Familiar Clutter

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jaron summers (c) 2025

According to people familiar¹ with such matters—specifically my wife—I “unjustly” complain about her clutter.

I, however, am what scholars call more experienced in life (read: older), and therefore have not just the right but the sacred duty to point out chaos, raise my voice in righteous fury, and occasionally break a lamp or two. Why? Because I am more familiar with things than she is. In fact, I’m practically on a first-name basis with things.

This is not marital bias. This is science.²

While some claim that love means never having to say you’re sorry, people familiar with reality know that love means apologizing after throwing out a shoebox labeled “Old Dental Floss / Emergency.”

Now, let’s address the creeping horror: empty containers. These are not innocent household items. They are weapons of mass accumulation. Buying empty bins, according to people familiar with doom, is how clutter metastasizes.

You’re not organizing—you’re incubating.

Take our condo. Please.³

It’s now 40% usable living space and 60% an archive of things no sane person would admit to owning. Inside one container I found:

• A broken zipper.

• A sock with “possibly blood?” written on a Post-it.

• The warranty for a microwave we threw out in 2003.

• A pinecone. (No further label.)

People familiar with reason would ask: Why is the pinecone here?

People familiar with my wife would respond: “It has sentimental bark.”

People familiar with sanity would call this a cry for help.

People familiar with marriage would call it Tuesday.

Now, let’s discuss labels. Labeling bins gives the illusion of order. But when your home contains boxes marked:

• “Misc Important?”

• “Not Trash But Close”

• “String-Like Things”

• “Jaron’s Things (DO NOT TOUCH but check weekly)”

…you are no longer organizing. You are staging an archaeological dig.

At one point, I thought I found my will. Turned out to be a Pizza Hut menu from 1997. I briefly considered rewriting my will on the back of it, just to save space.

People familiar with estate law discouraged this.⁴

And still, despite everything, I am the one accused of “unjust complaining.” Me—the man who once tried to clear out a box labeled “Tech Relics” and was nearly divorced over a tangle of charger cables that haven’t plugged into anything built this century.

People familiar with hoarding know that containers are not neutral. They are enablers. They’re the enablers’ enablers. They’re the sweet-talking plastic sirens that whisper, “Don’t throw that out. It might be useful. One day. In the apocalypse. For barter.”

And according to people familiar with bartering systems in post-apocalyptic societies, no one is trading old takeout menus for clean water.

Still, I go on. I stay. I love my wife.

Even though I live in constant fear of opening the hall closet and being crushed under six labeled tubs of “Seasonal Light Bulbs & Marbles.”

Even though I found a Tupperware with ashes in it and thought, Finally, she’s getting rid of something.

Turned out to be my mother’s ashes.

Labeled “Unsorted Beans.”

People familiar with grief assure me this is not normal.

But people familiar with me assure me I’m not getting out of this marriage alive—unless I’m willing to climb over a decade’s worth of batteries and a box labeled “Emergency VHS.”

In conclusion, I offer this warning to the uninitiated:

Beware the spouse who buys empty containers. For they are not cleaning.

They are plotting.
And soon, you too will find yourself labeled, shelved, and filed under:

“SPOUSE – SENTIMENTAL BUT IN THE WAY.”

Footnotes

¹
“People familiar with…” has replaced actual journalism in many mainstream outlets. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and their ilk have abandoned the tradition of naming sources. Today’s news is often a parade of vague attributions: “people familiar with the matter,” “sources familiar with the investigation,” or my personal favorite, “someone familiar with the city.” When I was editor of the college paper at BYU (back when carbon copies were high-tech), I’d have fired any reporter who submitted a story using such lazy sourcing. In the summers, I worked at the Edmonton Journal. If I’d handed in a quote attributed to “someone familiar with the government,” the editor would’ve tossed me out the second-story window. I’d have survived—but my typewriter wouldn’t have.

²
Science defined loosely here as “anything said confidently while holding a coffee mug.”

³
Offer void in states where realtors are legally required to disclose “emotional hoarding.”

⁴
But people familiar with stress eating encouraged me to keep the menu.