Dishes in the sink, toys throughout the house, stuff covering every flat surface; this clutter not only makes our homes look bad, it makes us feel bad, too.

At least that’s what researchers at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families (CELF) discovered when they explored in real time the relationship between 32 California families and the thousands of objects in their homes. The resulting book, “Life at Home in The Twenty-First Century,” is a rare look at how middle-class Americans use the space in their homes and interact with the things they accumulate over a lifetime.

Our over-worked closets are overflowing with things we rarely touch.

It turns out that clutter has a profound affect on our mood and self-esteem. CELF’s 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 the other hand, don’t seem bothered by mess, which accounts for tensions between tidy wives and their clutter bug hubbies.
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.

In the spirit of my very favorite holiday of the year, I am writing this week’s blog on the practice of gratefulness.  Not thanksgiving, but gratefulness and the practice of gratefulness as a leader. I know what you are thinking, "Seriously, I cannot take any more of this gratitude stuff!"

We are what we eat. The nutritionists and dietitians we all know and love have been right all along. They have never strayed from that message, and finally they are vindicated that the rest of us are listening.