in defense of mess

why you're too neat

I’m a neat person. Really.

I’ve always found organization to be an antidote for uncertainty. And I never liked starting a task without first checking off the menial one of tidying up the space around me. Wipe the counter. Crumple up the grocery store receipts. Line up the shoes on the mat (don’t forget to tuck in the laces). This stress-melting structure trickled into my phone as well — all my apps slotted into the appropriate categories, email inboxes pruned like a rose bush, my playlists renovated regularly so as not to let the queue go stale faster than organic sourdough.

Neatness is part of the sewing-machine precise fiber of my being. I’ll never let go of it completely, but lately I’ve even experimenting with letting the mess in.

It felt unnatural at first, like when your sock bunches up in your sneaker. But little by little I’ve realized that a scrunched sock, while uncomfortable, isn’t going to kill me. What’s worse is stopping your walk every five minutes to readjust it.

Too much mess would make it hard for me to focus and relax, but a little clutter seems to calm me in a way I hadn’t expected. The list of things I have to do every day already feels so long, it’s freeing to just say, “that pile of clothes can wait until the morning” or “I can leave the sheet music on the piano, I’m going to play tomorrow anyway.”

But my messes don’t resemble ones like the TikTok-famous bedside table, a performative curation of chaos dubbed “cluttercore.” My disarray is without aesthetic, devoid of an Instagrammable “vibe,” accidental rather than calculated. It’s not sexy, unless a receipt from Key Food for $7 goat cheese turns you on. It’s not sleek — you might find a dust bunny that’s growing so large it looks like it might start foraging for berries. And it’s definitely not thoughtful, unless you think that pulling underwear off the drying rack rather than putting it back in the drawer is actually the more efficient method.

Even the way I prepare for guests is different than it used to be. When my friends came over last weekend, the apartment was not “messy” by any standard. But if you looked a little more closely, the neatness was punctuated by pieces of my day — a key to my neighbor’s apartment whose plants I’ve been watering; a receipt from lunch in Brattleboro, Vermont; a rogue garlic skin; two oysters shells I’m planning to make into candles; a roll of Kodak UltraMax, awaiting the flashes of light in the shape of memories. I used to toss these crumbs in a drawer, careful not to present a home that looked anything short of a Pinterest wet dream. But I’m having fun letting my apartment become one big catch-all. After all, what is a home if not a place to sift through the mess of the outside world, only keeping what compliments the art on your walls?

I’ve even felt a bit more creative since embracing the mess, especially as I’ve stopped over-organizing digital spaces. I used to be very methodical, almost scientific, about saving bookmarks on Chrome, clearing out “this is your one-time code” texts, sorting notes and emails into folders someone could decipher of I went missing tomorrow. I figured letting my devices do some of this dirty work would help free up my brain for more creative thoughts. But for some reason I just felt overly structured — if I wrote an idea down in a new note on my phone, it would stress me out a bit until I put it in the one designated for those types of ideas. It’s been a relief to give my brain permission to function in a less structured way, in all the cobweb-cradled corners of my life.

I’ll never reject order completely, but these tiny slips have been a breath of fresh-ish air. Now, rather than spending a half hour dusting, I’m going to watch the next episode of a show (it’s Severance, the show is Severance), and save the chores for another day.