Eve Ottenberg reviewed Clutter for the Washington City Paper: How and why stuff accumulates is the subject of Jennifer Howard’s new book Clutter: An Untidy History. It begins with her cleaning out her mother’s home—an experience many people of a certain age are familiar with. The book then tackles hoarding disorder, the Victorian roots of… Continue reading »
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Podcast: “Our Anxious Relationship to Stuff, with Jen Howard”
In the latest episode of her thought-provoking series, Public Intellectual, the amazing Jessa Crispin and I hash out various material messes, including pandemic hoarding and whether divorce is an advanced form of decluttering (!). Thanks to Jessa for having me on the show and for a great convo. Find the episode at the link above… Continue reading »
September Song
“We’re not even halfway through the month yet, but September has been quite a ride so far. Amazingly enough, even in the midst of the fire-ravaged, virus-plagued hellscape of late summer 2020, I have a couple of launches to be happy about, and I am hella grateful.” The new issue of my newsletter is out,… Continue reading »
Book Q&A with Deborah Kalb: “Discomfort can be really useful to a writer”
Q: What did you see as the right blend of personal family experiences and more general descriptions as you wrote the book? A: I’m trained as a journalist, and working with such deeply personal material scared me at first. But my family’s experiences with clutter inspired me to write the book in the first place,… Continue reading »
LitHub: “Let’s blame the Victorians”
Thanks to LitHub for running this CLUTTER excerpt in which I suggest we blame the Victorians (at least partly—don’t @ me, Victorianists!) for our contemporary problem with excess stuff. This chapter was a lot of fun to research, BTW—I loved reading about 19th-century material culture. Enjoy!
