In Defense of Clutter

The joys of a well-crafted mess

Words by Kally Groat

Whenever I touch down in a room, a tornado ensues. I don’t mean to be messy and it’s not out of disrespect to other people; organized is just not how my mind works.

Once, in university, I paid my roommate to clean my bedroom. By the end of the chore she walked away carrying a laundry basket full of 18 mugs and cups. One weekend, while staying with my sister, I woke up to her disinfecting doorknobs; she said I left finger marks everywhere, as if I were an amateur criminal and she was dusting for evidence of my messy existence.

Last winter, when I moved to the ski town of Fernie, the girl whose room I took over neatly packed away her modest belongings, while I came prepared with my own essentials: keyboard, guitar, paintings, three lamps, and my most favorite coffee table (for an already furnished room). These choice items have become a horcrux of sorts to my artistic self: pieces of me without which I would not be whole.

It’s in my nature to be a collector, just as a bird can’t help but collect twigs and hair. I’ve learned that this is how I function best, even if messiness goes against the grain of our overly curated, modern world.

When I step into a place that feels too basic, too thought out, I shut down. Modern white walls with succulents placed in such symmetry you can basically see the Gingham filter; the millennial, urban equivalent of live, laugh, love quotes. Too static. In an uncluttered space, my creative fire wanes, and I go into artistic hibernation. Like a grizzly come spring, I will resurface when I can again interact with my environment.

I want oddities and furniture that doesn’t match. I want clothes on the floor. Give me books strewn about; invite me in with wild plants. There I thrive. I would argue that too much organization for the sake of aesthetics is a man-made construct that goes against the laws of nature.

Navigating clutter is sort of like having a memory map to a treasure you know exists. The search might take time, but will often reveal lost fortunes along the way. Finding an item in clutter is like solving a long algorithm: it seems jumbled and random until you are nearly there; then, everything unfolds with a certain rhythm.

To the untrained eye, a coral reef might look like bumps and humps of exotic color and bold texture, or squiggly tentacles tossed together with other bubbling, alien things. You can probably point out the basics: there’s a starfish, that’s an anemone, a clown fish. But it takes insider knowledge to plunge into an ocean landscape and know intuitively what hides there.

Maybe my messiness comes from being shy, the need to be coy or secretive, to have the ability to hide things. Maybe it’s an emotionally regressive psychological rebellion from being told since childhood to clean my room. Maybe it’s an artistic rejection of the modern aesthetic, of perfect compositions and no-character design. It could be societal, not wanting to be put in a predictable box. Perhaps it’s more personal, the need to be revealed in layers like a mystery rather than being bare and star-fished in an empty room. Maybe it’s laziness. Whatever it is, I’m at my creative best in mess. And whether it’s a lost item or idea, I know I will always find—like drunken recall—what I’m looking for exactly when I need it.