I’m standing in the laundry room, facing my so-called crafting room, but I can’t enter. The area next to the door is heaped and overflowing with stuff—bags of my partner’s off-season clothes and shoes, boxes of old files and unopened junk mail, a bin full of old cassettes and the arm rests we removed from that old office chair…

When we moved into our house a year ago, this is where we decided to leave the disorganized heap we were too tired to sort. We periodically shuffle through a few boxes in hopes of finding “lost” items or to remind ourselves what’s in here, discussing when we’re going to go through it all but instead adding another empty box or roll of gift wrap. Our temporary junk corner has become monument to clutter.

Depending on who’s looking, the display might be the product of consumerism or the effects of excessive thrift. Perhaps paradoxically, the answer could be both. A few years ago, when I finally realized how out-of-control my debts were, I made a genuine effort to stop shopping for pleasure. This doesn’t mean I don’t get unexpectedly wild in Target now and again, but I no longer charge the designer shoes I can’t afford or purchase big ticket items without leaving the store or website and giving it some serious thought. I’ve broken the desire I used to feel for everything to be new and better, but this only eliminated part of the clutter problem.

When you know you won’t be discarding the old and buying a replacement anytime soon, thrift can easily turn you into a pack-rat. Now I’m not a compulsive hoarder who keeps every piece of clothing or used tissue that passes through my hands—I weed through my closet for charity regularly and can still walk safely through (most of) my home. But in analyzing why I feel the need to save every magazine, birthday card, glass jar, and used padded envelope, I’ve realized that there’s more to it. In part, my chosen roles require these collections.

First, I’m a writer of non-fiction. Being the self-appointed family historian and documentarian for my own life, I’m naturally concerned about factuality. Each card, photo, or journal may lead to a discovery down the road, confirming or denying the validity of a claim and adding to the puzzle of our collective existence. Consider, too, my tendency toward sentimentality and ticket stubs and toys from my childhood go from garbage to memory joggers.

Secondly, as a crafter I see beauty in things that others discard. I recycle mustard jars into wire lanterns, turn scratched vinyl records into bowls and clocks, marbles into jewelry, and old magazines into collage. I don’t collect artifacts to sit on a shelf or in a box, but to eventually become art. The adage about one person’s junk being another’s treasure may have been written about an ancestor of mine. However, my partner would remind me, the problem with buying three wooden chairs at a yard sale for a buck each is that you have to store them somewhere until you get that flash of creative genius that tells you how to transform them. (Procrastination is a topic for a different column…)

Does this sound like rationalization? I’m not saying my jammed up junk corner is justified. To a certain degree, we’re either disorganized, lazy, or we own too much stuff. Maybe all of the above. However, the biggest problem isn’t the physical clutter; according to Zen teaching, it’s the mental clutter that results. Some forms of Feng Shui even correlate the areas where clutter accumulates in our homes to specific areas within our lives. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the mess in question above lies in our Wealth sector…

This is a topic I’ll revisit periodically here, but for now I’m curious—what are the ways in which you’ve reduced the amount of clutter and/or possessions in your living space? Have you found a trick to maintaining the balance between collection, thrift, and mess?

Taryn Chase has some sorting to do.

Resources

Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston
It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys by Marilyn Paul
Moving On: Creating Your House of Belonging with Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach