Conquering Clutter - Excerpt

From the book On Architecture Collected Reflections on a Century of Change by Ada Louis Huxtable

"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have a horror of vacuum and those with a horror of the things that fill it. Translated into domestic interiors, this means people who live with and without clutter. 

The reasons for clutter, the need to be surrounded by things, go deep, from security status. 

Some people clutter compulsively, and others just as compulsively throw things away. Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting. Collecting can be done as the Collyer brothers did it, or it can be done with art and flair. This provides a third category, or what be called calculated clutter, in which the objets d'art, the memorabilia that mark one's milestones and travels, the irresistible and ornamental things that speak to pride, pleasure, and temptation, are constrained by decorating devices and hierarchal principles of value. This gives the illusion that one is in control. 

I confess to very mixed reactions when I see these sleek and shining people in their sleek and shining rooms, with every perfect thing in its perfect place. Do these fashionable people, elegantly garbed and posed in front of the lacquered built-ins with just the right primitive pot and piece of sculpture and the approved plant or tree, feel a tremendous sense of freedom and release? Have they been liberated by their seamless new look?

Historically, clutter is a new phenomenon, born of the industrial revolution. There was a time when goods were limited; and the rich and fashionable were few in number, and objects were precious and hard to come by. Clutter is a nineteenth century aesthetic; it came with the abundance of manufactured products combined with the rise of purchasing power, and the shifts in society that required manifestations of status and style."