Is Decluttering Good for Your Creativity?

Study. Lilyfield, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Architecture by Danny Broe Architect. Interior design assisted by Toby Andrews. Photography by Karina Illovska. From the book My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation by Donald M. Rattner.

By Donald M. Rattner, Architect

Organizing and decluttering are all the rage these days. For that we can largely thank the present-day titan of tidiness, Marie Kondo, whose KonMari method has fueled several books, a Netflix series, and invigorated an entire industry devoted to helping people maintain control over their physical possessions.

But as an architect who’s written a book about scientific research into the psychology of creative space, I have long wondered whether Ms. Kondo’s prescriptions for self-dispossession were actually beneficial to creative types, many of whom work in home environments.

So I started to look into it.

My conclusion? Assuming you’re not a pathological hoarder, it depends.

Granted, that sounds a tad wishy-washy. Why the hesitation? And how could having an abundance of stuff be anything but detrimental to one’s creativity?

Let me explain.

KonMari and the Question of Science

A curious thing happens when you search for the word ‘science’ in Marie Kondo’s debut blockbuster manual, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: it doesn’t show up. Not once.

Hmmm.

How about the word ‘scientific’? Slightly more reassuring news: it appears a single time in a passage where the author acknowledges that she has no scientific basis for her theory that people accrue a variety of mental and physical health benefits from getting organized.

In this regard Ms. Kondo is misinformed. In point of fact, there’s a considerable body of research indicating that putting one’s house in order does exactly that. What’s more, these findings make it clear that a disheveled environment can indeed depress creative task performance, largely by diminishing our well-being.

Home office. Austin, Texas. Architecture and interior design by Tim Cuppett Architects. Photography by Alec Hemer.

Take, for example, a 2010 study published in the scientific journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. It found that subjects who described their homes as cluttered exhibited greater depression and fatigue, diminished coping skills, and increased difficulty transitioning from work to home compared to people who viewed their place of residence more positively.

What’s the connection between unkempt physical surroundings and a lack of mental well-being? Biology. According to the researchers, the group with messy environments registered elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, a substance released into the bloodstream by the adrenal glands. Normally, the body boosts the flow of cortisol when it perceives an external threat in order to sharpen our focus and analytic thinking skills, and by extension our ability to defend ourselves against potential harm. We then return to normal levels after the threat has passed. The problem with being stressed out by a messy environment is that the mess tends to remain in place, thereby leading to constant cortisol production and the kinds of disorders evident among subjects in the 2010 study.

And those are only some of the maladies linked to an oversupply of the hormone. Others include headaches, irritability, intestinal problems, high blood pressure, low libido, poor sleep, heart disease, suppressed immunity to disease, and difficulty recovering from exercise.

Home office. Scarborough, Maine. Architecture by Caleb Johnson Studio. Photography by Trent Bell.

But wait — there’s still more, as in more weight. That’s right — another potential consequence of mess-induced stress is weight gain. According to one source, people with unkempt homes are an eye-popping 77 percent more likely to be overweight than those who reside in well-tended surroundings. Unsurprisingly, kitchens overladen with goods are especially detrimental for maintaining narrow waistlines; a 2017 study from the journal Environment and Behavior found that subjects living in chaotic food environments significantly upped their consumption of scale-busting high-calorie snacks (aka junk food), the effects of which become all too plain for everyone to see.

Other unhealthy consequences of clutter accrue indirectly. Air quality, for instance, often suffers in disorganized environments because the profusion of objects creates more surfaces to attract dust. The extra layers of dust not only increase the possibility of respiratory problems among occupants, they can also reduce the amount of natural light inside a space by making those surfaces less reflective. Households with pets and in urban locations are particularly susceptible to the loss of light and dirtied air resulting from having too much stuff out and about.

And if all this weren’t enough to instantly turn you into a neat freak, clutter can also hamper your ability to focus on task completion. This insight comes to us via a 2011 paper out of Princeton University, where researchers found that our sensory apparatus can be easily overwhelmed by having too many things to look at at one time, thereby making it harder to sort out only those objects relevant to the task at hand. More stuff also makes it more likely that people will be distracted from what they’re doing as something new catches their eye with each pass of the room.

Library. Yonkers, New York. Architecture by Gary Brewer for Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Photography by Francis Dzikowski / Otto.

More Problems: Incompleteness and Control

The inability of people in disorganized settings to focus points to one of the reasons that clutter has the effect on us that it does: a space in disarray imparts a sense of unfinished business. Sometimes that sense derives from projects or tasks that literally remain undone, the residue of which lingers in stacks of unfiled papers or the detritus of half-completed household chores. At other times it might stem from deferred decisions, such as whether to keep a possession, and if so, where to store it. Given the discomfort most people experience when confronted by a plethora of unresolved conditions, it’s hardly surprising that the unhappy subjects in the 2010 study I discussed at the beginning of this article repeatedly used the term ‘unfinished’ to describe their disorderly habitats.

A second possible explanation for the negative impact of disorganization involves a psychological construct known as the locus of control. In a nutshell, the concept proposes that people fall into two main camps: those who believe that they are in control of their lives, and those who believe that external forces largely determine their fate. As you might expect, people who create tidy environments for themselves tend to fall into the former category, while those in less organized surroundings often feel that their belongings have gotten the better of them through no fault or desire of their own. As also might be expected, a landmark British study found that people with an ‘internal’ locus of control are generally more successful, healthier, better educated, and less anxious than those with an ‘external’ locus.

Mark Twain, possibly at home in New York City. 1901. Photograph by Theodore C. Marceau. Library of Congress.

On the Other Hand…

So all this would strongly suggest that going full Kondo can only boost your creative performance by sparing you the downsides of disorganization. Why, then, did I qualify my judgment at the beginning of this essay by suggesting that there might be more than one side to the story?

Answer: Because there’s evidence that a messy environment can stimulate idea generation. Exhibit A: a 2013 study that found that a group of subjects brainstorming ideas around a messy table evinced greater creativity than a second group performing the same task around a tidy table. The researchers who oversaw the study theorized that the neat table primed the subjects for conformity because neatness is a socially acceptable norm, whereas the unkempt work surface suggested a more devil-may-care attitude toward conventional expectations. I would also add that the findings are entirely consistent with the observation that creative thinking is by nature a ‘messy’ process — that is, non-linear and riddled with unanticipated surprises.

As for Exhibit B: I offer you a cadre of historically eminent creatives who did some of their best work in messy spaces, Mark Twain being a revered avatar in this category.

So where does all this leave you? Mess or no mess?

As with nearly all techniques for enhancing creativity, ultimately it depends on your individual work habits, even when the scientific evidence suggests that your preferences might run counter to those of the general population. My suggestion, then, would be to test both conditions to determine which will be most beneficial to your work.

My apologies for not being more definitive, but in this case, I wouldn’t be truthful if I said I could give you a neat and tidy answer.

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This article was adapted from my book My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation, 48 Science-based Techniques. Photographs courtesy of the designers or as noted. Versions of the article have appeared in The Creative Mind and the Tylko Journal.