Clutter Can Overwhelm Your Brain. Here’s the Easy Way to Tackle It
Three takeaways:
One of the biggest psychological challenges we face is the brain’s natural tendency to overemphasize how much effort a task will take. Our relationship to clutter at home is a perfect case study in this frustrating experience: you know exactly what needs to be done—clear the mail off your desk, put away the laundry, pick up the toys scattered across the floor—but can’t seem to begin.
Therapists say this reaction isn’t about laziness or a lack of discipline: it’s a stress response. When a space feels chaotic, the brain reads it as too much input, making action feel overwhelming.
- Why clutter can make you shut down: Your brain tends to blow the difficulty of a task out of proportion while barely registering the relief you’ll feel once it’s done — training you to keep putting it off. Left unchecked, that avoidance can curdle into shame or self-criticism, making it even harder to get moving. But the issue was never that you didn’t know what to do — it’s that some part of your brain decided the task was too much to handle.
- Why putting away a few items works: Haupt suggests the “five things” approach: instead of tackling a whole room, you just put away a small handful of items. Whatever is in reach. The task is small enough that the nervous system doesn’t register it as an overly taxing demand. That tiny win sends the brain a signal that action is possible and the space is becoming manageable, often sparking enough momentum to keep going.
- Small actions can build momentum: Once that shift happens, something else tends to follow: momentum. By turning the “five things” approach into a habit, you start building evidence — proof to yourself that you’re capable of getting started, even on the tasks that feel most daunting.
This pattern extends far beyond a messy room. Whether it’s an overdue email, a hard conversation, or a project you keep avoiding, the brain often reacts the same way it does to clutter — inflating the effort, minimizing the payoff, and convincing you to wait.
The fix is the same, too: shrink the task until your nervous system stops flagging it as a problem. The goal isn’t to finish — it’s to prove that starting is safe, so momentum can take it from there.
By Angela Haupt for Time Magazine
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