The joy of a little clutter

May 1—Organizing shows and books are all the rage, as professional organizers tell you how to declutter your house and, apparently, your life.

There are loads of streaming shows, like "Hot Mess House," "The Minimalists," "Get Organized With The Home Edit" and "Tidying Up With Marie Kondo."

The pro organizers are usually young women who are nauseatingly perky and positive and unbearably organized.

I bet they separate their M&Ms out by color before they eat them.

I'm not sure who their target audience is. I'm guessing there are many hopelessly unorganized folks who are looking for some tips. And I imagine those who are already super organized are always looking for new ways to be even more so.

Most of us probably fall in between those extremes.

Our house isn't cluttered or dirty, but I wouldn't say overly organized, either.

I have a huge drawer in my study desk filled with a tangle of old chargers and cords and HDMI cables, discarded point-and-shoot cameras and assorted other electronic stuff. There's another box full in the basement. I've kept them for years and years and have not once reused anything.

We have some spare-room closets that you have to use your shoulder to close and you open them carefully so as not to have something fall out on you.

My wood shop is perpetually a disaster zone.

We 75 million aging baby boomers are causing a dilemma of our own when it comes to people trying to declutter.

We have homes full of knickknacks, collections of thimbles and souvenir spoons, large Queen Anne furniture and basements and garages packed with a lifetime of bric-a-brac.

And then there are all the things handed down to us from previous generations.

When we're trying to downsize our empty-nest houses or getting ready to retire, we want to pass things on to our kids and grandkids.

But there's a problem. The millennials and Gen Z crowd don't want our crap.

They grew up on a disposable life of Ikea furniture.

And unlike us — who maybe took our previous generation's stuff even if we knew we didn't want it — the millennials and Gen-Zers don't mind telling us to bring our junk to the thrift store.

There's a book called "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter" that hones in on the problem. The author tells of the Scandinavian tradition of consciously thinking about things you should get rid of now and keeping only things you know your kids will really want and treasure.

Makes sense. But I have a sadistic streak that says our kids should suffer through it just like we had to.

There's a running joke in our house when we make all manner of oddball artsy/craftsy things that we really don't know what to do with: "Hang it in the basement somewhere. The kids can fight over it when we're dead."

I've thought of getting some of those How to Organize Better books. But I'd just ignore them and put them on my bookshelves with the hundreds of other books I've saved.

I'm sure our kids will love sorting through all those books.

Tim Krohn can be contacted at tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com or 507-720-1300.