Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
is your mess living or stagnant?
I see all types of messes: big, small, deep, superficial, old and new. I can handle any kind, but the main question I ask is: Is this mess stagnant or living?
Stagnant messes are the piles that never move. They increase as new layers form on top of them, and when we tackle them it’s an archeological project: “Oh, that’s from that conference last year” or “I brought that stuff back from my trip to Laos, and I just never dealt with it.” Stagnant messes are like stalagmites, growing slowly, but not moving.
A living mess is something else. My daughter is a living mess. No matter how often or how well we (or, lets be honest, I) clean her room, it looks like a hurricane hit it. But when I surrender and clean it up… I am amazed and secretly pleased by her mess. I hear a lot of people say, “Oh my kid only plays with three things.” I wish. What is awesome about my daughter’s mess is that she plays with everything. There is evidence in her mess that she is going up on ladders and getting books down from high shelves; she is raiding my kitchen and my small jars are reappearing as canisters for her American Girl dolls. She’s crafting from books she borrowed from the library and she is starting secret clubs at school. The child is busy.
Living messes are recurring-a side effect of the abundant, busy way that many of us live now. Stagnant messes, on the other hand, are usually the result of a sort of abdication: things brought in and never given a home, projects never completed, mail never opened.
So which kind of mess is worse? In my experience, the same home can have both living and stagnant messes, and living messes, unchecked and allowed to build up, can become stagnant (think of Miss Havisham). I suggest that you first commit to uprooting the stagnant messes: Don’t let that pile of annual reports from 2013 linger and take up your counter space! If you can’t remember what is in that pile of bags in the corner, get rid of them. Evict, eradicate, put away, shred. Then you can turn your attention to the living messes: yesterday’s New York Times, the party supplies that haven’t made it back into the cupboard from last weekend’s party, the pile of clothes that need to go to the dry-cleaner and of course your wonderful, creative child’s room.