“Clutter,” Peter Walsh said, “is a huge national problem. People are being suffocated by their stuff.”
A rapt audience at the Capital Home & Garden Show, some taking notes, hung on every word of the dynamic organizer on “Clean Sweep,” TLC’s hit home-organization show. His 150 listeners at Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va., nodded in agreement like sinners at a revival.
A massive industry has sprung up around the clutter weighing down America’s bedside tables, kitchen drawers, garages, playrooms and bookshelves. According to the International Housewares Association, Americans spent more than $5 billion on space and closet organizers in 2002, an increase of 19 percent over the previous five years.
Maybe misery loves company, because reality-TV fans in vast numbers also tune in to watch other people being publicly humiliated by their disorder.
Besides “Clean Sweep,” in which merciless hosts direct participants to sort belongings into piles labeled “toss,” “keep” or “sell,” there is HGTV’s “Mission Organization,” which brings before-and-after order to chaotic homes; and “Clean House” on Style Network, in which hosts “containerize” people’s stuff, one room at a time.
The shows are hugely successful: “Clean Sweep” and “Mission Organization” are both on their channel’s top 10 list of shows.
The cut-the-clutter movement has pushed into publishing circles too. Real Simple, a magazine whose circulation has quadrupled to 1.55 million since its launch four years ago, entices readers not with advice about how to lose weight or have great sex but “When to Throw Things Out.”
The underlying message to this rising clutter-busting chorus is that while it can feel good to buy more, it also can feel good to have less. And if you just can’t part with it, buy a storage tub for it.
Containers to corral the stuff of life are plentiful from Target to Safeway. At Pier 1 Imports, buyers have recently added storage baskets designed to hold CDs, DVDs and files.
Pam Danziger, a marketing consultant and author of the 2002 book “Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need,” argues that 9/11 has made Americans question our hyper-consumer society.
“For the past 20 years, we’ve had the cocooning mind-set. We’ve filled our emotional empty spaces with things and our homes,” she said. “What used to be warm and fuzzy and cozy-looking looks cluttered, confused and disorganized. We’ve filled up our homes; now we have to do something with it.”
Teaching to toss
Professional organizers have become the personal trainers of the 21st Century, charging from $40 to $200 an hour to offer support, direction and solutions to people’s item-control issues. Membership in the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napo.net) has swelled from five people when it was founded in 1985 to 2,200. According to the group’s president, Barry Izsak, full-time organizers can make from $40,000 to $200,000 a year.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
