Malignant Clutter
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Hello and welcome to the Art of Decluttering podcast. I'm your host, Amy Revell. It has been a huge day here in the Art of Decluttering land. I was up bright and early this morning doing the Today Show in Australia. That was great on the morning TV shows and I've already had a client book in as a result of seeing that and feeling like there was hope. which is exactly what I want to portray. Whenever I'm speaking to you, whenever I'm recording a podcast, sending something through to YouTube, I want you to know that there's hope where there is clutter. And so in areas where you're perhaps feeling overwhelmed, there is a way out. Your clutter does not have to be a life sentence. And kind of in that vein today, I want to talk about malignant clutter and benign clutter.
And what really triggered me to want to record this episode is I was watching Channel 9's Space Invaders a couple of weeks ago, and Peter Walsh, who is a fantastic professional organizer, talks about malignant clutter in the sense that it's evasive and it spreads and it really impacts the way that you live in your home. And I thought, wow. Peter, you've given me an idea. I want to spend a whole episode talking about the difference between benign clutter and malignant clutter and the impact that this malignant clutter has on your very being, on the way you live, on the way that your household runs and the importance that it is to get on top of malignant clutter. There are times and there will be times in your life when you've got benign clutter and it's not the end of the world.
You don't need to like rush out and deal with it immediately. But when you've got malignant clutter, that is an instance where it's really important to get some support. make some changes so that it doesn't take over. So I've got a few notes that I want to go through. And the idea is malignant clutter doesn't just kind of sit in the background, doesn't just mind its own business, but it invades your home, your peace, your mindset, your thinking, your relationships. It invades all these spaces. And so it goes from just being stuff to actually like overtaking areas that it was never invited into. So the concept is benign clutter. It's stuff that is temporary. It might even be contained. It's part of everyday life.
So as an example, I had a little bit of benign clutter this morning. So I had a cameraman come and he did lighting and sound and camera. He does all the things. He was amazing. Good job, Paul. And what there was in my house was a little bit of benign clutter because I had some props. So I had gone around and got some different things so that I could use them as part of the conversation I was having with the hosts. And in order to tidy our house, some things, simple things like things you would always have in your home, like a dish rack and a sponge and things like that, I wanted to remove off the sink so it was a clear surface. And so they went into the laundry. Now, I created a little bit of benign clutter.
They were things that were out of place, not where they should have been.
What is malignant clutter and how does it differ from benign clutter?
And there was like a little section of it in the laundry of things we had put away, you know, just like our green waste bin didn't need to be on the bench while we were recording a segment for the show. And so this benign clutter was there. Yes, it was clutter. Was it making an impact on anything? Absolutely not. In fact, it was actually serving a purpose. And then once this cameraman left and we reset the house, all that stuff came back. It was temporary. It didn't impact on anything. And it was just part of everyday life. Another example of benign clutter is the clutter that you get in the after school rush if you've got kids. So it might be that come home, shoes come off, a backpack is put down, lunch boxes go in the sink, the bench might have some notices or there might be a ball that's come in.
You know, you've just got life is happening in the space. And if that clutter at the end of the day, you say to the kids, okay, great, grab those school bags, grab your readers, grab your lunch boxes, put them where they belong.
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