I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.” So said Freddie Mercury in 1977, and he was precisely 37 years ahead of his time. A new era is dawning when we can stop making excuses for putting the mess in domestic, as we all do when the doorbell rings, and embrace our Victorian roots. How about relaxing, instead of the stressful business of inventing lame excuses?
A bit of mess can be inspiring – though you would never guess it from the insistence of 20th-century modernism, which saw order and tidiness as the inevitable expression of the future. The legacy remains in the advice of self-help books such as Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, titles which themselves litter many a coffee table. Accompanying them is the endless stream of lifestyle magazines that showcase limpid light on white interiors, as if to persuade us that all we need is ozone and bleach.
It is liberating to admit that the house looks like a train wreck, because that’s just the way it is. Nobody believes the temporary lapse from the Elle Décor cover shoot anyway. Clearly, most homes are a bit dishevelled because people happen to live in them, and the truly enjoyable moments at home don’t involve a day of conspicuous labour to meet a standard of orderliness: they are the relaxed, informal occasions based around family and friends and the trails they leave. The shackles of 1950s housekeeping must yield to the fact that living patterns have since changed dramatically. Today, we have no front parlour reserved for cabinets of Sunday best crockery, and a back “living” room for pipe smoke and boiled vegetables, as open-plan living is the norm.