Spaced repetition and cleaning one's room

I feel like there is a connection between spaced repetition and cleaning one's room.

What tends to happen for me in my physical surroundings is that I might put a book or scratch paper on my table because I am actively using it, but then at some point I sort of stop using it because I start working on a new thing. At that point the first book/paper becomes a "maybe" and I still want to keep it on my desk because I might come back to it soon (but I often don't).

I feel like when I make clutter in my surroundings, like the desk I am working on, I often want to keep some of that clutter, because I feel like I am still using a particular book or scratch paper or whatever. So the error isn't so much laziness on my part (though some clutter like dirty dishes are definitely just pure laziness), but also an epistemic error I am making about the relevance of certain things (in particular when I will next need to use a particular thing). So this is where the connection with spaced repetition becomes more apparent -- if there was some spaced way to prompt me/auto-clean the things I don't use, that seems like a more "soft", "natural", "humane" way to deal with clutter in a physical environment.

See also

• Spaced repetition as soft alarm clock