"Advocates of cluttercore... 'admit that they have a lot of stuff but that they're going to take pleasure in that and arrange [their items] in ways they like. As a counter aesthetic to the minimalist hegemony...'"

"'... that makes sense to me.'... Cluttercore turns ordinary people into curators. It takes real creativity to think about what goes where and what each item says about the other. Plus, decluttering can possess bleaker undertones. 'I have a running list of theories... People organise and declutter to distract themselves from the seriousness of living in the Anthropocene and its existential threats – a burning planet, the Sixth Great Extinction – inoculating us against the pandemic of anxiety.' You'll never tidy your house in the same way again. And there are yet other benefits to maximalism. Richer nations throw away tons of stuff every year, often dumping unwanted items on poorer countries who lack the infrastructure to dispose of them properly, decimating local landscapes. In this context, cluttercore becomes a revolutionary riposte to the explosion of 'stuff'..."

From "'Cluttercore': the anti-minimalist trend that celebrates mess" (BBC).

Order and chaos — you've got to find your own balance and notice when order/chaos is out of balance. Those who push order will provoke the agents of chaos, and those who create chaos energize the order freaks. Get somewhere in the middle and verge in the direction that feels good to you, but not too far.

I remember the lovely minimalism that was mid-century modern. The coolest house on our block in the early 1960s was 100% "Danish Modern." I saw the reaction: hippie/bohemian patterns and all sorts of overlapping rugs and tapestries and 50 year old dark wood furniture from junk shops. The minimalism was declared "uptight" and "sterile." We wanted real-life rooms that looked the way those minimalist rooms looked when we were on LSD. What a chaotic jumble we wanted for a while there. Then, in the late 70s, a look called "high tech" called out to us — glass, metal. 

I've been through enough cycles that I'm content to wait out anything I don't like. The other day, I blogged a photograph that showed the cabinets in our kitchen, which are natural maple, and someone in the comments — I had comments at the time — now, you need to email me, annalthouse@gmail.com — felt moved to say they had the same cabinets and they were painting them white. You want me to paint the natural wood?! Because kitchens must be white these days? Did you read that a non-white kitchen is dated? Google it, and you'll see that now the white kitchen is what's old. 

Minimalism hit so deep and hard that it produced anti-minimalism. But don't worry. Go whichever way you like. The anti-minimalism will bring back minimalism.

Here's a Pinterest collection of 280 hippie kitchens. Example: