“Surrounded with Junk”: The Role of YouTube Decluttering Videos in the Strive to Simplify Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic

With the rising popularity of decluttering content on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aimed to explore how the decluttering trend manifested in YouTube videos during that period. The first-level analysis utilized YouTube Data Tools (Reider, 2015) for large-scale data extraction, while the second-level analysis was guided by grounded theory methods and conducted on 30 videos between 2019 and 2023. This generated a grounded theory of striving to simplify one’s life in times of insecurity, with the COVID-19 pandemic serving as a catalyst for change. In their efforts to simplify their lives during the pandemic, YouTube content creators followed a classical storyline structure that correlated with the decluttering proces: (i) relationship with material possessions; (ii) COVID-19 as a catalyst of change; (iii) striving for the simplification of life; (iv) decluttering process; and (v) benefits of decluttering.

The relationships between the sense of self and the accumulation of belongings correspond with the previous research done on voluntary simplifiers (Brown and Kasser, 2005; Alexander and Ussher, 2012; Connely, 2020; Lloyd and Pennington, 2020). On the other hand, posted content provided comforting and relationship-building aspect in times of crisis, which has proven to be key for creating parasocial relationships