Clodagh Finn: Down with austere minimalism. Home is where the clutter is

We can admire those who have the storage space and discipline to keep their homes in a state of detritus-free living but we should embrace the things that mean something to us, and rehabilitate the word ‘clutter'

Actor Camille Lucy Ross said her home made her feel happy and calm. ‘There is always gold dots to paint on things,’ she added on ‘Home of the Year’.

WHEN Home of the Year judges entered a refurbished cottage in Longford in the first episode of a new series aired on RTÉ last night, the camera homed in on a sign that read: “Did I just roll my eyes out loud?”

There wasn’t a better phrase to sum up my reaction to architect, judge, and minimalist disciplinarian Amanda Bone when she dismissed the previous home — a playful, colourful 1900s artisan cottage — as an “eclectic, aesthetic riot”. It was “visual noise”, she added, with that pained look she has when surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of daily life.

But then that is what she does. She is the lightning rod for TV conflict — though that is much too strong a word for what is really a gentle show about aspiration and inspiration. There is a small dollop of voyeurism too, but it is of the friendly kind as viewers get to look behind the hall door of other people’s homes.

What always amazes me in these revelatory journeys into beautifully curated Irish home interiors is the glorious lack of what some disparagingly label “stuff”.

True, every contestant must have done the mother of all decluttering spring cleans before the cameras turned up. All the same, I still wonder where they have hidden the myriad objects that invariably settle into the ecosystems of even the tidiest home habitats.

The living room in actor Camille Lucy Ross' home.

It was an absolute joy, then, to hear the owner of all that “visible noise” proclaim herself to be a maximalist. Actor Camille Lucy Ross said her home made her feel happy and calm. Then she said this: “There is always gold dots to paint on things.”

The joy in those few words made me feel, well, right at home. It’s not that I have gold dots on anything — though what an excellent idea — it’s just that my house bears the (many) marks of the things that have made an impression on me along the way.

On the gold theme, there’s a gold sticker of a hummingbird tacked inside a kitchen cupboard. It came with a box of tea along with an exhortation to “float free of time” — like the hummingbirds of legend — and enjoy every moment. I think of it every time I reach for a mug to make a brew.

Don’t get me wrong. Part of me grudgingly admires the order and sleek lines of those beautiful, spacious, light-filled homes like the show’s deserving Kerry winners.

Reclaim the clutter

I also admire those people who have much more discipline — and storage space — than me and keep the detritus of daily living out of sight.

However, it is high time that we reclaimed the much-maligned glory of ‘clutter’. After all, one woman’s clutter is another woman’s collection of valuable objects charting her journey through life.

For instance, that dusty ceramic jar is not a worthless trinket for the charity shop, but a treasured gift from a Chinese friend. It once held green tea and we had many a cup over long chats in its presence. The memory of that bubbles up every time I see it.

That little copper key nestling in the jar of assorted buttons is not out of place either; it is there for safe-keeping. It once opened the lock to my father’s bike. Lock, bike, and my beloved father are all gone, but that key reminds me of a man who cycled until shortly before his death.

And that box of old papers will never go into the recycling bin. Among them, I found a letter to my dear aunt Mary dated September 28, 1954, from the assistant illustrations editor of National Geographic, Walter Meayers Edwards. She had obviously written to him enquiring if, as she had thought, the painting of Cardinal Sauli by Sebastiano del Piombo had a fly painted realistically on the cardinal’s left knee.

The magazine had reproduced a photograph of the painting without it, but as this letter shows it was a mistake.

Mr Meayers explained: “Unfortunately in making a color [sic] reproduction of the painting the engravers did not reproduce it very clearly, and the printer, thinking it was a blemish in the plate, removed it. This mistake was not discovered until it was too late to do anything about it.”

Look it up, the fly is quite something, but so was my aunt’s letter. It’s too late to ask her how she knew of it, or indeed the 15th-century Venetian painter, but I’m so happy to have this reminder of an exceptional woman who remained cultured and curious for the rest of her life.

It’s been heartening to see a pandemic-inspired riposte to Marie Kondo’s life-changing magic of tidying. The Japanese guru may well have sparked joy in many a household, but I’m with the ‘cluttercore’ brigade.

Cluttercore apparently describes a new social media craze that encourages us to embrace our clutter and think of it instead as the objects that give our lives meaning.

That’s not a new craze but an old one that has preserved so much of what is now in archives. Take Teresa Deevy, the playwright whose early feminist plays graced the Abbey stage in Dublin, for example. Her papers were discovered in a green suitcase under the bed by her great-niece Jacqui Deevy, who deposited them at Maynooth University.

Madeline Hutchins, great-great-grandniece of Ellen Hutchins, tells the story that two plastic bags full of letters written by Ireland’s first female botanist were in a pile of ‘stuff’ ready for dumping when they were rescued.

I’m not suggesting we hoard, just nurture a more tolerant approach to the ‘stuff’ that roots us to our surroundings.

An interior view of the home of actor Camille Lucy Ross.

Accumulate

DOING a regular cull is necessary — and often cathartic — but that does not mean that we should deny the human impulse to gather, accrete, and accumulate. As in life, there’s a balance to be struck, but there’s no point fighting against the impulse.

Take it from American writer Dominique Browning, who hits the nail on the head: “The stuff we accumulate works the same way our body weight does. Each of us has a set point to which we invariably return. Each of us has been allotted a certain tolerance, if not a need, for stuff; each of us is gaited to carry a certain amount of weight in possessions.”

It’s worth keeping that in mind as spring-cleaning fever takes hold. Remember the verb to ‘declutter’ is a relatively recent invention — coined around the mid-20th century — but we have taken to it with unquestioning gusto. 

The uncomfortable truth about decluttering is that clutter hates a vacuum. As soon as old stuff is packed into black bin bags, new stuff rushes in to take its place.

Would it not make much more sense to embrace the things we already have and rehabilitate the word ‘clutter’? I’ll be tuning in next week for Home of the Year but maybe next year, producers ShinAwil will consider a new series: The Secret Life of Stuff.

I’m not suggesting we hoard, just nurture a more tolerant approach to the ‘stuff’ that roots us