by Amanda Long
from The Washington Post
October 31, 2021
The premise that one’s space reflects one’s mental health can be particularly defeating if you’re already in a bad place mentally or physically
After giving birth to her second child in February 2020, KC Davis keenly felt the relationship between the state of her home and the state of her mental health. At home with two kids under 2, battling postpartum depression and ADD, she found herself sitting on the floor surrounded by onesies, toddler clothes and pajama pants, unable to get the laundry finished, ever. “I was living out of a basket of clean laundry — just unable to fold it or put it away — so I decided not to,” said Davis, a licensed therapist in Houston.
The relationship among our mental health, order and cleanliness — or a lack thereof — is strong, but like most relationships, it’s not simple. “We know there’s an association, but an association doesn’t mean we know that one thing causes the other,” said Dawn Potter, a clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
The premise that one’s space reflects one’s mental health can be particularly defeating if you’re already in a bad place mentally or physically, Davis said. Many of the symptoms of depression that make it difficult to care for ourselves also make it difficult to care for our homes, such as fatigue, no or low motivation for even small tasks, loss of interest in activities and difficulty concentrating.
Read the rest on The Washington Post.