I’m a therapist who writes about housekeeping hacks for messy people. When I post videos about my home — a place where clean laundry is tossed unfolded into baskets and a giant trash can on wheels rolls around my kitchen — the comment section explodes with admonitions that I am lazy. My private inbox, however, is different. People often tell me my embrace of mess is revolutionizing their lives.
“Are you saying that I’m not a horrible person and that I’m not just making excuses?”
“I just found you and I’m already crying in relief that I’m not the only one.”
The world is harsh toward messy people. I get it. Not that long ago I thought the home of a mature, successful woman was a bright and airy haven, à la HGTV’s famous interior designer Joanna Gaines, one with made beds and clear countertops. Homes where all the stuff is neatly packed away into artfully labeled containers, and where there are no piles or smudges.
My home has never looked like that. For years, it felt like I failed the aesthetic litmus test for being grown-up and put together. But four years ago, I accepted something that freed me and brought unexpected joy: I am messy.
Messiness ought to be celebrated. Instead, it’s a problem to solve, a bad habit to rectify, something to apologize for profusely when a visitor walks in. At best, you might forgive yourself or joke about your defect — your character flaw, really, since our culture associates messiness with laziness.
I’ve been preaching my gospel that being messy is not a moral failing for years now. But I want to take it one step further: Messiness can be a good thing. All communities should have some messy people. We are not all meant to be Joanna Gaines. Some of us are Molly Weasleys, our homes bursting with the cozy chaos of a loving family and cabinets packed full of odds and ends. We cannot be Martha Stewart because we are Thoreau, so consumed by capturing Walden Pond’s essence that we need someone else to bring us meals and do our laundry. And try as we might, no amount of clutching our items to see if they spark joy will turn us into Marie Kondo’s closet, for we are Albert Einstein’s desk.
The parts of my brain that allow me to produce handmade Renaissance costumes are the same parts responsible for a dining room bursting with fabric scraps and sewing supplies. It’s time we admit that what makes us shine can’t be divorced from what makes us scattered.
Science agrees. For example, people who have A.D.H.D. are often messy because the executive functioning centers of their brains — the area that controls time management, focus-shifting, memory and prioritization — operates differently from a typical brain. This atypical functioning can also create a higher level of divergent thinking and creativity, according to some research.
The often-repeated claim that clutter is harmful to one’s productivity and creativity may be wrong, as well. A University of Minnesota study tested the creative output of students working in a messy office space versus those working in a tidy one by asking them to imagine they worked at a Ping-Pong ball factory and had to come up with new uses for Ping-Pong balls. Participants in the messy room not only generated the same number of ideas as their clean-room counterparts, their ideas were also rated as more creative by independent judges.
To be sure, we messy people need to be considerate of others and provide a safe and sanitary environment for ourselves and our families. The good news is you can create an enjoyable, functional life as a messy person without becoming a neat one by using methods that work with your brain, not against it.
Some people can put something away instead of just putting it down, without much conscious effort. I am not that person. When I place something down, it disappears from my memory as if it doesn’t exist. But the effort to put away every item I touch throughout the day drains me more than mess itself.
This doesn’t mean I am incapable of making changes or exerting effort. Just the opposite. Instead of focusing on always putting things away and keeping my home neat, I make sure that every room in the house has a trash can, a laundry basket and a “this belongs in another room” bin. When a space becomes too messy to enjoy, instead of ignoring it because it feels overwhelming, I take a few minutes to toss things into their bin and move on. I gave up on having an aesthetically pleasing craft closet and instead embraced rolling racks with open shelves. They make it easy to store materials and keep the dining table usable even during ongoing art projects.
I focus on what works for me, not what matters for others’ opinions of me. I don’t actually care that dishes are in the sink for days, only that there is no food debris on them to smell or attract pests; I don’t care if my clothes are folded, only that I can find what I need. Cluttered countertops that keep the items I use every day at my fingertips are more functional for this fast-paced season of raising little kids than chasing someone else’s dream of a minimalist aesthetic.
None of the methods for housekeeping are particularly complex or groundbreaking. As soon as I stopped using all my energy trying to change myself from a messy person to a tidy one, I discovered the creativity I needed to find the housekeeping systems that work for me. Embracing my messiness has made housekeeping easier, not harder.
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