Mayo Clinic psychologist Craig Sawchuk, Ph.D., says that clearing clutter — recently popularized by organization consultant Marie Kondo’s new Netflix series — can be good for our souls as well as our homes.
It's a craze that's sweeping through (and sweeping up) living rooms, kitchens and closets — and every other space in our lives. Marie Kondo, the 34-year-old Japanese organization consultant, author and star of Netflix's wildly popular "Tidying Up With Marie Kondo," has our family and friends going through their homes, room by room, and chucking letting go of everything that doesn't spark joy. And then rolling their joy inducing T-shirts and such — the ones they decide to keep — into neat little rows of color-coded organization.
Regardless of whether you're into the KonMari method for clearing clutter, Craig Sawchuk, Ph.D., a psychologist at Mayo Clinic's Rochester campus and co-chair of Mayo's Division of Integrated Behavioral Health, tells CNN's Jessica Ravitz that adopting Kondo's basic principles of organization (or the principles of other organizational gurus) are not only good for our homes, but also our souls.
That's because, Dr. Sawchuk tells Ravitz, they give us clear "roadmaps" and "strategies to inform problem solving and decision-making" to help guide us in what to keep, what to toss, and what to donate throughout our homes and lives as we "face our clutter."
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This story originally appeared on the In the Loop blog.