#265 Spring Cleaning For Your Mind

We trace how clutter strains working memory, spikes stress, and saps attention, then share small, kind steps to reclaim focus through five-minute tidies, one-minute resets, and better buying choices. Stories, research, and gentle prompts make it doable and humane.

• Clutter linked to indecision and lower life satisfaction 
• Visual complexity reduces perceptual fluency and focus 
• Working memory overload as the core mechanism 
• Stress response, cortisol, shame and guilt loops 
• Five-minute daily tidy as a starter habit 
• Journaling for sentimental items and clarity 
• One-minute rule for quick wins 
• Four shopping questions to reduce inflow 
• Brain dumps to prioritise and cut urgency 
• Minimalism-lite, donations and local eco options 
• Attention economy framing to protect energy 
• Compassionate self-talk to sustain change

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Decluttering Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi listener, welcome back to another segment of Wellbeing Wednesdays with Sogand. This is Sogand and I'm so grateful to be here with you this evening. With spring equinox and hopefully spring weather vibes being right around the corner, I thought it's fitting to talk to you today about decluttering. You may have heard of the term spring cleaning as it gets pretty popular around this time of year. We're gonna elaborate on this concept and the significance of decluttering from a neuroscience and psychosocial perspective. We're gonna get right into it. So, why do people declutter? Well, according to the Reactance, Decisional Procrastination and Hesitation, a latent class analysis of clutter behavior published in 2023 by Patel and others, clutter clouds our spaces and our states of being. It fuels indecision, lowers life satisfaction, and has an impact on our overall well-being. I wonder if this is relatable to you because it definitely is to me. As I was doing this research for this topic this morning, I kept on almost involuntarily looking at this bag at the corner of my room. Let me explain the scene for you. So when I take notes, I like to use different color markers and pens. I also love using construction paper. I've been like this my entire life. I was that kid and still am, a big kid, who enjoyed back to school shopping only because it meant new stationery. So, still that person. Anyways, my little container of markers and pens had fallen out of my bag, and I could see all of the items at the corner of my eye as I was trying to focus on this research. I was typing, typing, looking, typing, typing, looking. Eventually it got so annoying that I ended up putting the markers and pens back in the container and I put my bag in the closet where it belonged. And you know, I realized this is what these researchers are talking about. I had very obviously just thrown the bag on the floor the day prior, and I never really got back to picking it up. This confirms the research I just provided. Right? Right. Did you know clutter has also been linked to higher stress, binge eating, and work-related tension? The research demonstrates that clutter affects everyone from students to adults to older adults. For my millennials out there, do you remember the 10 seconds tidy of Lunette the Clown? I love that show. It showed us the importance of cleaning up after ourselves from a super young age, but it's never too late to pick up those habits. Especially if you don't watch Lunette the Clown or it's been some time. And if you don't know what I'm referring to, it was a kids' show, widely popular and featured a friendly clown and her doll and their adventures. So let's get into some neuroscience. I found an article on what goes on in our brains when we have clutter around. Per the work of Quinn in 2025 called Home Clutter and Mental Well-being, Exploring Moderators and the Mediating Role of Home Beauty, they say that clutter heightens visual complexity and reduces perceptual fluency. This means that it makes it more difficult for us to process things. Hence, when I was looking at that bag and the markers at the corner of my eye this morning while I was taking these notes, I couldn't focus. It was making it hard for me to focus. It also impacts our judgment and makes our brains work harder to take in and evaluate things. That was definitely happening. Even if it was just a few seconds of me looking at the clutter, looking back at my work, looking at the clutter, looking back at my work, it was still affecting my judgment. And it got to the point that I was so irritated that I had to do something about it. This could obviously lead to negative affect, diminished positive affects, and it can definitely diminish your productivity and efficiency. You might be asking, hey Sylvan, I hear you talk about working memory a lot. What does that mean? Working memory is basically like a hard drive, right? Again, for my millennials, or anybody who remembers back in the PC days, if your computer is maxed out, you have too many tabs open, it freezes. Sometimes laptops do this too. Back in the day, we used to control alt-delete, right? Or we would have to manually shut down the computer and then reboot it again, or you would have to force shut down. I feel a lot of you nodding, because what a time to be alive. Even with your phone now, sometimes your phone, your smartphone, can get to a place where it slows down, and either you have to close your apps, reinstall your apps, or you have to turn off your phone and turn it back on. And sometimes, in more serious cases, you actually have to take it into your provider. So our brain is no different. We often think that we are supposed to act like we are just robots, and that we have all of this time and energy and devotion to dedicate to just anything, and that's just not true. So our working memory has a very limited capacity. The brain is a brilliant organ, but it likes patterns, and it doesn't like when we ask it to do too many things outside of its patterns and familiarity, because the brain is constantly scanning to see if you're in a place of threat. It likes to keep you safe. And so your working memory, the more you feed it, the more it's going to slow down all the other functionings of your body, similar to your smartphone. If you have a whole lot of apps, eventually you're gonna run out of storage. If you have a lot of photos and videos, eventually you're not gonna be able to take anymore. If you have been using it without charging it, eventually you're gonna have to plug it in or else it's gonna die on you. Your working memory also can get overloaded. And so, clutter, as research shows, can add to that cognitive load and max out your working memory. So the brain then in that situation has less resources to retain and process information. And so it's important for you to recognize that the clutter is not just aesthetically perhaps not appealing, but also it's important to recognize that it's messing with you and it's messing with your efficiency. This is applicable to anybody, whether you are a student and you have a place where you do your homework, oftentimes it might be your bed. A lot of people do a lot of things on their bed, right? They do their homework, they check their emails for work, they sleep, they bed rot. That is a term that the cool kids use, and that accumulates clutter, right? You're gonna have paperwork, you're gonna have wires, you're gonna have maybe clothing because temperature changes, because it's Edmonton. So all of that is going to contribute to clutter. That could be if you're a student, if you're working from home, you might have an office space. Oftentimes the office space is either very clean compared to every other place in the house, or very cluttered compared to other places in the house. If you are working outside of your home, same thing. Clutter accumulates. Even children, right? Children can have their toys out of their toy baskets, their books out of their baskets. This is why I think there has been a push for minimalism. There has been a push for this minimalist lifestyle, which I have started to apply. I don't think I could ever fully be a minimalist. However, I have in my free time now took in decluttering as a part of my self-care. I've mentioned in previous episodes and previous segments that I have been donating a lot of clothes, a lot of shoes, but I've also been making frequent trips to the Edmonton Eco Station. Did you know that our eco stations have free days where you can just go and dump anything that you want free of charge? You can look on the website at the City of Edmonton to see when those days are. And on Saturdays and Sundays, you can take a specific amount of garbage bags for free, and then if you have more than that, it's pretty affordable. But that is a way that you can start decluttering. So this isn't something you have to do when spring equinox happens in a few weeks. It could be something you do from today, and it could be something that you start, like I said earlier, with a little bag in the corner, and then you can move your way around. Did you know that even if you try to ignore the clutter in your space by dismissing it, it still depletes your mental resources? How rude, right? It impacts your attention, concentration, and can lead to cognitive fatigue. Per Fourne's work in 2025 called How Clutter Affects Your Brain Health. I give you these resources, so if you're a nerd like me, you can go and do more research. Oftentimes in these articles, there will be related articles. So if you're super interested in this, all of these are on our Spotify, and you can definitely go and read more into it. But yeah, this might be a reason why so many of us report being exhausted and overwhelmed, probably because our lives are busy, they're chaotic, the world is chaotic and busy, but also we probably have a lot of clutter that needs to be taken care of. This clutter could very well be guiding us into a state of mental fog, irritability, and overtax system. You may recall the term that I've referred in the past called attention economy. This is a term that I heard on Mel Robin's podcast. The idea here is that there are so many things consistently fighting for your attention on the daily. From the news to social media apps to world events to financial restraints, there's a lot always happening and it doesn't seem to end, it just keeps multiplying. The invitation here is to see clutter as yet another thing that is zapping away your energy and attention. However, with this one, you actually can do something about it. You don't have a whole lot of control about world events, you don't have a whole lot of control about your phone listening to you and giving you advertisements based on something that you said you may have been thinking about or wanting. But what you can control is the clutter in your life. You can also control your phone and maybe have it not so close to you all the time, maybe put it away from you, have some digital boundaries. We're gonna talk a bit more about that at the end of tonight's segments. But yeah, that is a way that you can also look at clutter. And from a psychological perspective, you can also recognize that it is zapping away your at your energy because it wants your energy. You may think that the time that we are spending listening to anything on our phone, watching something on Netflix or the news, there's no money going out of your pocket, right? But what is going out is your attention. What is also going out when there's clutter is your attention and it keeps getting depleted and depleted and depleted. So if you find yourself getting more and more irritable and overwhelmed and frustrated, I invite you to look around and see if there areas in your space, spaces that you frequent, whether it's your bedroom, whether it's a common space, whether it's your office space, whether if you have children or pets, it's an area that accumulates items. I invite you to look at that from this perspective of is this also zapping away my energy? Because research says yes. Forni in 2025 also found that women, particularly who consider their homes to be cluttered, show high cortisol levels. We've spoken in the past about Dr. Tara Swartz's research on cortisol. So she is a neuroscientist, she is also a psychiatrist and a coach, and she talks about how cortisol leaks from our bodies. So you may not be able to see it, but if you are in a stressful work environment or if you are in a stressful house environment, even if people are not talking about it, you can just feel the stress. So that is what we're talking about when we say cortisol leaks. A lot of women who say that their houses are cluttered also show that they have higher cortisol levels. One explanation for this could be that clutter triggers our fight or flight response due to prolonged exposure to low-level stress. So you might think, well, it's not really doing so much, it's just in the corner, but you have so much exposure to it, and those little, little, little stressors can add up. That can fuel your anxiety, inflammation, and even stress. A not so favorable loop, if I say so myself. Clutter can also spark shame and guilt and drain your motivation. I want to put a caveat here because a lot of people think that shame and guilt are the same thing. Shame is what happens when you think you're a bad person. Guilt is what happens when you do something bad. For example, guilt can say, I did bad on that exam. Shame will say, I'm a bad person or I'm unworthy. And clutter can spark those kinds of negative talk. And it can drain your motivation because you can imagine if you're continuously putting yourself down, even in a joking way, your brain doesn't know the difference, your body doesn't know the difference. So please be compassionate to yourself if you can relate to any of this. Most of us can. And also most of us know people in our lives who can as well. The worst thing we can do at this conjuncture in this conversation is to be mean to ourselves, as it is abundantly clear that the clutter is being mean enough to our systems. Do we really need to add to it? I think not. So now that we know the science, now that we know what's going on in our brain, now that we know what's going on in our bodies, what can we do with this information? Well, let's check in with our procrastination habits first. If we frequently put things off, can we start challenging that pattern? What I mean is, can we find five minutes a day to begin to declutter? Notice I said five minutes a day. Again, letting you know that there are so many ways that you can give donations for your new and gently used items. There are a lot of people I see them market themselves on Marketplace or on Kijiji, where for a flat rate they will come and you can just fill up a whole bin with junk and they will take it. If that doesn't work for you, be it financially, or you just don't feel safe doing that. There are so many ways to dispose of things. You just have to be careful with what exactly you're disposing so you can make sure that you're doing it ethically. But there are places that you can take your damaged goods or your junk, and they don't have to just fill up space and take up space. Oftentimes we don't recognize the importance of just having white space. And by white space I don't necessarily mean a place that's white, but what I mean is it's a place that it's just there's nothing there. Oftentimes we feel like everything has to be taken into account, right? Everything has to be there has to be a space for everything, and that's not true. We find if there's an open slot in our calendar, we have to fill it. If there's an open area in our house, we have to fill it. That's not true. You can give yourself permission to just not. And so, going back to my challenge, could you maybe dedicate that five minutes a day towards this goal of stopping that procrastination loop and starting in an area in your house? Make it practical to your personality and your lifestyle. It's important to recognize is your personality one that is there's a lot of compulsion and there's a lot of obsession, so maybe that five minutes has to be very specific to an area. Or maybe in that five minutes you could do more than just one area, who knows? It's important to recognize and work with your system instead of against your system. So many things in this world are working against our systems. We don't need to be our own worst enemy, right? And yeah, after you accomplish that five minutes, you can definitely do more, right? But that five minutes is a really, really good practical place to start, and you'd be surprised with how much you can do in five minutes. You don't believe me? Have you ever been in a room alone with a mosquito for five minutes? That five minutes goes by real slow, right? And that impact is something that you can't deny. Of course, if you're decluttering and you come across items that hold sentimental value, consider journally about this. What emotions, energies, memories are you holding on to? You might decide to dispose of the items or you might keep them. You might just have a box for those things, but not every single item is likely going to have some kind of sentimental value. But some will, because items hold energies. You might be triggered by the way something smells, the way something feels, there's a sound attached to it. All of these might trigger something, and if it does, hold compassion for yourself. That five minutes might be spent on just reflecting on that, journaling and holding space for yourself. The journaling prompt will help you decipher whether your decision with what you're gonna do with the item is then fueled by your emotion or by your logic. You might also find that you're holding on to items due to fear. What kind of fear? Perhaps you grew up in a household that rarely had resources and was focused on survival, not thriving, and then it was hard for you to let go of anything because there might have been a use for it, or you might have thought you will never get it again. That fear might still be in your system, and you might be holding on to items that you haven't even touched or looked at for years and years and years with the thought that maybe you'll need them again one day. Journaling can also help with that. Another tip is the one-minute rule. If tidying or organizing will take just one minute, do it. You'll thank yourself for it later. I want you to ask yourself four questions if you find that you might not have a decluttering problem, but you might have an online shopping problem. If so, no judgment, no tea, no shade, but maybe ask yourself these questions because you might be accumulating boxes, you might be accumulating items that maybe sounded like a good idea at the time, but you feel like you're not using, and maybe you regret spending the money. So, moving forward, maybe you can ask yourself, is this item necessary? And you might have to take out your handy dandy journal, which doesn't really have to be a journal, it could just be a piece of paper. Or it could be a sticky note, honestly, anything, anything will do. I like actual stationery and not doing things on my phone because I have no self-control and my fingers will just do their thing, and I will, before I know it, be looking at the news and looking on apps. If you can control yourself, great, then you could use the notes app. I can't. That's why I always have to have pens and papers ready. But yeah, you can ask yourself, is this purchase necessary? Am I buying this for an emotional reason or a logical reason? That's really important. You might find when you're doing this journaling work that you are just having a really bad day and this is how you're trying to take control of the situation, which is totally fine. That's totally fine. But if you don't like your bank account and what it looks like after these emotional decisions, this is a way to stop that loop. You can also ask yourself, do I have room for this? You might say, Well, I'll make room for this. You might, but then that means you have to either clean up clutter or you have to accumulate clutter. So is it worth it? You tell me. Also, how will this item genuinely benefit your life? It might actually benefit your life. It truly might. Like, for example, if you've ever seen me, I always have press-on nails. I have so many different shapes and sizes that I purchase. It's a self-care activity of mine to actually paint them. I have nail, nail polish remover, I have different designs. That is a worthwhile purchase for me. I have a lot of that, I'm okay with that being a little cluttered. Sometimes I try to organize it, but I'm okay with it because it's not an emotional purchase, it's actually useful. But I have a whole bunch of purchases that I've made that are emotionally driven. But every time you get into this habit of questioning yourself, you're less likely to actually make those purchases. It's a good practice and it will help you with how much you bring into your space and how much you're gonna need to take out. And so that is really, really important for you to do if you find yourself constantly looking for items that you don't know what to do with. More on Fourny 2025. Another thing that you could do is use brain dumps. Brain dumps are effective if you live a Super busy life, which I feel like is everybody. What you do is you write down everything that's on your mind and your spirit and you prioritize what needs to be done today. What can wait? You might have a deadline that's due today, but you might also have dishes that you have to do. Do the dishes need to be done right now, or is the deadline right now? That's where you can prioritize. Remember, your working brain, your memory, it all feels like everything is pretty urgent because your brain's job is to protect you and it's scanning for threats. And if you have been scolded for not doing dishes, for example, as a child or in a relationship, that might be as detrimental as that email that you need to do, right? But then you can actually tell yourself, okay, let me do this email, I'm gonna prioritize it, and then I will do the dishes. So that is how a brain dump works. You can put everything down and then you can prioritize, and you'll see how much of what's on your working memory is just fluff, and how much is actually needs to get done. This is gonna help you stay present, decisive, and focused. The good news here, and you know I always like to leave you with good news at the end of our segments. The good news here is that all of these steps that I'm encouraging you to take towards decluttering will sharpen your attention, enhance your cognitive and emotional well-being, and reduce your anxiety. Remember that a chaotic environment activates the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis and raises our cortisol. So this is both seeing clutter objectively and feeling it subjectively. So that means that it's what you see but also what you feel, if the clutter has any significance to you, or if it's just visually not appealing, or it brings shame and guilt, or it starts putting you in a downward spiral, right? It's not even as much about the items as it is what it's doing to you. You can definitely look at more research on this at the mental health benefits of spring cleaning 2024. I hope that you were able to find this segment beneficial and practical, and we are so grateful that you've joined us for Wellbeing Wednesdays with Sogand. And I hope that this segment helps you regulate your feelings about clutter that has accumulated, and perhaps see why spring cleaning is so popular from a neuroscience and psychosocial lens, of course. Be gentle with yourself as the world is not always gentle to you. I encourage you to be kind to yourself, and you will see that you will actually start being kind to others too. It's kind of like a domino effect, it's really cool. So, yeah, check that negative self-talk, recognize your working memory. If you're getting irritable or overwhelmed or frustrated, you might just need to declutter. Try that five-minute hack and let us know how it goes. And I will catch you next time. Thank you for everyone who tuned in. Stay up to date with our podcasts on our socials at the Universal Radio and stream us wherever you get your podcasts. This is Sogand, and keep turning it up with us.