My room is a catastrophe. It's not like I'm proud of it. I'm just stating a fact. Nobody ever really sees it coming because, in my regular daily life, I am six kinds of neurotic, well-organized, and for the most part, on top of things, so they expect to visit my place and see some reflection of my surface self instead of the post-apocalyptic war zone that is my bedroom floor. My clothes are perpetually askew, books seem to magically worm their way off my shelves, and if you're lucky, you'll find little pockets of wrapped candy I've systematically hidden from myself and gleefully re-discovered as tiny prizes on the days that I deign to actually clean.
While there is definitely room for improvement, and I've gotten a bit better about the upkeep of my space in the last few years, I've always been content with my mess. Other people...not so much. I would spend days in college cleaning before my mom came over so I could live a tidy little lie for her. She is neat as a pin and would've probably died a bit inside if she had seen the actual state of my bedroom. It's a good thing we love each other, because there has been a fundamental misunderstanding over the way we live our lives pretty much since the predictably messy day I was first born.
That said, there are some things I will simply never understand about incredibly tidy people. I'm not entirely sure it's a sane, happy way to live a healthy life, to be honest, and I know I'm not the only contentedly messy person to feel this way. If you are also a super messy person, then you, like me, have probably also had these questions about neat freaks:
Why everything needs to happen right now, this instant
I am the queen of putting off cleaning things. Half the reason I put it off for so long is that the reward is so much greater when you look at the huge dramatic difference and think to yourself, "Wow, I accomplished a thing today," before going right back to eating Nutella form the jar and stalking celebrities on Twitter. But neat freaks seem to think that the longer you leave stuff on the floor, the more likely it is to catch fire and burn down the house. It's a COAT ON THE FLOOR, not a bomb, y'all.
Why they compulsively apologize for their messiness if one thing is out of place
Dear all the friends who have ever shamefully apologized for the state of their cars:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Let's hope I never have to give you a ride. You don't know what messy is. Although, if we're being real (which messy people always are), you KNOW your car is totally perfect—you're just apologizing for its messiness so I'll correct/compliment you. You know what? I'm not playing your twisted little game. Next time you mention the regrettable condition of one of your living spaces, I'm just going to make a gross face and be like, "Ew, yeah, you need to get yourself together." It won't be true, but you'll deserve it, you shameless compliment fisher!
Why they feel the need to give us cleaning advice
I know how to keep my room tidy. That's not the problem. The problem is I don't care.
How they make so much time in their lives for the sake of cleanliness
Do neat freaks ever sleep?? By the end of the day, I'm so beat that I'm lucky if I remember to take off my bra, let alone put it neatly in a drawer with all of its other friends. I secretly suspect that neat freaks have some version of Hermione's Time Turner to get it all done. (Then again, if I had one, you know I'd be using it to fit even more Netflix into my day.)
How they aren't totally broke
Neat freaks always have the most splendiforous storage units that look so freaking classy, but you know they don't come cheap. I can't even let myself consider purchasing such items because I know I'd stop using them after the first week, and besides, I need that money to buy more clothes I can irresponsibly leave on my floor.
Why they feel the need to save us from our messiness
Confession: I eat and type. I can't remember a meal in the last few weeks I haven't shared with my laptop. Once, about a year ago, my little sister confessed to me that she'd been waiting for me to leave the house without it so she could clean the keyboard off every few weeks. And while this is adorable and goes beyond the sisterly call of duty, it is also a testament to the compulsion of the neat freak that I will never be able to comprehend.
How they seem to have so little stuff
Stuff is my favorite. I love to leave it all over the place and stare at it from my bed perch like a queen on her throne. I have old issues of Teen Vogue from 2006 floating around, and I never want to get rid of them, or maybe I will one day, eventually, when I get around to it, but who really cares? Why don't neat freaks have this issue? Where do they keep their memorabilia and all the weird crap from their childhood they're irrationally emotionally attached to? Can it be that they are so evolved that they've moved past it, or are their hearts made of stone?!
How on earth cleaning relieves them of their stress
All my neat freak friends say it calms them to clean. You know what calms me? A nice long nap in the nest of laundered clothes I was supposed to put away last week.
Why they clean when it is specifically unnecessary to clean
The few times I've gone on trips with friends, you generally have that one friend who compulsively makes all the beds even though housekeeping is going to change the sheets the second you check out. PUT DOWN THE BLANKET. We're all going to be OK.
Why they equate tidiness with a reflection of who you are
Like I said before, I consider myself one of the most vigilant and neurotic humans I know, and my room looks like a Transformer ripped through it. And some of the tidiest people I know complain about how their lives are a hot mess. I don't think the state of your room really says that much about you as a human (which is probably why I'm A-OK with it being a big ol' piggie).
Why everything has to have a place it "belongs"
Yeah, yeah, every now and then, my messiness bites me in the ass when I can't find my keys, but I feel like there are already so many unspoken rules in life—what you're supposed to say, or how to act in certain situations—that the idea of imposing more rules on myself is just a bit more than I can take.
That being said, I have to shout out to my neat freak friends in the past who have trailed behind me to remind me when I have left a purse on a barstool or a textbook in class. In order to maintain a harmonious universe there must be a neat freak for every person like me. We may not understand each other, us messy humans and those neat freaks, but at least we coexist like champions most of the time.
Images: NBC; Giphy (7)
