The Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers (APDO) has issued a warning about the rise of cleaning and tidying trends proliferating on social media.
In recent months, extreme tidying videos have become popular in some corners of the internet, but the APDO is now warning that some have gone too far.
The reason, says the organisation, is because of the high levels of stress these acts have started to trigger. Whilst the phrase ‘Tidy House, Tidy Mind’ has long been used to espouse the benefits of a bit of cleaning, the APDO say too much tidying can be bad for you.
President of the APDO Siân Pelleschi has said that the quest to copy these trends is now causing physical and mental stress.
Speaking to the Guardian, Siân warned: “The constant need to keep up with these decluttering and organisational trends is causing genuine mental and physical stress.
“People are losing the ability, in some cases, to distinguish between a fad and a method that can benefit their life.”
Siân added that some people were experiencing “feelings of hopelessness thanks to all these different organisational trends and methods”.
Tidying has gone viral to such a great extent that on TikTok there is a new wave of videos published under the hashtag Cleantok with videos under this category exceeding as many as 110bn views.
This isn’t the first time a TikTok trend has triggered warnings from the physical world with doctors warning against a new trend called ‘sunburning’ where people deliberately don’t wear sun protection so they can get sunburnt and achieve a sunburnt look.
The trend has been condemned by doctors including Dr Claire Merrifield who said: “This is yet another TikTok trend that is incredibly dangerous and misleading.
“It is completely false that exposing acne to sunlight ‘burns’ spots away. UV rays directly damage the DNA in skin cells, which can lead to mutations that cause skin cancer.
“[I]f you expose the skin without protecting it with SPF, then you automatically increase the risk of skin cancer. Not to mention premature skin ageing.
“One young person dying from a skin cancer that could have been prevented is too many. We have to stop these reckless trends in their tracks.”