Clutter and great intentions
The internet has discovered and endorsed my decorating style, although they forgot to add frogs
The decor mags have called it: I am an intentional clutterer. My love of campy old shit and insistence on having as much as possible of it on display at any one time now has an official name.
Finally, recognition for those of us who surround ourselves with framed tea towels, mid-century jugs and Kermits. There seem to be lots of us. We could form a movement. Stand against Reform. Say no to racism and yes to Elvis Presley plant pots.
I did not buy a glossy magazine and decide, yes, that’s me, buy a load of Hornsea canisters and throw my Live, Laugh, Love plaques in the bin. My house is just full of stuff that I like.
Innocently, I assumed that was how everyone decorated. A stint working on a curtains and cushions mag put me right on that one.
The clue should be in the name - it’s home. It should be full of things that have accumulated over years and earned their place by being delightful, useful, or a frog.
During my year of soft furnishings I wrote many articles about people who live in uncomfortable ostentation with loud wallpaper chosen by designers who roll their eyes if they put up photos of their kids.
These houses - not homes - looked great in photos, filled with hotel-grade floral arrangements and borrowed artwork. In person they were horrible, soulless as a Travelodge, with all the personality of a chain pub’s toilets.
Dining rooms for people who never entertain. Grand pianos owned by people who prefer karaoke. Spare rooms in houses that are never visited. An Alessi Egg toilet into which no one had ever taken a piss.
This was pre-Instagram and before fast fashion had extended its business model into fast candlesticks and dip bowls. I suspect these developments have not been improvements.
I’m not immune to trends and my clutter has shifted with the years. Fish, a huge obsession in the 1980s, now barely feature. One minute I was obsessed with piscine lustre vases and ornaments, the more lurid the better. Then pals started bringing me mobiles back from Greece, my bathroom looked like a taverna and I didn’t love fish any more.
Although, when I found a glugging fish jug in a charity shop recently, it accompanied me home. The intentional clutterer never says never.
Robots, an enduring theme, crept up on me. I did not play with one as a kid. Science fiction is my least favourite genre of anything. Yet when I found a great clanky plastic dude in a charity shop in Linlithgow, I was smitten.
He went on a shelf beside an ancient cuddly rabbit with a wonderful 1950s print body and a koala bear in tartan trews and started an enduring fascination with what the 1970s thought the future would look like.
What I learned from my fish era, however, is to be specific. Very specific This is intentional clutter not just any old nonsense that turns up after a house clearance or souvenir from Falaraki.
Robots must be plastic not tin. Battery operated, not wind up. Generic rather than a film or TV spin off if at all possible.
This is one area of life in which I get to make the rules and enforce the boundaries These are mine. Do not, as we said in a previous lifetime, @ me.
And if you think I am picky about battery-operated toys, wait until you hear about frogs.
Frogs are my favourite animals. They are excellent in every way, from their colour palette to choice of habitat.
I am far from their only admirer, which is is good for them as a species but terrible for me as a collector of geegaws and ornaments. They are too cute. Mostly I dislike cute. I want warts and double chins.
Crucially, I want the correct feet. Tree frogs are fine, I wish no harm upon them, but their bulbous feet and bulging eyes do not belong in my home. I like domestic frogs with small, pointy, webbed feet and proportionate eyes.
If they have appeared in the Muppets, that’s even better. One day, I will have a Kermit in every room in my house.
Why, you might wonder, don’t I just type campy old shit Kermit into Google and fill my boots? Good question. But if I did that with everything I love, it would be impossible to open the front door.
All my treasures are from charity shops, car boot sales and the occasional market. One or two were inherited from my mother, including the OG Kermit which was mine as a child.
No saved searches or visits to specialist dealers. Like artists who use found objects, I must encounter frogs, robots, Susie Cooper’s Wedgwood teapots (non floral only) and all the other extremely niche objects my heart desires in the wild.
That is their joy and my way of making sure I still have room for the bath mats and baking trays. It’s what Kermit would have wanted.
We were the generation that couldn't be sold to, but somehow 'they' are catching up on us