How messy is your environment? Do you struggle to find a place for your everyday items? Do you own more possessions than you can fit in your cabinets? Are your storage areas bursting with an overload of items? Is it difficult or dangerous to navigate your environment? Are you embarrassed for people to come into your home? Are you unable to throw out anything? Do you feel anxious or stressed from the condition of your home? All of these questions may help you sort through your own situation: Are you just a bit disorganized? Or is the problem getting worse? Or could you even be diagnosed with a hoarding condition? While wellness expert Dr. Heather Hausenblass recently declared that “Decluttering is Trending,” she’s well aware, as you should be too, that trends are meaningless if you’re stuck in the mire of deep disorganization and clutter that’s affecting both your physical and mental health. 

If you’re feeling like you’re more toward the “hoarding” end of the clutter spectrum, and there’s barely a clear space in your home, you’re certainly not alone. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Americans have a unique propensity to accumulate, especially as we’ve had access to an inordinate amount of cheap goods over the past many years (that may change as tariffs come into effect). Apparently, 80% of the world’s storage facilities are in the United States, and data show that our purchasing of such items as furniture, housewares, and clothing has skyrocketed in the past decade. U-Haul has even had to build bigger trucks to accommodate the pattern of US households moving more stuff. In fact, a recent survey by Storable reports that not only is all of this stuff taking up valuable space in our homes, but it’s also costing many of us the equivalent of over $60,000 per year if we consider the value of the household space being take up by clutter, rather than used for hobbies, businesses or even renting out a room. What about other costs, both fiscal and emotional, caused by clutter? Those could include buying duplicates of items because you can’t find the ones you already own. Or feeling stressed or anxious due to your home environment. Of course, there are the environmental impacts of all of the stuff we inevitably end up throwing away. Also, the growing amount of accumulated stuff and clutter in your home could be a source of stress or conflict with others who live in your home.

If you or a loved one tips over into an actual hoarding disorder (defined as the chronic difficulty parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items, causing significant distress when they try to part with them, leading to cluttered living spaces that interfere with daily functioning), then the physical and emotional costs of that level of clutter rise to a whole other level. Hoarding at that level is becoming a national problem, especially as the population ages (while hoarding is said to affect about 2.6% of the population, those over 60 appear more affected, and the rate of hoarding among US adults is higher than the rate of schizophrenia). It’s considered a complex and difficult-to-treat mental health issue and goes far beyond a person just being unable to clean up his or her home. The problems that result from hoarding are myriad: There are physical risks in the home, including fall and fire risks (hoarding environments pose real dangers to first responders), and the problem doesn’t resolve if concerned friends or loved ones try to come in and clean up in one fell swoop. In fact, addressing the problem of hoarding often takes time and patience, and emotional and therapeutic support groups are helpful, if not always available. While most people who hoard would prefer not to live that way, hoarders often bear severe consequences, including social isolation, depression, loss of jobs, or even loss of homes. While there are no quick fixes to get someone out of hoarding, there are compassionate and useful approaches to help, including maintaining your relationship with the hoarder, offering your time and support to gradually address the problems, and adjusting your expectations of what can be achieved. As one expert has said, “The goal… is to make the space healthy and safe, not to earn Marie Kondo’s approval.”

For those who have a clutter problem but perhaps would not be considered a hoarder, there is still an emotional aspect to your collecting stuff that may need to be addressed before progress is made. In a forthcoming book entitled Reset Your Home: Unpack your emotions and your clutter, step by step, professional organizers Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman urge you to identify the reasons for your attachment to the things cluttering your space as the first step to solving your clutter problem. As they write, it’s not about your stuff per se, but rather the emotional connection you have to your possessions. To read more about their practical solutions for addressing your “clutter dependency,” clear off a counter and click here.