I have more clutter than other people. I’m sure of it, because whenever I go to my neighbours’ houses, I never see any clutter, even if I just drop in on them.

Because I’m certain I have more clutter than other people, it implies one of two possibilities: either they do not amass as much clutter as I do in the first place, or they have organized spaces in which to store/dispose of their clutter.

It’s possible they have ‘clutter rooms’, spaces behind closed doors where they throw their clutter as it enters their houses, or even, perhaps, ‘clutter drawers.’ Really a drawer wouldn’t be enough space to hold all my clutter. I’d need an entire room. Or several rooms.

And it isn’t that I don’t throw out my clutter. I do throw out what I think can be thrown out, but some things, like the spelling test that got five out of five, or the cheque from the government for $2.50 that I keep forgetting to take to the bank (because it’s not worth the trip)… these things pile up.

Clearly part of my problem is just that I don’t take the time to put things in their proper place. The toy soldiers on the counter? I know where they belong. The insurance papers that keep on coming? We do have a file folder in the office labeled Annoying Stuff I Don’t Understand.

This whole idea of “putting things away?” It’s a skill I’ve never learned in spite of my parents’ best intentions to teach it to me. As a child I had all sort of posters and puzzles and laundry bags with cute messages on them, such as, “Sweetheart! Clean up your mess!” I can recall going hungry a few times because I simply couldn’t manage to get my bedroom tidied up before dinner was served.

There are different sorts of clutter: there is kitchen clutter, living room clutter, bedroom clutter, and office clutter. Kitchen clutter is sort of magical as it gets moved around in piles (from counter to table to counter to table) growing in size until it finds its way into a drawer. (We have a lot of drawers.) Then it starts over again. Living room clutter consists mostly of toys, books, drawings, and miscellaneous school items. Bedroom clutter is too private to talk about.

Office clutter is perhaps the most eclectic. Here are examples of my office clutter: used up printer cartridge, packaging from new printer cartridge, letters from people who don’t use email (yes, they still exist), some sort of level/flashlight, various bills, expired credit card, unused cheques from closed bank account, some silk trim from a dress, various photographs (including a wallet-size of my sister’s 1996 college-graduation picture!), a wooden scorpion, some rolled up scraps of wallpaper, two pieces of driftwood, a small ceramic house, some wooden toppings from a toy pizza, two tampons, a variety of books, three broken Barbie dolls, some beer coasters, a wooden letter ‘G’, 67 cents, a broken remote controller for a plastic bumper car, several pens, cords and wires, a tin of Vaseline, a book of matches, a brass paper weight that says “AT ONCE”, a fridge magnet with a picture of the Kremlin on it… Seriously I could go on, and that’s just the stuff on top of my desk. It’s amazing there’s room for my computer on here.

The real problem is not that I have a lot of clutter; it’s the fact that I actually do know what to do about it… and I haven’t done it. It would only take me about a day to go through it all, throw out what I don’t want, give away what I can, and put away the rest. In fact, I could be doing that right now, but it’s more fun to write about my clutter than to actually deal with it.

According to Google, there are about 4,160,000 hits on ‘how to get rid of clutter.’ Can you imagine that? Over four million people are out there ready to give me advice on how to get rid of my clutter and I already know what to do about it. The thing is, what I want to do even less than actually go through all my clutter is read about how I should get rid of my clutter. It’s like four million nagging moms out there saying, “Clean up your mess! Get it tidied up! Just do it!”

This is the point in my essay where I include a witty quotation about how clutter’s not so bad, but I couldn’t find any quotations like that. Seems all the experts agree that clutter is a negative thing that must be uprooted and destroyed.

Well, the amazing thing is that my clutter doesn’t really bother me all that much. Oh sure, I love my house right after I’ve done a big cleaning, but in the back of my mind, I know that within a few days, it’ll look exactly the same way it looked before. And that’s the thing about clutter: it’s CONSTANT. It never ceases. Clean it up and it’ll get messy again. Give it away and more will arrive. Put it in a drawer and it will undoubtedly find its way out.

And so I resolve not to worry about it. Clutter and I will live together in harmony, each minding our own business. Oh, I’ll try to tame it a bit, keep it in check so it doesn’t overwhelm or suffocate me, but I refuse to let it control my life. And besides, that grad picture of my sister reminds me that I should give her a call, and that Kremlin fridge magnet reminds me of my grandma and all her pretty trinkets I used to admire, and that beer coaster reminds me of the strange pub my husband and I went to that one time in Dallas, and that wooden scorpion reminds me of my son who painted it with such love…

As we go through life, we collect clutter. Some of it is annoying (like all those dead batteries that can’t be put in the garbage), but some of it is kind of nice (like the photos that just haven’t yet made their ways into albums). My clutter is the story of my life, little reminders of what has happened or of what is yet to come. I don’t feel stifled by it. It doesn’t make me anxious or stressed. Really, in my opinion, clutter’s only as damaging as you think it is.