Great Moments in Clutter

24,000 B.C.: Storage Pits

In the absence of Sub-Zero refrigerators, early people dig deep holes for storing food and other items in areas that later become Eastern Europe. While no match for a beer cooler, storage pits remain wildly popular globally during the B.C. (Before Clutter) millennia.

1310 B.C.: Embroidered Underwear

Humans like stuff—ridiculous, silly, unnecessary or simply beautiful—and we always will. How else to explain decorative needlework on ancient underpants and the continued success of Victoria's Secret?

“The Netherlands grave of Emmer-Erfscheidenveen Man, dated to 1310 B.C., included woolen underwear decorated with embroidery, sheepskin cap, calfskin cape and deerskin shoes,” reports Leigh Fenly in a sidebar to “Threads of Old,” a great article on ancient clothing.

(Don't miss the  so-called ice maiden, a manga-character-like corpse whose “thigh-high riding boots” were supposedly “still supple” a mere 2,400 years after her death. By the time she was discovered, I’m guessing the boots were the only supple thing left.)

1738: 10-Closet Mansion Built

The wealthy are different from you and me—they had better storage long before the modern closet cult. Although “only relatively well-to-do,” Susanna Wright builds a new home in Columbia, Pennsylvania with ten closets. The Wright’s Ferry Mansion is a bitter pill for those of us without any closets whatsoever, but I digress.

One closet adjoins each fireplace; additional closets make “use of other nooks and crannies in a remarkable utilization of space for its time,” according to Merritt Ierley in Open House: A Guided Tour of the American Home 1637-Present.

For most of the 19th century American houses were typically built without closets, according to Ierley. Until the early 1800s, “personal wealth had not changed materially” from earlier years and families could easily fit their belongings into chests, highboys, trunks or in attics. The exceptions belonged to well-heeled showoffs like George Read, who had four closets built into the master bedroom of the elaborate, expensive brick mansion he had erected in New Castle, Delaware in 1804.

1850s: Primitive Self Storage

The first warehouse for household and personal items is built in England, giving ship passengers a place to keep stuff during long journeys away from home.

1940: Storage as Decorating Challenge

The August issue of Architectural Review Supplement runs the third article in a series on the possible decorative use of storage and faces the ugly reality of interior architecture:

“It will be realized upon reflection that it is not far from the truth to say that nearly the whole of interior architecture is concerned with the problem of storage. The designless home is that in which all the owner's possessions are heaped in a litter on the floor; the well-designed home is that in which each object has its appointed place; and the well-decorated home is that in which the necessity of storing innumerable pieces of property is made the opportunity for an interesting sequence of shapes and patterns.

“The bedroom is as much dominated by the wardrobe and the chest-of-drawers as by the bed; the dining-room as much by the china-cabinet as by the table; even the old-fashioned kitchen was dominated by that obsolete piece of furniture, the dresser, while the modern kitchen often appears to consist of nothing but an array of cupboards from floor to ceiling and wall to wall.”

1952: Beer Cooler

Australian company introduces the Esky Auto Ice Box, metal precursor to the now-ubiquitous plastic, foam and vinyl beer coolers, thus enabling modern life as we know it today.

1961: House Beautiful Declares Storage Crisis

The July issue of House Beautiful magazine ignores the growing Communist threat to focus on the real problem facing Americans—the shortage of household storage space—and devotes 26 pages to solving crisis.

“No sooner do we add a new cabinet or a few shelves than they are filled to overflowing. Call our society acquisitive or affluent, the result is the same—an accumulation of equipment and materials that must be stored at the point of use for best operation of the household.

“We are only now beginning to realize that our storage needs have far outrun the traditional clothes closets and kitchen cabinets with which the ordinary house is equipped. Every room in the house now requires its own put-away space. The problem is so great that halfway measures will not suffice. Only major solutions, and many of them, will work,” the editors warn.

1964: Modern Self Storage

The A-1 U-Store-It U-Lock-It U-Carry the Key warehouse is built in Odessa, Texas by Russ Willams and Bob Munn. both men were avid fishermen who “needed a place to store both their boats and their oil field equipment,” according to the Texas Mini Storage Association. The men build several more facilities and, over time, spark imitators nationwide. Today the self-storage industry outgrosses Hollywood.

1978: The Container Store

In Dallas, Kip Tindell and Garrett Boone open their first store. By 2007 happy pack rats can get wired with Elfa shelving products and choose among 20 different paper-towel holders at nearly 40 locations nationwide.

1985: Organizers Band Together

The National Association of Professional Organizers is founded in Los Angeles by Beverly Clower, Stephanie Culp, Ann Gambrell, Maxine Ordesky and Jeanie Shorr.

Get Organized Week, a clever NAPO marketing vehicle, launches in October 2003. In 2005 the commerical observance moves to January to become the even more brilliant and brazen Get Organized Month.

NAPO’s successful ploy spurs lazy journalists to give NAPO members many opportunities to be quoted in scores of how-to-get-organized articles nationwide. By 2007 a happy NAPO has nearly 4,000 members, several satisfied sponsors and millions of potential customers still wrestling with too much stuff.