Closet Obsessions

Of course, many would-be neatniks are not satisfied with wicker baskets, leading to the related consumer phenomenon of over-specialization. Rather than cutting down on our belongings, we’re balkanizing them into sock dividers, lipstick holders, and cellphone “valets.” Visit organization retailers and you’ll find spinning stands for TV remotes, Lid Maids for corralling wayward pot tops, storage containers custom-designed for Christmas wreaths. This trend is spoofed in TV ‘s Will & Grace, when the fastidious Will wonders how he ever got along without a “wrapping room.” “I was always losing the scissors and spreading the wrapping paper on the floor. . . like an animal.”

Our grandmothers didn’t have specialized storage (other than those endlessly cunning sewing baskets). They relied on the drawers and shelves of a few looming pieces of dark furniture in houses that were, for the most part, much smaller than the average family homes of today. Many people retreating from over-consumption are looking to the Voluntary Simplicity movement, drawing on recollections of grandma’s house as a model of a quieter, slower, less-crowded time. The movement’s edges may be somewhere in Montana, among those who raise goats and live off the grid. But as it reaches the mainstream, it mutates into an exquisite minimalism that requires a deep consumerist foundation. Real Simple magazine’s solution for the chaos of contemporary middle-class life involves a shimmering mirage of Calvin Klein bedding, Japanese tableware, and that one perfect white shirt. Unfortunately, this kind of “simplicity” is just too tempting. Once you taste its preciousness, it’s hard to get enough of it. Again, our grandmothers didn’t have time for Voluntary Simplicity; they were too busy living through the enforced simplicity of the Depression. One of the most withering things women of that generation could say about some gewgaw was, “I wouldn’t give it house room.” This is not only a killingly effective term of derision; it’s a common-sense recognition that space is finite, as must be our belongings.

The title of Christopher Lowell’s latest decorating book, Seven Layers of Organization: Unclutter Your Home, is the implicit promise of the organization industry. If we whip those drawers, cupboards, and closets into shape, our unruly teenagers, harried workdays, maxed-out credit cards, buzzing brains, even our sick souls will somehow fall into line. It’s hard to see how the concept of organization can apply to all these levels without either extending practical transformation far beyond what it can actually accomplish or trivializing spiritual transformation into a matter of housecleaning.

Considering that the problem of clutter is so palpably physical, it’s odd that many organizational specialists avoid simple materialist explanations, preferring ornate spiritual theories, from feng shui to New Age pseudo-science. Dawna Walter, the otherwise matter-of-fact author of The Life Laundry: How to Dejunk your Life (co-authored by Mark Franks), ties her organizational approach to her interest in reiki: “The easiest way to explain how clutter can affect all levels of your being is through the theories of vibrational medicine which are based on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.” (This would probably be news to the grand old man of physics.)

In The Spirit of Getting Organized, Pamela Kristan makes organization into a link between the earthly and the sacred by offering parallel definitions. What she calls “Everyday Sorting” ( “Separate glass, plastic and metal when we recycle”) is paired with “Spiritual Sorting” ( “Identify the patterns in our compulsions, addictions and habits”), allowing you to clean up your kitchen garbage and kick that heroin habit at the same time.

Regina Leeds, author of The Zen of Organizing, makes a game attempt at being philosophical: “Perhaps Socrates said ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ after the tenth time he tried to clean out his closets!” Sure, and maybe Kant conceived of the Categorical Imperative while trying to rearrange his medicine cabinet. The tie between spring cleaning and the history of Western thought remains elusive.

TV shows like Clean Sweep, Neat, and Mission: Organization tend to avoid these kinds of conceptual frameworks, preferring the spectacle of raw emotion. These programs are ostensibly room makeovers, but they are room makeovers that pivot on pure naked psychodrama. The subjects on tlc’s Clean Sweep first purge their belongings with host Tava Smiley, who encourages a little healthy rivalry between the husband/wife, mother/daughter, or roommate pairs, which then boils over into unhealthy resentment as the couples fight over what to Keep, Sell, and Toss. (What to do with that giant stuffed panda that was a gift from the husband’s old girlfriend?) Next, the Keep pile gets a second, more serious pass with Peter Walsh, a chipper Australian, who comes off as half-therapist, half-organizer. He likes to confront emotional issues that are keeping homeowners mired in mess.

Canadian Hellen Buttigieg, the host of hgtv ‘s Neat, is another expert in therapeutic decoration. No doubt relying on her Certificate of Study in Chronic Disorganization from the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (seriously), she has a compassionate but keen instinct for rooms that have taken on the burden of a family’s tensions and become Freudian dumping grounds for fear, guilt, and dirty little secrets. The show loves trauma, whether it’s a mother suffering from panic attacks over the state of the living room, a wife’s obsessive collecting habit, or families in denial about major life changes (divorce, remarriage, a new baby, or kids leaving home). These are the Oprah hug-fests of the organization world, confessional stories that start with weeping and hand-holding but end in domestic uplift.

Other encounters have a distinct cruel-to-be-kind feel to them. Within the larger genre of shelter porn, home-organization shows have the potential to become a nasty little fetish line, with their repetitive rituals of exposure, humiliation, and punishment, all culminating in the money shot of “the reveal.” Like porn, they feature improbably good-looking carpenters with big, um, tool belts, and like porn, they foster unrealistic expectations, in this case the miraculous creation of mdf storage units in twelve hours. (mdf stands for medium-density fibreboard, a staple material of home shows and ikea furniture.)

Not every clutterer is up to the levels of exhibitionism and sadomasochism required for a TV makeover, however, and not everyone can afford the private services of a professional organizer. (Or a “clutterbug” cruise, in which you enjoy the waters of the Mexican Riviera while attending seminars on how to ditch draining relationships and get rid of gifts you hate.) The organization trend is also powered by a grassroots surge of support groups, self-help movements, and Internet chat rooms.