I once was invited to a friend’s ranch for a Christmas party. She had restored the ranch’s original Victorian-era farmhouse including period furnishings. It was astonishing, a genuine work of art. As I took a tour of the place, including the attic and the basement, I became concerned. I believe, you see, that every house must have a chaos space. “A place for everything and everything in its place” includes a place for chaos. Without that, any change — and change is, indeed, inevitable — would throw off the whole of the organized space. Yet, I hadn’t seen any chaos in the house. I’d looked in every room and closet. As far as I knew, there wasn’t even a garage.
It started snowing in the evening and I was almost 200 miles from home. The restored Victorian glowed in the afternoon light like a gingerbread house frosted in snow, surrounded by horse paddocks and forested mountain slopes. It could have been a Christmas card. But I was a long way from home and ill-equipped to travel in snow (this being Southern California). My host invited me to spend the night. In the guest house.
Ah ha! The guest house was tiny but quite cluttered: ironing board, various hobby projects, some boxes that I imagined were filled with things like non-period kitchenware removed from the house to make it authentic-appearing for the party.
Chaos space, found!
Similarly, every kitchen needs a chaos drawer. Mine is pictured above. I formulated my chaos space theory many years ago, and generally I even plan for the chaos drawer. In this case, it formed organically, though in reverse. The previous owner left a lot of odds-and-ends in many of the drawers in the kitchen. There were several chaotic drawers. Over time, we cleaned them out but — as I believe is inescapable — one magnificent Chaos Drawer remained.
—2p