Sophie Ellis-Bextor has five children plus a mega-successful music career to juggle, so it’s not surprising that the singer describes the home she shares with husband Richard Jones as ‘chaotic’. Chatting with Dilly Carter on the Sort Your Life Out Unpacked podcast, Sophie shared that she’s currently in the process of sorting out her house, but has accepted it’s an ‘ongoing process’: ‘I will never actually “complete” the house, I’ve realised. I don’t think it works like that.’
Asked to describe her home in one sentence, the Perimenopop singer said ‘it’s a joyful, chaotic celebration of domesticity and disco’, which sounds delightful. But yes, there’s quite a bit of clutter – and this does cause some squabbles.
First, Sophie’s biggest at-home bugbear: ‘People starting a job and then not finishing the job. See it through, put the stuff away when you’re done with it. I just think if you start something, it’s not completed until it’s all back away again. I don’t want to know what you’ve been up to. I don’t want to see the evidence.’
But despite resenting other people’s clutter, Sophie is quite attached to her own – and admits that this sometimes causes disagreements. ‘I take a lot of pleasure from what I see, and I think not everybody’s wired like that,’ she explained. ‘I can actively feel my brain being picked up by the juxtaposition of different things in my house. So I have filled my world with such trinkets, and I’m aware a lot of it is rubbish that someone else didn’t want.’
Sophie is far from alone in finding that different perceptions of clutter can cause friction in a marriage. We’ve all been there: furious that our partner seems to be completely clutter-blind, or, on the flip side, bristling when they suggest we might need to cut back our artful curation of bits and bobs. It feels ridiculous immediately afterwards, but who among us hasn’t had a shouting match about clothes in a pile on the floor or magazines left all over the table?
Joanna Harrison, a couples therapist and the author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need To) Have, reassures us that this is totally normal. She tells Good Housekeeping: ‘Sharing domestic space is a challenge in any relationship, not least because we have different ideas about how we want that space to look or feel like. One person may perceive as clutter what their partner sees as totally acceptable and possibly desirable – perhaps their creative corner of books that has piled up, or all the bits of a project they are working on. It's not just the differences of opinion, it's that some people can find it very stressful to live with lots of stuff, it makes them feel like they can't do anything else without clearing it, and if their partner doesn't see that, then they can feel unsupported or stressed out.’
Our ability to handle clutter can come back to our childhoods, says Relate-trained couples counsellor Jane James, so it makes sense mess can bring up complicated emotions. ‘How we were brought up in our homes as children reflects how we want our own homes to be when we are adults. It affects our tolerance for mess and clutter,’ says Jane. ‘Often, we want our homes to be completely the opposite to our childhood experiences. If your house as a child was chaotic, messy and full of 'stuff' when you have your own place you may insist on and need calm and space. Or you may feel your childhood years felt safe and secure surrounded by clutter.’
Clutter can also be a physical reference point for feelings about domestic unfairness. ‘If one person feels they're carrying too much of the domestic load, and the clutter is just another aspect of it that falls onto their plate, then this can mess up goodwill between them,’ Joanna explains. ‘The clutter building can just feel like a sign of disrespect or lack of care.’
So, what’s the solution? How do we make sure that normal clutter clashes don’t have a serious impact on our relationships?
While it’s tempting to issue a diktat barring all unapproved clutter (aside from your personal collection of random bits of paper), Joanna advises against it. Sorry to sound like a therapist or your old English lit teacher, but think about what the clutter really means. ‘Instead of taking a moral approach of "clutter is wrong, tidy is right", I think it's more helpful to start by being curious with each other's perspective,’ she suggests. ‘What does all this stuff mean to you? What is important to you about it?
‘In any aspect of domestic life, we are more likely to be able to reach useful compromises with each other if we know what is important to each other. If the clutter represents something really important to someone's personal identity, then maybe a way can be found for it to go into a space that has less impact on the rest of the family.’
There are plenty of helpful systems that can reduce clutter and general messiness – from the ‘declutter like a tourist’ method to our household advice editor Katie Mortram’s ‘Declutter by Degrees’ approach – but the hard truth is that it’s near-impossible for a home to be pristine 100% of the time. So while yes, it’s worth doing what you can to keep the home organised for the sake of your relationship, you’ll also need to build your tolerance for occasional disruptions Joanna notes: ‘As with our relationships, we can’t avoid messy feelings, keeping things perfectly tidy all the time’.
If clutter is becoming a bigger issue, though, it might be time for a proper conversation. ‘If you are arguing about this kind of issue, it's important to check in with how you are feeling about the whole domestic load in general, as this could be a sign that there are feelings around unfairness of how things are shared out,’ Joanna notes.
Jane advises ‘talking about expectations, organising space for belongings, and explaining the significance of possessions’. ‘Think of clutter management as a household responsibility,’ she adds. ‘People are rarely helped by being judged for their habits, but they often respond well when they’re invited to find solutions that reduce stress for everyone involved. Communicate and compromise until both sides of the couple feel heard and understood.’
