— ✍️Disha

“Declutter your home, declutter your mind.” That’s the mantra echoed across today’s internet. From influencer reels to mental health posts, we are told that peace lies in subtraction. A woman glides through her pastel-toned home, pointing to an empty desk, a floating shelf with one plant, and colour-coded drawers. “I got rid of 80% of my stuff,” she says, smiling into the camera. But what about the rest of us? Picture a regular Indian home. Steel trunks stuffed with wedding saris. Newspaper bundles tied with string. Calendars from past years that feature gods. Masala jars with hand-written names. An extra mattress under the bed. Is this clutter or a record of care? Minimalism is often defined as the deliberate choice to live with less in order to focus on what matters, but who decides what matters? It is not just about aesthetics. It is a performance of control, power, and privilege. Clean is never just clean. It is curated visibility. And clutter is not chaos; it is often continuity.

Minimalism’s language is not native to us. It arrived via Zen philosophy, Scandinavian design, and Silicon Valley’s obsession with streamlining life into productivity. Then came Marie Kondo’s soft instruction: “Does this spark joy?” But in India, letting go is not a lifestyle; it is a luxury. Our homes are archives, not galleries. Behind a stack of towels is a memory. Inside a trunk is a legacy. The plastic jar that holds sugar once carried ghee. Minimalism assumes a future that is safe and replaceable. But for many of us, the past must remain close, and the future is unpredictable. We keep things not because we are disorganised, but because we are cautious. We do not ask, “Does this spark joy?” We ask, “Will this be useful when I cannot afford another one?”

The Caste of Clean Spaces

In India, cleanliness is never neutral. It is shaped by caste history. Upper-caste homes have long followed rules of purity that divide utensils, mark spatial borders, and silence certain kinds of presence. The Brahminical ideal of clean was not about hygiene; it was about hierarchy. Filth was not removed; it was removed by someone else, usually Dalit workers. Today’s digital minimalism quietly echoes this ideal. Pale walls, untouched counters, noiseless decor. Social media rewards homes where nothing interrupts the line of sight. There is no room for religious icons, plastic bottles, or leftover containers. By contrast, working-class homes carry visible density. Every corner works. Objects are reused, repurposed, and respected. This is not clutter. This is collective survival. But the aesthetic logic of minimalism punishes this visibility as mess.

Decluttering is not cheap. It presumes that if you throw something away, you can buy it again later. That if you give away your winter coat, you can replace it next year. Minimalism celebrates the power to dispose, but that power belongs only to those with financial safety. What is kept in poorer homes is not a burden; it is a strategy. A fraying dupatta becomes a mop. An old phone is saved for emergencies. A mattress is stored for visiting cousins. Storage itself is a privilege. Influencers show clean rooms that are not actually sparse but secretly packed. Their drawers are deep; their wardrobes are large. In small homes, everything is visible. A single bed is for sleeping, folding laundry, and sometimes eating. A shelf stores school books, religious idols, masala boxes, and family photos. There is no privacy of possessions. Clutter is not a lack of control. It is a lack of hiding space.

Hoarding is Not Indulgence. It is Inheritance

In families shaped by migration, partition, caste displacement, or economic fragility, things are kept as insurance. A cracked bowl, a lidless container, a half-used roll of string. These are not errors. They are memories of scarcity and strategies for tomorrow. Your grandmother did not call it sustainability. She called it sense. The label of “hoarder” is thrown at women, elders, and the working class. But hoarding is not always dysfunction. It is preparation. It is love. What looks like excess in a minimalist home is often foresight in ours.

Women are blamed for the mess. The mother who saves old bottles is mocked. The grandmother who preserves wedding sarees is told to “move on.” Decluttering is marketed to women as emotional liberation, but it often becomes another task. What are they really keeping? Wedding cards wrapped in lace, toys their children no longer play with but never wanted to give away, containers for guests who may arrive without notice. These are not hoarded things. They are hoarded roles as nurturers, as archivists of love. When men keep old electronics, they are called practical. When women keep old gifts, they are accused of sentimentality. In August 2024, I lost my father to cancer. His cupboard is still untouched. His things stay not because we are dysfunctional, but because we are not ready to erase what still feels like presence.

A folded handkerchief. A broken pressure cooker lid. A wooden comb. A torn spectacle case. These no longer serve a function, but they carry meaning. And meaning is not always clean. It is stubborn and messy. Minimalism asks us to make peace by letting go. But some of us make peace by holding on. Not all healing is tidy. A room full of objects can be a room full of stories. Letting go is not always strength. Holding on is not always weakness.

Minimalism often wears the face of environmentalism. But there is a difference between consuming less and consuming differently. Buying new beige cutlery is not the same as using a steel thali for twenty years. Only one is called chic. Working-class homes across India reuse plastic bags, save cardboard boxes, and turn old clothes into cleaning rags. They are called jugaadu. An influencer does the same with branded links and is praised for “conscious living.” Sustainability is not how your home looks. It is how little waste you generate. It is not an aesthetic. It is a practice.

Therapists often say, “Clear your space to clear your mind.” But this does not land equally. For someone in grief or depression, clutter can be comfort. A room full of things may feel like safety. Not all healing needs emptiness. Some recover in silence; others recover in noise. Mental health cannot be measured by minimalism. Clutter can be routine. It can be company. And sometimes, it can be survival.

What Social Media Refuses to See

Instagram loves beige walls, plant corners, and “Sunday reset” reels. It rewards quiet and punishes reality. Homes with loud upholstery, framed gods, and plastic containers are filtered out. It is not just clutter that disappears. It is identity. Rental homes, rural homes, Dalit and Muslim homes are rarely part of the minimalist dream aesthetic. Minimalism becomes an algorithm of exclusion. It does not just shape taste. It shapes visibility. The shame of a messy home is not personal. It is manufactured through comparison, class codes, and curated images of what a good life should look like.

For people historically erased, clutter is not just stuff. It is evidence. It is testimony. In homes where certificates were delayed, ration cards were passed down, and report cards were lost in floods, memory does not live in clean folders. It lives in a plastic pouch with old photos. A pamphlet from a protest. A diary page. A chipped mug from a rented room. A stone from a river that no longer exists. These objects do not matter to landlords or governments. But they matter to us. For a queer person disowned by family, an old phone with saved texts may be the only proof of love. For a Dalit student in an upper-caste hostel, a birthday note from a friend may be a reminder that they were seen. For an Adivasi worker far from home, a packet of dried mahuwa flowers may carry the scent of lost land. For a single woman, a utensil bought with her first salary may hold a pride no passbook can record. These are not just items. They are fragments of self. Asking us to declutter is not just about tidying. It is about asking us to forget we were ever here.

Minimalism asks, “Does this object spark joy?” But maybe the more honest question is, “Whose absence will this object make permanent?” Decluttering is not always wrong, but it cannot be universal. It must make room not just for calm, but for grief, gender, caste, labour, uncertainty, and memory. Clutter is not failure. It is a method of staying prepared, staying rooted, staying visible. Let the room be full. And let us learn to see its fullness not as mess, but as evidence that we survived what we were never meant to survive.

- The author is a Ph.D. Scholar & Senior Research Fellow at Dr. K. R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi