Psychological Effects of Clutter

Learn all about the psychological effects of clutter (according to science!) and how it might be impacting your life right now. Get nerdy with me about the link between our stuff...and our mind.

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[tanithbramhill]

Living at home with my mum who likes to call it her "comforting clutter" actually really impacts my mental and emotional health, and I wish she had more awareness of it. I'm trying to learn more about where it stems from, so thank you for explaining.

[docmast]

Thank you. But Eeee. This is stressing me because you may be right and now I have to take action. Thanks.

[COKER]

Wow this is the best video ive found on this subject. This is exactly what I needed to work up the motivation to set things in order. Everything else ive found has just been so frustrating and lacking in an actual explanation.

[claudiamunoz]

Good morning, God bless you and your family. I want to thank you for helping and giving advice to people like me with the challenges we have in our minds. I thank you for giving us support encouragement and confidence. Thank you 🙏🏻 because it’s making me cry of knowing that I can and helping me to change. Our minds are strong and important enough to make us change our lives in many ways. Thank you 🙏🏻 for helping our minds brains to change.

[dannydimes]

Just discovered you after losing my temper with my son about how his room gets trashed out with food rappers, clothes under bed, floor covered with everything and anything. However my bathroom has clothes all over it, the kitchen sink and counters are filled with dirty dishes, kitchen table filled with several projects. Work full time and am a single mom am very busy then spend weekend cleaning and being angry. How does this stop? Can't keep up. Exhausted and angry and feel sorry for my son.

[amy]

So helpful thank you…definitly neuroplasticity is true… our neuro pathways change when we change our environment

[irmabronder]

Interesting Mia. Thank you for this lovely video. ❤

[lisamedeiros]

Very interesting. Makes sense. Thanks for sharing

[viviangautier]

Hi Mia! love your channel ❤️ suggestion 😊 you should show the spaces of your house that you talk about, like your closet. I would love to see what you do with your different spaces so I can use some ideas! 😉 Do you have a home tour video? I was looking for it but I did not find it.

[barbarahatfield]

Y’a I’m working on my pj . I mostly take out my clothes out the day before

[tynishabradley]

I’m trying to figure out why I have a tendency to clutter and then feel overwhelmed and defeated, difficult to motivate to clean up

[tomaszwyszkowski]

The best thing ever happened to our family is decluttering/minimalism. We are on that journey for 4 years now, with 5 growing children is never ending process, but it's much more easier to keep up when we only have things we use.

[katharinadavis]

Oh Mia you did a phenomenal job explaining the psychology behind it! Other you tubers only touch on it. I do feel defeated by clutter even though I regularly sort things out and stopped buying and bringing stuff I to the house years ago. I am now downscaling to a minimalist level. During the pandemic I got an overwhelming feeling of “needing space” - physical, emotional, mental. I do not want to take care of so many things anymore and spend less time cleaning. I also have ADD and get frustrated by a messy environment. Have you heard of the “Silent to do list” by Fumio Sasaki? Please keep posting. I love your videos!

[neokali]

Actually, the reason my home is such a bloody mess is because I work in private industry and every spare moment and the weekends for the past 2-3 years has been devoted to work so much so that I barely showered or even washed my face or did laundry. I had no longer cooked and just grabbed takeout, then went to my computer to get more paperwork done sometimes burning the midnight oil since many of us work remote. This is the reality for many people who work in private industry. Then, because California is an at-will contract state and when my company's task order had been completed with no more money left in the budget, I was recently laid off. I'm now into my second week of layoff. The first week I got sick and laid in bed exhausted and was knocked out from a bad cold which I'm still recovering from. Now, I am decluttering and taking care of all the disrepair which I hadn't been able to deal with due to lack of time. My work had been impeccable, but my home life wasn't. And the imbalance I blame all on the modern way of life with employers dumping more work on their employees rather than hire more people to assist with the work overload.

[jamesdaceyjr]

Excellent video Mia !! Great insight and yes I too, enjoy just looking at the cleared-out clean organized closet, kitchen, and living room, there is so much peace in seeing so much less in my home. Love your videos.

[miaschu]

I have too much materials for creative crafts. I'm not going to get rid of them yet, as I feel desperate to create. I don't because there's too much clutter! So, I'm getting rid of the clutter that won't make me feel happy, so that I can start creating.

Clothes that don't fit, or I don't feel comfortable wearing, books I don't want to read, gifts that I'll never use (although I was very happy to receive <3), bedlinen that I never use because it's tatty, and doubles of kitchen items (why? I don't know!) - they're all going to go!

I'll keep my excess of notebooks and ribbons and stamps and pretty fat quarters; if I haven't used them for any projects by the end of the year, I will say goodbye to them, too.

[andrewbrendan]

Great information and comments here. I have a cluttered space and part of the reason for that is there's simply too many things to do and to think about --- and I'm tired. Still I can deliberately take blocks of time to tidy up and put things in their places as I go along. Space and time management are a help. --- I particularly like the part in the video in which it was mentioned the brain can focus on only one thing at a time. I don't know who said it, maybe Joshua Becker, but someone said that multi-tasking is really multi-distracting. It's not good for us. --- Yes. Children are affected by the clutter of the adults. I recall a "Hoarders" episode in which a man was hoarding while his wife's sister was encouraging a divorce; hurting rather than the helping the situation. Turns out the wife was a hoarder too and a big part of the clutter came from her. The couple had a son who was only three years old and the child was using a toy broom trying to bring some order to his environment. How sad!

[kathyorourke]

I LOVE watching Netflix and eating Cheetos on the couch! In fact, my couch (sofa) is Cheeto colored. I understand your points though. Thanks.

[ladyjuliainaz]

Great video! The ideal self part really hit me and helped me realize why I have some of the things I have. Thank you!

[amy]

Can I give this video 100 likes? 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼