The link between messiness and mental health is real.

When I began my professional organizing business 18 years ago, I received various comments from friends and family. These included words of encouragement, questions about the role of a professional organizer, and some skeptical remarks. Even now, I get surprised reactions from people who can’t believe someone could be so busy organizing for a living. I believe that comes from a misconception about what I do and who my clients are.

My clients range from 45 to 90 years old and why they hire me is even more diverse. Very few people call to simply get organized in one or two rooms and that’s it. Many people tell me they waited years to find the courage to reach out. I make sure I listen as carefully as possible to what’s going on and see if they want me to come into their home for a judgement-free assessment. I should say at this point that I do not work with hoarders. I have received training to know what is or is not hoarding, but not the type of training that will make a difference in their lives, so I will give them referrals to find someone who can help them.

When a client has waited years to reach out, it’s a very big step to finally do so. It could be one room or the whole house, however, feeling shame is common. The reasons they are disorganized range from someone who wasn’t good at keeping house, never learned to organize, had a parent who was a hoarder, or the messiness could have been exacerbated by an extreme event like an illness, having a child, or a job change.

Very often a client is dealing with depression or ADHD (undiagnosed or not) and that has a strong link to messiness in the home that can get out of control and seem overwhelming or impossible to reverse. The term “depression room” or “doom piles” on social media describes miscellaneous stuff that builds up that you don’t know what to do with. The mental and physical strength it takes for someone to take care of themselves, let alone clean up a room, is tremendous. It’s also not a matter of laziness, it’s a matter of extreme fatigue.

KC Davis is a licensed professional counselor and the author of the book “How to Keep House While Drowning”. She had always been a messy person, but when she was faced with a new baby, postpartum depression and a pandemic, her clutter problem blew up. She has adopted a realistic approach to cleaning up that focuses on having a livable space, not a perfect one (She now has 1.5 million followers on TikTok.) Five things tidying is the idea that there are only five things in any room: trash, dishes, laundry, things with a place and things without a place. She will focus on one category at a time so it keeps her from not getting overwhelmed.

This idea isn’t new, but focusing nowadays is getting harder and harder for anyone to achieve. For each client, my prime responsibility is to keep them focused on one thing, one category, or one area at a time. In the beginning, progress may be slow and then momentum finds its footing and we can make a lot of progress in a short period of time.

Decision fatigue is also a real thing. If you think about a messy room in your home, it is probably full of delayed decisions on what to do with something; do I need it, will I need it in the future, do I know someone who could use it, and finally, if I had to replace it, would it be expensive. When a room gets out of control, mental and physical health issues make those decisions even harder to make.

Reaching out to any professional, whether it’s a counselor, doctor or a professional organizer is the first step in finding the help someone needs to make short and long-term changes in their life. The choices are to stay stuck or stick out your neck. Surround yourself with people who support you and find out.