Is clutter a sign of ADHD? It's a question I hear a lot as a Professional Organiser. Usually the person asking it has already Googled it more than once (and maybe you have, too?)
Yes, clutter has an association with ADHD, but most of the articles floating around online on this topic just assume the answer is 'yes' and go straight to surface-level storage tips, which isn’t really helping anyone understand why ADHD and clutter often go hand-in-hand.
Instead, in this article, I'm keen to walk you through what the research actually shows, because the findings suggest there's a lot more nuance to this question than you might expect. We’ll also explore what you can do to start changing things in your own home (whether you have a diagnosis or not).
But first, hello and welcome! I'm Dr Bea Bobbin, and I’m a Professional Organiser and Certified Decluttering Coach. I help women with ADHD declutter and simplify their homes to make everyday life wayyy easier. I previously spent more than ten years working as a medical doctor, and I also have ADHD myself. I’ll unmask right away as a huge nerd and say that decluttering, home organising, scientific research and neurodivergence are all 100% my jam.
So let’s have a look together now at the data on ADHD and clutter, and how to get help if you can’t seem to get on top of the mess on your own.
Table of Contents
Is clutter a sign of ADHD? Yes, it can be.
Research shows a clear link between ADHD in adults and homes that are more cluttered and harder to keep in order.
But clutter on its own can't tell you whether you have ADHD. Plenty of things can lead to a cluttered home, including other health conditions, a stressful season of life, a new baby, grief, a move, or having more stuff than space. A messy house is one piece of information, and it's a long way from a diagnosis.
If you're wondering whether ADHD might be part of the picture for you, please talk to your GP or another healthcare provider you trust. (Yes, I have a medical degree, but I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone with ADHD.) They can help you work out whether an assessment makes sense for you, and what support might be available through the health system where you live.
Looking for more ideas and insights? Pop over and say hi on Instagram. You'll find simple, kind decluttering tips for busy minds.
What the research says about ADHD and clutter
Most research in this area looks at hoarding, and clutter is usually measured as one part of it. A 2022 study by Morein-Zamir and colleagues is useful because it reports clutter separately, so we can look at clutter on its own.
The researchers compared 88 adults attending an ADHD clinic with a matched group of 90 adults. They measured clutter in two ways: a questionnaire, and the Clutter Image Rating, where people look at nine photos of a living room, kitchen and bedroom (ranging from tidy to very cluttered) and pick the one that looks most like their own home. Adults with ADHD reported more clutter on both.
One finding from this paper really stands out to me: even the people with ADHD who didn't have clinically significant hoarding still rated their homes as more cluttered than the comparison group. Clutter shows up in ADHD well below hoarding level, so you don't need to be anywhere near a hoarding situation for your home to be affected.
Inattention (difficulty focusing and keeping track of things) was linked with clutter in the ADHD group, and people with ADHD also scored lower on a measure of organisation. The authors suggested that difficulties with organisation, planning and working memory may sit underneath the link between ADHD and clutter, which is where executive function comes in.
Another detail that really rings true from this study was that participants didn't bring these difficulties up on their own, but they did acknowledge them when asked.
To me, this just speaks to how many of us are out there struggling with homes that feel oppressively full and cluttered, but we’d never dream of mentioning it to someone else because of the shame and stigma that can be associated with living in a messy home.
Overall, around 20% of the ADHD group had clinically significant hoarding symptoms, compared with about 2% of the comparison group. Most people with ADHD in the study didn't, though many had milder symptoms, and the authors describe these as sitting on a continuum. The study relied on people's own reports of their homes and habits, which is worth keeping in mind, as many people may have under-reported their struggles due to shame or even a lack of insight into how cluttered their own environment actually was.
Other research points the same way. A 2019 study of 801 university students found clutter ratings were more strongly linked to inattention than to hyperactivity or impulsivity. Looking at clutter more broadly, researchers have found a strong link between procrastination and clutter problems across all age groups (Ferrari and Roster, 2018), and that people who tend to be hesitant and indecisive feel the negative effects of clutter more (Patel, Graupmann and Ferrari, 2023).
Clutter or hoarding?
If you've ever worried that your clutter means you're a hoarder, this might help: Hoarding disorder is a specific mental health condition, where letting go of things causes real distress and possessions build up to the point where parts of the home can't be used for what they're meant for.
Clutter is far more common, and most people with a cluttered home don't have hoarding disorder.
CHADD has a good explainer on the difference between hoarding and clutter, which I’d encourage you to check out if this is a worry for you or someone you love.
As the Morein-Zamir study shows, clutter can cause real problems for people with ADHD long before anything gets close to hoarding level, and in my experience, the earlier we can intervene to turn things around, the easier it is for many ADHD’ers to maintain a tidier home in the long run.
How executive functioning challenges can show up as clutter at home
Executive functions are the mental skills that help us plan, start and follow through on tasks that have a goal. Russell Barkley and Kevin Murphy define executive function as "the organization and maintenance of behavior and problem-solving toward goals (across time)".
ADHD affects these skills, and research shows adults with ADHD often find everyday tasks harder as a result (Barkley and Murphy, 2011; Roselló et al., 2020). Keeping a home in order is one of those tasks, but it asks a lot of your executive functions every single day, so it’s no wonder many ADHD’ers struggle.
Here are some of the executive functions listed in Peg Dawson and Richard Guare’s brilliant book The Smart But Scattered Guide to Success, with examples of how they can show up at home (you might recognise yourself in some of these; I know I do!):
Planning and prioritising: Mapping out the steps to reach a goal and deciding what matters most. At home, it might look like walking into a cluttered room, having no idea where to start, and walking back out again. Or starting with the hardest thing in the room, like a box of sentimental items, instead of the easy wins like rubbish.
Working memory: Holding information in your head while you're doing something else, and drawing on past experience to guide what you do next. It's why something you put down "just for a second" is still sitting there three weeks later, why the donation box has been living in the boot of your car since autumn, or why you forgot you turned the sprinkler on in the front garden and left it running all night (or is that just me?)
Task initiation: Getting started on something without putting it off. You can know exactly what needs doing and still not be able to make yourself start. The clean washing on the bedroom chair is a classic (definitely not me with a mountain of clean washing piled on the bed for most of my adult life…)
Sustained attention: Keeping your focus on a task even when you're distracted, tired or bored. You start clearing the kitchen bench, find an old photo, take it to the hallway cupboard, and twenty minutes later you're sorting a drawer in the spare room. By the end of the day there's a trail of half-finished jobs through the house.
Organisation: Setting up and maintainting systems for your things and information. When things don't have a consistent home, they end up wherever they were last used, and you buy a third pair of scissors or another phone charger because you can't find the ones you already own. Lots of people with ADHD also leave things out on purpose as visual reminders, because out of sight can mean out of mind, but when everything gets left out, you can’t see the wood for all the bloody trees.
Time management: Working out how much time you have, how to use it and how to stay within limits. Decluttering the garage gets pencilled in as a quick Saturday job and turns into an overwhelming weekend, or it feels so big that it never seems worth starting. The return window on the shoes that didn't fit closes before they make it back to the shop. (My poor neurotypical husband, bless his cotton socks, despairs over my abysmal time management, but thankfully has the patience of a saint and the self-restraint to rarely complain.)
Goal-directed persistence: Following a goal through to the end without getting pulled off course. Decluttering projects get started with plenty of energy and abandoned halfway. Craft supplies get bought for projects that never quite get finished (calling myself out here as a prime offender… my husband’s jumper is still waiting for me to finish the second sleeve almost two years later.)
Stress tolerance. This is coping with stress, uncertainty and change. When life gets hard (work deadlines, illness, a new baby, a move) the house is often the first thing to slide. Then the clutter adds its own stress, and around it goes.
Seeing yourself in some of these examples doesn't mean you have ADHD. Everyone has stronger and weaker spots across these skills, and lots of things can affect them. But looking at the executive functions in this way can help explain why keeping on top of your home feels so much harder than it seems like it should.
Other conditions linked to clutter and a disordered home
ADHD isn't the only condition linked with clutter. Difficulty keeping a home in order also shows up alongside a range of other neurological, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. Most of this research looks at hoarding rather than everyday clutter, but it's useful context.
Depression
Depression is one of the more common. In older adults, studies have found depression alongside hoarding in somewhere between 14 and 54% of cases, and hoarding later in life has been linked with difficulties in memory, attention and executive function (International Psychogeriatrics review). The Morein-Zamir team also found depression and anxiety predicted hoarding in their community sample.
Parkinson’s Disease
Research from UCL found excessive hoarding was more common in people with Parkinson's, particularly those with other impulse control behaviours, and a separate study found hoarding was more common in older people with Parkinson's than in a comparison group. Parkinson's UK notes these behaviours can sometimes be a side effect of Parkinson's medications.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
OCD has a well-established link; in fact, hoarding was previously classified as a sub-type of OCD. A 2009 review found hoarding was most commonly seen in OCD, with 18 to 42% of people with OCD reporting hoarding and saving compulsions, and 10 to 15% having compulsive hoarding as their most prominent symptom. (Bear in mind that this review was written before hoarding disorder was recognised as a mental health condition in its own right, so it describes hoarding as part of OCD.)
So what I really want you to understand here is that a cluttered home can have lots of different causes, which is just one more reason to talk it through with your GP rather than settling on an answer by yourself (or getting ChatGPT to diagnose you...)
Want a little extra help to say goodbye to clutter, no matter the cause? Join the Hello Space newsletter for simple, brain-friendly decluttering tips
You don't need an ADHD diagnosis to get help with clutter
You don't need a diagnosis of ADHD, or any other condition, to get help with clutter. Practical strategies will work whether or not you have a diagnosis, and you can start making your home easier to live in now.
That said, a diagnosis can still benefit you, because it can help you understand why these tasks are so hard for you, and help you access a whole load more self-compassion for your beautiful brain brain that’s doing its best in a challenging situation. Touching base with your GP or another trusted health practitioner is always the best place to start the diagnostic process.
In my opinion, having a cluttered home also means nothing about you as a person. It doesn't mean you're lazy, and it doesn't mean you don't care (usually far from it). Having a cluttered home is just evidence that these kinds of repetitive, executive function-taxing tasks are a genuine challenge for you, and that you need and deserve more support than you're probably getting at the moment.
That support can come from friends and family who understand and love you, and who want to help. Or it might come from a skilled professional who truly understands executive function challenges and can help you implement strategies that make a difference straight away (hi, it’s me, your friendly local neurodivergent Professional Organiser!)
That's how I work with my clients. I use a brain-friendly Five Step No-Mess Process, originally created by Dana K White, so we never pull everything out and never leave a space worse than when we started. The first things to go are rubbish and anything that already has a home somewhere else. Sessions are short and regular so they fit around your actual energy levels, and I'll never ask you why something ended up the way it is.
Ready to try the No-Mess Process in one room? Read How to Declutter a Room Without Getting Overwhelmed for easy steps you can start today.
Ready for Help That Fits Your Brain?
If you can see yourself in some of this, you don't need to wait for a diagnosis (or the perfect free weekend) to start making your home easier to live in. The majority of my clients have ADHD (or strongly suspect they have it, but don't have a formal diagnosis), and I've specifically designed my services to be neuroaffirming and play to your brain's natural strengths.
I work with people in their homes around Canberra through my in-home decluttering services, and with people anywhere in the world through my online decluttering services. We start with the easy wins, and your space will always be better off at the end of every session, right from the start. I'd love you to take a look! If this kind of support feels like a good fit for you, I'm ready when you are.
Frequently asked questions (when you’re already asking ‘is clutter a sign of ADHD’?)
-
Many do. Research has found adults with ADHD report more clutter at home than people without ADHD, even when it's nowhere near hoarding level. Not everyone with ADHD has a cluttered home, though, and plenty of people without ADHD do. Challenges with executive functions like inattentiveness, organisation, planning and working memory are thought to be behind it.
-
ADHD is often pictured as hyperactivity, but in adults it can show up in more subtle ways, including at home. Frequently losing things, piles that never get dealt with, half-finished jobs around the house and buying duplicates of things you already own can all be part of it. None of these are diagnostic on their own, though, so if you recognise yourself here, make sure you book a chat with your GP.
-
So, is clutter a sign of ADHD? It can be, but a cluttered home on its own doesn't mean you have it. Clutter is also linked with depression, anxiety, Parkinson's disease, a hard stretch of life, or simply having more stuff than your home has room for. Because ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition (a brain-based condition that you’re born with), symptoms are thought to start appearing in childhood, so if your difficulties only began recently, something else may be going on. Only a qualified health professional can tell you for sure, and your GP is always the best place to start.
-
No! Practical decluttering strategies and professional help can absolutely work for you, whether or not you have a diagnosis. A diagnosis can help you understand why this has been so hard and be kinder to yourself about it, but you can start making your home easier to live in now, either by trying DIY strategies or booking help from a Professional Organiser to get the job done quickly and with minimal stress.
References
Barkley, R.A. and Murphy, K.R. (2011). The nature of executive function (EF) deficits in daily life activities in adults with ADHD and their relationship to performance on EF tests. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 33, 137–158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-011-9217-x
CHADD (2016). Is it clutter or hoarding? How to help. ADHD Weekly, 1 December. https://chadd.org/adhd-weekly/is-it-clutter-or-hoarding-how-to-help/
Dawson, P. and Guare, R. (2016). The Smart but Scattered Guide to Success: How to Use Your Brain's Executive Skills to Keep Up, Stay Calm, and Get Organized at Work and at Home. New York: The Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-4625-1696-4. https://www.guilford.com/books/The-Smart-but-Scattered-Guide-to-Success/Dawson-Guare/9781462516964
Ferrari, J.R. and Roster, C.A. (2018). Delaying disposing: Examining the relationship between procrastination and clutter across generations. Current Psychology, 37(2), 426–431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9679-4
Kajitani, K., Tsuchimoto, R., Nagano, J. and Nakao, T. (2019). Relevance of hoarding behavior and the traits of developmental disorders among university students: a self-reported assessment study. BioPsychoSocial Medicine, 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13030-019-0156-1
Lo Monaco, M.R., Di Stasio, E., Zuccalà, G., Petracca, M., Genovese, D., Fusco, D., Silveri, M.C., Liperoti, R., Ricciardi, D., Cipriani, M.C., Laudisio, A. and Bentivoglio, A.R. (2020). Prevalence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in elderly Parkinson disease patients: a case-control study. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 28(2), 167–175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2019.08.022
Lopez Gaston, R., Kiran-Imran, F., Hassiem, F. and Vaughan, J. (2009). Hoarding behaviour: building up the 'R factor'. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 15(5), 344–353. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.bp.107.005215
Morein-Zamir, S., Kasese, M., Chamberlain, S.R. and Trachtenberg, E. (2022). Elevated levels of hoarding in ADHD: a special link with inattention. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 145, 167–174. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7612156/
O'Sullivan, S.S. (2010). Non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease including the dopamine dysregulation syndrome and impulse control. Doctoral thesis, UCL. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/20244/
Parkinson's UK (2023). Impulsive and compulsive behaviours in Parkinson's (INFOB0046). https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-11/INFOB0046_Impulsive%20and%20compulsive%20behaviours_FINAL_WEB.pdf
Patel, D.A., Graupmann, V. and Ferrari, J.R. (2023). Reactance, decisional procrastination, and hesitation: a latent class analysis of clutter behavior. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 2061. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/3/2061
Roane, D.M., Landers, A., Sherratt, J. and Wilson, G.S. (2017). Hoarding in the elderly: a critical review of the recent literature. International Psychogeriatrics, 29(7), 1077–1084. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1041610216002465
Roselló, B., Berenguer, C., Baixauli, I., Mira, Á., Martinez-Raga, J. and Miranda, A. (2020). Empirical examination of executive functioning, ADHD associated behaviors, and functional impairments in adults with persistent ADHD, remittent ADHD, and without ADHD. BMC Psychiatry, 20, 134. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02542-y
