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Petula Dvorak / Living (or faking) the clutter-free life
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I am about to commit a serious fraud.
This weekend, I will defy years of unflagging take-me-as-I-am honesty and present a home that is a big, fat lie.
Well, maybe. If I can beat the clock.
The latest decline of my moral fiber came when one of the exceedingly organized and cheerful classroom moms began looking for spectacular or unusual homes in our neighborhood to include in a house tour that is one of our public school's big fundraisers.
She heard our place is pretty whack-a-doo (we definitely fall into the unusual, rather than spectacular, category) and asked if she could include ours: a Victorian rowhouse that a previous owner had gutted to resemble a warehouse.
Gasp. Saying no to a school fundraiser is tantamount to heresy in mommyland.
Saying yes means hundreds of complete strangers will see the paperwork drifts that accumulate in our home like snow on a prairie and our own personal Lascaux, courtesy of the little cavemen who express themselves on our walls via Crayola.
I've never tried to impersonate Martha Stewart. I've hosted dinner parties, play dates and birthdays with a cursory clean and an apology to my guests. I have two kids and a busy life, and I'd rather spend my time in the park with the boys instead of alphabetizing my books.
The problem is, we are constantly bombarded by unrealistic, impossible images of how we should live.
Catalogues, magazines, newspapers and TV shows are forever displaying a world where side tables aren't junked up by mismatched picture frames, a Hot Wheel car and a sock; dressers and closets aren't vomiting clothes; beds are populated by a small nation of coordinating, useless pillows; and cashmere throws are artfully draped at just the right angle across clean sofas.
This pressure makes people crazy.
But I said yes to the home tour, even though clutter is the new evil; organization, our nation's new religion. An entire industry, complete with experts, books, reality shows, doctoral theses and chain stores, has sprouted around the cult of de-cluttering. In this religion, Jane Campbell is a high priestess. The Rockville, Md., resident has a Harvard doctorate in psychology and uses some of that insight to help change the lives of her clients through their stuff. "It's not about looking like a magazine but about living the life in your head," she says.
All week long, I work through the night, bagging the neglected toys for donation, pitching the catalogues and magazines I have been meaning to look at for months, creating a Potemkin Village of relative order. But two days before the tour, it still looks like a daycare center run by squirrels and hoarders.
I decide to call one of the other parents whose home is on the tour for advice. Charlotte Larson is a doctor and mother of three young boys, has abs of steel and is a nice person - your basic nightmare. Her home is so camera-ready that shots of her kitchen were used to promote the tour.
"Oh, this is a nightmare," she tells me over the sounds of her boys.
Her husband is traveling; she just got back from the West Coast and has been scrambling to clean before the masses come. Even though the tour is this weekend, she's resolved to calm down.
"At some point, I decided to be less stressed about it," she says. And then she invokes the phrase that the smartest women in my life use to soothe me: "Listen, it is what it is."
She's right. I just hope no one opens the closets.
Petula Dvorak writes for The Washington Post.
Posted in Commentary on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 3:05 am
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