Research Friday Archive
One of the joys of retirement is having time to read widely again. Each week I collect research that helps me better understand the relationship between people, their possessions, and the environments they create. Some studies reinforce existing ideas, others challenge them, and many spark entirely new questions. This archive is a record of that ongoing conversation.
Summary: This research explores how affluent consumers struggle with material disorder in their homes, categorizing the problem into two distinct but related forms: disorder-as-untidiness and disorder-as-clutteredness. While untidiness refers to objects being out of their proper places, clutteredness stems from an overwhelming volume of possessions that "clog" the domestic environment.
The authors advocate for a pluralized understanding of household disorder to help consumers better manage their relationships with material objects. The Organizing Fingerprint is currently envisioned as a complex model which can be informed both by the findings and methodology of this study. The authors add academic language to concepts I have been circling for years, including the architecture of tidiness (spatial order) and the Possessive Materialist Lens vs the Post-Materialist Lens, related to current popular terms, maximalism and minimalism.
Why it matters to Messy Desk
#Tags
#tidiness
#clutter
#decluttering
#minimalism
#maximalism
Related Research
"We can claim with confidence that tidying up contributes to homes being packed with possessions" (p.400).
The discomfort of Things! Tidying-up and Decluttering in Consumer's Homes.
Gollnhofer, J. F., Bhatnagar, K., & Manke, B. (2025). The Discomfort of Things! Tidying-up and Decluttering in Consumers' Homes. Journal of Consumer Research, 52(2), 393-415. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae034