January/February 2005

Clutterers Anonymous

It must be genetic

by Larry Maddry

If there isn’t an organization known as Clutterers Anonymous, there should be.

And I’d like to join. I can imagine standing up at the first meeting, testifying: “Hello ... my name is Larry Maddry and I’m a clutterer. I can’t help myself. The first thing I do in the morning is scatter sections of newspaper from the bathroom to the kitchen. My work desk is so cluttered with books, clippings, faxes, bills, letters and magazines that I can’t find anything.”

I’m not the only clutterer on the planet. There are millions of us. Some even take a perverse pride in it, tossing clothes around their bedrooms onto lamp shades or bureau tops as a way of expressing their unfettered independence.

It seems a foolish way of showing your independence. One of my favorite editors at The Virginian-Pilot once reminded me that “There’s a very thin line between showing your independence and showing your behind.” (But I guess you can do both if you’re tossing your Fruit of the Looms onto a potted plant.)

I take no pride in cluttering. To clutter without guilt, a person should have a fine memory. I have a friend—also a writer—who is in that category.

Several times when visiting his house, I’d ask a question. “I was just reading a fax (or letter) on that subject,” he’d say. Padding in bedroom slippers to his small library, he marched over to a desk piled a foot high with papers and documents. Then, miraculously, his nimble fingers expertly pinched and removed the very paper we’d discussed from the heap—like a blindfolded magician pulling the ace of spades from a deck.

Amazing. But don’t try that at home. At least not at my home. I’d only be able to tell you it was buried under the stack someplace—its location, like the identity of the Unknown Soldier, known only to God.

Is there a gene for cluttering past down from generation to generation? I think so. My grandmother—bless her—was a gentle woman never able to grasp the reins of tidiness for more than a few moments at a time.

Once a month she fussed and fretted. moving furniture around, organizing the papers in her den, boxing clothes for the Salvation Army, even stacking boxes in the attic in orderly piles.

But when visiting with her the next day I found it as cluttered as ever. Amazing.

I imagined her sitting calmly in her bedroom rocking chair, eyes lowered to the book in her hand as the room rearranged itself around her: a book dropping mysteriously from the bookcase shelf to the floor; dresses on closet hangers springing off the rod like ballerinas leaping onto the floor and bed; magazines from a living room stand marching like soldiers into the bedroom before collapsing over and around her footstool.

My friends tell me the secret to overcoming the cluttering gene is to make a habit of throwing away unneeded things. But they never define what “unneeded” means. Something unneeded now may be needed tomorrow.

An old sweater with moth holes is a good example. I have a couple. I don’t throw them away because I may be camping out or doing yard work on a cold winter day when they’d come in handy.

Same with other clothes. Those large ties with bold dots on them may someday come back into fashion. And why toss away my ink-stained khaki pants? I’ll wear then when I paint my deck furniture.

I thought computers were supposed to eliminate paper clutter. When I was a newspaperman, one of the benefits of computers imagined by management was that reporters—who are notorious desk clutterers—would keep neater desks.

Not so. Instead of cluttering the tops of their desks with typewriter copy, they now litter them with computer printouts.

My desk at home which—before retirement—I imagined would be as neatly organized as planes on the deck of an aircraft carrier—is hopelessly crowded with old newspaper clippings, computer printouts, a pair of scissors, a magnifying glass, rolls of stamps and name stickers, magazines, and things I come upon that surprise even me.

Last week I found an old sock, used to dust the desk last summer, and a packet of cucumber seeds from the Mt. Olive Pickle Company.

Like I said, it’s probably a trait you’re born with. I fell into a gene pool with debris in the water.