Clutter Is In the Eye of the Beholder

Many people hate clutter. A disorganized room drives them nuts. But there’s another side to the story. One person’s clutter can be another person’s comfort.

Take, for instance, the office I’ve set up in the basement of our home. I love it when stacks of newspapers, magazines, and books are piled all around the room. Sure it can be a bit hazardous — a magazine on top of carpeting is as slippery as a banana peel — but it relaxes me to know all kinds of exciting reading material is within arm’s reach no matter where I sit down. (Or no matter where I fall down after slipping on a magazine. “Wow, here’s a TIME Magazine from 1975! I’ll read about that new music sensation Bruce Springsteen while I wait for the ambulance to arrive.”)

However, another member of the household, who shall remain nameless, constantly says to me, “You’re so messy! I don’t know why I married you!”

This unidentified person can’t stand clutter, and believes that books always should be on book shelves — even while being read. Also, any magazine or newspaper that has been in the house for more than 24 hours has overstayed its welcome and should be sent out to the blue recycle bin.

But I really don’t want to pick on this particular person, even though the chances this person will recognize him or herself in this column are zero because of the deft manner in which I’ve masked his or her identity. What I want to discuss is the issue of discrimination.

In our intolerant, prejudiced society, it is a sad fact that sloppy people are thought to be lazy and morally substandard — as if the urge to take out the trash automatically makes a person virtuous. Let’s not forget that Charles Manson liked to organize his file folders and Jeffrey Dahmer had neat handwriting. Being tidy did not exactly put those two fellows into the Character Hall of Fame.

On the other hand, St. Francis of Assisi always threw his robe on the floor instead of in the hamper and Mother Teresa often misplaced her bowling shoes. Being sloppy did not hinder their saintly lives.

Discrimination against those of us who are neatness-impaired is most prevalent in the corporate workplace. About 20 years ago I saw someone get promoted for no other reason than his office was clean. When the Big Boss wanted to see a copy of the previous year’s Sales Forecast Report, this guy immediately pulled it from an immaculate file cabinet. I could’ve found a copy of the same report in my office — if I had been given a 30 minute head start and a snow shovel. Plus, I actually wrote the report, so I could’ve explained what the report said, despite some of the pages on my copy being stained with pizza sauce.

By the way, this was back in the mid-90s, before everything got computerized and people still used paper copies of important documents. Nowadays, of course, everyone works in a “paperless office,” and all crucial data is stored on “servers” in the “cloud.” But whenever people can’t quite figure out how to make the data display correctly on an iPad, they send the file to the printer for a paper copy anyway, but accidentally print out 46 copies. This explains why a modern “paperless office” kills ten times more trees than an office in the olden days.

Just thinking about this unfair discrimination against sloppy people gets me upset. I need to read something relaxing. I’m sure there’s a good book or magazine article in one of the piles by my desk. Now where did I put my snow shovel?