An acceptable number of shoes to own is 45 pairs—or one pair for each year of your life. You probably already own at least three pairs of Havaianas, some running shoes, and some peach satin bridesmaid heels your friend was like, “you can dye them black!” That friend is divorced now, but you should keep the shoes. Keep all the shoes. Fuck the shoe trees and shoeboxes. Leave them everywhere.
Quiz
what’s your clutter tolerance level?
Your partner leaves his/her shoes in the living room. They’re size 11, so it’s not like they’re hard to miss. You:
A. sweep them to the side of the room with your foot.
B. sigh loudly, pick up the shoes, and put them away where they belong. Remember when you were seventeen and thought you’d take the bus out to LA and become an actress? It was fun when life held possibilities, wasn’t it?
C. exclaim, “Something to tidy!” and enthusiastically place Clippy and Cloppy away on their shelf, while thanking them for giving you something to do now that the kids are in college and that morning bottle of wine is finished.
D. do nothing.
Let me enlighten you. The only options that will allow you to retain your sanity are A or D. Being mad about clutter is a waste of time. Being happy about it is pretty weird. Acceptance is key. Either casually deal with the tripping hazard, or don’t. On your deathbed, will you be like, “Super glad I always got mad about shoes”? Or, will you remember the feeling of freedom as you lived life free of society’s restrictions?
KIDS: The very definition of messy
I have a few friends on social media who have five or more children. Not in a sad oppressed cult way (totally in a cult way) but because they enjoy kids and love them and want to have a big family. At least that’s what I assume, because they seem happy, and social media is never wrong. I also have friends with one small baby. If you walked into the houses of either of these families, there would be kid mess, probably. I avoid houses with children under six in them because visiting a house with tiny kids is super stressful. You think you’re in for some gossip and possibly a discussion about the World Bank and whether Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century was the book of the decade and whether they agree that carrots are the new kale, but instead there are strollers and play mats and pumping supplies and burp cloths and the detritus of children everywhere. They literally haven’t read TMZ in months, and all you end up doing is staring at their kid and commenting on how cute they are and how big they’re getting before taking off after an hour. (Let’s face it, babies that aren’t your own are boring. They do not “like” bubbles and Raffi at two months old, despite what your monthly updates would have your followers believe. They are blobs without preferences. Give me a six-year-old, obsessed with dinosaurs and robots and wearing his pants on his head any day. That shit is weird and hilarious.)
Anyway. Parents: It has never been more important to remember you’ll be dead soon. Because know this: Your house will not be tidy if there are children in it. Isn’t knowing that more than enough reason to give this not-giving-a-fuck thing a shot? You can have the tidiest house in the world but your teenager’s rank, semeny bedroom is going to make you cry. So your option is 18 or more years of being stressed about kid mess or just dealing with it. You probably love them and hopefully mostly like them and aren’t consumed by thoughts of the path not taken or your lost vagina. It used to be so tight, right? So lighten up. And learn something from the little ones. Are they ever concerned with mess? Probably not. Kids don’t give a fuck about anything, as you well know. When do we lose that ability to just enjoy our environment as-is? Go bedazzle some denim or cover the driveway in sidewalk chalk or fingerpaint a wall or something. Being an adult is hard. Being a parent is even harder. You can only control so much. Concentrate on the important stuff—like what kindergarten program gives your three-year-old the best shot at getting into Harvard.
CATS: Buy more cats
Cat people have a bad reputation. The more cats you have, the more likely you are to be insane or acquire Toxoplasma gondii, which rewires your neurons to make you more or less outgoing, depending on your gender. Some people think cats are shady, and they’d be right, but if you don’t “get” cats you should just go buy a hundred gerbils. But there’s a reason people who like cats seem to end up with a million of them. Because they are fluffy and quiet and everyone likes quiet, fluffy things. You should always have a few more cats than seems reasonable. Golden Rule: If you like cats, you should have a bunch.
DOGS: Ditto
In order to have a bunch of dogs, you should probably live in the country, otherwise it’s kind of mean. You just look like a selfish dick when you walk your greyhound around Tribeca. I know you’re rich and have a big apartment—but it’s not that big. Get a fucking house in the country, so that thing can run around properly. Dogs are also great because they come with a lot of accessories. Your dog should own at least 10 sweaters, a few coats, and a bunch of cute little plastic shoes to protect its feet from salt and snow. There’s no excuse not to have dog clutter. If your dog doesn’t own a whole bunch of adorable dog accessories, you’re basically not taking care of it properly. If you live in the country and have a real dog, however, you’re excused from buying cutesy accessories. Just give it a horse leg or turkey jaw or whatever country dogs eat and let it run around and get sprayed by a skunk or attacked by a porcupine and enjoy country life.
BOOKS: Buy them, pile them
If you’re a book person, you already inherently know this: Books are important, and it’s okay to own thousands of them and never get rid of them. This requires bookshelves, possibly. But the great thing about books is they’re imminently stackable. Your bedside table is the obvious place to start. When that’s full, try the floor next to it. Windowsills. Chairs. Obviously a few books go in the bathroom for when your phone battery is dead. Work-related books by your desk. Cookbooks in the kitchen. Coffee table books on the coffee table. Old, weird books in the attic or garage. Acquiring more books is important, too. Any trip to a place that sells books of any kind requires you to purchase one. You could be eight months behind on your rent, and if you don’t buy a book at a used bookstore, you’re basically a bad person who doesn’t love to read.
Acceptable reasons to downsize your collection are: you’re hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and you need to rip and discard the pages you’ve already read to lighten your backpack.
Books are not clutter, no matter what some book about getting organized may tell you. Literally no one has ever walked into a library and been like, What a fucking mess. Also, it’s difficult to judge people properly if they don’t own any books. Oh, your favorite author is David Foster Wallace? Congrats on reading one book in university. You recommend The Alchemist? Can you also share with me some inspirational sayings from your Instagram stream? You loved The Millionaire Next Door? Nice work on your business degree and hope the real estate thing works out for you. You prefer The Story of O to Fifty Shades of Grey? Your friends think you’re pretentious. Subscribe to People? You love Fireball shots and are actually pretty fun at parties. Your favorite book is Moby Dick? Go fuck yourself. See how it works? Plus, if you go to a new friend’s house for the first time and they have no books, you can basically turn the fuck around and never talk to them again. So keep those books where we can see them.
5.
Leave some sh*t outside and in cyberspace
“You might be a redneck if . . . you didn’t put pink plastic flamingos in your front yard as a joke.”
—JEFF FOXWORTHY
Mess isn’t just for houses anymore. Step outside and embrace the beauty of messy yards, cars, and inboxes. If you’re not messy in every area of your life, you’re missing an opportunity to be lazier.
YARD: Keep plastic and broken stuff hidden behind the house. If there’s room.
When I was in my early twenties, I worked as a door-to-door fundraiser for various charities. It sounds a bit shady (definitely was) but the o
rganizations agreed to contract us as fundraisers and we went out and raised money for them. Some donors got bent out of shape when they found out we were getting paid, but we were happy for the work. We were all basically unemployable: kids with no job experience, random Europeans working illegally for extra cash, or people for whom a regular office wasn’t a good fit. Like my coworker who had done time for attempted murder. I got to see a lot of doorbells, quirky door knockers, and lawn ornaments, and meet lots of nice ladies who’d invite me in for lemonade. The point of all this is that in Chatham, Ontario, there were about 20 houses on one street that had cement geese out front. Geese that the homeowners had painted and dressed up in bonnets or straw hats. This is the correct way to decorate your yard. By filling it with random shit.
If you’re stressed about your garden not being a perfect Zen paradise with white rocks and mini Bonsai artfully arranged, I’m sorry about your feelings. But your yard has a purpose, and that’s for storage and tacky decorations. So hoist up those unfunny “Attention: Spoiled Grandchildren Ahead” signs and stick them proudly in your garden. Salute the remnants of that sandbox that seemed like a good idea until the raccoons started shitting in it. Let a family of beavers nest in the rusted shell of your old Honda. Paint your garage with your favorite team logo, you utter cock. Let everything run amok.
HOLIDAY DECORATIONS: Yes
Embracing clutter around the holidays can be tough, depending on whether you’re excellent at clutter or whether it still stresses you out. The prospect of adding plastic skeletons, paper turkeys, menorahs, Easter bunnies, and inflatable Santas to your décor can feel a bit overwhelming. The key is to go all out. I have an aunt who collects Christmas trees. She literally owns 500 trees and puts them up every holiday season and then takes them down again in January. People go similarly nuts for Halloween. My friend in South Carolina turns her front yard into a haunted cemetery, complete with animatronic witches and plastic severed body parts. Our capitalist overlords know this, and that’s why you can buy a turkey-themed literally anything around Thanksgiving. Turkey ashtray? Sure. Turkey-scented candle? Yes. Turkey-skin martini? Yum. Turkey onesie? Snuggle me! Paper flag banner from Etsy that says “Merry and Bright”? Hang that shit up because it’s almost Christmas. Leave it up all year.
Forget your chic, modern holiday with your white ceramic decorations. Get those boxes out from storage, make your own decorations, head to the Dollar Store, or whatever you need to do. Holidays aren’t about sleek, empty, magazine-ready space. Holidays are tacky as fuck and definitely cluttered. Enjoy it. And remember to enjoy the seasonal booze: Absolut Mistletoe and Captain Morgan’s Leftist Labor Day Rum. Embrace the festive spirit.
Quiz
find your holiday clutter style here:
1. If you could pick one holiday and only celebrate that one for the rest of your life, what would it be?
A. my birthday
B. Administrative Professionals Day
C. Indigenous Peoples’ Day
2. You’re at a big box store. What’s your splurge?
A. a 16-pack of sponges
B. a curved flat-screen television and imitation crab dip
C. you don’t shop at big box stores. You prefer Etsy or local craft markets you can bike to.
3. Venice is sinking. What action do you take to help?
A. find a designated, approved charity like the Red Cross and donate as much as you can afford.
B. find out what people need on the ground and organize a shopping expedition to fill those needs: bleach, mops, cleaning supplies, etc. Also find out if you can order some discount blown Venetian glass, pasta, and Pecorino from the flooded shops while you’re at it.
C. volunteer for Habitat For Humanity and carpool over to Italy to help rebuild.
Your holiday style:
Mostly As: Martha Stewart’s responsible niece. You’re practical and organized. Maybe you bought this book because you know that and want to learn a bit more about letting go. You like to spend money if it’s on something you need. You’re not really into kitschy stuff. You like to pour your orange juice at night and put plastic wrap over it so you can have it chilled and fresh in the morning.
Mostly Bs: Ho-ho-holiday elf. You’re a hoe for the holidays (any holiday) and you love buying stuff and making people happy. You’re the friend that bakes cookies for holiday parties and hand-paints ornaments with inside jokes on them for presents. #MiamiGoals #LeBron is an actual thing you wrote on your ornament gifts this year for all your sorority girls from FSU or something. Not sure if that makes sense, because in Canada, where I’m from, we barely have basketball, let alone sororities. The point is, you run the holidays. Congrats.
Mostly Cs: Low-key holiday tofu loaf. You’re not into consumerism, or holidays, so your house is lame and no one likes visiting you. You celebrate the least among us. Those who aren’t so fortunate. You feel guilty about enjoying holidays when others have so little. This is admirable, I guess, but if you’re looking for a break from saving the world, it’s okay to reach for a bottle of whiskey and some glitter.
CARS: Out the window or into the backseat
When I worked at Cedar Point in Ohio, a coworker asked if I wanted to help her clean her car. I said yes because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re twenty and it’s your day off. The mess in her car was epic. It was the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen. She was particularly fond of White Castle, and there were dozens of those tiny burger containers in the backseat. She also had, like, five of those round gum containers designed to fit in the cupholder of your car, but because the cupholder was full of other stuff, they were just lying on the floor of the passenger seat. If she’d had an ant farm and five stillborn babies in the trunk, I would not have been surprised. Then she cleaned her car by opening all the doors and scooping the mess out onto the pavement and driving her car to a new parking space. The point of this is that she was a borderline sociopath but she was doing “having a car” correctly. I learned a lot from her, including how to shoplift.
Cars are mobile storage palaces. Thinking of paying for a storage unit? Don’t be a sucker. Extra cowboy hats? Car. Stuff to take to the Goodwill or Amity? Trunk. Stilettos and McDonald’s fries left over from your club night when your friend balled that NBA player in his hotel? Backseat. Dog blankets, car seats, emergency shovel, binder full of CDs featuring TLC and Blackstreet (or Lifehouse and Sugar Ray, depending on your preference)—good for you. When you’re stranded overnight in a snowstorm on the Trans-Canada highway (Canada’s Route 66, except still very useful and a bit colder), heading from Ottawa to Winnipeg, you aren’t going to be relieved that your car is nice and tidy. You’re going to be stoked that you’ve got a box of Timbits in the backseat, a SONY Discman, a case of beer, a snowblower, and a book about Confederation to put you to sleep. Basically, your car should always contain everything you need in the event of the Apocalypse.
DIGITAL: Leave a big digital footprint
Anti-clutter books or science will tell you words are stressful but they should all fuck off (and those do-gooder authors should embrace the irony of writing a whole book or peer-reviewed journal article about how words are stressful). Too many words and your brain can’t concentrate. Too much multi-tasking and you’ll forget stuff. Guess what? If you forget things you can look them up online. Just as calculators mean we don’t have to remember how to multiply anymore, so the Internet releases us from the responsibility of ever remembering anything again. Yet think pieces about the danger of digital clutter are everywhere. Digital clutter is all up in your head, fucking up your day-to-day life with notifications and dings and voicemail messages from your mom. This is normal. We are all now cyborgs from a dystopian novel about mind control and you shouldn’t care, because smartphones and the Internet are amazing. I can order cat food online and have it delivered to my door two hours later. My cats love the Internet. Obviously I’ll be the first to die if there’s some kind of robot uprising or general systems failure and I
have to leave the house in January to trade cigarettes on the black market for food. But until then, let’s agree our lives have been easier since Al Gore invented the Internet.
Despite this, you can’t read Good Housekeeping or listen to a Slate podcast without some nut telling you all about the joys of a digital detox. Oh, I lived in a tree for a month and now my mind is clear and I can focus on my shuffleboard game and designing this arrow logo for my house-made condiments line. By all means take a digital detox for a week, if you can hack it, or go live out in Slab City, California—an off-the-grid community of squatters in the desert with no electricity or water or anything.
But generally we’re all living in smart homes and connected cars now and we have to find a way to deal with it. Emails are stressful? Boo hoo. Guess what? They aren’t. Email is fast and convenient and literally the easiest thing in the world to manage. You should have as many email addresses as possible. Keep your Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail one for nostalgia and your Gmail or .me for your real business and a few extras for catfishing and Ashley Madison purposes.
Try thinking about it this way: Emails are amazing, and every time you receive one, try to be grateful for how much collective intelligence and energy went into creating the mechanisms enabling you to receive 4,000 emails from LinkedIn every day. You like Crate and Barrel? They want to be friends with you too! Can’t remember which of the Great Lakes is the deepest? Look that shit up! Open 12 tabs and switch between them for hours. Consume as much information as you can. Read about world news and celebrities and watch clips of important events. Comment on various articles and share opinions with friends. Get involved in some public shaming when someone posts or writes something you don’t like. Fill your brain with information and distraction and communication. We’ve never, in the history of the world, had access to so much information. Libraries don’t count, sorry.
The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place Page 4
