Clutter Clemency

Earlier this afternoon, I trekked through this labyrinth of avant-garde plastics in search of a few items: an imaginary contraption for organizing the mail, preferably one that hangs from the wall; a supposedly simple tupperware-esque enclosure for my lunch; and other efficiency-inspired synthetic abstractions.

The myriad of organizational forms was overstimulating. The design and allure of shapes was seductive. Ooooooooo. What is this supposed to hold? What can I put in this cool box made of recycled coffee grinds and evaporated pomegranate juice pigments? And so it went. The task of finding a form for my household content had been turned on its head. I was now brain-streaming images of all the cram, overfill, refuse, jam and junk at home, and whether it was suitable to pack into a particular carton, case, casket or crate. How did a simple trip to this store, turn me into a wardrobe designer...a clothier for my clutter? The marketing genius is not necessarily the appeal of the sleek plastic form...it is how the form--these PVC husks designed by Scandinavian architects with cool eyewear--elicits a desire, a desire to eradicate a void, to fill a space, to frame and give boundaries, to endow us with the sense of domesticating the overabundant.

After walking around this maze and absorbing the aesthetic of symmetry and order, I resisted and re-imagined my legions of stuff, not as chaos craving order, but as commodities au naturel frolicking happily in closets, drawers and cabinets. I decided that I support clutter nudism. Yep. I like the thought of all that stuff in the buff.