Oh my gosh, just declutter yourself

Phil is recapping Top Design for Television Without Pity. Last night's episode had the aspiring designers working on one family's garage which, in addition to holding a Delaware-sized SUV, was also expected to house distinct working areas plus the mountain of crap the family had accumulated.

The guy who got booted last night effectively pinned the bulls-eye on his chest when his first words were something along the lines of, "Oh my God, just declutter already!"

This is a popular sentiment on TV. It's a mantra over on Clean House, a show with a fabulous fantasy set-up -- witty, personable and talented people will clean your house, throw you a garage sale, put you up in a schmancy hotel, then redecorate your house. In the new A&E show Clean This House, two slobby families compete to see which can better declutter and sanitize their filthy, overstuffed abode.

Clean This House is not nearly so fabulous as Clean House. First, Clean This House made a bad impression in the first episode, when the competing families dealt with their surplus stuff by merrily chucking it all in a dumpster. "Holy cats, call the Salvation Army!" I shrieked. "A lot of that's re-usable by someone else!" By contrast, Clean House keeps any stuff-chucking tastefully offscreen and allows viewers to wallow in the fantasy that all the old stuff hauled out of the house will be re-used later. It seems less wasteful.

Second, there is the matter of the hostesses. Clean This House's Molly Pesce looks like she disapproves of slobby families and she dispenses lots of brisk, bootstrapping advice right before she checks the tops of doorjambs for dust. By contrast, Clean House's Niecy Nash is more of a commiserator, so when she tells someone "it's time to take your big-girl pills," you're like, "You're right, Niecy! We have reached that point in the quest where indeed, the big-girl pill must be swallowed."

Really, your reaction to the shows will come down to why you're watching. Clean House is clearly a rescue fantasy for messy householders, while Clean This House advocates the Horatio Alger-like position of cleaning up your own messes lest you be judged harshly by others. Since I am the type of person who is delighted by the idea of sparkly, fabulous people dispensing acts of decluttering mercy over the greater Los Angeles area, I am a loyal Clean House viewer. I watch Clean This House when I need to be goaded into dusting my own doorjambs.

ANYWAY. The declutter meme, it is all over the television. It is also resurfacing in people's brains, as now is prime spring-cleaning time. And it is in today's NYT, where the article "Hooked on Storage" made me suck in my breath and whisper, "Oh my God, declutter already."

There were a few prevailing sentiments in the piece that caught my attention, chiefly this one:

For many, the appeal of renting storage space is the way it seems to represent the pursuit of simplicity: by transferring excess stuff to a storage unit, people can free their basements, attics and living rooms from years’ worth of clutter, and create the impression of a pared-down life.

And the piece also explored how, for many people, renting a storage unit simply gave them license to accumulate more crap. There was one subject who had filled up two units (she had 400 dolls, 46 boxes of Christmas decorations and 6 artificial Christmas trees) then filled up her house again and so is renting a third unit.

I find clutter and declutter stories so fascinating because the material mess is the secondary narrative. What drives the narrative is emotional -- it's the value these people are assigning to objects above and beyond their economic worth, the secret stories of their selves. Decluttering is often positioned as a victory -- the forces of order and discipline and reason prevail! But it's also about grappling with defeat: realizing you're not always a smart shopper, recognizing the moments when your fantasies outweighed reality, facing the objects that remind you of all the ways in which you fell short. When our movers absconded with a rubbermaid container I had labeled "projects, unfinished," I was secretly relieved that they had done the real dirty work.

In an age where the links between our values and our consumption are so matter-of-factly assumed (see also: the Mar 6, 07, Consumerist post, "Wal-Mart PowerPoint on '3-Customer' Plan," which reprints the presentation covered in this earlier Rage Diaries post) (also, thanks, Siobhan, for the heads-up!), it seems like maybe I shouldn't be saying, "Holy cats, declutter already!" so much as I should be asking, "How did you get here to begin with? And what can we do to make sure you're not coming here again?"

Comments

[Mary-Lynn]

But but but... you're missing the best one of them all - TLC's Clean Sweep. Oh, how I adore it. It has less sort of faux-drama than Clean House (will the make enough at the garage sale or... not....) and seems sort of, almost, sensible. Though when Peter puts his hand on a homeowner's shoulder and says in a low voice "But why, why do you feel the need to keep all your high school football gear?" and teases out of him that the homeowner is afraid of growing old and his new responsibilities as head of the household you feel sort of sleezy. Overall, I just find Clean Sweep to be superior and more fun to watch (though equally as predicable as Clean House).

I'm a sucker for hoarders. Probably because I also like to acquire stuff and were it not also for my passions for weeding and organizing I would be in the same shoes as some of these people. Also? Animal hoarders! ADORE!

[Alissa]

I too am fascinated by all of this because I am the exact opposite of the people typically depicted in these stories and shows -- I am a purger. I'm always poking through closets and drawers thinking, "What can I get rid of?" I'm not hyperorganized, so I don't think it's about perfection or control; I'm generally a big ol' sap, so it's not that I don't assign sentimentality to any of my belongings. Can it just be that I value the calm serenity of a spare living space more than the seldom-used items that would otherwise be filling it?

[Lisa]

Alissa, I'm also a purger (hire me for all your premarital garage-sale and posthumous house-cleaning needs!) which is another reason I am riveted by people who love to collect and store stuff they don't use. I do know that what you or I might consider a calm, serene space where you have room to breathe ... is what other people consider a sterile nightmare. (And I suspect that even our living space, with its many bookcases, would be considered Too Much by some folks.)

MaryLynn, I just can't get behind TLC's Clean Sweep. Perhaps it's because that show is sensible, and I am more entertained by the drah-mah of Clean House and the didactic disapproval in Clean This House. Sensible ruins the reality-trainwreck fun!

[Brianne]

I'm definitely on the Clean House bandwagon. If only my mother lived in their radius. I think she's a packrat because she was a military brat and wasn't allowed to keep many posessions as a child. I love watching how crazy people are and how grateful they are in the end. And Niecy is so charming, I almost didn't recognize her from Reno 911!

[Jennifer]

I wish my mother would go on any one of these shows. The woman won't throw out a single piece of paper, and pays something like $200/month for a storage unit she's had since maybe the 80's or 90's, which she won't go through. ARGH.

[Kerry]

As a former accumulator, I freely admit that it's all tied to issues of emotional security. I wasn't getting what I needed from people, so I hoarded food and collected objects. Also looking back with new information about a strong family history of bipolar disorder, a lot of the collecting in retrospect looks a bit like mania. Combine this with being so visually oriented that if I can't see it it doesn't exist, and boom! disorganized clutter craziness.

[drunken monkey]

I like stuff. It's probably not fair to say that I am a minimalist; I like to have lots of things around me. It drives my mother crazy, though I suppose less so now than when I lived at home. When I was in high school I had my bedroom walls papered with pages I ripped from magazines -- pictures of hot rock stars, ads I liked, etc. -- and all the visual stimuli drove her nuts whenever she was in there.

But with 550 square feet, one can only have so much clutter. I would love for somebody to come in and be a bit mean about what I need to get rid of, then rig me up with shelves for the rest.

[laura]

Have you ever read any of the FlyLady's stuff? She comes at things from a very different angle, and pretty much preaces that hoarding *looks*like loving yourself when it is, in fact, the opposite.

Just google Flylady...

anyway, things happen so fast nowadays, and everything feels so disposable. I like having things that are, in fact, irreplaceable. It is hard to determine what these things are sometimes...

[Lisa]

Who hasn't heard of FlyLady?

I am impressed by the brand name Marla Cilley's built for herself. I consider her one of the pioneers of parlaying Internet community into a profitable business franchise. And when I was trying to line her up for a piece I was writing, I was impressed by her focus and accessibility.

[Cynthia Friedlob]

Your comment below is particularly significant:

"I find clutter and declutter stories so fascinating because the material mess is the secondary narrative. What drives the narrative is emotional -- it's the value these people are assigning to objects above and beyond their economic worth, the secret stories of their selves . . . it seems like maybe I shouldn't be saying, 'Holy cats, declutter already!' so much as I should be asking, 'How did you get here to begin with? And what can we do to make sure you're not coming here again?'"

Most of us fall somewhere in the tolerable middle on the "clutter curve," not flawlessly organized but not so overwhelmed that we need the "Clean House" crew to save us. And, yes, we all hang onto things for emotional rather than practical reasons. But there are some people who have crossed into an area far beyond where the very best organizing-and-redecorating shows can be of help. Those people are clinically classified as hoarders. I'm not talking about someone who just likes to collect a lot of stuff; I'm talking about someone who is paralyzed when faced with the decision to toss out a ten-year-old newspaper or the remains of a shattered dinner plate. If you are one of them or know someone who is, there is help available at www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding -- that's the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation website which has a section devoted to the problem of hoarding. It's worth a look to help get a little perspective, especially if you're frustrated by a friend or relative who just can't seem to let go of anything.