Paring Down to the Kernel of Clutter

I'm proud to announce that my house is 100% uncluttered, which took some doing. First, I had to overcome my phobia of The Boxes I've been shlepping from home to home since college (they've been unboxed; every one of them!), and, second, I couldn't just create new boxes to shovel loose items into, because I'm moving out of the country and can't take that junk with me.

Remember the annotated tour of my kitchen clutter I published a few years ago? Jump back to that link to check out the photo, then compare to this antiseptic and unrecognizable kitchen:

The whole house is like that. Buyers traipse through daily, figuring I'm Mr. Immaculate.

But there's a problem. When I come home, and need to drop takeout menus and water bottles and iPhones and keys and wallets and mail and business cards and pamphlets and prescriptions and leftover cookies and whatever else on the nearest counter or kitchen table, I instantly remember I'm creating more work for myself. A toothpick left on my kitchen counter - a single dirty sock on my bedroom floor - must be processed and stored/used/trashed so I can reset the house for the next round of buyers. And there's no closet or drawer or tub I can dump it all into, because I'm not doing that anymore.

For example, I just strolled into the house with a gift 2023 calendar from my local Chinese restaurant, and briefly spazzed out.

"Wait!" I commanded, "Don't dump it on the table! No, don't throw it on the counter, either! Wait, don't throw it out, it's a nice one! Wait, don't fling it in that drawer!

Each command killed momentum, leaving me frozen, standing there like an idiot in the middle of my immaculate kitchen clutching this stupid calender, vaguely needing to drink something and pee and put away frozen groceries and return email and wash my hands. All those tasks remained queued while I faced the impossible dilemma of integrating this calendar into Mr. Immaculate's sleek habitat. Finally, rattled to my core and as vacantly puzzled as I've ever been in my life, I chucked it into the trash with addled vehemence.

"Man!" I exclaimed to myself. "Home showings are stressful! I have to deal with every little thing I bring in!"

It's a good thing I talk to myself. It allows me to hear how dumb I am from a distantly objective position.


Here's the thing about reframing - which was what this was. Yes, I could have saved myself a year and a half of hard labor (and saved you 600 words of reading) and merely observed "You'll always generate clutter until you learn to deal with each object you bring in!" But I knew that, and you knew that, and it's utterly banal.

But then one day you find yourself standing in an improbably immaculate house clutching a souvenir calendar, your body flailing through its trademark gambits to avoid dealing with habitat integration, and, suddenly, you get it. You reframe. This is what neat people do! This is the time they take! This is the level of diligence they ascend to! I needed to spend two years cleaning and 20 seconds flailing (and you needed to hear about it) to viscerally grok the sheer unfamiliarity of treating your home as a place where every last toothpick really really matters.

I'm not saying I'll continue living this way. But at least now I understand what it involves. Clichés and other glib wordiness can be an intellectual aid, but don't deliver real visceral understanding.