Don’t call it a ‘mess.’ ‘Clustering’ is gaining traction on social media for its revamping of nostalgia.

The followers of the Girls Who Cluster Instagram account see surfaces differently. To them, empty tabletops and refrigerator doors are “cluster spaces,” or an open canvas for them to decorate with their most treasured items. They’re the type of person who, if they buy a beautiful perfume bottle or pick up a matchbook at their favorite restaurant, they’re going to put it on display.

Avery-Claire Nugent, 24, is the mastermind behind the account and adopted the word “cluster” several years ago to succinctly describe scenes throughout her room that showcased her personality. Jewelry strewn on her dresser, an empty Altoids tin holding a loose dollar bill and stray button, a Post-It note left by a friend who stayed with her — these were all her clusters.

“I’ve always been someone that’s very much affected by my space,” Nugent told Yahoo News.

In February 2023, Nugent decided to make an Instagram account dedicated to people’s clusters. She loved examining cluster photos, almost like an I Spy, to learn about a person from their space.

Within a year, her audience grew to over 11,000 followers as she continued to build the account with user-submitted cluster photos during off-hours from her full-time job in the fashion industry. It started to build a community, with commenters pointing out their favorite features of strangers’ clusters, writing things like, “I feel so seen,” “this is everything,” and “can I live there?”

How clustering is repackaging nostalgia

Caner Daywood, the director of content strategy at creator agency Buttermilk, told Yahoo News that putting treasured items on display isn’t necessarily new. However, what makes it significant is that it has redesigned nostalgia for the digital age — a time when photos on Snapchat are temporary and Instagram grid placements are coveted for special occasions only.

“It’s almost like re-vamping, repackaging nostalgic elements for today’s environment,” he said. “Clustering is like what I grew up with [during] the whole Spice Girls era, but on acid [and] to a different degree because it’s modernized.”

Minimalist trends like “clean aesthetic” and “sad beige” have been dominating social media over the past year-plus. leading to fatigue from some internet users due to the oversaturation of “girlhood trends” and “sterile”-looking home interiors.

“There’s a collective consciousness that we’re all a bit done with that clean aesthetic,” Daywood said out. “I think people [now] have a receptiveness to sort of unhinged, chaotic creativeness that we’re all pining to see.”

Daywood isn’t surprised to see something as visually stimulating as clustering taking off, especially with young internet users, and mentioned the concept of “attention-layering,” which, similar to the proven popularity of overstimulation memes, is what captures and holds interest now.

“Attention-layering is definitely something we’re seeing a lot more in terms of how people consume content,” Daywood explained. “And I think relatability is a huge piece [of it].”

Reagan Strader, 23, was one of the first followers and collaborated with Nugent on some branding for the account. Strader works in the interior design industry and had the account recommended to her by Instagram. She defined a cluster as “like a portraiture of someone.”

“I felt like it was a very approachable and attainable way to personalize your space,” Strader told Yahoo News. “I just had my friends over to my apartment for the first time, and we went around every little corner and went over all the things I had on display, talking about the joint things we love.”

As Daywood mentioned, nostalgia is a major element of clustering. The account brings followers back to the messy teen bedrooms in early 2000s movies — The Princess Diaries, Bring It On and Freaky Friday to name a few — and a viral photo of director Sofia Coppola's office from 2000. Nugent also argues that a lot of the items people choose to cluster hold some type of deeper meaning for them, which is why clustering is seen as elevated beyond just “messy.”

“I always say it’s kind of like making the movie set of your life with your memories and little items that have told your story and journey,” Strader said. The account, she added, is intended to remind people that “you don’t need the nicest apartment ever to make it the most special space to you.”

Nugent said she didn’t want to monetize Girls Who Cluster or try to incorporate ads because she wanted it to continue showcasing realistic spaces without audiences questioning whether she was trying to sell them something. Instead, she started building gift guides with affiliate links and used the earnings to collaborate with Strader on creating branded stickers and postcards for followers.

“I just want to be able to put every penny I make back into the account so that someone else isn’t building something similar and they have more resources so it could grow bigger than mine.”

Why is clustering finding an audience now?

Another early follower, Sarah Isenberg, 25, described discovering the word “cluster” as a “light-bulb moment.”

“I was like, ‘Oh this is just what I’ve been doing ever since I was little,’” she told Yahoo News. “It feels like sculptural scrapbooking — it’s concert stubs, club wristbands, it’s matchbooks from a bar. All these objects have sentimental memories attached to them.”

Isenberg kept emphasizing the intentionality behind clustering, saying it’s not “just collecting for the sake of collecting” but “memory curating through objects.” It recalls the sentiment behind the Museum of Broken Relationships, a popular traveling exhibit that showcases seemingly mundane objects with the stories of the relationships behind them.

What can be arguably described as a two-dimensional version of clustering is collaging. Collaging, created from the assemblage of different pieces and forms that ultimately create one whole piece, has also been described by some mental health experts as an expression of “experiences as holistic [and] nonlinear.”

It explains why apps like Landing are finding success with young users. Landing is a free community platform predominantly made up of people between 15 and 22 years old, who want to make digital collages.

“Digital collaging allows us to communicate visually (and therefore across linguistic barriers) and taps into our psychological desire as humans to collect, organize and categorize things,” Landing co-founder Miri Buckland told Yahoo News.

“Clustering is about romanticizing, taking the time to collect beautiful things just because and finding beauty in the everyday, like the way your items are organized on your bookshelf or nightstand,” Buckland said. “Collaging on Landing is the same exact thing.”

According to Nugent, clustering won’t be going away anytime soon. And, as she insisted, it’s also an activity that has never gone away.

“I really reject when people call it a trend because this isn’t a trendy form of decor, it’s always been a thing,” she said. “I just put a term to what has always been there.”