I’ve been reading the KonMari method. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the ‘life-changing magic’ of cleaning up your house in the way that you never have to deal with clutter and mess again.  Marie has a 100% success rate – that is, once she’s shows you just how you can live your life clutter free, you’ll never revert to old habits.  You might remember from my previous rambles, I have a little inner control freak streak in me.  It tends to come out when packing my bags for a trip and when I’m in crazy cleaning lockdown.  I don’t necessarily know when my inner control freak will strike- she’s sneaky like that.  Previously I never knew why those two things triggered me, but I’m beginning to learn a whole lot more as I read.

What struck me as most interesting as I devoured the pages of the book, was how appropriate her tips were not only to cleaning up your nest, but in fact cleaning up your life – and that’s her point.  When you ‘tidy’ things up, all of sudden clarity comes, not only because you can see three feet in front of you and your kids undies no longer spill out their draws, but because you clear out the clutter which is a stressor – the kind I refer to all the time – that run in the background, don’t even know you’re actually stressed about it kind of trigger and fires along possibly unrecognised.

After a stressful encounter, I too have been known to come home and clean my house from top to bottom like a frantic germ-a-phobe.  I used to think this was because it was something I could control when everything else felt like was in disarray, but as I’ve continued to learn thanks to Marie, more than likely it’s because when it’s a mess, I’m a mess and the stress of the chaos only adds to the stress of my life.  So in fact then for me, cleaning my house can give me clarity.

Clutter in one corner of your life will overspill into many areas of your life including your health.

So it has me asking if we really know what’s feeding our health (or lack of) when so often we are unaware of the drivers that could be contributing to subaverage wellbeing.  I’ve spoken about hidden or subconscious emotional influences here before and I’ve dedicated a plethora of posts to looking at the physical factors that might be influencing our hormones too. I’ve also touched on the environment and how that can also be detrimental to our health however this was more so from a physical perspective. Only now am I urging us all to looking at our surroundings and their emotional input into our lives.

Perhaps you know somebody who’s house is a mess.  They hoard their items, the have a lot of clutter and their lives very much reflect it.  Maybe it’s you?  I know I’m guilty of holding onto things.  I also know when I’m clutter free just how ‘free’ I feel.  It’s true that our environment is a reflection of who we are immensely.

So as a means to take you one step closer to a more hormonally happy and balanced human, my hope is that this may be a clue to your hormone imbalance.  Is your house full of stuff you don’t need?  Is your health a reflection of your environment?  Tricky part, at least for me means there will always be there is a whisker between a healthy tidy environment and my inner control freak (cue perfectionist – one of the biggest hormone imbalance offenders of all time), but so long as I’m aware I can keep on adapting to the impact this has on my wellness.  Of course, it all begins with awareness and perspective.

I’m not endorsed by Marie Kondo.  But I do love her perspective on life.  It’s worth checking out.

So now’s the time to de-clutter.  It doesn’t necessarily have to begin epically, baby steps is key.  Start with your desk or your handbag and just see what happens.  There’s a whole world of decluttering to be explored!

Check out Debunking Stress for more support and tangible tools to help you continue to get a good hold on your stress and take you towards greater wellbeing.