Clutter and the Crafter

Posted by Susan Caplan Jul 17, 2009

My mother died nearly a month ago, on June 18. Although my father is still around, I am the one at the house going through boxes and bags, cabinets and closets. I am one of those easy-to-distract people, so my determination to clean a particular dresser is thwarted each time my father says, “What’s this stuff in here?” Off I go. Soon, piles in three different rooms surround me.

As a person who makes art and craft projects, stuff has a powerful draw. Stuff is potential new stuff. Necklaces beg to become trim on costumes. Keys to unknown locks get set in a pile because I know, someday, I will use them in a craft project.

My mother was a clutter person. She kept everything – clothing, artificial flowers to decorate each season, the shoulder pads cut out of shirts and jackets from the 1980s. (Will that look be back any season soon?) She was not a crafter. I recall her working on embroidery kits for a brief time when I was a child, but she never framed or created a pillow from the finished pieces. When she stopped doing embroidery, she started doing word search puzzles.

Unlike my mother, I can’t stand clutter. Cleaning her piles is cathartic because I was always offering to help her organize. Yet, unlike my mother, I craft. Crafting requires stuff. Hmmm.

The three packages of hair combs go to work as craft project potentials. Somewhere in a comb is a cricket craft waiting to stridulate. The shoulder pads are tossed. The costume jewelry from discount stores is now sitting in a bag in the corner of my room. The gold tone has worn off the earrings-for-everyday-of-the-week set but I’m convinced there is a project there.

Do crafting and clutter go together? My mother held onto stuff because, as she said, “someday I may need it.” Although I craft, I’m forever winnowing through stuff. Part of this is because I spent more than forty-one years living in single rooms. Now I live in a four-room townhouse. Who knows what I will collect?

So, artists, crafters, makers, hold onto stuff because someday they will take that stuff and give it new life. Stuff lives in boxes, bins, bags, closets, sheds, and other places where we know it exists while at the same time trying to deny its overwhelming presence. Can hidden stuff become new stuff? Stuff requires holding onto the past for future use. As it exists at the present it is clutter, but someday, it beckons, it will become something more.