Object Lessons from Clutter: Why clutter is essential to our sense of self

During a video call across the country with friends I haven’t physically seen in years now, I asked the question “what’s the least notable or noticeable thing in your room?” I was curious how people evaluate and notice their own personal spaces and also curious what narratives surrounded these seemingly unimportant items. Perhaps these seemingly insignificant things could carry more meaning than at first glance. My friend responded that her desks and clothes clutter was the most unremarkable thing in her space. I was intrigued that her answer was both a single thing entity and a collection of individual items. In this essay, I dive into the meaning of clutter.

What is clutter?

Personal clutter can be many things; an amorphous pile of clothes that you pick from throughout the week or an assortment of desk stationary and other knickknacks. Clutter tends to fill up the space allotted to it from the overflowing pile on top of a chair to table tops and any free space on the floor. It tends to be a collection of the least interesting things that we own; things that do not deserve their own special place on a shelf, yet mysteriously never get fully thrown away. In many ways, clutter represent the larger forces of consumerism that push unnecessary objects into our lives. However, clutter expresses a personal manifestation of meaning and reckoning with the world despite how unremarkable or how shameful we feel about it. Clutter can be both our downfall and also one of the most honest representations of self.

Clutter as a single object

Clutter occupies an interesting duality. Even though it is physically a collection of many individual objects, we often refer to it a single entity. We instantly group tee shirts from organizations, tape you needed one time, books you were gifted, mail that you received, receipts from that week, wires to connect your devices, paper from an assignment, a bag of chips that came with a meal, toiletries that you don’t use that much, into a single identifiable object. Despite the lack of cross over in each object’s purpose, functionality, and origin, we can instantly refer to it as a single thing. Verbally packaging up a wide collection of random objects as “clutter” itself is an instant way to ‘clean up’ the the ‘mess’ and skip over the arduous task of defining each individual item. As a group, clutter is functionless and an inhibitor keeping us from doing what we need to do despite the fact that it is made up of many objects that carry unique useful functionalities. Individual useful items can quickly cross the line into a state of uselessness upon entering the clutter despite maintaining the exact same physical and operational integrity. While an object can retain its function, its proximity and lack of connection to the things obscures its original function.

Clutter has agency

Clutter also takes on its own agency despite its lack of unifying categorization and function. We often notice or remark on our “pile” that seems to grow out of control and take over our rooms. We say that it’s “getting out of hand” when referring to the various things in our spaces. Clutter’s agency is so powerful that every now and then we need an intervention to deal with it; a “cleaning day.” We tell ourselves that we finally need to address the clutter when we notice it growing. We remove ourselves from the natural growth of clutter perhaps because we wish to distance ourselves from playing a direct role in its growth, but also because it is unnoticeable. Clutter documents our micro actions and decisions such as deciding not to wear a jacket and leaving it out. These micro actions are rarely memorable despite the fact that we make a multitude of these actions every day. We also don’t tend to define ourselves by such inconsequential actions. Yet clutter carries a self expression through its documentation of these tiny actions.

Clutter Free Culture

An online search of “clutter” immediately yields pages of articles, blogs, and videos on “How to declutter your space”, “5 reasons why tidying your room can change your life,” and “The Psychology of Clutter.” The ‘clutter free’ movement has plenty of steam, spearheaded by organizational consultants like Marie Kondo with her 4 best selling books and other experts, interior designers, and influencers. Furthermore, the vast array of secondary marketplaces and services from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Decluttr, and Got Junk show the economic presence of clutter removal. In addition to aesthetic elements, many equate clutter with an individual’s state of mind and health; a clean space allows a clean mind. This appealing narrative addresses many of common fears of losing control of one’s life.

Psychology of Decluttering

Beyond the surface level memes of decluttering and aesthetics of clean spaces, there lies a deeper association that clutter plays with self. The act of decluttering forces one to reckon with impressively difficult personal questions of meaning, value, guilt, and grief. While clutter manifests itself in physical things, it embeds a series of decisions that we do not wish to encounter. Clutter as an object is a buffer that grows because it is the path of least resistance: it allows us to skip on-the-spot decisions such as deciding to let go of something because we paid for it, because it was a gift, or because there was a dear memory associated with it. Elizabeth Robinson, a psychologist in Denver, says “it can be an obsessive disorder in which the person is immobilized in terms of action. I think there is a great fear in making a decision that could be wrong, of feeling something like regret or loss or guilt about getting rid of things.” In this way, clutter is comfort from these difficult emotions and decisions.

Clutter as Self

While clutter is sweepingly defined as something bad or shameful, it holds utility as a tool of therapy or reckoning. Through clutter, one can dive deep into one’s meanings of value, memory, and things. The spectacle of personal clutter is untranslatable; one cannot quickly and easily explain the path that lead to all these disparate objects took to land under one roof. Each object’s meaning does not exist without the person and all their associations with it. Only the owner knows the combination of these unique journey’s to end up at single destination. Clutter is our big collection of little meanings.

In comedian Ali Wong’s standup “Baby Cobra,” she jokes about generational trauma and hoarding:

I have a hoarding problem, which I’m hoping is the center of all of my other problems…I have a hoarding problem because my mom is from a third world country and she taught me that you can never throw away anything, because you never know when a dictator’s gonna overtake the country and snatch all your wealth. So, you better hold onto that retainer from the third grade, ’cause it might come in handy as a shovel when you’re busy stuffing gold up your butt and running away from the Communists.

Here, Wong captures the connects between clutter, traumatic pasts, and personal associates that lead to us holding on to more things than we need. Wong also shows how individual pieces can be associated with greater world events such as immigration and the Chinese Revolution. Individual items can be delicate connections between us and distant times and places. However, Wong later describes an argument with her mother over a TI-84 calculator manual, showing how our personal clutter associations do not translate easily to others. Even through direct conversation, it can be difficult to decipher the intricate reasons that a person has retained something. All these little associations of meaning, history, and value are dependent on the person. In “Souvenir,” by Rolf Potts, the author describes going through the belongs left behind from his deceased relative Lynda:

Looking at those items, I was struck by how much of what we collect in life ultimately becomes depleted of meaning: without any sense for the memories or desires that led Lynda to to save these keepsakes, they felt like a sorrowful menagerie of lost objects. I ended up taking a small alabaster elephant, which I now keep perched on a coffee table in my living room (108)

Since we often place importance on clutter, we do not bother to relay our personal associations to it. In this way, our clutter is non-translatable despite the fact that these object can carry immense notions of self and identity. Sociologist Ning Wang describes the collection of things as “existential authenticity,” a sense that the object reflects a more genuine sense of selfhood in the person who acquired it. (94)

Clutter as personal agency

There is no shortage of aspirational photos of immaculate spaces and picture perfect layouts circulating the web. Part of the excitement of checking into a hotel room is being impressed by how clean it is, matching perfectly with our desire to take a vacation in the first place; to get away from our lives for a bit. However, that hotel room never really feels like it belongs to you. While, clutter might be seen as an impulsive escapism from reality, cleanliness and clutter free spaces detach us from those little associates that existential authenticity. The novelty of vacation and the perfect hotel room fade and eventually a longing to return from vacation inevitably returns. Clutter is a way of exercising our personal agency and ownership. Rolf Potts notes our need to collect things even as children:

Nobody sits down and tells us to collect objects when we’re young; it’s just something we do, as a way of familiarizing ourselves with the world, its possibilities, and our place in it… “The behavior of children as young as toddlers shows that possessions are not just utilitarian devices,” notes scholar Stacey Menzel Baker. “In general, possessions provide the child with an emerging sense of control and self-effectance over his or her environment.” As children grow older, the keepsakes they collect don’t just give them a feeling of stability; they help create and interpret a sense of self. Even as adults, the private mythologies we attach to souvenirs are a way of mythologizing our own lives. Like Proustian Madelines, these objects invoke a personalized sense of the past self — a universe of “lost time” — that can be felt in the present moment (Potts 105)

Living in immaculate settings is unsustainable as we are unable to fully imprint our self onto our spaces and understand ourselves. As adults, the need for a junk drawer is not only physically utilitarian, but also represents a mental need for a “parking lot,” a place where we can leave things to revisit and ponder, two deeply human characteristics. Often it is these imperfect spaces that separate our homes from hotels. A junk drawer is required to make a home your home.

Closing

Clutter commonly holds negative associations. The inevitable return to a messy cluttered state could be seen as a relapse towards a poorer state of mind and health. Yet, the need to collect things remains as a universal way to imprint onto our spaces and represent our selves. The comfort of clutter is not only an avoidance of difficult decisions, but the building blocks of self narratives and honest personal representations despite their seeming lack of utility and unification. Rolf Potts again writes:

Most of these objects are unremarkable in and of themselves (and were even less remarkable in their original contexts); what gives them significance is the fact that they’ve ended up here together, in what amounts to a kind of collage-autobiography. Everyone who collects souvenirs ends up creating these object-narratives, which resonate with private meanings no written autobiography could ever achieve. (Potts 104)

Ali Wong Baby Cobra: https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/09/19/ali-wong-baby-cobra-2016-full-transcript/

Souvenir by Rolf Potts: https://rolfpotts.com/books/souvenir/

Psychology of clutter: https://www.denverpost.com/2008/01/23/the-psychology-of-clutter/

5 Reason Why Tidying Up Can Change Your Life: https://www.lifehack.org/350760/5-reasons-why-tidying-your-room-can-change-your-life