Keep Calm and Clutter On

"Clutter is a grand parade that follows us all our days from a playpen of toys...to the places we call home." A quote from the book; "A perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life" by Mary Randolph Carter.

I have admitted to being polar opposites from my one sister, the interior designer. She is unbelievably talented in design, color and organization. My other sister and I have the great quality of being able to function in mess, hence not feeling the need to have a home for everything. But what it does do to us when it gets really bad is that we freeze up and can't function at all. That forces us to put things away and begin the creative process all over again. I found this book over the weekend and thought it was very enlightening. I have just begun to read it. I wanted to share a few things I've read so far.

"Though there seems to be no research on the tidy gene, there is an interesting study about what offices and bedrooms reveal about our personalities. Undertaken at the University of Texas, Austin, by psychologist Samuel Gosling, PhD, and his colleagues, and published in the March 2002 issue of APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study looked for physical cues in the environment, such as tidiness, organization, and decorating style. People with distinctive decorating styles got high marks for openness; those who were neat for conscientiousness."

Now, clutter is life lived out in the open, things not hidden, shared. However, even in this book, the clutter is not a dirty mess. It's clutter with intention. It's organized mess. Creative clutter. And as I read or skim through this book, I'm still seeing tips on how to keep it within limits, i.e., don't let the overflow from one project run into another: Finish one, clean it up and put away. Try to clean up at the end of the day, take one step at a time, create a schedule, start with what you hate most.... all these are tips that my sister lives by. Me? I only apply when necessary.