My mother had a theory that maniacally neat people were those who didn’t actually own anything. They could be neat because they had nothing to tidy up. If you check out the headlines on neatness, you’ll notice that neatness is purely local-specific and personal most of the time. You can also be diagnosed with OCD if you’re lucky.
Neatness even has a spiritual dimension. Many philosophies, notably Feng Shui, that brave attempt to join the material world to the spiritual world, emphasize this. The nature of anything you include in your space affects your whole being. Mess is therefore wrong.
Whatever’s in your space also coincidentally affects your ability not to go stir-crazy with the obstacle course most living spaces inevitably become. Odd, isn’t it?
The headlines about clutter are pretty similar. The only real difference is that they presume the existence of clutter. It’s your fault of course, but some verbose altruist is here to help with impractical suggestions from every warehouse catalogue in the last 80 years.
You can also be patronized for your clutter. “A messy place is a creative place, busy place or happy place”, etc. Never mind reality; you’ve become that invaluable person in media, someone to disapprove of in words and pictures. You’re the problem, not that nice reality we hear so much about.
Every so often the relationship between available space and mess is acknowledged. A family of eight living in an overpriced run-down linen closet may be a bit messy for some reason other than laziness.
There are tips. Lots of tips. Revelations, in fact. Did you know that 10 cubic metres of essentials don’t fit into one cubic metre of shelving? Did you know that for a few thousand bucks you can get the fridge space you actually need? How could you face another day without knowing that?
If, by chance, you also happen to have a life to live involving things you need, that’s your fault. How self-indulgent can you get? You monster, you.
One thing you will never hear about in the discussion about neatness and clutter is abysmally lousy El Cheapo interior design. The overpriced cupboards under construction don’t have storage space. Many of the impossible cardboard buildings from the 1970s and 1980s diligently managed to avoid having any storage space, too.
These place were designed for unfussy dolls, not people. Any possibility of organization depended on your ability to find wardrobes, drawers, etc. and fit them into whatever space was available. Result, mess.
The “modern” antidote to space management is usually defined by those big, flimsy, expensive wardrobes with heavy mirrors that fall apart when you look at them. That’s probably what the mirrors are for. They’re a wholesome mix of guilt and impracticality.
The thing that unimpressed me most while wincing my way through sourcing links for this article was the assumption of normality. Neatness and mess are considered normal. Both are considered health hazards.
…So how do you fix this problem? The short answer is built-in storage. Any amount of it will do, preferably more than you actually need. Good built-in storage is solid, with solid frames and proper supports for whatever you’re storing.
You can put this storage in anywhere you have a decent amount of wall space. You’re creating cubic space where you otherwise just have empty, useless space.
This sort of storage becomes a default for anything you really don’t have a natural place to put. You can store the clutter. You can store relatives and those hordes of meandering uninvited billionaires if necessary. It really does look neat, and (don’t tell anyone) is actually sort of organized.
This is how to make the clutter look neat, and the neatness bearable. There’s some sort of philosophical point in there somewhere, but I can’t really get keen on looking for it. Sound familiar?
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
