Clutter?

"Reguero" is common here, and means "mess" and works for "clutter" as well.

"Hacer una limpieza general" - like spring cleaning - could probably be used figuratively in the way you suggest, but I'm sure there's a better way of expressing this.

jeanmarie said:

How do you translate "clutter"?. Also is there a catch phrase roughly equivalent to figuratively "cleaning out the closet", in the sense of simplifying your life?

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Clutter would be "toyo" in Dominican Spanish.

As far as as a catchy phrase as you mentioned I don't know one and wouldn't be surprised if there isn't one. I have found Spanish to be more direct with less euphimistic/figurative phrases than English. It seems to be less creative and probably becasue of that it has changed much less that English over the years even though it is much, much older.

As far as examples of being more direct in Spanish goes - take notice of when they rename movie title from English to Spanish. Whereas the titles in English seem to be really inventive and creative the titles are rarely directly translated into Spanish but rather a direct if not descriptive title representing what the movie is about is usually chosen.

Clutter: reguero, desorden
Spring cleaning: Literalmente: Limpieza de primavera
En Republica Dom.: Limpieza general
Los dominicanos no solimos decir "limpieza de primavera" por el hecho, en mi opinion, de que no solo hacemos limpieza general en este tiempo, sino semanalmente. En los Estados Unidos, donde las personas acumulan tantos objetos (la mayoria inservibles) es comun despojarse de ellos en el tiempo de la primavera, cuando la temperatura ya comienza a subir (es mas dificil en el invierno) es decir, hacen un "garage sale" y asi pueden hacer una mejor limpieza general. Nuestra pobreza no nos ha permitido acumular muchas cosas, y esto facilita el poder limpiar con mas frecuencia.

clutter, clutters your mind, so thank God Dominicans are not there yet like Americans, we are drowning in THINGS!!!!! help!!!!
I agree with Norma it should be - desorden or reguero
Chipo - toyo - would be a wet mess

M.A.R. said:

clutter, clutters your mind, so thank God Dominicans are not there yet like Americans, we are drowning in THINGS!!!!! help!!!!
I agree with Norma it should be - desorden or reguero
Chipo - toyo - would be a wet mess

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The people in the campo in Moca among others use toyo to describe a "normal" mess too. A toyoso is a messy person.

There used to be in Santiago, a store named EL Reguero. I wonder if it still exists. The merchandize was all over the place.

We say reguero as in "aqui, limpiando este reguero" (here, cleaning up this mess. You can also say "un reguerazo" which means a BIG mess.
Toyo is usually a mess of the wet kind or the stuff that you can't count as in "un toyo de habichuelas" -a bean mess, "un toyo de azucar" (a mess of sugar (spilled).