There was an article recently in one of those fluffy “magazine” inserts they put into the Sunday paper that was bemoaning the terrible increase of “clutter” in our lives; according to this article, the clutter we surround ourselves with mirrors the obesity of our bodies: both are just examples of “too much in, not enough out”.While I’m not entirely sold on the analogy (at least when your judgement fails you in Target you can always go back the next day and return the karaoke machine; donuts, however, are like special occasion dresses: once you walk out of the store with them, they are yours–and your hips’–for life), there was one part of the article that really did resonate with me: the part where clutter and “clutterers” were rated numerically according to their severity (kind of like hurricanes).
According to this scale, Level One clutter would be something like a newspaper on the bathroom floor, whereas Level Five clutter would be when you have to start using the backyard as a bathroom because of all the newspapers blocking the way to the toilet. Clutterers themselves were rated in much the same way; unlike clutter, however, their ratings were somewhat fluid: a person could easily start life as a Level One clutterer and then, without warning, swiftly make the transition to Level Five.
As the mother of a child who owns wall to wall collections of “collections” (scraps of paper, shorn Barbie doll hair and other people’s socks, just to name a few), this did not come as good news.
My daughter, Clementine, has always been a clutterer: she was practically born a Level Three (I’m surprised she didn’t try and keep the placenta), and has done nothing but deteriorate since then; in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she was most of the way towards the dreaded Level Five already.
I used to say that it was like living with Howard Hughes, and joke that someday we would go into her room and find shelves covered with urine-filled jars and toenail clippings, but lately I’ve realized that this was simply wishful thinking on my part: Clementine has never voluntarily put anything up on a shelf in her life.
Not that she hasn’t had plenty of opportunity; she has an abundance of shelves–all empty, all the time. She also has plenty of clear plastic storage boxes. I bought these for her thinking that perhaps the real problem was a lack of organizational space, and not a complete and utter lack of concern over floors that go “crunch” when you walk on them. Needless to say, on this, too, I was wrong.
Unlike the shelves, though, at least her boxes sometimes actually get used; unfortunately, this use usually occurs during those times when I insist (read: scream, threaten, cajole, beg and demand) that she “clean up her room”. I say “unfortunately” because Clementine approaches these boxes the same way New York City approaches its landfills: fill ‘em up and move on to the next one. The first few times she did this the subterfuge actually worked: glancing around the apparently newly “cleaned” room I somehow failed to notice that the boxes contained, not “Legos”; “puzzles”; “Barbie clothes” and “art supplies” as their labels indicated, but rather exactly one shovelful each off of the floor. This meant that a box opened at random was just as likely to carry: one (dirty) pair of underwear; three extremely urgent notes from her teacher (dated last month); two stuffed animals and one half-eaten apple as it was to carry any of the items carefully listed on its front. In fact, with Clementine’s method, it seemed to become even less likely that the item mentioned on the outside of the box would actually be found on the inside of it, sort of like a grade school (and PETA friendly) rebuttal of Shrodinger’s cat.
Which reminds me: speaking of quantum physics (I was), some people will try and tell you that chaos like Clementine’s merely indicate intense inner activity. Einstein, they will assert, never worried about keeping a clean desk. This may be true, but I’m almost positive that Einstein’s desk never went “crunch” when he sat at it.