In 25 years of designing houses, Memphis, Tenn., architect Carson Looney has found that almost every couple has one of each. It’s not “a him or a her thing.” Men and women tend to be neat or messy in equal numbers, but the harried pace of most people’s lives today exacerbates the difference. As the clutter starts to overtake the house and tax the relationship, the clients think a bigger house will solve the problem. But “bigger isn’t better, better organized is better,” Looney said. “The solution is to find a place for all that junk.”
The three places in a house where neat and messy most often collide are the shared ones: the kitchen, the bathroom and the entry area. Junk mail and catalogs overflow the mail area and often end up on the rarely used dining table. Every schoolchild in America carries a backpack, and these invariably pile up near the front door along with coats, boots, and myriad sports equipment. If a household member plays ice hockey or another sport, the equipment can even spill over into adjacent rooms.
Looney’s unusual solution to this front hall disaster is what he calls a “liver room.” As the liver is the cleansing organ of the body, the liver room is the cleansing place of the house through which all household members must pass before entering the living areas. Intended to capture coats, backpacks, sports equipment, mail, briefcases, laptops and everything else, the liver usually has a bench with space for shoes and boots, and hooks abound. There’s plenty of shelving and each family member has a designated cubby. If space and budget permit, Looney incorporates a small home office where the mail is sorted out, bills are paid and household files are kept. Once Looney’s clients understand the concept, he said, they are universally enthusiastic.
The kitchen can turn into a neat-messy war zone and a bigger one can make things worse. In her 20 years of designing houses, Los Angeles architect Gina Moffet has found that when a kitchen is large, functions and storage tend to be spread out. This makes for lots of walking back and forth to get all the items required, even for something as simple as making a piece of toast (open the bread box, get out the toaster, fix the toast, get a plate and butter and jam). Rather than retrace all those steps to put everything away, the messy person will leave stuff out on the counter and a trail of crumbs on the floor. To avoid this, Moffet organizes the kitchen layout so that the storage related to a task is next to the equipment that will be used for it. Not only is the task easier, both partners are more likely to clean up afterwards.
A second dishwasher can also help diffuse tension over the condition of the kitchen, Moffet said. This may sound excessive, but in many households over the course of a day, especially if one or both partners work at home, dirty dishes pile up in the sink and on the counters because the dishwasher is still full of clean dishes from the day before. With two dishwashers, dirty ones can be loaded as they are used, and the clean ones removed during meal preparation times. If you entertain a lot, a second dishwasher is also handy, she pointed out.
Many clients already use an appliance garage to contain some of the kitchen clutter. Moffet also puts one in the master bathroom “to make bottles and potions disappear.” Looney has had great success in capturing bathroom clutter in a built-in recessed shelf with a sliding doors that he puts just above the sink. “It eats up about eight inches of mirror, but it works. You put outlets in it as well, so you can use an electric shaver and put it right back.” Separate his-and-hers vanities will make the neat partner feel better, and both architects install an outlet in the top drawer of the vanity for a hair dryer so that owners just open the drawer, use it, stick it back and shut the drawer.
An irksome bathroom issue for many couples is wet towels left on the floor. Moffet includes plenty of hooks for the big towels because throwing a towel on a hook is easier than folding it and putting it back onto a towel rack. She also puts hooks for the hand towels near the sink.
Another war zone between neat and messy is the dressing area in the master bedroom. It’s easier to control when it’s separated from the sleeping area, which both architects like to keep tiny because a smaller bedroom means fewer places for clutter to accumulate. If the budget and house are big enough, two separate dressing areas are optimal. At the very least, each partner should have his own closet, and dresser storage should be moved in there as well. A separate dressing area will eliminate a trail of clothes across the bedroom floor. And by moving the dressers in as well, the man will have a place to unload his pockets, and little piles of change and notes won’t appear all over the bedroom. Even with these tactics, the dressing area won’t be perfect, and you’ll still want to shut the door to hide the mess, Looney said. He always specifies a pocket door because “you only have to move a few clothes out of the way to close it.” If a home owner has to kick too many clothes out of the way to pull a door shut, it will stay open and the clutter will be in full view.
Both architects said that clients are happily surprised to discover that design can help bring order to a cluttered household. The homeowners are even more surprised to find that the details that will bring it under control and make a house more livable are, as Looney put it, “not really noticeable. You won’t notice the little shelf above the vanity unit until it’s pointed out.” But you’ll notice less clutter every single day.
