This Spring why not purge your inner horder and make a positive effort to lift your mood and declutter your home!

It turns out that clutter has a profound affect on our mood and self-esteem. Anthropologists, social scientists, and archaeologists found a link between high cortisol (stress hormone) levels in female home owners and a high density of household objects. 

The more stuff, the more stress women feel. Men, on theother hand, don’t seem bothered by mess, which accounts for tensions between tidy wives and their messy husbands.

Many women associate a tidy home with a happy and successful family. The more dishes that pile up in the sink, the more anxious women feel.

Even families that want to reduce clutter often are emotionally paralysed when it comes to sorting and throwing out belongings.They either can’t break sentimental attachments to objects or believe their things have hidden monetary value.

Here are some top tips


 1. Every time you get up from your desk or walk through a room, put away five things. Or, each hour, devote five minutes to de-cluttering. At the end of the day, you’ve cleaned for an hour.


2. Clear and clean your kitchen sink and drainer every day. It only takes a couple of seconds more to place a dish in the dishwasher than dump it in the sink. A clean sink will instantly raise your spirits and decrease your anxiety.


3. Return to the days of our grandparents when only photos of ancestors or weddings earned a place on the mantelpiece. Put photos in an album, which will immediately de-clutter many flat surfaces.

4. Create new storage space in out-of-the-way places, like under the stairs.

5. Fill a box with items you don’t wear, love or use. Seal the box and place it in a cupboard. If you haven’t opened the box in a year, donate it (unopened!) to charity.