When I moved to Indiana 6 years ago I had a yard sale of all my junk back in California. I couldn’t believe how much stuff I’d been able to fit into my tiny bedroom at my parents’ house. There were journals and sketchbooks unused, CDs and floppys with one file on them, a few outfits I’d never worn, and about a hundred other things I could have done without all those years since I’d bought them. I was more surprised when I finally packed the little I planned to keep and found how much money I’d made off the sale. I had enough to pay for the trip out to Indiana (hotels, food, gas, etc.) plus some extra for groceries once I got moved into my new apartment.

A bad habit made worse

I had spent years accumulating a bunch of things that were just things, not really worth anything but a few moments of joy the day I brought them home. I didn’t stop once I got to Indiana. I kept on buying new things, not always expensive things, but things. When I got married I had more junk than I’d moved here with and then again when we moved this summer I found my husband and I had more things than either of us knew we had.

The memory is still fresh, of my brother-in-law recounting the moment during our move when he discovered that the heavy box he was straining to get to the truck was full of rocks. “Rocks!” he said, “What does he need a box of rocks for?” I shrugged, thinking only Dr. Seuss would know. So, as I look at the storeroom in the basement (piled to the ceiling with our “things”), I can’t help thinking about web design. It doesn’t seem like a parallel could be drawn here, but…

The cluttered web we weave

Blogs (and websites) are a dime a dozen, they say now, and so are the “things” designers and owners accumulate within the walls of their domain. I’m referring to all kinds of things like banner ads, text ads, scripts and other fun little trinkets, which are not bad in themselves, but mostly unnecessary, particularly as more things are added to them.

Author, Joseph Hall, said Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues. Website owners and designers need to digest that. I need to digest that. Moderation is the string which holds all virtues together. In other words, no matter how solid your life, how beautifully designed your website, you lose all of that if you let the string of moderation break. All your pearls fall to the waste with each new thing you add to your site or your home.

Old and new things are still just things

My husband and I have this same old tired argument in which he defends his old junk and I defend my new junk. He justifies his old stuff because he never buys new stuff, while I justify my new things because I don’t hang onto old junk. He wants to keep his old rocks and buddhist books and I want my baskets. I love baskets - tall ones, small ones, fat ones, flat ones. I put everything in them. I get them at Goodwill, so I rarely spend more than five dollars a month, but it’s still just more stuff. I think I’m justifying it because I need the baskets to put his old junk in (take that hubby), but I really just love the baskets for the sake of having them.

And aren’t a lot of web things just like his rocks and my baskets? Sure, for awhile, in the moment, they seem to serve a purpose, but in the end, they’re just something we trip over on the way down the stairs. You may have an old script that does something cool and you just can’t live without it, or it’s a new trick that you just had to put in your sidebar. I’m with you. I love a lot of the things I have on my site too, but I’m seriously considering wiping them out. I love my last.fm music update, but in the end it may be too much. Simpler is better. If you want to see my music, go to “my last.fm account](http://www.last.fm/user/nataliejost/.

There are some marketing gurus I’ve worked with who argue things to death because they think it’s really doing something for their bottom line, but I say prove it. Show me the user studies which show that people like seeing more stuff on a website. Show me where clean and uncluttered is bad for business.

When it comes to design, less really is more, particularly because no matter what your website contains, the purpose will be for the user to focus in on and probably read, some sort of article or product, so the fewer the things you have cluttering the page, the easier it is for people to see what it is you want them to see. So try removing a few of the extra things or afterthoughts you have up and see if reading your articles or posts isn’t just a little easier.