January is Get Organized Month … Or Not

There seems to be a month for everything. January is apparently “Get Organized Month”, sponsored by The National Association of Professional Organizers.

Oh no, you might think, not another reminder to tackle that messy desk, those piles of paperwork on the kitchen counter, that overflowing garage. Or maybe not?

Just as there seems to be an organization for everything, there’s also a group for anti-everything. Don’t tell anyone I told you, but there’s an anti-anticlutter movement. It’s an unorganized group (as becomes them), one that’s underground, and quite possibly growing in numbers.

Irwin Kula, rabbi and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” (aff.), says that “Order can be profane and life-diminishing”.

David Freedman and Eric Abrahamson, co-authors of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder” (aff.), agree with him.

Mess has resonance, they write, which means it can vibrate beyond its own confines and connect to the larger world.

It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin, from a moldy bloom in a petri dish he had forgotten on his desk.

Mess is robust and adaptable, like Schwarzenegger’s open calendar, as opposed to brittle, like a parent’s rigid schedule that doesn’t allow for a small child’s woolgathering.

These authors also describe mess as “natural”, “complete”, “a real time-saver”, and evidence of an overflowing life.

This article by Penelope Green gave me much food for thought, and raised my blood pressure in the process. Is sloppiness alright? Is it OK to live in chaos? Should I let go of the “standards” I have set for myself and strive for every day and week? Am I missing out on something because of the time I spend cleaning (or trying to anyway)? Should I just let it all go?

After 15 minutes of thought, I came to the following conclusion:

I cannot live in total clutter. But I also cannot expect a two-year-old to keep his toys 100% in order every minute of the day. In fact, I’d be scared if one day my toddler insists on spending his energy cleaning and putting away his things, instead of making a mess of the whole house. I’d think there was something wrong with him.

I cannot advocate messiness and will always strive for some semblance of order in my house. But I also see the pitfalls of being obsessed with neatness. Mine is a 3-person job. Two little kids in the house, meals to prepare, bathrooms to clean, laundry to wash, and toys to put away every single day. At this point in my life, striving for neatness is causing me some amount of stress, and I never get there anyway. I want a clean house. I want neat closets. But, until the kids are older, I’d probably have to shelve such aspirations.

Yes, being organized saves more time than having to hunt for one’s keys for 10 minutes every single day. Surely a reasonably clean home contributes to a feeling of well-being and relaxation. Yet freaking out over every little Cheerio on the carpet is too much. Especially if, with every crumb that’s picked up, three more get added to the pile.

So my new year resolution, with the month’s theme in mind, is to be right smack in the middle of the neatness scale. I will clean. I will organize. But I will not obsess. I will let some messes lie. And most of all, I will not stress over clutter in my house.

This way, I get the benefits of organization and, at the same time, be “adaptable”, “creative”, vibrant and all those positive things that messy types are supposed to be. Now, if I can only figure out which messes to cross off my list of things to tackle …

[Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Tags: clutter, home organization, messy home, housekeeping, homemaking