Eliza, thanks for leaving a comment and for the book suggestion. I’ll check it out.

Teresa-I have to keep my clutter organized or it makes me crazy. So when the piles start to overlap or I have to start using the floor for piles, I de-clutter, which I actually enjoy. I have to feel like the master of the piles! And it is such fun to find things I’ve forgotten about. Thanks for adding to the conversation.

Tricia-The main character in The Painting Story also loved to make piles and she read an article that said the piles we make represent the contents of our brain! So pile, pile, pile to unclutter your brain.

Ohhhh, that’s where all the papers come from.

I never was a shopper. Materialism was never an issue with me. But paper piles. Where do they come from? My desk is also in the guest room so I frequently clean the room to prepare arrivals. However, if I leave two pieces of paper out, they breed to millions the next day. I can’t keep up.

If this is how you feel about your writing place, well, may be it’s because you need more space to work… and put some new…

“Notebooks, letters, pictures.”

I just love the way you express your feelings about this private and secret place of your. It’s look and sound like a garden where words keep growing day after day and travel from page to page.

I love your clutters.

Emily, you bring up the other side of this issue, the fact that sometimes clutter can promote creativity. Really, seeing papers everywhere and books open on top of the printer and on the floor does help to bring out my creative or “wild” side, which I’m just now realizing as I type this. The “mess” somehow overpowers my logical self. Cool.

Owlandsparrow and waggledance, the two “picture names,” both of you seem to be able to really get into the fun of de-cluttering!

Lindsay, I think one of the reasons I’m drawn to the small houses in the blog header is for exactly the reason you mention you enjoy living in your small house–there’s simply not room for a lot of possessions.

Zoe, you bring up a side of this issue I thought about but didn’t get into–saving things for their sentimental value. Notebooks, letters, pictures…how do we keep that aspect of “things” in check? Thanks for your great post on the subject.

Jennifer, It is interesting how good empty space feels. It’s difficult to understand it, but it’s true. Why do we rush to hang pictures? Is it more of a need to find a place for things? And my clutter is very organized. It’s not messy. There’s just so much of it.

Thanks for all the great comments. Here’s a little snippet from Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping that I thought of after I had written this post:

“The parlor was full of the newspapers and magazines Sylvie brought home. They were stacked pretty neatly…Nevertheless, they took up the end of the room where the fireplace had been. Then there were the cans stacked along the wall opposite the couch. Like the newspapers, they were stacked to the ceiling. Nevertheless, they took up considerable floor space….Sylvie only kept them, I think, because she considered accumulation to be the essence of housekeeping, and because she considered the hoarding of worthless things to be proof of a particularly scrupulous thrift.”

Thanks for the fun photos!