Debbie from Keokuk, Iowa, shares a funny story about her family’s tradition of speed-cleaning the house if guests were coming over. Her mother would declare, “Quick, guys! Whited sepulchre approach!” Her use of the term whited...
Duane, who lives in New York City, says that his parents who are from the U.S. Virgin Islands use the term corotole to mean “clutter.” This term appears in The Virgin Islands Dictionary by Kareem Nelson-Hull (Bookshop|Amazon). It also...
Death cleaning is the translation of a Swedish term, döstädning, describing a kind of de-cluttering later in life, when you downsize to make things easier for the next generation. It’s being popularized by The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning by...
Judy Schwartz from Dallas, Texas, sent us the best sentence she read all day. It’s from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: “Clutter is the disease of American writing.” Have a sentence that stopped you in your tracks? Send it...
CHAOS n.— «don’t need the stuff filling boxes and crevices throughout my home. It’s like the material equivalent of fatty deposits over muscles or lining the walls of blood vessels. It looks gross and inhibits my ability to do everything...