The case for clutter

Piles of old books, letters, musty files, old clothes, yellowing novels and two tables covered with papers, an armchair and a bed. This is how my father-in-law's room looks on any given day. He is a celebrated writer with many novels and travelogues to his credit and this space is his haven. Once, harassed by neighbours and nagged by my mother-in-law to do something about the mess, I decided to clean it up. On one of those mornings where he went off to spend the entire morning with an old friend, I dusted and swept the place, stacked and steadied teetering structures of old files, innumerable number of books, put together rampantly random paper, cleared his table and even put all his old and thread-worn clothes in a carton to be packed off to a charity home.

I stood back and surveyed the room. It looked beyond habitable. In fact it looked new. Without a clue to what storm would hit our house we had lunch and our snooze was interrupted by loud rumblings of displeasure. My father-in-law is a man of few words and this cataract of displeasure was the acme of his anger. My act of kindness so upset him that for nearly a week he couldn't put pen to paper. After a week, as his familiar chaos reappeared in his room not so much by design but by habit, he was able to settle back in and resume writing. We had our loveable but individualistic father-in-law back. My initial sense of hurt was replaced by the realisation that each and every one of us has a comfort zone and its boundaries are clear. I had, in my misplaced zeal, stripped his space of every shred of comfort.

An integral part of his existence

His habit of going through old files, papers, clippings, revisiting books, opening files full of unfinished pieces by him... these rituals were a part of the way he lived and allowed ideas to brew.

I returned to Dubai after that particular trip wiser and calmer and suddenly the numerous knick knacks in my own home seemed to look back at me differently. The discarded toys of my sons' childhood that I store in the bottom shelf of my cupboard keep getting a new lease of life each time realisation hits me that soon they will be on their way to make their own lives. Then I might want to look at the slightly discoloured aeroplane my son built as a boy of six and beamed with pride for weeks on; or the dented, dog-eared cardboard chessboard that was a battleground every weekend as the brothers fought and cried out ‘cheater' to each other. (Till now I don't know who was cheating or was it simply one was better than the other). Sometimes I bring out the good old Scrabble board which was such an integral part of the way we bonded as a family but clearly they are too plugged in today to return to it.

In the by lanes of my brain nestle a thousand and one memories, aromas, flavours and sounds. Are these all mind clutter?

Since the time clutter was declared a contagion, I have been trying to rid my mind and my home of things physical and mental, hoping space will stop being premium and simply calm me into stillness, peace and joy. From the stacks of my sons' report cards, their certificates of excellence in something or the other, their drawing books, paper art... endeavours the tiny tots strove towards, to boxes of videos capturing their boyish pranks, was all this clutter? So I organised my clutter! I discarded some of it. Was it cathartic? Far from it. It was painful. As letting go of anything is. So in the end I reclaimed everything I had deemed junk and let the chaos reign. Peace returned to my heart.

Which led me to wonder: is it me or is it an overkill of a lifestyle sanitisation drive? Does tidiness necessarily indicate an organised mind? "No," says Dr Andrea Tosatto, a Dubai-based clinical psychologist, from Synergy Integrated Medical Centre. "Tidiness does not indicate anything in particular," he says. But he cautions: "De-cluttering completely is always wrong. Why get rid of good clutter? But also why force someone to get rid of bad clutter? To get rid of all clutter is like throwing the lid along with the pot. You never know what was cooking in it which would have been healthy for you."

Which is pretty much contradictory to the New Age talk which exhorts you to throw out stuff you do not need, de-clutter your space to facilitate the flow of ‘positive energy'. So we are back to the question, ‘Are all the things you hold on to really bad for your well-being? Would this modern-day mantra of ushering in happiness by saying goodbye to ‘clutter' also do away with emotional markers in life? When people become compulsive cleaners and organisers, is that a good thing?

The flip side of tidiness

According to Dr Tosatto not all things that crowd our lives qualify as clutter. There is an important distinction to be made here he says. People who are often clearing their desk and trying to be too neat and discarding things in their life can be obsessive-compulsive, he agrees but adds, "people who avoid discarding things can be obsessive-compulsive too. It is not the action itself that characterises an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but rather the sense of coercion that the subject feels connected with it," explains Tosatto.

People who are constantly throwing out stuff that defines them and sweeping everything clean are more prone to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) than those who allow some of their physical and emotional baggage to be strewn around, revealing a bit of themselves in them and happy to allow these to mirror their personalities.

What's Dr Tosatto's take on the New Age password (‘Declutter') for well-being? "A wise man," he says, "should never suggest to clear the clutter. Instead, he should motivate people to meditate, to keep the mind focused on the present and reduce anxiogenic and depressive thoughts that increase our need of clutter. It is not important if we keep or throw away something; what is important is the relationship we have with it. Why get rid of old recordings of music you love (just because of the digital revolution)? A nice memory, though not a part of your present, nevertheless, is a feel-good moment. It leads to good sensations. I think that being able to enjoy many things without feeling the need for anything must be the goal of every individual."

One of the hoary beliefs that time has allotted a revered place to is that creativity stems from chaos and thus most great writers, painters and poets often love to live in untidy surroundings but in their minds possess tremendous organisation of ideas and thoughts. To which Dr Tosatto replies: "That is just a belief. But the opposite as Nietzsche said: ‘One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star', is also not necessarily true. We must make a distinction between confusion and apparent disorder.

"For an artist, being surrounded by objects can be a good source of inspiration, but this does not mean that he has to work or live in a mess in order to be creative."

Clutter also has a cultural dimension to it. In countries where homes are ancestral and pass on from father to son and future generations, you inherit things as a legacy. In many instances the things might serve an immediate purpose in the modern context but they are articles revered by the generations before you. It is an emotional call, not a matter of decor how you deal with it and the connection you wish to make with it. (Of course, as the last 50 years or more have revealed, old objects are ramped to the status of antiques, which brings us back to precious clutter vis-a-vis discardable clutter. Then there is the celebrities' possessions which we hanker after. A movie star's hat pin or the pop star's broken guitar.)

Clearly, the clutter issue is more complicated than one thinks.

In countries where young couples are on the move and there is a large immigrant population, clutter naturally has no room as people have to make the most of rented spaces. The past has no room in their lives. Do such people feel a sense of being disconnected?

For emotional sustenance

"Sometimes, it is important to allow people to cling to a real thing or a memory for better emotional health,'' says Dr Tossato. "A pair of male twins I know always carried with them ragged pieces of cloth wherever they went. They could be dressed in the finest clothes and going to the grandest celebration, but their mother always had to pack two ragged cloth pieces with her to calm them down. They couldn't sleep without holding these pieces close to them.

"I later learnt from her that these were remains of their first bedsheet which in turn was made from the mother's soft cotton stole she would drape on their cribs. Today, the boys are adults and secure individuals doing very well in their careers. But they remember the small pieces of cloth with great fondness. The question then is, should the mother have snatched the pieces away thinking it's ridiculous for young boys to be seen clutching these old pieces of cloth?

"Behavioural specialists always point out that it is not healthy to cling to an object or a memory and leaving it behind can liberate you. But the mother of these two boys did not forcibly ‘liberate' them. Instead, she allowed them to be. In the natural course of time, the twins eventually outgrew the habit.'' The process of letting go, says Dr Tosatto, whether of a thing or a memory or a person, has to be natural, not forced and self-driven if you wish the act to lead to healthy consequences.

A philosophy that could also apply to emotional clinging. If you have a memory, maybe an unpleasant one that has become a yardstick for you to measure relationships with (and unsurprisingly finding nothing really matches up), common modern-day mantra urges you to let go of that memory and move on. But in your mind, that yardstick is a measure of how you will make a good decision instead of a bad one.

There is a fine line between something that is posing as dangerous emotional clutter and that which is a healthy reminder for you to steer clear of trouble. Sometimes these lines blur.

Says Dr Tosatto regarding this blur, "We must look at the situation from another perspective. A photograph from the past or an old toy or the favourite bedsheet cannot be the cause of a refusal to move on but they can be just a symptom. To get rid of a symptom just because someone tells us that we have to, is not useful and can even be harmful because every act of ours is based on a reason. If this reason is premature and forced, it will not lead to the desired result.

"If an adult likes to sleep holding his favourite childhood bedsheet, but it does nothing to retard his mental, intellectual and emotional growth, he must be free to do it. Even if someone starts seeing his clutter as not egosyntonic any more, forcing him to get rid of it would be always wrong. What I try to do with my patients is to help them to reach a condition from which they can get rid of their ‘bad clutter' spontaneously, and without damaging side effects."

One of the most popular programmes on US television is Clean Home where a popular US comedienne, Niecy Nash, walks into people's homes flanked by her team of clutter-clearing specialists. They discard, clean and sort out, transforming chaotic places into perfect havens of habitat. Thousands of people have reported to have had a dramatic overhauling of their fortunes and lives once they de-cluttered.

What does Dr Tosatto have to say on this? "I repeat, there is good and bad clutter. Some memories or things need to be preserved to define who we are so that we can interpret our present and dream of a future."

Though I haven't sat in meditation for a while, the fact that I no longer question my decision to keep my sons' old report cards, and so on, makes me happy. For me, that works.

Five Virtues and Vices of being a clutter bug

Virtue
1. Clutter keeps you in your comfort zone and makes you feel safe.
2. Physical Clutter is creative
3. Emotional clutter is a powerful teacher
4. Clutter defines you
5. Clutter is healthy as it keeps you away from OCDs

Vice

• Clutter tricks you into wallowing in memories and blocks flow of positive energy
• Physical clutter is nothing but chaos
• Emotional clutter holds you back and does not let you move on.
• Clutter confuses you, de-cluttering liberates you
• Clutter makes you lose control of your external and internal landscape

Good and bad clutter

"Good clutter," says Dr Tosatto, "is whatever I decide to keep in my physical space because I think it can be useful to me, but it is not necessary to maintain my emotional balance, it does not affect my life in any aspect, it does allow me to function properly in the present. On the other hand, bad clutter is whatever I keep in my physical or psychical space because I feel it is emotionally absolutely necessary to me, even if I would like to get rid of it and even if it could affect my life in some ways."

Going by that definition, his advice is: identify and know what clutter you possess, mental and physical before you decide to clear it. "I think that people must be free to keep in their life anything they like or think can be useful to them, until it does not affect their life in some ways. If they start feeling uncomfortable with their clutter, I suggest they practise meditation or work on themselves in order to find an inner sense of security (that is not tied to things or objects or people). This will eliminate the need to be weighed down by any dilemma."