In the TLS, writer Beejay Silcox writes about CLUTTER and “mess as an emotional and cultural problem”: “Neuroses and trauma may have helped to bury Howard’s mother in domestic rubble, but so did an insatiable, deep-rooted, and increasingly unsustainable, cultural hunger to own. ‘The chaos of my mother’s house, then, can be read as a… Continue reading »
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Vox: Quoted in an article on “The New Maximalism”
I talked to Vox’s Rebecca Jennings about the Victorian roots of maximalism and the psychic toll of the recent mania for decluttering: Television shows like Hoarders, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, and now The Home Edit, in which a team of organization experts traipse through the pantries of celebrities and explain the importance of color-coding one’s nut butters,… Continue reading »
The Guardian: Quoted in a feature on “Cluttercore”
Morwenna Ferrier, the Guardian‘s deputy fashion editor, talked to me for a feature on “Cluttercore: the pandemic trend for celebrating stuff, mess, and comfort”: Clutter has emerged, dusty and triumphant, as a defining byproduct of the pandemic. Yet we are undecided on what to do with it. “Forced inside, some people have been decluttering, absolutely,… Continue reading »
PAWcast: Jennifer Howard ’85 Explains the History of Clutter
PAWcast, Princeton Alumni Weekly’s podcast, has posted my conversation with associate editor Carrie Compton about the book and all things clutter-related: This month, Jennifer Howard ’85 discusses her book, Clutter: An Untidy History. Faced with the daunting task of cleaning out her elderly mother’s chaotic and jam-packed home, Howard began to ask herself about our relationship with… Continue reading »
Curbed: Clutter discussed in “Your Quarantine Clutter Has a Long and Distinguished History”
Design and architecture critic Alexandra Lange featured the book in an astute essay for Curbed called “Your Quarantine Clutter Has a Long and Distinguished History”: According to Jen Howard’s timely new book Clutter: An Untidy History (Belt Publishing), the Victorians invented clutter. “In 19th-century Britain, during Queen Victoria’s rule,” Howard writes, “industrialization, urbanization, and the expansion of… Continue reading »
