Peace of Mind Organizing

(Double) standards of clutter

11 May 2011

There’s an interesting conversation going on over at Unclutterer, one of my favorite blogs at organizing and clutter. Unclutterer editor, Erin Dolan, wrote a fascinating post about societal pressures women face to keep house.

She asserts that there’s a double standard at play in our society, that women are expected to have neat, clutter-free homes and men are expected not to.

Here’s a snippet:

Personally, unless a home is filthy or is a danger to the person who lives there or a burden to others, I don’t care about the clutter. I just hope the person is happy and the clutter doesn’t interfere with her ability to pursue the life she desires or anyone else’s. Not only do I think gender is irrelevant to this topic, I believe we need to stop cluttering up our thoughts and time by concerning ourselves with how other people have chosen to live. If someone chooses to be an unclutterer, I think that is an amazing decision. However, I don’t think everyone should or needs to be an unclutterer to pursue a remarkable life.

I love this. I’ve blogged about how everyone has their own standards of clutter and that we should try to live up to our own and no one else’s. I think professional organizers sometimes feel they have to live up to a higher standard of non-clutter (and I blogged about that on Unclutterer a couple of years ago.) As a woman and a PO whose standards of tidiness are somewhat lax, I completely agree with Erin that regardless of gender how someone keeps his or her home is no business of mine (or anyone else’s).

I read this Unclutterer blog post two days after it was originally posted and there were already 96 comments. It’s an interesting discussion. Once you read the post, be sure and click on the comments.

Tagged with: clutter, order, society, unclutterer

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