| A Word Edgewise
by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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CLUTTER IS OUT TO SMOTHER US
by Mary Joe Clendenin
Help! I'm up to my ears in clutter! It seems like all of my life, I've fought a desperate battle with clutter. How do you do it? How do you keep a house free of clutter? I have friends whose houses would serve as models for HOME BEAUTIFUL, or some such magazine. They have fascinating color schemes, beautiful dusted and polished furniture--and husbands who don't look as if they have been banished from their kingdoms.
Friend Leta not only has, but appreciates such a house. She even had a dinner party recently to celebrate a clean house. You could have fooled me. I've never seen her house any other way. I'm convinced that somewhere in that house is a closet where the family skeletons are covered with clutter. There must be some place there where all the stuff lands.
I could place blame and say that mama didn't raise me right--but I felt very at home in that house of clutter, like my dad. He, Joe Fitzgerald, read several newspapers daily, with a method that would irritate even a hungry goat looking for munch. Dad took one sheet of news at a time (maybe it was primarily news then, rather than advertisements) and scattered the discards around his chair. Sometimes, if the air coming under the door had just the right amount of lift, the sheet might land in the other room, or flutter under the bed. It didn't matter to him. He was done with it.
A barefoot man in most weather, the scales of mud fell from his feet as it dried, or from his muddy shoes, adding to the litter of greater size. Mother was a patient woman, but she also accumulated clutter. She never had a special place for things. Important papers, or even little dabs of money, she would "stick" up some place, among books or dishes or what-nots. Clothes were put away, but in different places. We didn't have closets in houses of that ancient period--one little one across a corner. Chiffoniers, we called them chifferobes, held the few changes of clothes we had. I can see the carry-over of this method of storage in this daughter.
Ray's mother was a neat woman. She picked up and put away after four children--but she gave up the battle before Ray came along. Poor woman. It gets so that its easier to just do it yourself than to teach or persuade children to form neat habits. I know. I also surrendered to the everlasting war on clutter.
Ray comes in to rest a bit, puts his hat on the table, grabs his paper with the crossword puzzle, sits and works that a while, drops the paper by his chair and decides to take a nap. That means, he puts his pocketbook and change on the counter, his belt on the divan, takes a pillow from there to put under his knees in his recliner, drops his pencil behind the cushion, knocks his deck of solitary cards to the floor as he reaches to turn the reading light off--and starts snoring.
In my baliwick I have knitting in the midst, a quilt top I'm working on, and always have within reach, reading material. I often have three or four books started at one time, and then a magazine or two laying beside my chair. Across the room, I have another quilt on a frame, just waiting for me to come make a few more stitches.
Keeping a table cleaned off--especially one near an entrance--would take a genius with octopus arms. Just sorting the mail: junk, bills, interesting, must answer, would take a tornado. Occasionally I rake all off into a box just to check the color of the forgotten table top.
Visitors are always welcome at our house. Some of the more polite ones say, "Well, your house looks lived in."
That's just a polite way of saying, "The chairs are not stacked. There is a place to sit."
I wouldn't even lead you into my work room. You might step on some of the writing I've started.
When I taught at Lubbock Christian University and had an office, the clutter was organized in stacks. I could, at least, put my hands on grade sheets, lesson plans, references, pop corn, dried flowers--if someone didn't come in and need something in a hurry. Only Lynn Lloyd has me be bested in that respect.
My daughter is a real chip. She says, "Why is it that another person can take a group of pretty things and make a work of art on a coffee table, and I can take the same things and they look like clutter?"
She asked the wrong person. My sister Nell is a neat person, and has a neat daughter Melanie--who even taught her sons to clean their rooms. Nell told us one time, "Its a good thing you and Ray married each other and didn't ruin another couple." I don't think she was thinking of clutter when she said that, but it would apply.
So far, we have moved about every sixteen years or so. Then I get a new start and make all kinds of resolutions about keeping things tidy--but it doesn't take long before I must ask Ray to wear a bell so that I can find him.
We love to have company, but when you come, please don't judge the amount of clutter in our minds by the clutter in our house. You might be getting too correct for comfort.