And, I consider myself ‘tidy’ (well tidy-ish) and am very good at using cleaning to proscrastinate writing. But, having stuff, in its place, is comforting. It doesn’t matter that there is a lot of it, or that other people might see it as ‘mess’ or claustraphobic. And while there are people who live in their own filth (literally not cleaning or throwing out garbage etc), a lot of hoarders are quite organised and methodical. My parents bought a house that had belonged to an old man hoarder who died. And they said he had a room full of clean but used tin cans; another of clean but used jars etc. There was vast quantities of ‘rubbish’, but it was still orderly.

Historiann, I agree that Caroline Kennedy has distinguished herself mainly by adroit cashing in. Her brief quasi-candidacy for the U.S. Senate a few years ago made us New Yorkers cringe. She couldn’t say why she wanted the job but implied she was doing us all a big favor. Public service, yadda yadda.

But she seems to have a good work ethic, and I’ve never read anything negative about behaviors in the Kennedy-Schlossberg household. Plus I tend to cut Kennedy women some slack because of the intense misogyny in that extended family. It has to have left scars.

Sometimes I think that blogging also represents a de-cluttering of the brain. I either have to write about it or let it the f^ck go.

To clarify: I don’t think that tidiness is *necessarily* a sign of a wasted life. I guess I’ve learned to live with my anxiety about my clutter, but your example of how office makeover = book progress is one I must think about seriously. My office is the only room of our house I’ve never done anything to at all–not even a lick of paint. So I wonder if that wouldn’t be a way to force a clean-up, clear-out, and help me reconnect with my research mojo.

Thanks for reminding me of the Collyer Brothers, there’s an E L Doctorow novel about them that I wanted to read but forgot about. Nook, here I come!
My mother used to reference them, too, and the story was so fascinating. Only one of them died because of the hoarding so the other brother was living with his corpse for a while. Did you know that among the hoarded things in their apartment was an automobile!

In fact, I had a huge writing block precisely because my study had become excessively cluttered over time. There was hardly space to move, so encrusted was the room with books, file furniture, and piles of paper. Once I cleared out that space, purchased a smaller desk, revised my book & file storage to a cleaner look, I began writing again immediately. I find that being anti-clutter is not just an aesthetic preference, it’s actually an intellectual necessity for me.

As I said, though, I really don’t care how other people approach their own spaces. I often am surprised by how… programmatic people are in expressing their opinions about clutter. I recall a discussion in the blogosphere some time ago about how people without clutter lack soul, &c. Even you, Historiann, accuse us anti-clutterers as having a “wasted life”! Why should you care how other people live? To each hir own!