Althouse: "It's an example of someone who isn't governed by tidying up."

September 24, 2026

"It's an example of someone who isn't governed by tidying up."

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15 comments:

n.n said...: Entropic chaos and disorder.; 9/24/26, 8:57 AM
Aggie said...: It's a new kind of hoarding !; 9/24/26, 8:59 AM
baghdadbob said...: Her teeth aren't governed by tidying up either.; 9/24/26, 9:02 AM
Peachy+2 said...: No amount of charming English accent can make that appealing.; 9/24/26, 9:04 AM
rhhardin said...: A mess prevents loneliness. You never get the feeling that you should have guests over. The idea never comes up.; 9/24/26, 9:11 AM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: Good for Her! Three cheers for reinvention and expressing dormant talents at any age, remarkable.

"Energy is eternal delight" - William Blake, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭, 1793; 9/24/26, 9:16 AM
J L Oliver said...: Or is it a small step to hoarder doom?; 9/24/26, 9:24 AM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/24/26, 9:24 AM
n.n said...: The progressive clutter is an indication of a liberal disharmony.; 9/24/26, 9:26 AM
Disparity of Cult said...: She likes fast cars and lots of land. Can the hive forgive her?; 9/24/26, 9:33 AM
Jamie said...: Do we have to valorize every damn disorder now?

"Not governed by tidying up" - lady, *I'm* not "governed by tidying up" either, but when I need a surface to work on, I don't need to clear a space. (I won't address food hygiene because I'll take her word for it that she doesn't actually LIVE like this, she only WORKS like this.) That one phrase serves just the one purpose: to make people who take a moment to clean up after themselves feel uneasily as if THEY'RE the ones with the problem, THEY'RE just sad little prisoners of conventionality who have no creative spark, because if they did, they'd glue posters to their walls and then half-rip them down and drop the scraps on the floor... forever.

It also sounds like BS that she doesn't want to impose herself on other people. If that's true, what's the point of being a displayed artist? Putting your work on display is imposing your vision on other people. I don't have a problem with that - that's the job of artists, to try to make me perceive the world from their perspective. If you don't have that urge, don't allow your works to be displayed - keep them to yourself, let them be discovered after your death.

I'm running a bit hot on this subject. A couple of years ago, I helped a couple of relatives move apartments, and because they're hoarders - pretty clean hoarders, but still, you wouldn't have believed the accumulated dust and grime behind and under the bins and stacks of papers and clothes and saved power cords - it took almost a month of all-out effort, and I came home grimy to the hair roots every day. *Their* justification for living that way was, "To us, a cluttered home is busy and happy!" "Cluttered" - they thought they meant "like a set from a cozy English murder mystery, where every item has a history" but what they were living in was "ok, today we took twelve outdoor garbage bags of nicely folded clean clothes to Goodwill and you still can't close your closet door, you have little waste baskets beside both sides of your sofa so you can each throw away your tissues or whatnot without getting up but you miss them all the time and never pick up what's on the floor, you have food in your pantry that's been out of date for five years, you've never thrown away a piece of junk mail but you think you're doing great by keeping it in a paper bag under the desk - to say nothing of the dozens of boxes you've piled against the walls of your unusable office."

No. Be just a LITTLE bit governed by tidying up.; 9/24/26, 9:52 AM
Eva Marie said...: The reason hoarding is discouraged is that it usually attracts roaches, mice and rats - and with those, disease. Unless that place is drenched with DDT every month, the smell of rat piss must be overwhelming.
I quit watching the longer video after a few minutes because I thought it was blatantly dishonest.
I do commiserate with her. She has less and less energy and yet wants to be independent. So she spins a story and gullible reporters (are there any other kind) fall for it.; 9/24/26, 10:19 AM
RJ said...: Eva Marie has it right: roaches, rats, mice.; 9/24/26, 10:49 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: Probably too late for her to read Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" or listen to his YT snippets. She's a SLOB; 9/24/26, 10:54 AM
Temujin said...: It's HER studio so I'll give her a little room for that. But damn...I don't know how that place isn't rife with other lifeforms. Sure...she's an artist so we have to give her the room to live in her artist's head. But damn...I could not feel an ounce of creativity with that mess bearing down on me from all sides, from above, and from below my ankles.

We all live in our own heads. I'm often reminded how lucky I am.; 9/24/26, 10:54 AM