Is clutter making you feel bad?

All In The Mind

ABC listen

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When was the last time you decluttered? Was it a satisfying process, or did it fill you with dread?

Where you sit on the clutter spectrum differs person to person, so today, we investigate if decluttering is worth the hype.

Why can it be so hard for some people? Could there be a way to reduce clutter before it builds up?

And what's the relationship between hoarding disorder and clutter?

If you want to hear more about our relationship with objects, check out Why do we love collecting?

Guests:

Professor Melissa NorbergPsychologistMacquarie University

Professor Jessica GrishamPsychologistUniversity of New South Wales

Dr Seung Hwan (Mark) LeeProfessor and Associate Dean of Engagement & InclusionTed Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University

Dr Omar FaresAssistant Professor in the Faculty of BusinessUniversity of New Brunswick

Credits:

Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar
Reporter/producer: Rose Kerr
Senior producer: James Bullen
Sound engineer: Simon Branthwaite

More information:

Understanding 'underconsumption core': How a new trend is challenging consumer culture

Breaking up with belongings: a pilot randomized controlled trial of an unguided web-based program to reduce overconsumption

Nudging society toward more adaptive approaches to material possessions: Harnessing implicit approaches to reduce overconsumption and excessive saving

Transcript

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0:31.1	week. I'll be quick, you'll be smarter, it's quick smart. Find us on the ABC listener.
0:37.7	Do you consider yourself a maximalist, someone who enjoys having lots of stuff in your space,
0:44.8	little trinkets, pictures, books, etc? Or are you more of a minimalist?
0:50.5	I would say I am relatively clutter-free. So I can let things pile up for a week or so, but then I enjoy organizing. I just spent the whole weekend organizing my son's room, which he may not have liked.
1:12.4	I would say I'm fairly in between. I do really love reading and books, so I have probably a few
1:19.7	too many books that I'm pairing down, but I definitely wouldn't call myself a minimalist.
1:24.1	Where you sit on the spectrum of clutter can be a point of tension amongst family and housemates and even co-workers.
1:31.0	But there's probably been a point in your life where you thought, wow, that person has just way too much stuff.
1:37.1	Or maybe you've even thought that about yourself.
1:41.0	I'm Sana Khadar. This is all in the mind.
1:43.7	And today, producer Rose Kerr joins me in the studio to talk about clutter and decluttering and why it can be so hard to get rid of our stuff even if we have too much. Hi, Rose. Hi, Sana. So last time you were on the show, we were talking about collecting. Yes, and we talked about why people love collecting
2:01.6	and how it differs from hoarding disorder. And following that episode, we got a listener email
2:06.2	asking about decluttering. So Ray wrote, I'd love to suggest the topic of decluttering as a sister
2:12.1	episode to this one. It's a good idea. I mean, it's a pretty universal topic. I don't know anyone
2:16.6	who hasn't been irritated by clutter at some point or another.
2:20.3	Yeah, 100%. And Ray also had questions about the morality of minimalism and how we might tackle the idea of influencing people to buy less.
	...

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