This Aesthetic is (Still) Total Crap 🙅🏻‍♀️

"Clutter Core?" Nope. We are (still) not doing this.

Good news for everyone who ever wanted to get their home organized but didn’t want to:

❶ give away all of their stuff,

❷ buy a bunch of “natural fiber” containers that cost as much as a bottle of the expensive bourbon, and

❸ live in a home that looks like nobody lives in it…

…WE ARE MOVING AWAY FROM PERFECTION!!!

Meticulously styled, spotless, fully decanted, and containerized homes are out! And I am not even a little bit sad about this.

I mean, I love a beautiful, clean, organized space. But nobody wants to live in a home that they can’t actually live in.

And all of those perfect-looking homes? How are people not messing everything up all the time? Are there people actually maintaining all this perfection? Isn’t that … stressful?

Plus, where is all the personal stuff?

Where is the sentimental stuff?

Why do the closets look like they belong in an alcove off the lobby of a ski chalet in Austria?

I’m not gonna lie. I’m glad to see that people are looking for something less pristine when it comes to getting their homes organized.

But, if perfection is out, what’s in?

Well, prepare yourself.

Because the aesthetic I thought had been dismissed as completely crackers, is apparently making the rounds again.

“Intentional Clutter.”

“Clutter Core.”

“Curated Chaos.” (I am not even joking).

Yeah. No.

We are not doing this.

Anything with the words “clutter” or “chaos” in the title? Nope. No sir. This is not our destiny.

I am also banning the words “mess” (as in “Organized Mess”) and “sloppy” (unless the next word is “Joe”).

These are words we do not want anywhere near us or our aesthetic.

We don’t want homes that are cluttered or messy or sloppy.

This is not going to make us feel good about ourselves. This is not going to make coming home any more fun. This is not going to make it easier to get out the door in the morning or make coming home at the end of the day any more fun or relaxing or safe.

We don’t want chaos inside our home. There’s enough chaos out there in the world right now and honestly? I don’t need any of that on my side of my closed front door.

We want calm.

We want easy.

Shouldn’t it be easy to be at home?

I cannot express how much I love that the standard for what an “organized home” looks like is changing.

I hate that “organized” has come to universally mean “minimalist.”

Or “empty.”

Or “plain.”

Or whatever the hell Kim Kardashian is doing with her shades of beige room. Nobody wants to hang out in that. Can you imagine having a party in an all beige room? Would you have to serve a beige cake? What kind of cake would that even be? It certainly wouldn’t be lemon, which is my favorite. Or red velvet, which is my second favorite. Gawd, wouldn’t you just be so depressed?

The uncomfortable truth for a professional home organizer is this: I don’t want to live in a home without “stuff” in it.

I want to live in a home where I am surrounded by stuff.

Stuff that reflects who I am, reminds me of the lives I have lived and the people I have loved, and inspires me to become the woman I am becoming.

I want my home to be filled with colors and textures and kitsch and quirk and as much parmesan cheese as you can fit in the fridge.

To be clear, I am not interested in feeling like there’s so much stuff in my house that the walls are closing in on me and I’m being eaten alive. But. I’ve always believed that an“organized home” doesn’t have to be boring. It can be “hodgepodge” and “mishmash” and “fun.”

Organized can be personalized.

It should be personalized.

If the “organized home” aesthetic is evolving to embracing and celebrating the things in our home that we love, and that make us laugh at ourselves, and that make us feel like we’re living in a home that is uniquely ours?

Well, I am all in on that.

But.

This trend that started at the beginning of the year and I’m starting to see being talked about again at the end of the year?

“Clutter Core?” Please. We are not core-ing our clutter.

Nobody wants to open the door and be like, “Hey! Look at all my clutter! I’ve been intentional about it. I’ve curated some chaos!”

We’re not doing that.

We do not want to curate the chaos inside our homes by organizing our clutter.

We want to eliminate our clutter.

It’s clogging up our space and making it feel like everything is impossible. Like there’s no room available for all the things that make our lives feel fun and relaxing and safe and calm. Or for things that support the lives we want to be living. Or for the things that inspire us and make us happy and make us the kind of people who know exactly how long the ground beef has been in the fridge because we really want to make Sloppy Joes for dinner tonight.

How do you make room for these things in your home?

By being intentional about what makes your life better and what’s just taking up space.

By clearing the clutter so you can curate (and organize) your home with the good stuff.

By letting go of anything that doesn’t belong in your life right now.

By curating calm. And then organizing the unique things that make your home the place where you live your favorite version of your life.

This is the aesthetic we want.

We’ve just got to come up with a catchy name for it.

The original hodgepodge mishmasher,
Vivian

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PS. I don’t just write on substack, I also help smart, capable people downsize, declutter, and make space in their home so that they can stop fighting with their stuff and feel proud of the space they live in. If you’re struggling to do this on your own, hit reply to this email and let’s have a conversation about it.