Jeanne Arnold talks to the Boston Globe about cluster, stress and he latest book:

With the 21st century’s constantly evolving technological innovations and the wild success of bulk-shopping stores, our hoarding habits have gotten worse. Some of us feel like we’re drowning every time we take a moment to look around our homes.

A recently published book called Life at Home in the 21st Century indicates that we’re living in more clutter than ever before: our shelves are jammed with dozens of jars of tomato sauce bought on sale at Costco or with outdated electronics that we can’t bear to throw away because they’re too valuable.

Of the 32 middle-class families from Los Angeles who were studied for the book, only one-quarter could use their garage to store their cars since they were so packed with unused junk.

[...]“We were able to identify a troubling health trend,” said Arnold. “The physiological stress that occurs among women who see their homes as cluttered may have some long-term health consequences.”

Read more at Boston.com:

Feeling overwhelmed by clutter? 7 stress-reducing tips

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

08/09/2012

From 2001 to 2005, a team of social scientists studied 32 middle-class families in Los Angeles, a project documenting every wiggle of life at home. The study was generated by the U.C.L.A. Center on the Everyday Lives of Families to understand how people handled what anthropologists call material culture — what we call stuff. These were dual-earner households in a range of ethnic groups, neighborhoods, incomes and occupations, with at least two children between the ages of 7 and 12 — in other words, households smack in the weeds of family life.

Read more at NYTimes