Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed by stuff, I take solace in this thought: that nature is almost never neat. Just a look off our village bridge reminds me of that.
Then of course, there are families and kids...constant cleanuup.
We've begun shifting the pileup of clutter that followed our move. We figure if we're lucky, we'll be done by icebreak next spring.
Even the language here has clutter in it. American English and Cajun French. But it seems to thrive on the crazy mix. And no one tries to make it pure.
A good rule about clutter? Forgive yourself for allowing some messes.
Books, books, and more books. Ah, but don't ask a writer to throw a book out. Somewhere in this pile is the Holy Grail. I mean one of my books on it. But I think I must have given it away, just before I really needed it.
Another of my books, which of course I also can't find — I think it's in the psychology section — is about Clutter. And its author, Katherine Gibson, has some pretty sensible things to say about it. Including, anything that inspires you is never Clutter.
Trouble is, if you're at all artistic, you never know what the next thing to inspire you will be. Random associations are always creative.
A mountain of ice. A shipful of stuff. I've got a whole bunch of books on that subject, too! And an actual chunk of Titanic's coal. First-class clutter, from the ocean floor. Even dirt can have meaning.
Which brings me to my real quibble with the Clutterbusters. If you try too virtuously and aggressively to clean things up, I think you're risking harm to soul. Which always prefers things to be murky, messy and indirect. As if the path through your life were ever a clean straight line.
There's joy in that there clutter.
Katherine Gibson says the key is to resist keeping everything. Just enough to retain the flavour of what's special. So I think we'll settle for a whiff of soul, and maybe just two or three of those bears.
--Tim Wilson
Katherine Gibson's book is titled "Unclutter Your Life: Transforming Your Physical, Mental and Emotional Space" (Beyond Words Publishing, 2004).
For more info, visit ClutterBook.com.