Or do you find it?

For me it's a little of both. I'm an acquisitive sort of person; I colllect a lot of different things. But when you're that sort of person, you tend to become a repository for other people's collections, as well.

I dream of smooth hardwood floors, no rugs in sight, and a few spare sofas and chairs spaced far apart.

I don't think that's in my nature, though. And as I said, families abhor a vacuum.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Answers

Yes, yes, yes, yes oh f***ing yes clutter does surely find us, by gawd. Oh man I can't tell you what a pain in the arse our move was, if only because of the boxes and boxes that we had to haul over the course of weeks and weeks holy s**t. And, you know, our families don't really burden us with anything, so all of it was OURS. >groan<

We do, however, have one room in the house that's clean and clear of clutter. In fact, that room was recently featured in the "living" section of a national newspaper, up here in Canada. It'a refuge, a hallowed sanctuary; it's the room we're in least of all.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

When I moved out of my family's vacation house into a smaller apartment, I held a tag sale and sold pretty much everything I owned. Furniture, anitque knick-knack thingies, clothes, prom dresses (I'm 30, it was time), my Barbies, pretty much everything but my books.

I have no idea why I did it, really, but it was very freeing. My mother just about had apoplexy about the furniture, though. Most of it was her cast-offs, things that she didn't really have room for, but couldn't seem to part with. She wasn't real happy about my cutting the cord on her behalf.

sara-a

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I'm resisting.

My husband and I are in the process of building a new house, one that's much bigger than our current four-room apartment. Meanwhile, his parents are redecorating and his grandparents are purging and they're all looking to the couple with the big, empty house.

They mean well. They don't want us to be pathetically furniture-less. I'm not ungrateful, but I also don't want a house full of orange chairs and hand-me-down curtains that clash with them. No matter how many times they offer.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I am clutter. Clutter is my life. Everywhere I go, there are piles and heaps and collections of stuff. I can lose a basketball in the bathroom, a bike in my living room. When the phone rings, the sound alone is not enough for us to find the phone; we have to run to the wall jack, find the cord, and follow it to the phone's last resting place.

As the person responsible for cleaning most of the house, it's probably my fault; however, I have three other people living with me who seem to feel that it's their job to create the clutter in the first place, so it's kind of a losing battle. Two of these people are just getting to the age where I can point out to them that keen things like TV and computer games are rewards for cleaning clutter... we'll see if that works.

I go to my friends houses and they apologize for the mess. One person did so and I laughed, saying, "I just walked through two rooms and only had to step over one thing, and that was a phone cord. This place is immaculate." My house hasn't been as clean as his apartment since before we moved in.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I don't consider space to breath and move to be a vacuum. I lived in apartments that were way too small for us for way too long. Now that's we live in a huge flat, I like the space around things.

There are a few small pockets of clutter, and a pile of stuff on a chair in the dining room that needs to be filed, but that's about it. We got rid of a lot of stuff as we moved three times in the last ten years, and I'm glad it's gone.

I have too many books, but I give boxes of them away every year to Friends of the Library for their used bookstore at Fort Mason. And when the CD rack overflows, I sell some CD's until they all fit again. I don't ever *need* more than 400 CD's at one time.

We could use a new couch and a couple of comfy chairs... but probably won't get those any time soon.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I used to be a pack rat, or rather my husband and I were pack rats. Now he's an ex-husband and I've been living in a very tiny, old woodframe cottage where space is at a premium. I've -learned- to live clutter-free purely out of necessity. Periodically getting rid of junk feels good. Cozy but never claustrophobic. The cats seem to appreciate it as there's more free surface space for them to lay around on! On the other hand, my best friend is still a pack rat. She specializes in accumulating anything made from paper, i.e. greeting cards, old letters, receipts. Her husband amasses computer hardware and other electronic paraphernalia. I am always stepping over piles or stacks when I visit their apartment. Are most people fond of a particular type of clutter? Maybe it's a comfort thing, like comfort food.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I am a clutter magnet. My DH and I live in a huge 5-bedrooom home and we have it stuffed to the gills. People automatically assume that we will fill the 5 bedrooms with children, but they are wrong. Bedrooms are for furniture and pottery.

Our living room is larger than the homes of some of our friends.

We have five Christmas trees.

Enough said.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I swear, I inherited my clutter. Even the stuff I saved, I saved because my parents won't toss anything. I'm trying to get rid of stuff I havcen't used in the past three years I haven't lived here, so I can have some room for the stuff I have been using. However, I get given intense guilt when I go to throw out any clothing, and unless it Does Not Fit I have a hard time tossing it. Add to that the fact that my bedroom has been used for storage recently, with a lot of stuff that is Not Mine still here, and everything that I have marked for disposal but hasn't yet left still here....

I think I'm going to scream now.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Yes. Unfortunately, like many women, I live with a male who can't seem to remember that socks go int he sock drawer, dirty clothes go in the hamper and the mail has a BASKET right in the front hall, just waiting to be used.

Clutter accumulated like wildfire on our kitchen/dining room table. I hate it. Can't stand it, but Sabs came from a household where things were sorted and dealt with on the kitchen table, so that's his default thinking method. He gets the mail when he comes home and sorts it on the dining room table "to be sure that I see it."

This has resulted in some nearly tragic circumstances of missed bill payments, since when I come home and start to make dinner and set the table, I get VERY pissy about the stacks of paper on the table where we're about to it and since I've got six pots boiling, I don't have time to go through it. So it gets shoved to the side.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

If I'm really busy this can lead to the fiasco that I recently cleaned up a week ago. A stack of papers and magazines two feet high, teetering precariously on the table, with occasional forays onto the floors when the cats couldn't contain themselves and were chasing each other around the room.

This time though, I'm staying on top of it.

Solution #1: Pick up mail and MOVE IT to the basket as soon as I get home. Solution #2: Come home earlier, before Sabs does. Go through mail myself.

For all solutions, go through mail in basket once a week on Saturday morning.

Clean and dirty laundry are two other sources of clutter.

My bad habit: leaving my socks on the floor by the couch where I take them off at night after dinner and then getting sleepy, forget all about them.

His bad habit: dirty clothing scattered all over the bedroom on every available surface.

I do the laundry and he's supposed to fold it.

This is why there are no less than three bags/baskets of clean laundry overflowing all over the place in the bedroom, mingling with his dirty stuff and there is no clean underwear in my drawer.

As for furniture, don't get me started. We inherited a bunch of left-overs from our landlord, who had originally wanted to rent the apartment to us furnished. But we already had a bunch of stuff and only really wanted her filing cabinets and bookcases.

She left those and several other pieces that I conceded to, but her living/dining room set just HAD to go (black and white upholstery and a glass tables).

This left us couchless except for the little blue futon fold out from this end up that my mom gave me when i first moved out.

While it's very comfy, it only really seats one person stretched out and two, if they get cozy.

So we inherited our friends' 10-year old sofa and chair as well. The cats have destoryed these, as they are seemingly, ideal for sharpening claws. They mostly keep their mitts off my futon though -- it has a high wooden back so there's nothing for them to grab.

Then there's the table thing. Sabs has a gorgeous finished pine kitchen table with an extender leaf from Ikea (I'm dying to get matching chairs for it, but they're SOOOO expensive, so we're making do with the two surviving screw-in leg chairs we got at Ames and two Hitchcock chairs my mother currently doesn't have room for, until my folks buy a new house), my mom gave me a small fold-out card table, a medieval table they picked up at an antique sale when we still lived in Belgum, and her extra, unfinished dining room table with the pedestal, claw-foot legs. Sabs also has a desk that his father made for him out of an extra piece of counter-top and metal pipe legs.

We have a lot of tables. The landlord also left us her computer desk -- a slab of door balanced on top of two out of the four filing cabinets. Currently the computer room has a table on 3 out of 4 walls and the cot with my friend Shana's futon on top of it is on the 4th. A dresser with a bookcase a top it sits in one corner and papers are tucked into corners just about every where along with furballs and dust bunnies.

AAAAACK.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

i can't throw anything out. it's horrible.

i still had my fifth grade notebooks - after i'd finished college. just got rid of them two or three years ago. i have a storage unit full of stuff. clothes i refuse to get rid of from my hippie phase; my mother gave a lot of them to me, so i couldn't possibly get rid of them! my worst thing though - magazines. i have stacks and stacks of magazines. and i mean just TONS. like three of four tubs of them (i learned to put everything in huge rubbermaid tubs after the bottoms kept falling out of boxes - also good for preventing water damage).

and of course, just crap. i keep every little scrap of paper that has ever passed into my life. phone numbers written on napkins that i'll never call because there's no name beside them. but i keep it.

a couple of years ago i had a huge purge session and just threw TONS of stuff out and gave tons away. i still have that storage unit though.

i'm living at home (as in with me crazy mother), to save money (haha!) and i basically live in my room. everything is in that room. i have boxes in the closet with cool housewares i keep finding, lamps, champagne glasses, candles. oh and then there's all my old toys. i can't seem to part with them. never mind that i never ever play with them, being 25 n' all.

and of course my nesting instinct is in high gear, so i want to start buying furniture and blankets and vases and dishes... and of course i can't.

i have at least an apartment, if not a house, worth of stuff. and nowhere to put it. and i love those layouts, in magazines - where there's like a couch, a coffee table and hardwood floors - always by some dutch designer. and it's beautiful and spare and clean and fresh - and i just can't live up to that sort of design! what about knickknacks dammit!? where would i put all my books!

i've decided i need some sort of wall unit with cabinet type doors that actually slide into the unit so that if i want to display stuff, so be it, but if i want to have that empty look, i'll just close the doors!

in my dreams. *sigh*

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Oh, boy does clutter find us. It's not because of guilt, though. Oh, no, I stopped taking guilt trips a long time ago. I figure I wouldn't want anyone holding on to something I gave them if it was cluttering up their house/life and I refuse to adopt others sentimental objects. If it means that much they can find a place for it themselves. I know this sounds harsh to some. Some people are just more sentinental about objects than I am and have that nostalgic fondness for the past. My husband is like this, but I am not. I thrive on change and the past can stay where it is.

My clutter comes from my need for creative expression. I have drawers, cabinets, closets, porches, rubermaid bins, etc. filled with material, sewing supplies, colored pencils, stencils, beads, sewing books, markers, acrylic paints, tiling supplies, grout, adhesives, scrap wood, craft books, miniature furniture and lighting system (for the dollhouse in the basement I'll get to someday), decorating books, plaster, paint, stain, wallpaper (my house is an ongoing project), gardening books, pots, soil, seeds, rocks, shells, leaves (never know when I can use them in a project) books, gift wrapping supplies (it's an art, you know), did I mention books? Oh, yeah, and extra wood shelving and brackets in case I need to add another bookshelf.

Martha Stewart would be impressed.

I have no problem carting off just about anything to Goodwill accept these supplies which have to be there in case I get a creative urge. And I don't get attached to the results so my house isn't cluttered with art projects. It's all about the process. When one thing's done, it's time to give it away and move on.

And my grandkids love it. Most of their friends just have crayons.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Oh yeah, clutter finds me. Our garage is completely filled with boxes with no plans to remove them - where would we put the stuff? There's a few things I could bear to part with, but most of it is stuff that I can't bear to get rid of, for whatever reason.

I think I inherited my packrat tendencies from my father. My mother doesn't save things the way he did, though she's getting a lot of knick knacks in her old age. When I was growing up, a family friend called them "Vishnu the preserver and [something] the destroyer".

Aside from that, our families don't give us stuff. I wish.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

i freed myself of clutter 10 years ago when i moved from so. cal. to s.f. if it didn't fit in my vw squareback, it didn't go... i say, SELL IT ALL!!!

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Clutter found me and I smacked it on the nose over the weekend. It has to be this pregnancy thing. I'm organizing and nesting and I realize it's a short-lived thing, but it's nice to feel like I'm gaining ground on the house crud. I mean, the man cleaned his side of the room *and* the closet.

You were talking about shelves for books. We bought some pine boards from the hardware store, coated them in varethane (because it wipes clean with a damp cloth and it's clear so it makes the boards look pretty and blonde --stupid high pitch laugh omitted) and bought a few strips and installed them in the Bear den. The six year old Bear informed me that his arms were tired from moving books and that he thought he should play with legos for a while to rest. I informed him when his books were moved, I'd make him a peanutbutter sandwich. The books were moved and lunch was served. I have strip shelving in various spots all over the house, and I like it because it can go up over the furniture and you can move clutter up that way. Somehow, if it's not on the floor, I'm under the impression that things are less cluttered.

And as for the dream...I always think that people who have smooth hardwood floors, and big space, must have 3 car garages with dead bodies in them, buried under mounds of clutter which has since been reclassified as a health nuisance or a fire hazard. And they don't have a car parked in their garage because it's too cluttered up. That's what I tell myself, so I don't feel stressed about my clutter. Because at least my clutter doesn't involve something nefarious.

I think I would feel uncomfortable living in too much open space. If I want open space, I can go drive out to the fields. In my home, I want to know it's okay to live there. Clutter means that people are living and playing. And while I object to pulling legos from between my toes, I prefer that to feeling like I couldn't play legos. A designer catalog house is for the pictures. A cluttered house is for families.

I'm a collector, too. I've got the 200+ book poetry collection. I've got the happy meal toys collection, which I no longer am collecting for, but rather am removing said toys from my feet as I move through the house. I've got the fabric collection. I've got the pretty little boxes collection. I've got the earring collection -- which I finally just turned into a wallhanging in the bathroom.

Clutter definitely finds me, but I also find it. For some reason, I always seem to choose a day to go to garage sales and all they have at the garage sales are books, old happy meal toys, fabric, adorable little boxes, or earrings. Every so often they actually have something I'm looking for like diaper covers.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

OHHH please!!!! My grandmother has moved twice in the last year and half. My mother has proceeded to beg and plead with me to take all the stuff that came out of her condo and then her retirement community apartment. You should have seen the look on her face when I would only take a third of what she didnt want. Absolute dismay comes to mind. My father you see is a pack rat..he just cant throw anything away. Particularly if it came from his aging mothers home, is something he will never use, and is of no use to anyone else!!!! Dont get me wrong I got some wonderful things from my mom and granny! But the rest, I told my Mom she would have to make secret trips to Goodwill and Salvation Army to unload the rest of the junk without Dad knowing!

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Clutter always finds me. I seem to be a magnet for it. My computer desk has so much crap on it that you can't find the mouse sometimes.

When my boyfriend and I move into our condo in the next month or so we came up with a plan to deal with our "Book Problem". See, we both read a lot! And we like to keep our books, kind of like a show and tell of what we have read or will soon read. We decided to put small shelves on the wall in everyroom. Even the bathrooms and the kitchen. We put our books all along these shelves all through the condo, even going up the stairs. That way, our normal bookshelves can hold all the bigger books we own and all the 200 or so paperbacks will be literally scattered all through our place. We get to be surrounded by our love of reading and books. And the kind of shelves I am talking about are pretty cheap.

Just an idea.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I won the war over clutter when I moved from Vancouver, BC to Chicago, Il. I could only take what would fit in a soccer mom van, after my desk, computers, and the two dogs and two cats were in. Needless to say, this didn't leave a lot of room. I purged, big time, and only brought that which held a sentimental bond...the worst was getting rid of about a thousand books.

So, I had beaten clutter....my new rooms would be dust free and clear of meaningless chachkies....until I opened my new husband's front door for the first time, and realized i had married the king of the packrats. He saves everything, and collects everything, and every spare surface is covered in toys and photos and candles.

But he has promised that when we move to our new house, he will pare down, and purge, and all will be well. I don't think he will be able to get rid of a thing, but I apreciate the thought.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Seeds. Seeds. Seeds. That is what clutter is like. If I leave just one little item out, it multiples all on its own. And you don't even need to water!

But if there is one thing that I absolutely LOVE to do it is to get rid of stuff. Except kitchen gadgets. I can appliance my way through any situation. :) Salad shooter, tater twister, shake maker, belgian sandwich maker, waffle maker, etc, etc, etc.

Movies, cds, and books take up the majority of "space" in my little apartment < 600 sq. feet. So my closets are pretty packed - but with cute little shelves. One of 99 New Year's Resolutions that I wrote down last December was to discard EVERY piece of clothing that I didn't wear in 1999. We shall see if I follow through!

I try to ask myself, "what is the worst thing that could happen to me if I got rid of this?" If the answer isn't getting in trouble the IRS or my mother, it can be tossed.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I find it. I love stuff. I have so much stuff that I have run out of room. I have so much stuff that I hear mumblings of discontent from my husband at least once a week. I have so much stuff that my children already know if I put it someplace *safe*, they may never see it again, lost in the clutter.

That's okay though. I absolutely LOVE every single bit of my stuff.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

I have lived in the same rather large house for about 25 years and have not thrown a single magazine away it seems. I would love to be able to throw out more but as soon as I do it seems I need it. My father just sold his house and I now have boxes of things I don't need and sentimental things sitting around me as I write. I have no attic and an unusable basement so any available room is now a storage room. I feel like I live in a storage room or someone's attic. On top of all this I love to go to flea markets and can't resist certain things like bowls. So yes I am cluttered, with mixed feelings about all this clutter. I would like to get rid of a lot of it but when I sit down to do it I just can't.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 1999

I echo someone else, I'm a clutter magnet. Barb also will save the oddest things---old TV Guides, for instance, which you think would be useless once the week is past. Between us, we could open a flea market.--Al

-- Anonymous, September 14, 1999

Clutter finds me, sure--but I'm learning how to DEFEAT IT IN MIGHTY BATTLE. A great help is my wife, who is anti-clutter, and she sets a good counterbalance to my taste for packed-to-the-ceiling stuff. I've spoken of my room before--that's the one with all the clutter. But even in that room I've made some advances, and have actually started throwing stuff out again. I must admit that some of my hobbies help me get rid of stuff. I formed UBERKUNST largely as a way to get rid of the mass of computer junk I accumulate just because people know I'm a geek and want to give me computery things. People show up on my doorstep with boxes of old printers. For a while, a fellow modemer was sending me boxes of semi-functional computer stuff via UPS (which I either smashed at UBERKUNST shows or turned around and sold) after delirium and gecko (his previous stuff-destination) politely asked him to stop sending things: they have trouble throwing things out and no noise band, so they had completely lost a room to the objects he had sent them. Dejunking is a long process. I've made an effort to do it in ways that make it more appealing--selling old records/CD's/tapes rather than throwing them out, building computers out of the computer parts and selling them for a profit, and we're even taking many boxes of junk out to the Roseville Auction in a couple weeks to try and sell it off--and whatever we doesn't sell goes to Goodwill or to my work. speaking of my work, one benefit of working with the homeless is that I have a handy repository for old clothes, kitchen items, and assorted things I no longer need. When Vivian was winnowing her clothes closet down to size (the one place where she isn't minimalist) my work got everything that Crossroads wouldn't buy. Considering that the bulk of it had labels from Nordstrom, Macy's and the Limited and was in very good condition (Vivian takes good care of her clothes) the female clients were most appreciative. Getting rid of stuff makes one feel cleaner, calmer, and more decisive. Admittedly, I'm still sitting in a room filled with full bookcases, and the main reason I winnow my book collection on a regular basis is to make room for new acquisitions. But it's good to turn that trash into cash once in a while, and to have an un-junked up place to set my feet...

-- Anonymous, September 14, 1999

It's a joint effort. It finds me, and I also am to blame.

I can hardly wait till oldest (33) daughter finds a house and I can give her back her 6x8 (foot!) seascape and other artwork. Second daughter is a changeling (on that unwanted advice question? SHE dishes it out, all the time!) and doesn't have clutter. We still have the younger two's stuff, too, but they have to settle first.

But mostly it's mine. Oh, and my mother's... it's overwhelming tackling her stuff, even though we turfed out (including old TV Guides, Al!) twice before she died.

Rich also has piles of old hardware he'll never use, and etc. Woe betide me if I tackled that. But I have enough junk of my own to worry about.

Rec.recovery.clutter is a great newsgroup.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999