Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Curated isn’t Edited

I just read an article bemoaning the overuse and misuse of the word curated. Looking back, I realize I’ve misused it myself from time to time, but now that I know, I won’t make the mistake again.

Apparently, the word curate comes from the Latin, “curatus,” meaning to care for. As a noun, a curate is a member of the clergy, one responsible for the care of souls. Around the turn of the last century, it morphed into a verb with the meaning those of us over 40 learned, to care for a collection or archive, in a similar way that the curates (the clergymen) were supposed to care for the souls in their parish. Hmmm.

Nowadays, if you’ve been paying attention, the word has morphed again. Museum curators moved out of maintenance and into editorial, and then we all got in on the game. To curate came to mean culling and keeping only the best. You can curate your guest list, your local grocery store can curate their cheese selection and you should definitely, definitely curate your tchotchkes. In fact, I’m not even sure you can call them tchotchkes after they’ve been properly curated: You will have elevated them to Pop art.

I’m a big fan of editing, though really, what I encourage my clients to do is the far more basic: weeding. However, I find the earlier meaning of curate intriguing. One thing I see in my clients, my kids and even, though I hate to admit it, myself, is that the more stuff we have, the harder it is to care for it all.

When I had my first apartment, I used to clean the entire floor with a rag on my hands and knees. It was small, it was empty, I was young. When my oldest son was a year old, I used to alphabetize the blocks in his little wagon every night, because he had so few toys and putting that level of attention to them only took a few minutes. I’m way past that now, and while those examples might seem a little crazy (only a little?) I’d argue that the opposite—mashing clothes into drawers and closets, shoving papers into boxes and being unable to find what you want because you have so much—is equally crazy.

I say, let’s put the caring back in curate. I’m pretty sure that if you care more for what you already own, you will end up acquiring less. And if you realize you have more than you can realistically care for, you will have to weed or edit, but please, don’t call it curating.