Keeping my house tidy gave me terrible anxiety, then my therapist told me this one, eye-opening thing that changed everything

I grew up in an intensely messy home so as a teenager, and later as an adult with my own home, I was preoccupied with having a perfectly tidy space.

But rather than curbing the anxiety that being in a messy space brought me with a perfectly tidy home, I found I had gone too far the other way, and was unable to relax unless everything was in its space.

Having a child amplified this as they are wonderful and messy tiny humans. With therapy, I began to understand what was making me unhappy, the tidying tips to action (and how often), and when I needed to simply focus on living more.

Why an overly tidy house may be a tell-tale sign of something deeper

Renowned psychologist and internationally bestselling author Dr Meg Arroll explains, ‘Perfectionism doesn't make life perfect. In fact it leads to anxiety, low mood burnout syndrome and a reduced quality of life.’

It couldn’t have been more true in my case. Instead of doing a 10-minute closing shift routine, I delved deep into housework that delayed my going to bed by 90 minutes. Fighting that tiredness no doubt drove up my cortisol (a stress response to fatigue) and stopping me from sleeping when I finally did flop into bed.

It was odd that organizing my living room or decluttering my kitchen cabinets was taking priority over my well-being. It was truly exhausting and also made me feel resentful about housework.

Dr Meg explains, ‘It's important to uncover the psychological drivers of housekeeping perfectionism, such as growing up in a home where there was criticism rather than positive feedback, conditional instead of unconditional love, as well as unrealistic societal norms.’

It couldn’t have been more true in my case. I’d been running on emotional fumes for years, and in time, my tidying became hard to maintain. It also adversely led me to sometimes behave as a serial procrastinator.

As a result of unknowingly being in a lifelong state of fight or flight, a stress response to decades long trauma, I found it hard to relax. Often, that nervous energy manifested into excessive tidying, sorting and organizing my house. Sometimes, I’d tell my husband, ‘I need to do something with my hands because my anxiety is so high,’ and off I’d go to declutter the pantry or start an intense Chaos Method decluttering session that would keep me up for hours.

This went on for years.

Then, I started to notice even at the weekend, I couldn’t seem to relax or sit still. I would get up and start tidying because I wasn’t allowing myself to rest – a harmful pattern born of trauma from long-term abuse. As a result, whenever I tried to relax at home in my 20s and 30s, I immediately felt guilty for resting.

Dr Meg says, ‘Recognizing these drivers can help to release harmful patterns of needing to have your home to be picture perfect.’

It was a relief when I finally understood what had been going on and why I had approached tidying in that way. Once I realized my past was negatively impacting my ‘now’, I started to unpick the negative patterns and forge newer, healthier tidying habits that were easier to maintain.

What you can do to fix negative patterns

The answer is not exactly a one size fits all solution. Identifying the root cause will inform the way in which you make forge more positive cleaning habits for a tidier home.

Speaking on my own journey, here are all the things I've worked on, or do to help break my cycle of anxiety around tidying:

• Intense therapy for my trauma and to understand myself better.
• Allow myself to rest.
• Give myself grace and forgiveness.
• Be as compassionate to myself as I am to others.
• Stop expecting or wanting my home to be a ‘show home’.
• Start truly living in my space rather than tidying and cleaning 24/7.
• Adopting cleaning tips and the best decluttering methods that work for me.
• Stop obsessing if I can't finish everything I need to around the house, and tidying when overwhelmed. If I am cleaning the living room and begin to feel sleepy, I go to bed.
• Set up smart home storage solutions such as baskets as per the Desire Path Decluttering method to ease clutter hot-spots until I am ready to sort it out.
• Ask my other half for help and stop trying to do everything myself. If you live alone, our experts have shared guidance for managing chores alone.
• Decluttering my home to reduce the volume of things we own and need to put back all the time. Moving forward, we aim for under-consumption.

Helpful tidying essentials

The realization that my housekeeping perfectionism was rooted in trauma was a real eye opener for me and changed the very core elements of how I was doing chores. It was one of the things I knew at nearly 40 that I wish I had known about tidying in my 20s.

Now, my house is clean and tidy, but it’s lived in and if someone stops by unexpectedly I do not mentally punish myself for that little pile of stuff on the stairs or the mail I have not yet sorted.

I’ve also learned how to use adaptive pacing for cleaning so my chronic health conditions don’t get flared as much as possible. Learning how to declutter when you're feeling overwhelmed will be a gentle way to easy into tidying.