If You Believe In The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, Consider The Shakers

Tidy up, throw away what brings no joy, and your life will be less stressful. That is the message of the moment, and millions are enthusiastically embracing it. Less clutter equals more tranquility. Stuff that you don’t like or use is a burden. A clean house feels serene; a dirty one does not. A properly folded shirt is more easily stored and looks better when you put it on. Who can argue with statements like these?

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Au courant as these principles may seem, there is a religious organization that practiced them 250 years ago. Today, the word “Shaker” is most often used to refer to a style of kitchen cabinetry, but the Shakers were, in fact, far ahead of their time in their beliefs and practices. As early as 1750, they preached the equality of the sexes, pacifism, simple living and that work is a form of worship. They coined the phrase ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness;’ they held that good spirits will not live where there is dirt. They were tidying-up geniuses and, stylistically, the first minimalists.

The Shakers originated in England, where they were first called “Shaking Quakers” for their ecstatic, dancing form of worship. Escaping persecution, they came to the United States at the time of the Revolutionary War. At their height, between 1830 and 1860, about 6,000 Shaker brothers and sisters lived in more than 20 communities. Today there are two Shakers left, a man and a woman living in the last remaining Shaker village at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. The sect’s belief in celibacy has diminished their numbers, as have the principles of striving for perfection, shared possessions and communal living.

While Shaker life holds little appeal for people today, their adherance to efficiency, quality and simplicity created rooms that please the most stringent modern minimalist. Spare spaces with gleaming floors and unadorned walls hold only what is necessary: beds for sleeping, tables for eating and working, stands for candles, chairs that hang on the walls when not in use. Early in the 19^thcentury, the Shakers began to produce furniture for sale. The clean lines and superb workmanship of those pieces are prized by collectors and are endlessly reproduced. A Shaker chair, in fact, inspired the Danish Modern movement.

In today’s world, Shaker design motifs abound: aside kitchen cabinets, their influence lives in ladderback chairs with woven tape seats, peg rails, trestle tables, white plaster walls, natural fabrics and muted colors.  And, oh, the storage! In Shaker rooms, whole walls were given over to built-in graduated drawers, their wooden pulls carefully aligned for symmetry and simplicity.

Anyone bitten by the tidying-up bug knows that the tranquility of uncluttered space relies on plentiful storage. The Shakers knew that. They also knew that form follows function, that ornamentation is an add-on, that you should not have more than you need, and that cleaning up after yourself is part of the job. If it weren’t for those pesky demands of communal living and celibacy, they would be perfectly aligned with the hottest trend of the moment.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.