A Defence of Mess
I’ve been messy my whole life. To my mother’s (and Dan’s) chagrin, I’ve always been happy to step over a pile of washing or work around an obstacle course of bits and pieces I haven’t put away. This extends into the way I work – despite choosing a small desk precisely because of my messiness, my elbows are currently resting at different heights on various piles of notebooks, to do lists and stationery.And for most of my life, I’ve felt this was one of my greatest flaws. When I cast my mind back to childhood, the clashes between myself and my mum were always to do with tidiness. In my last job my messy desk got sideways glances and passive aggressive post-its, and even now Dan rolls his eyes at the pile of washing up done, but not put away. It’s not just physical messiness either. My computer has one folder, ‘Documents’, and that’s where everything is. I just click Save and I’m on to the next thing. No email account I’ve ever had has had folders.
And this is weird because although my room was always messy, at school I was a neat freak when it came to my work. An accidental slip of the pen would be cause to gently and neatly rip out the whole page and start again. I’d go through ink erasers like a problem gambler goes through betting slips and would guard my belongings from the doodles and vandalism that are par for the course at a large comprehensive.At university all my notes were long swathes of cursive which I all too often would approach trepidatiously with a highlighter, only to chicken out of marking the page. How I admired my creative friends with their pages of scribbles and flow charts, how I wondered at the way they colour coded with reckless abandon. My long-winded bullet points and tiny, tentative return arrows always seemed so square and uptight.I have slowly moved away from this neatness necessity. Moving into the workplace meant that a pen and paper were no longer needed, and it’s easy to delete and remove on a computer. But as I flick through the jotter pad from my old job, it is tea stained and the handwriting is scrappy and barely discernible. Thirteen year old me would have baulked.
And I think the change has been to do with time. As you get older you can see it slipping through your fingers. Sitting at your desk your eyes flick to the laptop clock and an hour passes by in the space of minutes. When you’re young you will with every fibre of your being for time to move faster; now we will for it to stop for just an hour to get some of this damn work done.In the end, I think, the weight of time changed me. It stopped being infinite and began making me choose: “you can do this or you can do that, bur you can’t do both today”, it would say. So I had to choose what was important. It’s more important to me to write an article or reply to comments than it is to sort out the files in my ‘Documents’ folder. I’d rather take the dog for an extra long walk than do the ironing. I’d rather sit and enjoy my lunch than put that magazine back on the shelf. Going back to last week’s Rethinking Slow Living post – tidiness has never been a priority.And actually, I think my messiness is key to my productivity and organisation. As much as tidy people refuse to believe it, I do know where everything is! I remember what I wrote in each notebook, I remember the file name I’m searching for, I know what’s in each pile. And rather than hoard things away in boxes of folders, I regularly go through the papers and piles on my desk (and floor...) and get rid of the outdated or no longer useful things, keeping what I need around me.
Einstein said, “if a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk the sign?” and if I’m going to side with anyone it’s Einstein. For me, my messiness is crucial to my creativity (and this doesn’t just go for my style of flat lays). I've realised that my earlier perfectionism was a total creativity and productivity stifler.I always liked the idea of colour coordinating things, but I would spend longer trying to work out a meaningful system than actually organising anything. Since starting Simple & Season I have had untold numbers of editorial calendars, planners, diaries – both digital and paper. And the trouble is, if I try do things tidily, properly, neatly, then I feel like I can’t change it, like if I go against the plan I go against a world order. The walls come down, the gates clang shut and I’m stuck within a prison of perfection.So messiness is crucial to my creative flexibility, as well as being the antidote to my latent perfectionism. My editorial plan is now a basic, un-colour coded grid that I can copy and paste around til my heart’s content. It also has a long and messy list of ideas for me to dip in and out of and change how I like. Having things open and messy, rather than neat and proper, works for me, and I hope works for you as my reader too. Some people need boundaries to be creative; it turns out I really do not.
For so long I felt my propensity for mess was a flaw I had to overcome. Whether via Googled editorial calendar templates or frenzied storage-buying, I tried to fit into the idea of tidiness, into how others thought I should live. When actually, I’m more at home in a blanket nest than a perfect sofa; and I work better with freedom rather than spreadsheets.After 26 years I’m embracing the mess. I’m accepting it’s who I am. I wonder if it’s something you’re born with, a line of code in your DNA that programs ‘messy’ and ‘tidy’? I'm beginning to think so. After years of hating myself for it, I’m leaning into the mess and using it to thrive. I may not be able to Instagram a perfect shelfie from my little office, but I can have some kickass ideas and make amazing things. I know which I’d rather, don’t you?
Are you messy or minimal?
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