Packrat

BTVFreep:

To many observers, clutter reflects the mind-set of the modern household -- overburdened, disorganized and compulsive. To others, clutter is a broader symbol of a ravenous culture dependent on easy credit, piling up debt and consuming a lion's share of the world's resources without considering the consequences.

"People's homes are a reflection of their lives," says Los Angeles psychologist and organi- zational consultant Peter Walsh. "It is no accident that people have a huge weight problem in this country, and clutter is the same thing. Homes are an orgy of consumption."

The obesity analogy isn't a joke. While personal spending drives much of the U.S. economy, the resulting clutter from all that shopping is so pervasive that some researchers wonder if it might have a deeper, biological component, similar to overeating.
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Modern humans developed some 100,000 years ago as hunters and gatherers living in fundamentally harsher circumstances. Today, we are surrounded by abundance, but our bodies have remained genetically programmed to eat everything in sight and store calories to survive winter, drought and famine. To some nutrition experts, it's a primary reason two-thirds of Americans are overweight.

Similarly, our forebears saved anything that could be materially useful because they had to make everything from scratch, whether it was flaking a sharp edge on a stone tool, or chasing down animals for meat and hides. So to want more and to keep it is fundamentally human.

Clues to how simply most people lived as recently as 150 years ago can be found in wills and other archived documents, says Philadelphia design critic Thomas Hine.

"A tradesman would leave his survivors two tankards, a chair and two spoons," says Hine, author of "I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average household size has declined to 2.61 persons, while the average dwelling has doubled since the 1950s to 2,250 square feet.

My disaster area of an office?  Not my fault: it's evolution (or Intelligent Design)!

Uh...my wife would beg to differ.  Anyhoo, I'm trying to get a handle on my mess, if not fast enough for her taste.  My office is in fact more than a little better than it was when I took that picture, though it's still a maze of stuff. 

As I think I mentioned previously, we're talking about how to downsize our lifestyle, eventually including the house itself.  Stef's done a great deal of sorting to cull her stuff and give it away.  I am one who is loathe to do such things because a) I'm lazy, and b) you never know when I might need that worthless gewgaw or the course material I wrote back in 1994 for a class that's no longer offered!

Ahem.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have some decluttering to do...

ntodd