Beyond Clutter
Your house doesn’t have to look like a neat-and-tidy department store display. Here’s how to be comfortable with the stuff among us
Perhaps you are reading this article curled up on the couch, along side a stack of other newspapers and magazines with articles you intend to read. Or maybe you are at your desk, with a pile of clippings to file for your next project. In any case, you are likely surrounded by clutter. And, even if are one of the few who has tamed the paper tiger, if you breathe, you likely spend a good part of your day cleaning up, asking someone else to clean up or feeling like you ought to clean up.
If that’s the case, you may delighted to hear that there have been a spate of new books and other research that say it’s OK to be messy. Some call it a backlash to the organizing trend of the last few years. Others call it just common sense. Still others think it is a rationalization for not picking up after yourself.
Whatever the rationale, the masses are happy. A study conducted by Office Depot in 2005 found that 53 percent of people work in what was they call “controlled chaos,” claiming their desks are messy, but they know where everything is located.
In “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder – How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place” (Little, Brown and Co., 2007) authors Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman suggest that people suffer guilt over the mess they can’t avoid, which, of course, is a useless waste of psychic energy.
“The messiness of life allows people to be inspired,” says Alison Kaufman founder and president of Space of Mind, a professional organizing firm in Miami.
This doesn’t mean Alison Kaufman espouses leaving dirty socks on the floor or dirty dishes in the sink. “But,” Kaufman says, “many people need a little chaos to be creative.”
Janice Taylor agrees. The author and artist “Our Lady of Weight Loss: Miraculous and Motivational Musings from the Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal” (Studio, 2006) says, “There’s no way I can create without some level of chaos.”
The trick is to know what needs to be kept clean and what can be left a productive mess. Dan Ho, host of “The Dan Ho Show,” which began airing on Discovery Health Channel in January and author of “Rescue from Domestic Perfection” (Bulfinch Press, 2006), is against clutter, but not against mess.
“There’s a difference between not being perfect and being messy. If you understand that it is OK to be messy and you have your priorities down, then you don’t get caught up for a whole day looking for a vase for flowers. You put them in a cute jar,” Ho says. His aim is to help people develop their own sense of style, and he believes perfection is a barrier to style. Perfection (or even the pursuit of it) is boring and generic.
One of the ways Ho advises folks to have style, creativity and aesthetic pleasure in their homes without succumbing to clutter is to re-evaluate some of their “must haves.” Instead of keeping a collection of rolls of wrapping paper that must be stored neatly, he suggests wrapping gifts in newspaper, craft paper from the butcher or printed paper from the florist. “You do not need to have an inventory in your house.”
Plastic organizers for the sock drawer are deceptive. The pressure to roll your underwear and socks in neat little balls that will fit in a drawer organizer is tough to keep up every day. Paring down your collection of socks so that you can clearly seem them in a drawer – without an organizer – is much simpler to maintain. Ho doesn’t believe that interior designer’s rule that electronics must be hidden from plain sight. You like to watch TV? Don’t hide the TV in a huge armoire that creates a new kind of clutter on its own. (Ho’s caveat is, the television should not be larger than the largest chair in the room.)
Alison Kaufman suggests this tip for distinguishing between clutter and acceptable mess. “Clutter is something extra. Sometimes it is the stuff around us that we don’t want to deal with.” Tossing out magazines that won’t be read, vases that are never used and gifts that you never use leaves room to leave out the book your currently reading and the candlesticks you love even if you’re not using them in a fancy place setting.
There’s more than just aesthetic style hanging in the messy balance. “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” (Hyperion, 2006) was written by a rabbi, Irwin Kula, who believes that messiness is part of the complexity that leads to a happy and fulfilled life.
Dr. Carolyn Kaufman of Columbus (Ohio) State Community College has seen such a correlation. She says, “even self-proclaimed ‘slobs’ usually only say that they feel bad that they’re messy because other people give them a hard time.” As a result, she says she’s seen incidence of depression decrease and productivity increase when people let go of the myth that the house and office need to be perfectly put away.
She adds: “Usually people who are messier also understand better that life is messy—things aren’t always going to be exactly the way you want them to be. But that gives you more time for things you might not otherwise have had the time or flexibility to try.”
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