The Case for Clutter

I joined my family in helping our mother pack up her condo and move into a smaller place. Our parents kept a tidy house, but every home has one: the unfinished part of the basement, the cellar of misfit toys (and old rugs and cathode-ray televisions), the place where you put the boxes you packed hastily the last time you moved, or the time before that. These would need to be gone through carefully—a sample box would be three wax apples, a VHS, and my father’s birth certificate—but we would need to be ruthless. Donate