Jen Owen is a Research Associate at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health & Social Care Workforce, King’s College London. (482 words)

Unit researcher Jen Owen virtually attended the Association for Professional Declutterers and Organisers (APDO) annual conference on 20th May 2021. APDO represents the UK decluttering and organising industry. Founded in 2004, it now has a community of over 400 professionals across the UK.

Caroline Rogers started off the day with a presentation based on her recent paper ‘Home and the extended-self: Exploring associations between clutter and wellbeing’. As a Professional Organiser herself, Caroline was motivated to study for a MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, to see if the positive wellbeing outcomes of being on top of clutter she noticed in her clients were universal. Her presentation outlined the current significant gap in literature on clutter, and how she went about exploring the associations between home self-extension variables (subjective clutter, objective clutter, home self-expression and declutter habit) and wellbeing (measured quantitively through the PERMA model). Her findings challenge existing theories of clutter as being maladaptive, instead drawing attention to its subjective nature, and offer a refined definition of clutter as “A subjective experience of possessions (material or other) that inhibits the curation of self-identity at home”. Continue reading →