who tend to overcomplicate things and then abandon them when they can't be perfect.
I promise you: it might take a little time to get to a space that holds you rather than exhausts you, but the payoff is enormous. I get so many little bursts of dopamine and satisfaction from a tidy house that didn't take very long to tidy. Low time investment, high return in calm.
Your surroundings are either supporting your life or quietly working against it. You get to choose which.