The pandemic has altered our perceptions of the world, unfolding a fondness for loungewear as well as outdoor settings such as gardening, and personal approach to wellness. Most of us have even taken on food business and fashion resale.
It has also evolved our relationship with our homes, in which the creative chaos of “cluttercore” has emerged—an aesthetic trend that screams an approach that is way “out of the ordinary”.
Adele Shotton-Pugh, an interior designer at Terrys, explained to Yahoo! News, “The Cluttercore trend focuses on the core principle of ‘organized mess’,” in which she also added, “it’s an anti-minimalist trend which celebrates a combination of quirky and often mismatched belongings, meaning we’re able to fill our homes with interiors that celebrate our personalities.”
What not everyone knows is that this stuff-eccentric aesthetic is also spawned by the still ‘alive and well’ trend “cottagecore” of which The New York Times once accounted as a “budding aesthetic movement”, fostering a busily multifunctional approach to spaces.
@possum.piss updated room tour! sorry this took so long it took me forever to clean haha #roomtour #cluttercore #aesthetic #plantsoftiktok #fyp
Cluttercore’s rise as a nightmare to ‘neat freaks’
Certainly, people with obsessive-compulsive personalities don’t like the idea of having a jumble of stuff strewn around in a frenzied manner. However, after years of minimalism and Maria Kondo’s gospel of ‘tidying up’ series, #cluttercore has exploded in the media–gaining a total of 15.4 million views on Tiktok and 11.4 thousand views on Instagram as of this writing.
Cluttercore is something I can appreciate in pictures but I feel like it's setting the difficulty for keeping your space nice to Nightmare mode. Trying to manage all that clutter so that it stays beautiful just seems way too hard for me. https://t.co/pBjtHdbxvm
— Shelby (@datadruidry) January 25, 2021
With all the “museum-of-me” rooms from internet users that have been displayed on social media, we can all agree with what Jennifer Howard, author of Clutter: An Untidy History, stated on BBC, “We want to feel safe, we want to feel comfortable, we want to feel protected and taken care of – stuff can act like a literal cocoon.”
‘Team tidy’ may be a little freaked out about it, but with its increasing hype and overall cozy appeal, any of us might actually be convinced to give our homes a total makeover with this cluttercore touch.
@kitschybtch Room tour ! #vintage #groovy #cluttercore #roomtour #room #clown #60s #elvis #thrifted
@hauntingghostaesthetic Had to do my room with the audio from @ghosthoney #cluttercore #howlsmovingcastle #maximalism #bedroom #goblincore
The deeper meaning behind all that ‘mad mismatch’
A blog by cluttercore devotee Alyssa Longobucco described herself as one who is “not a messy person by nature; in fact, much of my clutter is confined to a piece of furniture I lovingly call my cabinet of curiosities.”
She further stated that one’s home’s design should be reflective of the life they lead and love, and “what better way to do that than by surrounding yourself with things that make you happy”.
A similar response from the source The Guardian was given by Irina Balog, an interior designer from Gothenburg, Sweden, who described cluttercore as “both an aesthetic and an emotion” while explaining that the way she decorates her space is part of who she is—this portrays the idea as a depiction of boldly revealing one’s self rather than an urge to do so.
The previous statements can also be strengthened with a cluttercore-related point given by the psychology professor Joseph Ferrari from the DePaul University in Chicago, defining home as a “situation for living” and a foundation for identity; also emphasizing that home is not simply a place, but “an extension of ourselves” and “a living archive of memory”.
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A cluttercore inspo go-to
And just in case you would want to be one of the adapters of the newest wave of maximalism, we have prepared a little parade of Instagram posts that might inspire you:
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