I clutter, therefore I am

So, I see the de-cluttering Nazis are at it again.

For a while I thought there might be light at the end of the tunnel. I thought we were emerging from the Dark Age of Clean Freakery. The minimalists were on the way out. The slobs were in the ascendancy. Hooray!

And what lead me to this startling conclusion? Well, the articles in the paper, of course. They started popping up at the end of last year, innocent little pieces talking about the importance of keeping some of your personal stuff scattered around the house.

Some of these articles even mentioned the C-word. Clutter. Gasp! Apparently the unclean, sinful, verboten C-word was set to make a comeback. Well, break out bourbon and call the party to order. The Clean Freaks are going down! Tra-la-la.

Yes, it turned out that people – real people – didn’t actually want to live in those sterile, tidy, scrubbed-to-within-an-inch-of-their-life rooms you see on the glossy pages of the home decorating magazines.

You know the type of rooms I mean. Everything is perfectly designed, beautifully styled, obsessively colour co-ordinated and void of personality. Even the “mess” is styled.

You can never win with these magazines. Home dec mags are like beauty mags. You look at the air-brushed faces and bodies and think, I don’t look like that. Similarly, when I look at the “entertainment centres” featured in home dec magazines, I think my rumpus room doesn’t look like that.

So when I saw the C-word, I saw hope. Finally, I thought, the home style dictators were offering an olive branch to the slobs who have the kids, cats, crumbs and clutter to contend with.

Suddenly there was the possibility that I would no longer be on the outside looking in at the pretty, pristine, petite bourgeois world of graceful living! Move over Martha, the slobs are back in town.

It’s lonely being a tasteless slob when the rest of the world seems so obsessed with style, design and window treatments? Forgive the ignorance but it was only recently that I discovered that a windows treatment did not mean opened or closed.

You have no idea how I’ve longed to see my house reflected on the glossy pages of a home dec magazine. Where are the magazines called Slobs and Gardens or Slovenly Living or House and Slob?

And the TV channels. Where is the Homes and Clutter channel? I’d tune in on Thursday nights and watch the latest episode of Slobs on Slobs. And what about a show with two saucy Scots coming into a house each week to criticize the cleanliness, lambaste stylishness and making mincemeat of tasteful makeovers.

We could call the show How Not To Be Stylish or How Not to Have Taste. They could offer tips on messing things up a bit, you know, making the place look like it’s actually inhabited by normal people with kids, cats, crumbs and clutter.

I was getting so excited about the possibilities and then it stopped. No more articles with the C-word. My friends, I fear the nascent Back-to-Clutter Movement has been crushed.

The Clean Freaks and the Taste Titans got to them and snuffed them out. I imagine they’ve burned those articles and destroyed their printing presses. That’s why we don’t see them anymore.

So, when you look at the home dec mags, it’s all neat and tidy and graceful, just like before.

Pity the poor slob.