Hidden Ways Your Home Might Be Draining Your Energy

Your home can quietly sabotage your energy—and not just in the obvious ways like tripping over laundry baskets or staring at a chaotic kitchen. The impact runs deeper, and once you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it.

Let’s dig into a few of the hidden ways your home might be draining your energy right now.

1. Neuroception

Even if you feel calm on the surface, your body is constantly asking one quiet question in the background:

“Am I safe here?”

This automatic scanning process is called neuroception—a term coined by Dr. Stephen Porges, a neuroscientist and the founder of Polyvagal Theory. Neuroception describes your brain’s ability to assess safety, danger, or life threat without conscious thought. Unlike perception, which is deliberate, neuroception is subconscious. You don’t decide how to feel in a space—your body just reacts.

Your nervous system reads cues from your environment—things like lighting, noise, scent, clutter, and even the layout of a room—to determine whether it can relax or needs to stay alert.

And here’s the important part:

If your space is filled with sensory clutter—too much visual input, unresolved messes, broken or chaotic areas—your body doesn’t read it as "danger", but it also doesn’t read it as safe. Instead, it keeps you in a mild state of hypervigilance.

This keeps your nervous system tilted toward the sympathetic state—the part responsible for alertness, scanning, problem-solving, and protection. That might sound helpful, but when you stay in that mode too long, it becomes exhausting. You’re not fighting or fleeing—but you’re also not resting.

It’s like trying to recharge your phone on a frayed cord. The energy input is inconsistent.

The flip side of that is a parasympathetic state—your rest-and-digest mode. That’s where healing happens. Creativity flourishes. Focus sharpens. Your body can only access that state fully when it feels safe.

And that’s what a supportive environment does:

It tells your nervous system, “You’re safe here. You can breathe. You can let go.”

I've shared a video called Yoga For Your Home which really highlights the similarities between a restful body and a restful state- it's kind of an interesting parallel.

So when we talk about decluttering or redesigning your space, we’re not just talking about aesthetics—we’re talking about helping your body relax. Because if your nervous system is constantly working overtime just to exist in your home, it’s no wonder you feel drained before your day even begins.

2. Visual Overload = Mental Exhaustion

Cognitive Load Theory explains how your brain has limited bandwidth for processing information—and how clutter can hijack that mental space before you’ve even started. Let’s look at what that actually feels like in your body.

Because clutter doesn’t just distract you. It exhausts you.

Your brain is a meaning-making machine. Every object in your environment is a tiny question it tries to answer:

• Is this important?
• Do I need to deal with it now?
• What’s it doing here?
• Ugh, I meant to fix that. Why haven’t I?

These aren’t full thoughts—they’re rapid-fire, subconscious alerts your brain sends in response to every item it sees. But they still take energy to process.

Imagine walking through a room where nothing is resolved.

A pile of mail that needs sorting.

A basket of clean laundry you haven’t folded.

A stack of books you “should” read.

A gadget you regret buying.

Now multiply that by every room in your home. That’s dozens—maybe hundreds—of open loops your brain is constantly trying to close. No wonder you feel depleted before you even make it to lunch.

It's ambient noise- and you might not even realize it's happening. Because it’s not loud. It’s not urgent. It’s just… persistent. And it slowly chips away at your clarity, patience, and ability to focus.

So if you’ve ever felt like you should have energy, but don’t, or like you’ve been “on” all day without doing much—this could be why. You’re spending your resources managing your surroundings, not your actual goals.

When you reduce what your brain has to sort through visually, you give it space to breathe. You make it easier to focus, to transition, to rest. You stop spending energy on ignoring things and start having energy for what matters.

3. “Energy Blocks” Are Real—And They’re Everywhere

Let's migrate away from nerves and into a more physical and emotional drain. I've been talking for years about something I call energy blocks- stuff in your space that causes snags of frustration or negativity when you come into contact with them. They can be physical or emotional:

• Physical, like a jammed cabinet, scattered cords, or a drawer so full it won’t close properly.
• Emotional energy blocks are even more powerful because they bring on a negative emotional response every time you see or come into contact with them. This could be something like remnants of a past relationship that make you feel sad or bad about yourself every time you come across it.

Every time you see it or go to use it you get frustrated or annoyed.

So now, it's the extra emotional baggage that's draining you- the frustration of the physical energy blocks from stuff that isn't working (or is causing you physical pain as the case may be) or the emotional energy blocks that are making you sad and feeling bad about yourself. Energy drained.

That's why I always recommend decluttering these things first. Anything that's going to ruin your day when you come into contact with it? Get those out first.

4. Your Stuff Reflects What You Believe About Yourself

We don’t just own things. We attach meaning to them—stories, memories, and, often, judgments.

That’s why the state of your space can quietly reinforce (or undermine) how you feel about yourself.

Let’s say your home is filled with mismatched furniture you don’t love or old clothes that no longer fit, but you’re holding onto “just in case.” On the surface, these might seem like no big deal. But emotionally, they may be reinforcing deeper beliefs:

According to research in environmental psychology, our surroundings are not only mirrors of our internal world—they also shape it. When we’re surrounded by clutter, disrepair, or items tied to guilt or regret, we’re more likely to experience lowered self-worth and a reduced sense of personal efficacy.

This hits especially hard in personal spaces like your bedroom or closet—areas where you expect rest or self-expression. Instead, they become places of comparison, shame, or stagnation.

But here's the empowering part: every decision you make about your space becomes a form of self-talk. Choosing to let go of something you’ve outgrown? That’s you saying, “I’m allowed to evolve.” Upgrading a space to better fit your needs? That’s you saying, “I matter.”

5. Everything You Own Asks Something of You

Even the most harmless-seeming stuff in your home has a price—and it’s usually paid in time, attention, or energy.

That extra chair in the corner? You move it every time you vacuum.

The basket of tangled cords? It nags at you every time you pass.

Even the things you don’t use still take up mental space—because your brain has to constantly decide whether to ignore, engage, or rearrange them.

When we talk about clutter as a drain, it’s not just about mess. It’s about the constant background effort required to manage the excess. Every item has to be cleaned, maintained, worked around, or stored. And if you’re not actively using it or loving it, chances are... it’s using you.

Ready to clear the real energy drains?

Your home can either drain you… or refuel you. Of course, the first step to ditching what’s draining you… is to clear the clutter. I’ve created a free workshop that shows you how to declutter smarter—in a way that supports your energy and actually sticks.

✨ Sign up for the free workshop here or go to miadanielle.com/workshop

It’s a gentle, holistic approach to getting rid of what’s holding you back—so your home finally starts working for you again.

You deserve a space that recharges you, not one that wears you out.