ENCHANTING CLUTTER

When I worked around 1993 in the open-plan office of a statutory health insurance company, shortly after I had completed my training as a social insurance merchant, I was thrown into a treadmill by the daily arriving mail. My colleague, who had already reached the age of fifty, handled her incoming mail with the accuracy of an accountant. She processed the documents in a staccato that intimidated me. Her cleanly varnished red fingernails bit with her orange-red hair, her lips never without make-up, and I never saw the woman eat. She was very quiet, but I hadn't the impression that she was shy. I think I was a little afraid of her. We didn't chat.

If I'd only been dawdling around with the mail for two days, by the end of the week the mountain of mail would have grown to almost unmanageable proportions and I would probably never have been able to catch up. At least that's what I thought. Other colleagues did not take it so exactly indeed with it and I am sure, some sick note paper disappeared and never emerged in the data.

I began to suffer from the flood of mail and every day became a race against time. Data collection took up most of my work. So I had received top training only to process applications and enter the sick notes of the insured into the database, making sure that the diagnoses were consistent with pre-existing conditions. Administration took such a large part of my work that there was no room at all for creativity, spontaneity and one-off projects. After five years of this proper work, I was sick and tired of it. The merit was excellent and also the chances for career advancement, but the topic bored me beyond comparison. The entire order of the filing system and the treatment of the insured - at that time, public traffic was generally seen as a disruptive factor in the clockwork - seemed cold and lifeless to me. I was dealing exclusively with the sick or with people who wanted to claim a benefit for themselves, which I was guided to reject as far as possible.

Basically this training was useful for my curriculum vitae. I had also learned what order meant. It gave me a certain deeper insight into bookkeeping, but never a real love for filing systems. My desk has been one that I remember as messy and papery. Today I don't have a desk anymore.

I have become a little more orderly over time - I suppose it has something to do with picking up many things over the years that you never actually use, and so at some point you have to realize that it would be better to throw them away, to scrap them, to sell them or to donate them. Especially in the last few years, I find myself hardly buying anything new and picking up something old that I once put in the cupboard and starting to use it. I mean, if not now, then when?

But my sorting and tidying up actions also have a big disadvantage:

the filthy and messy corners, drawers and accommodation for miscellaneous things were a source of inspiration. I knew, without knowing it exactly, that there were things hidden in the piles that I could look at or even use from time to time, documents next to tools, decorative items and hair ornaments, bags with photos, everything was somehow unsorted, and yet I knew when I was looking for something to start with. I robbed myself of the surprises in my closets and drawers, and the other day, when I thought of something I could use, I remembered that the place I would have guessed was clean. It's a bit sad, I think. I wonder why I've done so much away with and why I thought I could live so badly with my mess. Certainly, there are still a few boxes that I don't know exactly what is inside. And that's the way it should stay.

If you ask me, order is far overrated. Just like long-term planning. As I am always starting to collect new things, I will soon experience little surprises again as soon as I browse through a bag. The many things that one purchases or buys rather unconsciously and that one thinks one has bought for nothing serve one purpose: they are an inspiration when one once again does not know what to do with one's time. It's all very well to browse the Internet, but unfortunately it's completely dust- and odourless, you can't see things sparkle in the sun and you don't have to stretch or bend an arm to find out what might have fallen behind the closet.

I think the real reason for some kind of disorder is the surprise effect.

We collect things in our houses and move objects because, like when we're out in the woods or an area with different plants and deposits of rocks and rivers, we can find something surprising and useful to improvise with. A messy forest floor is certainly a good playground for finding interesting broken branches, various plants, insects and the like. Similarly, we have to leave a space for the unexpected for city dwellers who do not have sheds, cellars or garages where we tolerate disorder.

When I was once present at the household dissolution of an eighty-year-old man, the grandfather of a brief affair of mine with his grandson, I was amazed at the sheer size and extent of his things: he had several sheds and a large workshop and his entire house had been full of collected things. An unbelievably huge truck was loaded so that he could move his belongings into the area of - I think Arizona. I walked around in delight and looked at as much as I could before it was loaded or thrown away. It was such a joy to participate. Afterwards, all the helpers got a lot to eat, huge amounts of beef, which they served, boiled into fibers. The old man gave me a handmade wooden box with the funny saying: "Made with only nine fingers" (because he had injured his hand). Today it stands on the shelf in my bathroom and serves as a container for various cosmetics.

A friend of mine, who is a photographer and taught herself her hand and art work, has a rather messy apartment. When you come into her kitchen, you are greeted by a mountain of papers piled up on the kitchen shelf, the fridge is in the middle of the room and the dining table serves as a desk, so you have to go into the living room to eat. Next to the table there are clothes racks and a large lighting tub, in the hallway there are long wardrobe rails with interesting clothes, hats and other utensils that the models can wear when they feel like it. Every inch of the walls is paved with pictures and photographs. Books form columns on the floors. A plant thrives on the windowsill that I have never seen before and feels great.

My mother was very messy. Her cupboards were a kind of mausoleum, almost uncanny to look in there, since you never knew how many spiders had already made themselves at home in them. The drawers were full of letters, cards, bible verses, hymnbooks, religious cheesy novels, rotten pages from our old telephone directory, junk, crocheted mushrooms, and smelly Russian perfumes that nobody had ever used. Nevertheless, I loved to browse in the drawers again and again, because under the rubbish there was a treasure hidden every now and then. So now I've taken her old Sunday night out handbag, a little darling made of wine red leather. I cherish it like a rare trophy, but I use it almost every day. There is not much that I have of my mother in material things.

My brother's garage and workshop at the same time is a home full of grease, strange utensils, oil drums, dunkards, grinding papers and noisy machines. I have never seen it properly before and I would probably be disappointed if this were to happen. Next to the crate of beer that always stands there, I see a very old cupboard that once stood in a kitchen, a radio that was just as old, full ashtrays, a stove and, of course, always an object that one screws on. None of this can really be described as beautiful, but I don't think it's necessarily about beauty. The place that inspires you is not a clean, manageable space, but rather the opposite that encourages you to create something beautiful and aesthetic.

Why order dominates disorder is a mystery to me.

The only really interesting garden in the place where I grew up was and still is the same. It is maintained by a family whose son attended primary school with me and who at that time were considered "ecos" (a kind of insult word at the time of the 80s, when environmentally conscious people with Jesus shoes on their feet were considered stupid). Apparently no one had been encouraged to imitate a rather wild - but nevertheless planned - garden. The other houses and gardens are still ironed and groomed and one might think people would be more suitable as horse landlords where they clean skins, scrape out hooves, sweep stables and keep yards clean. I see many homeowners kneeling on the sidewalks and scratching out the cracks in the slabs with pointed iron hooks, where the first indigenous grasses tentatively want to spread, but are not allowed. Why is all that wild and rampant such a thorn in people's eyes? Isn't it much more laborious to fight against what seems to belong there? Why water and mow the lawn when it is of little use, prevents rainwater from seeping in and consumes an infinite amount of water as soon as there are dry days?

For years I have cultivated a balcony that has native grasses and plants growing (others call it weeds), but nobody has imitated what I do. My neighbours continue to buy the disposable plants from the supermarket and none of the flowers will be visible next year. Nobody would believe me if I had a compost box on the back balcony, because everyone would say it stinks. But it doesn't. You just have to put organic waste in there and have enough soil and loosening material to cover it.

I collect wrapping paper and bows when I get things as gifts and reuse them. I always buy a set of postcards and other cards, so I have a supply when I spontaneously need a gift and have forgotten to buy one. So I plundered an origami block that I recently picked out from the grab-box of a bookstore, made it into a pretty case and put Mark Twain's book in it - The Diaries of Adam and Eve - as a present to my boss, who retired. How glad I was that I hadn't put all the books in boxes and in the basement! Since I had read the book only once before, it looked like new. And I was happy to make such a beautiful gift. The story is very entertaining and for someone who is retired, just the right thing, I think. I can only recommend reading it, I laughed out loud!

If things aren't so neat, it offers opportunities to spontaneously make something out of it, to improvise. Some improvisation then lives so long that it becomes a permanent institution. I have not even pretended to improvise the chair which I put on the bathroom shelf and then tied together in the back with some leftover rope pieces. I immediately regarded it as a fixed installation, because the one chair was a permanent obstacle to me anyway and I didn't know where to put it. When my eyes accidentally grazed the bathroom shelf and the chair shortly afterwards, I compared the sizes, found them suitable and since then I have additional space in the bathroom. I nailed a few hooks to the shelf and now the bathrobes hang so that we can grab them easily after showering. Before the whole construction would have been too low. How nice that I kept this chair for years!

I prefer to go shopping in cramped stores, or second hand. Where I wind my way through corridors and look in corners, where I have to bend down or stretch to take a closer look. I find the tidy shelves by the chains boring and I only go there when I know exactly what I need. I am thankful when I find edge comments from readers in used books and am curious what they say.

Therefore it is no wonder that the book The Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman was read with pleasure by me and I recommend it to everyone who thinks he is messy and needs to be freed from this "unforgivable" habit.