Is it possible to cherish clutter? Yes, if you see it with fresh eyes

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/01/possible-cherish-clutter-if-see-with-fresh-eyes

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On this New Year’s Day, many of us will resolve to rid our lives of clutter, an ambition now supported by countless websites, blogs and bestselling books aimed at teaching people how to live better with less. But the struggle against stuff transcends our own time, as I’ve been reminded since last New Year’s Day, when I made my own pledge to clear my house of unwanted belongings, drawing upon the wisdom of some of the world’s greatest writers for inspiration.

From the New Testament to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden to more contemporary texts like Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, there’s a longstanding literary argument for serenity through subtraction, steeped in the idea that quite often, possessions pose a barrier to personal peace.

But I’ve also learned this year that the stuff we own – the things we choose to keep and cherish – can be a wellspring of the spirit, too. Thoreau, who famously moralized about the virtues of economy from his pondside cabin, wasn’t above indulging the sheer pleasure of acquisition himself. In 1855, when a friend sent Thoreau a lavish, 44-volume library of eastern wisdom, he welcomed the gift, making a special bookcase from Concord driftwood to showcase it. Thoreau’s indulgence underscores a basic truth: we humans seem wired to like stuff, embracing what we possess as an extension of who we are.

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Virginia Woolf acknowledged that reality in Street Haunting, a 1930 essay that begins in the author’s London home, where a stir-crazy Woolf, feeling circumscribed by the sight of so many familiar objects in familiar rooms, takes a stroll to get away from it all.

On her city walk, Woolf discovers that what we own can be limiting, but liberating, too. In a boot shop, a marginalized customer selects a beautiful pair of shoes and affirms, in wearing them, that she’s beautiful, too. On Oxford Street, Woolf window-shops among the displays of furniture and jewelry, improvising imaginary rooms from what she sees, and trying on alternate selves in an exercise that mirrors the crafting of fiction.

She makes another stop at a used bookstore and sees, in the boundless plenitude of the selections, proof of how infinitely ingenious humanity can be. Finally, Woolf returns home and learns, after her brief time away, that it’s not so bad to dwell once again within the intimate constellation of what she’s acquired. “Here again is the usual door,” she writes, “here the chair turned as we left it and the china bowl and the brown ring on the carpet.”

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Chilean poet Pablo Neruda navigated a similar tightrope in his imaginative life – admitting, in a poem called “Walking Around,” to occasional weariness from the weight of stuff: “All I ask is a little vacation from things: from boulders and woolens, / from gardens, institutional projects, merchandise, / eyeglasses, elevators – I’d rather not look at them.”

But in another poem, Ode to Things, Neruda finds his vision refreshed, seeing possessions as possibilities. “I have a crazy, / crazy love of things,” he confesses. “I like pliers, / and scissors. / I love / cups, / rings, / and bowls – / not to speak, of course, / of hats.”

Seen this way, the pageant of consumerism that twinkled so brightly this yuletide season needn’t be a cause for lament; the treasures it brought can sometimes enrich the soul as well as the body.

Related: Decluttering is the enemy of humankind | Emma Brockes

The trick, in deciding what should go from our lives and what should stay, is to constantly examine what’s familiar and accepted with new eyes, a way of seeing the best writers engage in as a daily discipline.

“It is our mortal heritage,” author Rose Macaulay wrote of her own clutter in 1936, “and a losing war against nature that we wage.”