For too long, the owners of messy rooms have tried to explain away their state of clutter. “Gasp! I’ve been robbed!” you maybe exclaimed to your friend who visited from out of town. “You wouldn’t believe the cyclone that just ripped its way through here!” you said to the wide-eyed, unprepared electrician. But it’s time to change our story. It’s time to reclaim our pride. It’s time for us to stand together – or a few feet away from each other, since we still can’t quite see the floor – and declare to the world that this is who we choose to be, whether they like it or not.
And we shouldn’t be so ashamed, my friends. Last I checked, we are well within our legal rights to live in our own filth, so long as it isn’t hurting anybody. Our messy rooms are a form of self-expression, not a crime! In the words of the almighty Taylor Swift, “We made quite a mess, babe. And it’s probably better off this way.”
Turns out we are better off this way – and there is plenty of proof to back me up. Here’s why you shouldn’t go off and do something crazy like buy a cleaning product just yet:
You Never Really "Lose" Anything
Or at least you have a general idea of where things are. Which ultimately means you're a lot more self-aware by being in touch with your inner slob. "Where would a really lazy person have put my car keys?" you ask yourself, and voila, twenty seconds later, there they are jammed between the mattress and the springboard just like they sometimes usually are.
You Have Time For More Worthy Pursuits
Can you even imagine how much time people waste keeping their rooms orderly, just so they can get messed up again? This is one pitfall, friends, that we will never fall into. Now you can spend all that extra time doing something more productive, like homework or paying your bills or other common synonyms for watching Netflix.
You Know Who Really Loves You
Let me take this opportunity to shout-out to the awesome roommates who survived me in college. The people who have seen the state of your room and still stick around are your best friends; the people who have seen the state of your room and have to live with you are your soul mates. (Or your incredibly tolerant parents, who dealt with you and your disaster zone from day one.)
You Are More Creative Than Your Tidy Counterparts
Right now, all your neat freak friends are rolling their eyes, but there is legitimate science behind this. A study from the American Psychological Association indicated that while people with messy and tidy rooms were able to come up with the same number of solutions for a presented problem, the ideas of the people with messy rooms were significantly more creative.
You Can Appreciate What You Have
Mostly because it’s all laid out in front of you. Would you be able to admire all the junk that you own if you'd done the "responsible" thing and hidden them all away in drawers and closets like they were prisoners in your room?
You Make Neat Freaks Feel Better About Themselves
They'll never admit it, but somewhere deep under their initial horror at seeing the place where you sleep, they feel a relief in the very marrow of their bones that they are not you. (Pfft. They don't know what they're missing, but that's fine, let them pretend they're better off.)
You Find Like-Minded People in College
Colleges are a lot smarter about this than real-life (and by real-life, I mean ads on Craigslist, which is how I usually find roommates, god help me.) In college you take a roommate survey way before you even head to campus. Odds are, it's going to ask you if you're a messy person, and because you are both a messy person and a truth-teller, you will click "yes." And if all goes well, you will get paired with a fellow slob, and the two of you will live messily ever after.
You Are An Unmatched Expert at the Sniff Test
Think of what an excellent parent you’ll be one day when you're triaging your kids' laundry one day. You can pick up an item of clothing off the floor and know in .04 seconds whether or not it's too smelly to wear. (Whether or not you're actually going to do something about cleaning it is a different story entirely.)
You Enjoy Frequent Surprises!
WOW, there's an entire bag of Goldfish between my sheets? SCORE!*
*based on a true story
You Squeeze in Some Quality Panic Cardio
Surprise! Your parents are in town. Worse, they're in the driveway. Time to play another rousing round of the "how much stuff can I shove in the closet in the next thirty seconds" game!
Nobody Ever Asks To Borrow Your Stuff
They all know where it’s been.
Nobody Will Ever Rob You
They have no idea how to navigate the mess. That's right, your powers of grime have intimidated even the lowliest members of our society. Pat yourself on the back. And pray that the government doesn't one day use you and your room for top secret research.
You Are One With Nature
You can bet animal parents don’t ask their animal offspring to clean THEIR rooms. So really, what you're doing is perfectly natural. It should be every bit as celebrated as meditation or raw food diets. YOUR ROOM IS A TEMPLE, DAMMIT.
So stand tall and stand proud, fellow untidy humans – because I'm assuming your room is too messy for you to find somewhere to sit down, anyway.
