One Person's Clutter Is the Next Person's Treasure

There’s lots of talk, and gnashing of teeth, no doubt, about clutter (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/opinion/the-clutter-cures-illusory-joy.html?ref=opinion). Every so often—not as often as Gilda would like, more often than I can calmly take—the woman I live with feels compelled to lighten our load. No matter how attached I might be to an object she’s determined to make room.

Our most recent bout was over a wood cutting board. Admittedly, neither of us had used the slab, in say, more than a decade, since we redid our kitchen. But I still saw value in it. Some background: I prefer thin boards sized about 8x10 inches. Gilda favors a mix of thicker boards, large and small. The board in question matched my preference. I reluctantly permitted it to be removed from the cutting board drawer last evening. I could not find it this morning. I thought she had surreptitiously thrown it out. Later today she confessed to stashing it near the microwave.

I admit, I’m a pack rat. Objects stay in my closet long after their useful life has passed. I’ve got numerous suits, sports jackets and dress pants hanging in my closets (note the plural, not on suits, for goodness sake, but on closets necessary to store my wardrobe) despite the fact that since I retired nearly six years ago I have worn a suit or sports jacket but a few times a year. I can’t explain why I keep them. It’s not as if I am preserving them for my next job.

I’ve got stuff in the attic waiting for my kids and their spouses to come around to my taste in home furnishings. Ha!

Most hard liquor doesn’t spoil. Good thing. Inside our liquor cabinet is a bottle of gin left over from Dan’s bris party 36 years ago!

Gilda and I try to adhere to the buy one-dump one strategy. We are somewhat successful, gauging from the charity deduction we take each year. But proper hoarding, neatly packed and labeled stuff, can be an asset.

Take Legos, for example. We packed up Dan’s Legos in his early teens. They slumbered (I’m using a humanizing verb because of all the small Lego people stored away, people who are now worth quite a bit more than when we bought them some 25-30 years ago). They were hibernating in the attic until a year ago when Finley was old enough to appreciate the saved and now resuscitated treasure trove of people and interlocking pieces. Legos have supplanted a riding front loader as the first toy he runs to when he visits.

Clutter, Clutter Everywhere

If you took the time to read the voluminous obituary of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger in Sunday’s NY Times, you'd have come across this description deep inside the story of his life and work as publisher of The Times:

“By nature, he was fastidiously neat. The habitual clutter on reporters’ desks drove him to distraction.”

As a former reporter, I can vouchsafe a cluttered desk is part of a journalist’s DNA. Our desks could be, should be, condemned by fire marshals as potential fire traps. But as seemingly disheveled as it appears, a reporter’s desk is unique to him or her in its self-ordered filing system. With a deft hand, a reporter could sift through the mess on his desk and surrounding floor space to produce the report or notebook containing the exact quote or citation needed for the story approaching deadline.

One of my favorite Abbott & Costello routines was their take on efficiency experts. Abbott upbraided Costello for the mess on his rolltop desk. Papers were strewn every which way. Calmly, Costello reassured Abbott everything was in order, in its proper place. Anything Abbott would want could be easily retrieved. Go ahead, test my system, Costello challenged him. Sure enough, whichever contract Abbott requested, no matter how deeply it was buried under mounds of paper, Costello pulled it out from the pile with a pair of scissors. Duly impressed, Abbott raced off to tell their boss and invite him to a demonstration of Costello’s efficiency. Costello’s triumph was aborted by a sudden gust of wind when the door to their office was opened by their supervisor, sending all the papers flying across the office. They were fired on the spot.

I carried the reporter’s prototype desk well into my days as an editor and publisher. It would exasperate my superiors who forever were urging me to clean up my surroundings. I'd reply with the time honored line, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.”

During one of my vacations, our company president demanded my office be cleaned up. My boss's assistant dutifully straightened up all my papers. Barbara didn't throw any out, she made neat piles of loose papers, magazines, newspapers, and assorted reports. But when I returned to work I was unable to find anything for more than a week. I threatened to have her fired if she ever touched any of my stuff again. She never did (shortly thereafter I promoted her to an editorial position; she’s been reading and editing copy for the last 15 years). 

My desk resembling the aftermath of a typhoon blowing through a stationery store, I had to advise my staff they should never put anything they want me to see on my desk if I wasn’t sitting before them. Always, I told them, put papers on my chair. I always looked at my chair before sitting down.

Much to Gilda’s chagrin, now that I'm retired, my desk in the home office we share remains messy. She has a hard time concentrating at her desk amidst the clutter on mine. Why my desk should bother her is beyond my ken. She's always promoting the virtues of a neat desk. Sometimes, even I find it necessary to clear the decks and throw out really old newspapers with stories I had tagged for blog posts but never got around to writing. Try as I might, I revert to old pack-rat ways. My clutter is habitual. I guess that will always confirm I’m a reporter at heart and in mind.