CALL ME SNAKE

Most sentences that contain the construction — ____ is the new ____ — are intended to make you feel better. The cover story of a recent Boston Globe Magazine article, “Small is the New Big,” was no exception. The point of the article was to make me and my family feel better about our overcrowded living quarters. But the article had the opposite effect on me. I looked at all those compact, ship-shape homes and realized that’s exactly our situation except that our house, rather than being furnished with the latest in sleek designer products, is crammed to the gills with junk. Now are they going to tell me that messy is the new tidy?