Storage and clutter: Discourses and practices of order in the domestic world

Journal of Design History

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 229-239

  Cwerner, Saulo B ^a   Metcalfe, Alan ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b LANCASTER UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Clutter; Consumption; Domestic space; Interior design; Storage

Indexed keywords

EID: 5744245860     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/16.3.229     Document Type: Review

References (55)

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2. Z. Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters, Polity Press, 1987;
3. R. Shields, Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption, Routledge, 1992;
4. and D. Miller, Theory of Shopping, Polity Press, 1998.
5. See, for instance, P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge, 1984;
6. D. Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style, Routledge, 1979;
7. T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Macmillan, 1991 (1899).
8. See R. Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, Routledge, 1992;
9. W. F. Haug, Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality and Advertising in Capitalist Society, University of Minnesota Press, 1984;
10. and A. Tomlinson (ed.), Consumption, Identity and Style: Marketing, Meanings and the Packaging of Pleasure, Routledge, 1990.
11. See Hebdige, op. cit.
12. For a comprehensive analysis of consumption as the realm of individual freedom, see Z. Bauman, Freedom, Open University Press, 1988.
13. See also M. Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Sage, 1991.
14. See, for instance, A. Ward, 'Consumers, identity and belonging: reflections on some theses of Zygmunt Bauman', in R. Keat, N. Whiteley & N. Abercombie (eds.), The Authority of the Consumer, Routledge, 1994, pp. 58-74.
15. In the growing literature of material culture studies, see, especially, K. Hetherington, 'In place of geometry: the materiality of place', in K. Hetherington & R. Munro (eds.), Ideas of Difference: Social Spaces and the Division of Labour, Blackwell, 1997, pp. 183-99
16. and T. Dant, Material Culture in the Social World: Values, Activities, Lifestyles, Open University Press, 2000.
17. For a recent approach that brings together material culture and design studies, with a focus on everyday life, see J. Attfield, Wild Things: the Material Culture of Everyday Life, Berg, 2000.
18. See the papers in I. Bryden & J. Floyd (eds.), Domestic Space, Manchester University Press, 1999.
19. L. Walker & V. Ware, 'Political pincushions: decorating the abolitionist interior', in Bryden & Floyd, ibid., p.63.
20. R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, Penguin, 1990 (1957), p. 35.
21. R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Verso, 1996, especially Part I.
22. G. Lees-Maffei, 'From service to self-service: advice literature as design discourse, 1920-1970', Journal of Design History, vol. 14, no. 3, 2001, p. 204.
23. Attfield, op. cit.
24. E. Wilhide, Creating Space: 101 Ways to Organize Your Home, Pavilion Books, 1997, p. 6.
25. D. Walter & M. Franks, Life Laundry: How to De-junk your Life, BBC Books, 2002, p. 82.
26. G. Love, Storage Solutions, Conran Octopus, 1985, p. 7.
27. E. Hilliard, Perfect Order: 101 Simple Storage Solutions, Kyle Cathie, 1998, p. 7.
28. J. Campbell, Clutter Control, Robert Hale, 1997, p. 11.
29. D. Aslett, Clutter-Free! Finally and Forever, Betterway Books, 1995;
30. and S. Wright, Good-bye Clutter: Organize and Simplify Every Room in Your Home, Citadel Press, 2000.
31. Walter & Franks, Good-bye Clutter: Organize and Simplify Every Room in Your Home, op. cit., p. 74.
32. D. Walter & H. Chislett, Organized Living, Conran Octopus, 1997, p. 8.
33. Hilliard, op. cit., p. 15.
34. T. Shaw, Home Front Storage: Inspirational Makeovers and Practical Projects, BBC Books, 1998.
35. S. Freud, 'The uncanny', in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XVII, The Hogarth Press, 1953-64 (1919), pp. 219-52. 'Unheimlich' translates literally as 'unhomely'.
36. For discussions of house and home as flow, see H. Lefèbvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell, 1991, p. 91;
37. I. Roderick, 'Household sanitation and the flow of domestic space', Space and Culture, no. 1, 1997, pp. 105-32;
38. and L. Stone, 'The public and the private in stately homes in England, 1500-1990', Social Research, no. 1, 1991, pp. 227-52.
39. Hilliard, Social Research, op. cit., p. 18. At this stage the authors wish to make clear that we did not set out to analyse the gender dimension of storage practices and clutter control. We acknowledge that much can be gained by looking at how the roles, identities and expectations of men and women in contemporary British households frame such discourses and practices. The same could also be said in relation to social class (especially as most contemporary conceptions of class tend to focus on income and consumption patterns rather than on positions in the structure of economic production), age, ethnicity and physical ability. We believe that our findings must be nuanced to accommodate these dimensions of social structure and group difference. Yet we do not think that remaining largely silent about them at this stage of our research undermines the validity of our interpretations. Similarly, while we would not want to make any claims regarding storage and clutter in other parts of the world, this paper seeks to inform and encourage cross-cultural studies that examine the practices of storage and the place of clutter in the processes of consumption and dwelling. Storage has not figured as an important topic in the social scientific study of households in contemporary capitalist societies, despite the fact that many historians and anthropologists have highlighted its importance for social structure and social organization in other societies and historical periods.
40. See, for instance, T. Ingold, 'The significance of storage in hunting societies', Man, vol. 18, 1983, pp. 553-71.
41. On front and back regions, see E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin, 1959.
42. See also R. Madigan & M. Munro, 'House beautiful: style and consumption in the home', Sociology, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41-57.
43. See G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, 1964
44. and A. F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
45. See C. Attan, 'Hidden objects in the worlds of cultural migrants', in T. Putnam, R. Facey & V. Swales (eds.), Making & Unmaking: Creative and Critical Practice in a Designed World, Design History Society, 2000. A version of this work was also presented at the LIAM III conference 'Navigating the Material World', University of Brighton, June 2001.
46. J. Attfield, 'Time and ephemerality in the material culture of everyday life', keynote paper presented at the LIAM III conference 'Navigating the Material World', University of Brighton, June 2001.
47. S Baker, 'To go about noisily: clutter, writing, and design'. Émigré, no. 35, 1995 (unpaginated).
48. For other specific statements on clutter, see Attfield, Émigré, op. cit., pp. 150-4.
49. and J. Graves, 'Clutter', Issues in Architecture Art and Design, no. 2, 1998, pp. 63-8.
50. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger, Routledge, 1984.
51. K. Hetherington, 'Second-handedness: consumption, disposal and absent presence', e-paper, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, http://www.comp.lanes.ac.uk/sociology/soc097kh.html (also forthcoming in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space).
52. Hetherington, Second-handedness: consumption, disposal and absent presence op. cit., p. 5.
53. See J. Law, Organizing Modernity, Blackwell, 1994.
54. Attfield, 2001, op. cit.
55. Gordon, op. cit, p. 205.