The Merits of Messiness
Dec 21, 2006
Today's New York Times includes a fascinating piece about messiness, headlined "Saying Yes to Mess," that defends it almost as the new American way, a sign of creativity and promise. The reader comments about it are fascinating, with most people confessing to major messiness without shame.
I recollect (but barely) a favorite quote from "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" about the satisfaction of neatening your cave while knowing that life itself will mess it up. Life is chaotic. Neatening and straightening and cleaning is what we humans do to try to take charge of life but, clearly, it's got to be an almost daily effort.
I'm mostly neat. But even when my office seems to me to be a mess, I like to ask visiting cable guys, for example, how my office ranks on the neatness scale, with 1 being disaster and 10 being Martha Stewart. They always tell me I'm a 10, even a "10 plus," as one guy said. For some reason, I'm both proud and ashamed of that rank.
I confess I like order (and so, thank God, does my husband) for two reasons: It makes me feel more in control, in a world where I control so little. And, it saves tremendous time when I can find what I need when I need it and not 20 frantic minutes later.
The Times posed the question to readers: "How messy is your desk or closet? What do you think that says about you?" I hope it's OK to borrow that question for the day and pose it to my own readers.
Comment by Jodee | Dec 21, 2006 1:31:05 PM
Grr. I just saw that article and was trying to figure out how to block it so my husband won't see it. It will just give him another argument for being messy and heaven knows we don't need more of those.
Messiness is fine if you are the only person who lives in the cave. If there are other people who live there, you have to find a middle ground. For instance, the messy person could have a room or a garage that he (yes, HE) can keep as messy as he wants. The neat person can pick up things to her (yes, HER) heart's content, but she can't touch the stuff in the messy zone. The messy zone needs to be somewhere that the rest of the world doesn't have to trip through to get something. That kind of compromise.
Right now, the messy zone in our house is, well, the entire house. Sigh. I am losing the war and I never even got to fight.
Comment by Martha | Dec 21, 2006 1:31:37 PM
This is a mega- personal issue since it has led to an arrest, jailing, conviction, eviction, child protective services investigation, threatened eviction and many family disputes. The neat problems started after marriage and a child upon reflection. When single, although an aunt with allergies and a family babysat for come to mind as ten times cleaner, I heard labels of fastidious and was by nature a picker upper urging others to greater neatness. Mother filled the house with craft projects. Sewing needles and pins were embedded in the carpets. Her bed doubled as a work table and had to be cleared off at bedtime of patterns, fabrics, tools and trim... By age seven, the neatness wars started. First it was the lego set and other little parts all over that needed to be picked up. Then there was the apartment with the immaculate manager and his family of four. Their apartment rated there with the aunt with allergies and the family babysat for. Unfortunately when you work full time and your eight year old may have inherited the creative tendencies to crafts of the grandmother, the apartment fills with pails of mud, cardboard, leaf and string creations, lego and other little toy parts, along with dirty dishes from a broken disposal, piles of clothes awaiting laundry day or waiting for closet space or a chest of drawers plus all the papers and books of a job requiring study and other issues. When the anal manager pulls a power trip, the stress of cleaning after a few others and yourself, let alone trying to motivate participation, have ended in arrest, conviction, eviction etc. Fortunately other apartment complexes have more intelligent management with more lenient policies that realize cleanliness is relative to personal preference and lifestyle. Still, when the likes of CPS come, it seems best to have a surgical suite clean house. Now the landlord threatened with blight and fire hazard concerns for the clutter of keep. Is it the years of life that create the problem of boxes of papers, too many clothes etc. that fill rooms as storage units instead of freeing the space for grandchildren's bedrooms and other living?
Comment by Edd | Dec 21, 2006 1:34:00 PM
Susan, I read that article this morning and immediately emailed it to my wife and daughter saying that I was finally vindicated. The desk, the basement, the spare room... I have all the messes the article described. Hmmm...maybe next year.
Comment by Denise | Dec 21, 2006 3:46:07 PM
Jodee--you must know my parents! The "main house" was immaculate (mother), the basement and garage (father, aka Basement Man), disastrous.
I think it is a cycle...my maternal grandmother: immaculate; my mother and her sisters: ridiculously clean and organized; my sister, cousins, and I: pretty darn clean and organized, but not "crazy" like our mothers.
Dad was another story...didn't inherit that trait from him. I know a lot of messy women, but for the most part, I think it is men who are messy (used to other WOMEN picking up after them).
Comment by Rox | Dec 21, 2006 5:00:52 PM
I like order in my life(and feeling in control of it somewhat). My husband has lots of clutter in his workshop, but he knows where everything is. A friend of ours is messy--has lost car keys, important documents, pays bills late because he cannot find them--so I believe there is a huge downside to being messy because it can screw up your life (a little or a lot depending on how messy you are!!). So my vote is for being somewhat neat--not so neat as to be considered OCD--but neat enough so bills are paid on time, passports and car keys and drivers licenses do not get lost in the clutter. Plus I just like it when my home is tidy and fairly orderly. I cannot control the weather, or what our political leaders will do, or when the next earthquake/flood/etc. will be. But I can control my environment a little and I like that.
Comment by JGolden | Dec 21, 2006 10:21:18 PM
I just informed my husband that January is National Organization Month. You should have seen the way his eyes lit up.
I live by three wonderful watchwords:
Embrace the chaos.
Comment by Dave | Dec 22, 2006 8:29:57 AM
Great article Susan! Have been cleaning up the house for a Holiday get together. Doing well except for the office. It's always the last to get any attention. Looks like the aftermath of one of those Japanese quakes. My measure of success will be how much makes it to the curb. I do best when I psych myself up and say: "Be ruthless, get rid of it".
Comment by annweir | Dec 22, 2006 8:56:01 AM
My husband is the neat freak here. I am certainly not. And my son unfortunately decided my path looked more appealing than dad's Monk-like behaviors. How did we ever hook up! January, I decided, it all goes - even I have my limits!
Comment by BillJ | Dec 22, 2006 9:02:41 AM
Merry Christmas Susan! I've been called a neat freak, but I'm not sure it's accurate. You see, I'm not angered by messes so much as I am perplexed by them. I can't understand how someone can function in one. I guess that's because I'm slightly lazy and a bit scatterbrained. I have to make lists, create files, and put things back where they belong, or I forget about them, sometimes with severe consequences. My two most glaring examples were when I got a traffic ticket for driving on expired plates - simply because I forgot to renew them before my birthday. Then, a few years later, I burned out the engine in my car because I forgot (for many, many months) to change the oil. Let's face it - that's forgetful to the point of being stupid! So now I make lists, and put things away, and clear out old things. And when someone makes fun of me for an anal-retentive control freak, I just remember the sight of a tow truck hauling my car to the junkyard. I'll stick to being neat. It's cheaper.
Comment by bernie | Dec 22, 2006 10:03:38 AM
Heehee. My dad's garage married my mom's refrigerator and we were all happy ever after! Until I found out on my own that I don't save food and I don't save junk and then wondered where I'd come from!
Comment by Sonya Chloe | Dec 22, 2006 5:56:45 PM
The best thing I ever read about messiness and creativity, was in Julia Cameron's artist self-help book "The Vein of Gold" (I'm pretty sure that's the book!)
Here's the story:
A younger musician felt like their career wasn't going anywhere, they were stuck. So an older musician advised, DO NOT START ANY NEW PROJECTS!!!!! Go through all your old files, tapes, etc, (i.e., "the big mess"), organize it, and through the process of organizing, you will discover all these old half-finished recordings, etc. FINISH THEM!!!!!! FINISH YOUR OLD PROJECTS!!!! DO NOT START ANYTHING NEW UNTIL YOU FINISH THE OLD!!!!
______________________________
Well, there weren't all the explanation points and capital letters in the story in Julia Cameron's book...but as a messy, project-generatin' artist myself, this is the single best advice I've ever gotten. It's like eating your vegetables before you have dessert. You MUST finish old projects, which may be the mess in three boxes, or in 10 computer folders, or on shelves in the basement, or all over the living room sometimes!
NOTE: This advice doesn't apply to the mess-of-living type messes, or post-breakup messes, or not wanting to get up in the morning and face the day type messes. Only the creativity kind of mess. I think...
Comment by John | Dec 25, 2006 11:46:14 PM
If someone could've gotten through to me the lessons learned this past year regarding the parallels between horizontal surface cluttering and mental health...I might be a more 'neat' individual. (might)
One of this past year's lessons was indeed discovering how much my mental landscape could be cleared via simple housecleaning...and how those horizontal surfaces ALWAYS indicate the state of my mind.
Always.
Same with the car, perhaps that is the early indicator!
I've yet to discover how to work it prophylactically...yanno, cleaning BEFORE the mental health crisis...but I'll take one step at a time.
Once again I find myself bumping into another deadline...the year-end is always the most heart-rendingly refreshing time...and decided that the best way to confront the raging anxiety inside would be to clean up a wee bit around home.
Feels good, I've GOT to remember this feeling.
Funny how the good habits take 90% effort to maintain, while those pesky bad ones coast along with less than 10% of my energies!
I'm going to take that advice to heart, Sonya, and NOT take on any new projects until I can actually finish one or two open ones. I'd be happy with ONE completion...
Comment by diane | Dec 27, 2006 4:42:53 PM
Think of your mess area as a "studio" and offer no excuses.
Comment by Andrea | Dec 29, 2006 1:39:48 PM
For all those planning on decluttering next month: Please consider using WWW.FREECYCLE.ORG to donate usable stuff to others in your local community. It's a very cool system! and only requires as much of your time & effort as you're willing to put into it. It's the "reuse" part of the cycle of reduce-reuse-recycle. Through freecycle, I have both donated and received many goods that would have otherwise cost money or ended up in a landfill. There's a short explanation, an FAQ, and a local Group Finder on the site.
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