“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”, Albert Einstein ones responded to a comment on his messy desk.
If your house is a reflection of your brain, mine I would say, is chaotic, cosy and always work in progress. It has been a struggle for me to keep my house (back in the day, my room) organized and tidy. I was notorious as a child for the mess in my room. It was like a landscape with areas where you cannot walk on or a mine field you could say, so you enter with care and move around the piles with finesse. And in that chaos I had a system that made sense. The problem was, that system only made sense to me. So other people would come in and step on top of the piles, or worse, move stuff around. That would mess up my whole system and cause short circuit in my brain, which then made me shut down to cope.
Like Sigmund Freud said: “Don’t clean up the mess. I know exactly where everything is.” Obviously this did not really work for me, but little did I know then about that internal thing that was the cause. Also I wasn’t blessed with conscious parents, like most people from my generation.
In my twenties this continued, by that time, I was pretty good at shutting myself down for chaos around me. I had never trained myself to keep things organized, it has not become a habit of mine. So the way now, was that every now and then I would have a massive cleanup session, but the rest of the time…, chaos, correction, organized chaos.
Fast forward to the past 10 years, this concept interests me because it has been such a topic in my life. I felt ‘not good enough’ in household, it was a constant struggle to keep things tidy, I was embarrassed really, and was always apologizing for the mess, even if it was hardly there. And also very intriguing, there were always a few people in my life commenting on it, and these people were usually the worst in keeping things tidy themselves! It was like I attracted that somehow with my energy.
What I realized though, if I believe this about myself, everyone else will too. If I stop believing this, the rest will follow?
Let’s try this out, it seems worth it. Now a good question is, what will my new mental image about this be. I guess I am also not completely attracted to the clinically clean sterile environment.
So how do I want to be? Or better, how am I now in my newly invented mental image.
First I want to thank the messy phenomenon for the good things it has brought me, how it served me. I think it made me very capable to be able to survive under any circumstances. In extreme chaos, I keep standing. Also I read that some researched advantages of being messy are: greater creativity and more likely to try new things. I think they are right.
Now going forward, I am a full functioning organized person. I am clean, organized enough and my house is very ‘gezellig’ (untranslatable dutch word), personal and has amazing positive energy. I treat my stuff with care and I am not afraid to throw things out that ‘no longer spark joy’ (thank you Marie Kondo). I am happy with my organization and it does not cost me a lot of energy to get it this way. I don’t freak out when something is out of place. It is very easy for me to put it back in the right place. I know where to look for stuff, and all clothing closets are tidy and have a sublime organization.
Hello new mental image!
