Swedish death cleaning has replaced hygge as the hottest Scandinavian life management tool in the U.S. It seems that Margareta Magnussen’s system for de-cluttering (detailed in her book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Make Your Loved Ines’ Lives Easier and Your Own Life More Pleasant) is a little more straightforward than Marie Kondo’s (described in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up).
The current popularity of Magnussen’s book and the continuing attention to Kondo’s indicate that in America, and probably elsewhere, many of us have finally reached the point where we really have too much stuff around.
When a space we’re in is cluttered, visually and otherwise, we get stressed. Then our professional performance degrades along with our mood, and we start to do undesirable things such as eat food that isn’t good for us.
Since de-cluttering is top-of-mind, it seems like a good time to take steps to manage the clutter both at our own workspaces and at those of our clients.
Magnussen’s approach to eliminating possessions is pretty direct and seems like tough love compared to Kondo’s. Magnussen admonishes people to cut, cut, cut and winnow their stuff down to essentials; Kondo takes a more sentimental tact. Magnussen’s method for de-cluttering seems like the best option for work areas.
Before the de-cluttering process begins, anywhere, it’s important to remember that an environment that’s too stark, without anything in it that reminds us who we are and what’s important to us, is just as unpleasant as one that’s overstuffed. In a workplace, seeing just a couple of personalizing items (for example, photos) in any gaze through a space seems about right.
Science tells us that what we should be working toward in our workplaces is an environment that has the visual complexity of an interior designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. At this level of complexity, both our moods and our work performance are good.
But, realistically, most of us, and our clients, have more clutter-inducing items than are good for us. We retain printouts of reports that we’ve marked up with highlighters and pens, because the world is not as paperless as advertised, or any number of other similar items, all of which fill our worlds with untidiness.
If we’re actually honest with ourselves, we need to acknowledge that much of the stuff that still surrounds people at work, after decades of the war on paper and other material objects, is here to stay. Maybe a single printed report will find its way to a shredder, but when it does another will take its place.
Our behaviors and our reactions to clutter mean that storage is required in workplaces and that storage containers must hide their contents from view. Cabinets with transparent sheets of glass in their doors – or anything else that allows a peak inside – are definitely not useful. They gather our possessions together but don’t help with the de-cluttering because we can still see their contents.
Realistic de-cluttering requires chunking papers/books/tools/pens/etc. into solid blocks of stuff, instead of visible piles or free-floating ephemera. Visually impermeable blocks that hold papers, tools, etc., can dramatically reduce clutter and visual complexity. These blocks can be hard sided cubes or something else, their most important feature is a view blocking, unpatterned surface. Some people may legitimately require more than one of these blocks.
It’d also be great to provide workers with some way to keep all the papers, etc., that they’re not working with right now out of view. That annotated report, which won’t be relevant for a few days, can find it’s way into a storage block but the printout that’ll be needed in a few hours should, ideally, also be out of view until it’s required. When an item isn’t needed at the moment, being able to slip it into a clutter busting pocket/organizer/cubby/etc., for example, keeps visual complexity in check. A closed door/cover on the front of that pocket/organizer/cubby/etc. can remind viewers that there’s something inside it.
Getting rid of extra in-workplace stuff, using techniques discussed by Magnussen and Kondo, starts the de-cluttering process. Chunking what remains into visibly impermeable containers helps us pull visual complexity to manageable levels – and that boosts mood and performance and improves behavior.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.