I aspire to simplicity. I love those houses and personal spaces that are almost minimalist — even austere — in the way they are clean, fresh and uncluttered.
I aspire to Voluntary Simplicity; I really do.
However, it’s an aspiration that has eluded me since my messy room as a child, and continues to elude me, as I have now rounded 60 years of age.
At this point, I have grown pretty Zen with the idea that my world will always be cluttered.
It's NOT "a Mess!"
But let’s back up, for a second: Let us not confuse ”cluttered and over-filled” with "messy and chaotic.” There’s actually a method to my madness, and if someone actually needs a specific thing from my workspace, I can typically lay my hands on it, in short order.
My stuff is also not dirty and dust covered.
Because I have always had an interest in human nature and the ways our psyches and motivations work, I increasingly tend to believe that being of a creative nature naturally makes you more inclined to become surrounded by clutter.
A large part of the entire Creative Experience revolves around precisely gathering a bunch of disparate ideas, objects, words or whatever and re-organizing them into something else; a new combination and interpretation of those very things.
Simplicity of Circumstance
There have been moments in my life where I approached the simplicity I thought of as an ”ideal.” In the mid-1990’s my first marriage ended and ”the stuff” was split in half. Then I moved, requiring a thorough cleaning up and many trips to the garbage dump and thrift stores. Then I moved again, and then again, each time to smaller apartments… and by the end of it, I’d sold, discarded or given away enough things to where my life existed on a scale that felt very… manageable.
It didn’t last long, though… because around the same time I also switched from ”working” to becoming full-time self-employed, meaning that suddenly my office and all my work stuff was in the apartment… and I gradually moved back towards a more ”comfortably cluttered” design style.
Follow that up with a new relationship that "combined households" again, and the clutter grew some more.
So MANY Interests!
I do believe a large part of my cluttered legacy can be attributed to the fact that I tend to be somewhat of a polymath and so many things are interesting to me!
I’m a writer, I’m a photographer, I’m a rare postage stamp dealer, I’m an artist, I’m an eBay re-seller, an avid gardener, a book collector and so on and so forth.
These ”interests” and ”activities” all demand a certain amount of space for the ”tools” of each respective ”trade.” I have inventory. I have art supplies. I have shipping supplies and everything it takes to set up a vendor booth at an arts and crafts fair, OR at a spiritual/self-development conference.
I remember talking to Ann — the therapist — about all these ”things,” and her primary interest was in knowing whether or not I was bothered by my cluttered surroundings.
We Are Who We Are...
With that question came the insight that whereas I might admire those spare pale Zen-like settings where the only “things” in evidence are a vase with pink orchids and some strategically placed sea shells on a coffee table, the only thing I could see myself doing in such a space is sleeping and meditating! It’s not actually a reflection of my life; of my interests.
And therein lies a lesson we can perhaps all learn something from: We can admire and even aspire to things that aren't necessarily relevant to our actual lives. But that doesn't mean we need to feel somehow inadequate for not making those things a reality!
As to Ann's question about being bothered by clutter, pretty much the only thing that bothers me about my cluttered life is that someone will have to deal with it, after I am gone.
And that’s not such a huge worry, on the greater scale of things!
Thanks for reading, and have great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Comfortable Clutter or Austere Minimalism? In general, are there things in life you feel drawn to, even if they don't actually fit who you truly are? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210624 19:11 PDT
0284/1527