Cluttercore is an aesthetic where there are lots of things everywhere. Things on the walls, knick knacks on the shelves, a bunch of stuff everywhere. I’d like to think my family was ahead of the trend because I have been living in cluttercore for my entire life. We have always had too much stuff. In fact, technically we still haven’t fully moved into the apartment we have lived in for the past nine years because we haven’t unpacked all our boxes. But we still have them – despite the fact that they haven’t been touched in almost a decade. Why? Just in case. Just in case we come across a situation where we need this one specific thing and we can find it in the house. Growing up in a middle-class household where each purchase was thought through, my parents didn’t want to waste money buying things again, so they kept everything just in case they would need it later on.
There is this idea of creative adaption, when you find round about solutions to problems. Part of the reason there is so much stuff is that we can see so many uses for them. In fact, there is a Hindi term called “Jugaad” which means a non-conventional, frugal innovation. The core of this it to make existing things work, or to create new things with meager resources. My dad would constantly be referencing this term as he would always find creative, out of the box solutions to our problems. Some examples of my dad’s jugaad include his creative use of toothpaste! Growing up we always lived in apartments and when we move out, we would have to cover the holes from tacks that we had put up. My dad’s ingenious idea was to use toothpaste to cover up the holes, a prime example of creative adaption and jugaad. Growing up this is what I was taught to do, always think of how to use all the resources that you have at hand to solve your problems.
Another aspect of keeping all our stuff was to pass it down to the next generation. I had a conversation very recently with my father about all this, as I threw away boxes and boxes of high school notes, and study books. I was told to keep all these in case my little brother took any of those classes so he could refer to my notes, so I did, and it ended up taking up way too much space in my room. During our conversation my dad told me about how when he grew up, they had to keep all the textbooks, and notebooks for his younger siblings because once they bought it once, they weren’t going to buy it again, and he still has this attitude to this day. Now that my little brother was out of high school, I threw all these notes out, but I had still kept them just in case.
Comments