Quotes & Sayings About Clutter

Clutter-clearing is modern-day alchemy. — Denise Linn

I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. there are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."
"You're asking a lot of life if you want it to make sense."
Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.
Basset watched him a moment, then said,
"Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want. — Margaret Frazer

Our possessions are dictating our free time. Sundays used to be for relaxing and eating, and now they're spent cleaning the garage. --pg55 — Cristin Frank

It ticks me no end when people get ticked off at those of us who comment audibly and in print on events and problems. That's what we're paid for. Why clutter up your mind with a bunch of facts that might inhibit the solve-ability of us who must express an opinion? After all, all the world cries out for a solution to its problems, and we supply them right and left. Come to think of it, it's we who should be giving our deplorers and detractors the blast; because 99% of the time they don't do as we say. — Malcolm Forbes

You cannot truly love yourself if you are constantly surrounded by clutter, chaos and bitterness. The time has come for you to de-clutter your mind and your environment. — Winsome Campbell-Green

The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla. — J.D. Salinger

You can't stand clutter, and you have an obsession with orderliness. The furniture in here is centered exactly on the walls; the files on your desk are arranged in precise corners. If I had to guess, I would say you are probably a control freak, and that is usually symptomatic of a man who feels powerless to control his own life, so he tries to control every facet of his surroundings. — Judith McNaught

By handling each sentimental item and deciding what to discard, you process your past. If you just stow these things away in a drawer or cardboard box, before you realise it, your past will become a weight that holds you back and keeps you from living in the here and now. Pg.116-117 — Marie Kondo

All the itch and clutter of the world, its bother and fuss, its nagging pettiness, can wear you down so easily. And this is why I like the beach ... — William Boyd

Your health, your experiences, and your life do not have to be at the mercy of your negative emotions. When you consciously choose to focus on a thought or belief that is positive, comforting, or hopeful, you're clearing out that emotional clutter that's weighing you down. You're energetically shifting yourself to a better place. — Susan Barbara Apollon

It can make us stronger, more compassionate, more understanding - more like Jesus - if we allow it to. And the more clutter we get rid of in our life here - the more we will be able to enjoy heaven - when we get there. So, pain can have a purpose. — Janette Oke

It's really hard to break through the clutter and get the attention of the top investors, as they typically only look at deals that come in from a warm, credible referral. There's absolutely nothing more credible than getting an endorsement from a well-known subject matter expert who has already put their own money into your company. — Scott Weiss

I love my music, so I want to produce, write, and serve my music. I've had to learn about EQ frequencies and programming and space and clutter and how to be a better piano or bass player - everything. — FKA Twigs

Like your home's closets, your financial clutter needs an overhaul every now and again, and the payoff will go far beyond the psychic satisfaction of neatening up. — Suze Orman

The ironic thing is that marketers have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they're interrupting us even more! — Seth Godin

For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table,
how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a pretty
farfetched example; you can't rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet
earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the
clutter - those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international
dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean,
for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a
lifetime would the equator be a significant factor? — Haruki Murakami

As a scientist I rebelled against the disorder, and I had long since discovered that nothing thwarted the mental processes like clutter. — Deanna Raybourn

I have personal issues with clutter. I, personally, am very minimalist and like a clean slate. I like to throw everything away. — Tempestt Bledsoe

God will give you a way out of tempting situations but if you keep intentionally putting yourself in those compromising places, then soon the Holy Spirits voice will be drowned out by your emotions and feelings. Soon, you will no longer be able to hear God's voice because you're so busy listening to the clutter around you. — Heather Lindsey

To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God. — Joan D. Chittister

In the future we would have total storage, all of us would, our media libraries would dematerialise and just float above us, books would no longer sit on the shelves reminding us that we had not read them, music and TV and film formats would no longer clutter the den reminding us of all we had not yet listened to or watched. — Joshua Cohen

Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter. — Gretchen Rubin

Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five ... — Richard Russo

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there. — Francis Crick

Any cyclist will tell you that one of the things they value most about cycling is what it does for their heads. It cleans out the clutter. Cycling allows for reflection. It simultaneously offers time to mull over problems and to escape those problems. It's both meditative and contemplative. Whether you're weaving through traffic or climbing a long country road, the effect is the same. Your body's working, and your mind is working. And when those two things start working in concert, other aspects of life can start falling into place too. — BikeSnobNYC

Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself. — Charlie Munger

People who picnic along the public highway leaving a clutter of greasy paper and swill (not a pretty name, but neither is it a pretty object!) for other people to walk or drive past, and to make a breeding place for flies, and furnish nourishment for rats, choose a disgusting way to repay the land-owner for the liberty they took in temporarily occupying his property. — Emily Post

It really is a shame that through our sad neglect of wonders, hopefulness, and trust we allowed so much clutter and debris to build up in the space that once connected us to Diamond Green. — Michael Chabon

Organization isn't about perfection; it's about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money and improving your overall quality of life. — Christina Scalise

Ninety percent of all the data in the world has been produced in the last two years. Six thousand YouTube videos are posted a minute - and that figure was computed in 2011; by now there's probably not a number high enough to convey how overwhelming it all is. Here's another cocktail party statistic: The amount of information we generate every two days is equal to the amount produced from the beginning of civilization until 2003. That factoid comes from Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google, so you can partly blame him for all your mental clutter. — Patty Marx

Think twice before you buy. Decide before you purchase anything where you are going to keep it and what you are going to use it for. If your answers to either of these questions are vague, then you are about to purchase clutter. Desist from buying. — Karen Kingston

-and he flew in to her from the clutter of Somerville, the compost heap behind the Harvard Yard. — Elizabeth Hardwick

This is what I term a reduction lifestyle - reduce excessive consumption, unnecessary obligations, and overbearing clutter. When — Cristin Frank

If you have clutter, you're richer than you think! — Donna Smallin

When hosting a party, move any clutter from the space where you're entertaining. — Pippa Middleton

It's easier to get rid of things when you're giving them to someone who can use them, but don't let this kind intention become a source of clutter itself. I have a friend who has multiple piles all over her house, each lovingly destined for a particular recipient. — Gretchen Rubin

Sully suffers from a stutter,
simple syllables will clutter,
stalling speeches up on beaches
like a sunken sailboat rudder.
Sully strains to say his phrases,
sickened by the sounds he raises,
strings of thoughts come out in knots,
he solves his sentences like mazes.
At night, he writes his thoughts instead
and sighs as they steadily rush from his head. — Bo Burnham

It's more and more difficult to get through to your audience with all of the clutter. This is a great way for Ace to get [its] message out. — Bill Rancic

My parents often remind my brothers and me that they won't have any money for us to inherit, but I think they've already passed on to us the wealth of their memories, allowing us to grasp the beauty of a flowering wisteria, the delicacy of a word, the power of wonder. Even more, they've given us feet for walking to our dreams, to infinity. Which may be enough baggage to continue our journey on our own. Otherwise, we would pointlessly clutter our path with possessions to transport, to insure, to take care of. — Kim Thuy

Really living without clutter takes an iron will ... This involves eternal watchfulness and that oldest and most relentless of the housewife's occupations, picking up. I have a feeling that picking up will go on long after ways have been found to circumvent death and taxes. — Ada Louise Huxtable

I hate belongings. I hate clutter. It really bothers me because I can't think properly. If you've got distractions in front of you, your mind goes nuts. — Simon Cowell

Why should I clutter my mind with general information when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I need? — Henry Ford

Mounting anything on a plaque instantly transforms it from trash into an award. For example, a dry disposable pen goes from junk clutter to the first annual writer's award for dry humor. — Jarod Kintz

Clutter is postponed decisions. — Barbara Hemphill

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow! — Og Mandino

Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence - the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes - all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. — Jon Krakauer

Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. — Joe Queenan

I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat. — Truman Capote

What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing - that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God? — Richard Dawkins

Go is such a refreshing language to program in, there is very little clutter just the stuff you need to get the job done — Matthew West

It was madness to leave without your useless shit. You came in with it, you left with it
that was how it worked. What would you use to clutter a new office with if not your useless shit? We could remember Old Brizz with this box of useless shit, shifting the box from arm to arm as he talked with the building guy. Of course, Old Brizz never had an office again. His useless shit really was useless. He had cause to leave his useless shit behind. But his was a rare case. All things considered, it was better to take your useless shit with you. — Joshua Ferris

But there was so much that one had to pretend not to see the incredible clutter that threatened to overtake the entire flat save for those few narrow paths that the old man moved on; the acrid odor of dirt and neglect that pervaded the place and worked its way into your pores so that you carried it with you after you had left; his odd ways,born of living so long in an absence of mirrors. — Michael Bedard

Remakes, in general, are a result of necessity being the mother of invention. They can't open movies consistently and break through the advertising clutter that's out there. — John Carpenter

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. — Anne Lamott

Don't cluster too much plans to do within a relatively minimum time. As beginner, you must not cut your coat according to your elder brother's size. Know your limit. — Israelmore Ayivor

Though we live amid promiscuous pressures, spiritual clutter and forgetfulness, we probably still value the integrity of life. — Baker Brownell

On the whole, I think women wear too much and are to fussy. You can't see the person for all the clutter. — Julie Andrews

The long gray two-story box was the newest structure on the property, having been built in the 1970s. The buildings up the hill had accumulated one by one since the 1920s, most of them incorporating bits salvaged from various torn-down hotels and movie sets. Their aunt Amity, affluent from the sales of her series of popular novels, had added to the architectural clutter after — Tim Powers

I can't stand clutter. I can't stand piles of stuff. And whenever I see it, I basically just throw the stuff away. — Brian Greene

Stillness is not about focusing on nothingness; it's about creating a clearing. It's opening up an emotionally clutter-free space and allowing ourselves to feel and think and dream and question. — Brene Brown

In your fantasies you imagine that you'd love to have all the clutter gone so you could relax, but in fact, nobody really wants to relax. Not for very long, anyway. Everybody needs something to do. — Barbara Sher

It always amazes me that once you cut through the clutter, people are pretty much the same. Especially through adolescence and early adulthood. For the most part, people go through the same experiences and think the same things, but somehow no one ever escapes the belief that his experience is unique in every conceivable way. — Nicholas Sparks

I think of the New Testament story of the woman with an issue of blood--specifically of her hand reaching out into the clutter and chaos of a crowd, not sure that she would reach Christ, but nevertheless reaching for him in hope. Her story is sacred to me because she truly believed that by reaching outside of the bounds that her culture had set for her--perhaps even the bounds she had set for herself--she could be made whole. — Ashley Mae Hoiland

There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind.
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.
I'd like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still. — Richard Brautigan

There are tons of things in your home and life that you don't use, need, or even particularly want. They just came into your life as impulsive flotsam and jetsam and never found a good exit. Whether you're aware of it or not, this clutter creates indecision and distractions ... — Tim Ferriss

So you want to keep the list short by focusing on what he called "the killer items" - the steps that are most dangerous to skip and sometimes overlooked nonetheless.
The wording should be simple and exact, Boorman went on, and use the familiar language of the profession. Even the look of the checklist matters. Ideally, it should fit on one page. It should be free of clutter and unnecessary colors. — Atul Gawande

The simple rhythms of nature are calling you. Let them wash away the clutter and distractions from your false life. — Bryant McGill

Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding. — Edward Tufte

Amidst one's daily clutter, one doesn't usually reflect on the splendour of being free because - naturally - one has to get on with the business of living. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

Eliminate the clutter. That's the key. Eliminate the clutter and understand the important things. First and foremost, the most important thing is affecting the people around you in a positive way. Second thing is, be one of those guys that's going to out-study every person there is on what you need to do from a game-plan standpoint, what you need to do from a characteristic standpoint to stand apart. The last thing is, throw it to the color jersey we're wearing. — Jim McElwain

Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire. — Wendell Berry

It requires courage to face and to conquer the immense weight of inertia and the dead and dying traditions and sophistications that clutter the minds of men and mould them into the mimicry of living ways ... — Lawren Harris

Clear clutter. Make space for you. — Magdalena VandenBerg

In the modern view, the pitched roof was itself a "dead concept," but equally unhealthy
were all those other dead concepts that got stored underneath the gable, in the attic. For there is where the ghosts of our past reside: the bric-abrac
and mementos that a lifetime collects; the love letters, photographs, and memories that clutter an attic and threaten to bear us back in time. — Michael Pollan

unequivocal anal-retentive clutter buster — Katherine Bayless

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love ... prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude ... all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy. — J.R. Ward

That once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone. — Patricia A. McKillip

Many families amass more objects than their houses can hold. The result is garages given over to old furniture and unused sports equipment, home offices cluttered with boxes of stuff that haven't yet been taken to the garage. Three out of four Americans report their garages are too full to put a car into them. Women's cortisol levels (the stress hormone) spike when confronted with such clutter (men's, not so much). Elevated cortisol levels can lead to chronic cognitive impairment, fatigue, and suppression of the body's immune system. — Daniel J. Levitin

Why must we be left, the survivors picking among the flotsam, among the small, unnoticed, unvalued clutter that was all that remained when they vanished, that only catastrophe made notable? — Marilynne Robinson

But the dust! And the clutter! My housewifely and scholarly instincts were equally offended. — Elizabeth Peters

Hey Audrey,I am watching you de-clutter your house,do you need help? — Toni Aleo

If you love home - and even if you don't - there is nothing quite as cozy, as comfortable, as delightful, as that first week back. That week, even the things that would irritate you - the alarm waahing from some car at three in the morning; the pigeons who come to clutter and cluck on the windowsill behind your bed when you're trying to sleep in - seem instead reminders of your own permanence, of how life, your life, will always graciously allow you to step back inside of it, no matter how far you have gone away from it or how long you have left it. — Hanya Yanagihara

The more I examine the issue of clutter, the more effort I put into combating it, because it really does act as a weight. — Gretchen Rubin

The stars in the sky last for billions of years. That's nothing to the mind, nothing. It's an instant, a millisecond. The mind shines radiantly forever. But we don't see the shine because of the clutter. — Frederick Lenz

I remember the smell of the pines and the sleeping on the mattresses of beech leaves in the woodcutters' huts and the skiing through the forest following the tracks of hares and of foxes. In the high mountains above the tree line I remember following the track of a fox until I came in sight of him and watching him stand with his right forefoot raised and then go carefully to stop and then pounce, and the whiteness and the clutter of a ptarmigan bursting out of the snow and flying away and over the ridge. — Ernest Hemingway,

There is more story in a minor character like Boba Fett than there is in all the clutter of various vampires in the Twilight franchise. — George Takei

The office, which had an outside entrance for ordinary visitors, was separated from the parlor by a sliding door; though Mr. Clutter occasionally shared the office with Gerald Van Vleet, a young man who assisted him with the management of the farm, it was fundamentally his retreat - an orderly sanctuary, paneled in walnut veneer, where, surrounded by weather barometers, rain charts, a pair of binoculars, he sat like a captain in his cabin, a navigator piloting River Valley's sometimes risky passage through the seasons. — Truman Capote

Be as a seed, a seed for change. Allow my gift to grow and rearrange. Multiple blessings for many. For those with none, let there be plenty. p64 — Alexandra Chauran

Nancy clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that is the definition of a lady. — Truman Capote

Clutter is evidence of excess. — Cristin Frank

In my parents' house, nothing was ever thrown away. Clothes piled up, formed drifts that grew into mountains Philip, Baron, and I would climb and leap from. The heaps of garments filled the hallway and chased my parents out of their own bedroom, so that they eventually slept in the room that was once Dad's office. Empty bags and boxes filled gaps in the clutter, boxes that once held rings and sneakers and clothes. A trumpet that my mother wanted to make into a lamp rested atop a stack of tattered magazines filled with articles Dad planned to read, near the heads and feet and arms of dolls Mom promised she would stitch together for a kid from Carney, all beside an endless heap of replacement buttons, some still in their individual glassine bags. A coffeemaker rested on a tower of plates, propped up on one end to keep coffee from flooding the counters. — Holly Black

I didn't kill Francis," I said. "He managed that all by himself. And Lee was dragged off by a demon he summoned. Nick went over a bridge."
Mrs. Sarong's smile widened, and she patted my hand again. "Very well done on the last one," she said, glancing at her daughter. "Leaving an old boyfriend to clutter future relationships is investing in trouble. — Kim Harrison

Out of clutter, find simplicity. - Albert Einstein — Timothy Ferriss

Lina had never seen anyone so disorganized as the doctor. She peeked into the medicine room once when the doctor was out and was amazed at the clutter in there-shelves and cupboards and tables piled with stuff in bottles and stuff in boxes and stuff in jars, all higgledy-piggledy. How Dr. Hester found anything she couldn't imagine. — Jeanne DuPrau

Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? — William Zinsser

With more [distribution] channels, it's important to have 'must-have' content and brands that cut through the clutter. — Thomas O Staggs

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. — Edward R. Tufte

Rakhi likes the comfortable clutter of her life, the things she loves gathered around her like a shawl against the winterliness of the world. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Clutter, either mental or physical, is the sign of a healthy curiosity. — Christopher Fowler

The reason why clutter clearing is effective is that while you are putting your external world in order there are corresponding changes going on internally too. — Karen Kingston