Objects and things

Decluttering seems to be a new religion. I am in support because I am a passionate anti-consumerist and find it painful to watch or read about people spending thousands of pounds, dollars or whatever on items they don't really need or want, and giving gifts for the sake of giving a gift.

It may be strange coming from someone with a background in a culture where everything was in short supply or simply non-existent, from toilet paper to ball-point pens to tights to baking powder to T-shirts to books, and where every item, obtained through unimaginable effort was cherished and passed on and mended over and over again. To own something generally desirable, whether a pack of chewing gum or a tape recorder, was a matter of status. If you were privileged to travel abroad you were expected to bring presents to family, friends and colleagues; and even from domestic holidays you would bring souvenirs. A chocolate wrap or a bottle label would make a welcome gift.

When I moved to Sweden and gained access to unlimited supply of anything, my lust for purposeful or purposeless objects could not be fully satisfied for a very simple reason: money. In Russia, if you were lucky to know someone who knew someone who sold book shelves or wall sconces or wall-to-wall carpets on the black market at ridiculous prices, all your friends would contribute, and you would pay them back some time when you could. Capitalism doesn't work like that.

We had Russian friends visiting in neverending lines, and all of them brought presents, because that's what you did. Some were nice, some were ugly, but all were given with love. It is hard to get rid of objects given to you with love, but every now and then your home begins to feel like a dump. We decluttered before we moved to California in 1999, then decluttered again when we came back. After my mother-in-law died, I inherited a lot of nice stuff, which interestingly enough made me declutter more, because the nice stuff made my old less-nice stuff too conspicuous.

Obviously, we decluttered massively when we moved to Cambridge. The children were given a chance to choose what they wanted, and they didn't want much because by then they all had their own households and had perhaps even started decluttering themselves. I remember selling dozens of rather valuable objects to an antique dealer for almost nothing, just to get rid of it. Everything else went to charity shops that probably sent half to recycling. Every now and then I remember an object with some regret, but immediately change my mind: why would I need that gigantic cut-glass drinking horn?

Now that I am forced to mass-declutter again, I wonder how all this stuff has accumulated again. It was only last year that – I thought – I gave away everything I didn't use. And I regularly take bags of stuff to charity shops.

There is one major flaw in this article. It does not distinguish between mess and clutter. If you come home and there are clothes all over the floor and dirty dishes in the sink, it's not clutter, it's mess. The anxiety reasons stated in the article are relevant for mess. There are two simple ways to deal with mess: you ignore it or you tidy up (or better still, don't allow it to pile up). I am not a supertidy person, but I wouldn't be able to live with a mess.This is why I have Gatehouse rules. 

Clutter is something different, and only point 3 in the list of advice deals with it. The rest is dealing with mess on a day to day basis. 

In dealing with clutter, it is important to differentiate between objects and things. Thing theory – yes, it's a thing! - claims that objects only become things when they are filled with significance, with immaterial value. Sometimes we say “of sentimental value” meaning that an object is more than an object: it is a memory, a souvenir in the original meaning of the word; also something that makes you glad. Few of us are privileged to be exclusively surrounded with objects that make us glad, but in decluttering it should be the guiding principle: only keep objects that make you glad, objects that have become things. They will not necessarily be the prettiest of your possessions, or the most expensive, or the most desirable. They will not necessarily be gifts from your closest friends. For some reason, I will never part with a wooden bench from my mother-in-law's home, or a banal dream-catcher I got from a children's author, or a miniature Japanese garden I impulse-bought at a spa.

Decluttering is good for your mind, declutter prophets say. What they don't say (because they are, unlike me, good citizens and know that the capitalist wheels must turn) is: stop buying. Don't be tempted by trinkets. Don't be tempted by objects that you will never use and that will never become things.

That said: who knows what object might suddenly become a thing? 

Some of my favourite things