Messies and Cleanies.

One of the books in my parents bookshelf is The Messies Manual. It says that people naturally fall on a spectrum, 0 being a total chaotic Messy and 10 being an insufferable Cleanie. Messies and Cleanies. My mum admits to being a Messy. I'm a moderate Cleanie. If you're anywhere in the middle, it doesn't matter whether you're an M or a C, it's a basically a liveable land. If you are a 10C, you won't let people in your house because they'll mess it up. If you're a 0M, people can't get into your house because the mess covers all surfaces and probably blocks the front door. The 0M people get TV shows made about them. There aren't any TV shows for the 10C people, cos they are probably beyond help. But there are plenty of helpful books for the low M people or middle people who want to improve organisationally. Mum found the Messies Manual quite a relief actually, cos being born a Messie doesn't make you a failure, it's just the outworking of your personality*, and she's moved up a couple of notches on the scale over the years.

I've been slowly listening my way through another book, Unstuff Your Life, I got it on special from Audible. I don't really need the room-by-room decluttering guide but I've found the simple rules helpful, like A Place For Everything, or noticing the feeling of guilt and failure when you throw something useless away and remembering it when you are tempted to buy something useless.

Organisation is it's own reward. I'm really proud of that saying! I made it up. It motivates me to see organisation as a self-care thing, rather than a boring thing. I have gradually got more organised. It's taken years since I moved out of home to work out how much to own, and how to store it. I have regular declutter binges and improve a bit each time. I still have messy areas, the kitchen table and dresser are dumping grounds, and the bathroom is only ever passable, but I can sit on chairs, access books, cook conveniently, store all my clothes, find sewing stuff when I need it. It's like "this is the messy stationery drawer" (applied A Place For Everything), rather than "I'll put these sticky tapes in this handy drawer with some bank paperwork from last year and some iTunes cards and a gift bag I can reuse and my passport." All just things floating around randomly. Entropy is not a good system. (I made that up too!)

* I'm looking up different Myers Briggs types and how they relate to messiness. It might be to do with P/J. Ps would be more likely Messies and Js would be more likely Cleanies.