The Clutter Stutter
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{This is not our place. Our messes are legendary, but not this bad. Usually. And, no, I’m not making fun of stutters. Just commenting on my fragmented conversation with myself, on the domestic paralysis that grips me sometimes.}
I love our apartment. It is beautiful and unique and ours. But these days it is hidden under a thick layer of clutter. Part of me revels in this rainbow of chaos, in the ubiquitous evidence of vitality and family and life. Part of me loves how lived in our home looks. But part of me thinks the disorganization it is affecting me. Part of me thinks the clutter is more than clutter. That it is a symbol of something, a curious choice, a frenzied mind, a split focus, an alarming void of control.
Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, wrestled with sheets, and had a silent and staccato conversation with myself. I kept interrupting myself. I opened my eyes. In the darkness, I scanned the silhouettes of laundry piles. The tangled necklaces dangling off my nightstand. The lineup of half-finished water bottles. For a few moments, I felt a surge of claustrophobia, of being buried. In stuff. In that moment, I chided myself for letting this happen. For not fulfilling a role I’m culturally and historically meant to fulfill. In that moment, I felt low. I felt that I’d been letting myself down, letting Husband down, letting kids down.
This morning, I woke up and zigzagged through the strewn shoes and damp towels to the bathroom. As I splashed water on my face, I noted the bottle of Nyquil still on the edge of the basin from weeks ago. The topless bottle of my favorite perfume. The piles of bath toys. I looked at myself in the mirror. At the mussed hair and sad eyes, and I said to myself: Something must change. This is no way to live.
And words are just words. But in that moment, they were my words, honestly felt, passionately uttered. These words were empowering, a timely promise. Because we can choose to change. Right? Right? I told Husband of my middle-of-the-night musings, of my frantic conversation with myself, of my clutter stutter. I told him about how I want to get better and cleaner and more domestic and more responsible. I told him that I crave clean lines and empty counters and peace. And sitting there, in between his giggling girls and the trappings of family life, he looked at me and smiled and nodded.
“I’ll be back in a minute!” I proclaimed, grabbed my coffee cup, and disappeared to the dining table. Furiously, I flipped open Laptop and Googled organization, declutter, clean. And, within moments, the answers were there. A lovely list. Bold names. Phone numbers to call. Fees to pay. For a split second, a sublime but fleeting second, I felt invigorated. But this feeling faded and fast.
Something occurred to me. Something sad and true. The answers to questions about clutter and chaos and change, in the mind and in the home and in the life, if they exist, are not hanging out in cyberspace.
Do you live amidst clutter? Do you think clutter is a choice, or something that just happens? Can we ever really change or are these patterns entrenched in who we are? Give me some hope. Pretty please.
Here’s a great book that I am reading. It has totally changed the way we live life at home. It’s been perfect for me. However, I must admit, that string of water bottles is still occasionally seen on my nightstand.
But really, this book has been a godsend for my life at home.
http://www.amazon.com/Momstown-Guide-Getting-All-Stay-At-Home/dp/1401307876
Love the post!
There is so much cyber-clutter out there how can anyone really find anything anyway, except probably tips on how to contribute to the clutter more expertly. If it were not for Google and other SEs, how could anyone ever use the web at all!
Come to think of it, Google does not force order on the web per se, but simply organizes it temporarily for us, making it pallable for a seating session. Really, a good mop and bottle of Windex is usually enough to restore order to my household and just enough to provide enough domestic catharsis; just enough redemption… until the next cleaning service visit.
I think everyone has their threshhold of clutter. I for the most part am fairly clutter-averse. This is in part to growing up with a mom that always had stacks of paper, magazines, mail on the end of my parents’ bed. Whenever I would get into bed with my mom, stuff would fall off the end of the bed, (I nicknamed the “piles” the paper fortress.) So, I throw out junk mail at the mailbox in the lobby, I toss magazines after 2 weeks, and after photographing my kids’ artwork, the bulk of it goes down the chute (after they are asleep, I am a heartless, terrible mother but not stupid!)
Of course, like anyone else, I am attached to certain things I should toss and every so often (usually during a bleak winter weekend), I do a big purge. I think you can break the clutter cycle but it is hard. If it helps, I am happy to be the annoying voice (poster?) in your head asking, do you really need to keep that?!
In my experience cluttering is a form of expressing unwillingness, maybe frustration, being overwhelmed, maybe depressed. Other than that I’ll neatly fold my clothes and sheets, line all my pillows, no matter what time of night. My bed has to be perfectly made, even of I get up at 4, or 5am like today. In a weird way, but still, I think it gives me confidence…or at least a feeling of safety through routine.
Carolyn – Thanks so much for the book suggestion. I will certainly check it out as I need all the help I can get. Ultimately, however, I feel like it isn’t going to be an expert or a book or an approach that morphs me into a clutter-clearer. I think it is going to be a self-induced internal tweak. Maybe this admission, this blog post, is the beginning of that change? A girl can dream, right?
L – “Cyber-clutter” – I love that. And how true. It seems that in this contemporary world, clutter is not limited to our living spaces, but occupies every nook and cranny of our existence, including our cyber-existence. In truth, who these days doesn’t live a life full of cluttered closets and inboxes and minds? I think some combination of having a regular cleaning service and coming to terms with my own domestic denial will get me moving in the right direction. Hope so!
D – I envy your clutter-averse patterns. I wish you could bottle them and share. Interesting how you photograph your kids’ artwork. My babes are still so young, but I imagine those masterpieces begin to stack up. The funny thing is that I do not consider myself a pack rat. I am not very sentimental about things. The clutter does not exist because of undue attachment to objects, but probably because of some combination of laziness, and rebelliousness, and inertia. Who knows.
P.J. – I can definitely relate to the notion that tidiness and order in the home seep into tidiness and order and indeed confidence in the mind. Next time I attack the clutter, maybe I will tell myself that I am not just cleaning stuff, organizing my home, but cleaning my mind, organizing my psyche. Maybe that will help. We will see!