In this episode, we delve deep into clutter with Jennifer Howard, author of a recent book entitled Clutter: An Untidy History.
This book is for you if you have a closet that will no longer close because it is so crammed with clothes. Or a garage piled with boxes you keep meaning to sort. Or a storage unit that you pay for every month without having an exit strategy…
Maybe it’s especially for you if you have an older relative with a house piled high with belongings that you know they will never get rid of and you have a growing sense of dread that one day you are going to have to roll your sleeves up and tackle it.
Jennifer went through that herself when her mother was no longer able to live on her own. And as well as feeling overwhelmed by the experience, she began wondering: why do so many people undergo this? How come our houses are so full of stuff that stuff itself becomes a problem?
In 2103, hoarding disorder was recognized as a distinct mental condition in the diagnostic bible for mental health professionals, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In extreme form, that disorder may affect as many as 6% of Americans. An extract from the definition:
| Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. |
| This difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to the distress associated with discarding them. |
| The difficulty discarding possessions results in the accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas and substantially compromises their intended use. If living areas are uncluttered, it is only because of the interventions of third parties (e.g., family members, cleaners, or the authorities). |
Even before that stage, for many of us, our possessions can be a problem as much as a pleasure. The Philadelphia Fire Department came up with a label for the severe clutter they kept encountering in homes when they attended emergencies: ‘heavy contents’. Heavy contents impede emergency services’ access, prevent escape; they burn, they become waterlogged and collapse through ceilings.
Heavy contents weigh us down as much psychologically as physically. Whatever you think of Marie Kondo’s approach to culling your book collection, she clearly tapped into something.
Jennifer Howard is a former contributing editor and columnist for the Washington Post and a former senior reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her book is not a manual for decluttering your home, so much as an invitation to think about our vexed relationship with our things and how it came about. Perhaps seeing it in a different context is a way to begin to overcome it.
You’ll find Jennifer’s website here. And on Twitter she’s @JenHoward. Belt publishing is here. And @Belt_Publishing.