My room is generally a mess — half my bed is usually covered in books, marginally clean clothes, notes and mail; my dresser is cluttered with vitamins, thumbtacks, pens (some missing lids) and hair clips; my bookshelf moonlights not only as a filing cabinet, but a scrapbook too. I have a small chest of drawers from Ikea on my dresser, which I gave up trying to assemble according to the instructions. The drawers are now, miraculously, held together solely by rubber bands. I got tired of hammering. It’s an eye sore, but it holds stuff.

At best, my room looks like a grad student has yet to finish decorating. And I’ve lived here two years. The one thing I am vigilant about cleaning is my floor, which I vacuum daily, because I shed so much hair.

For the most part, I am fine living like this. I can still find what I need. I don’t have much space to begin with. I’m not trying to impress anyone. It doesn’t bother me.

But any time I’ve got a lot of my mind, I have an irrepressible urge to clean. Like, move everything out of my room and evaluate whether my possessions are worth keeping kind of cleaning. It’s as if organizing the external things in my life subconsciously organizes the internal ones too. I don’t know how it works, but it does. Doing something as mindless as cleaning keeps me from overanalyzing, which somehow results in feeling peaceful about whatever was bothering me.

Once all the dust bunnies are gone and the random papers are trashed and my bed is cleared, I tell myself that I’ll keep it up — every day — so it won’t turn into an exhausting weekend of trash bags, Clorox wipes and Windex. But without fail, I always let things slide. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing though. I never know when I’ll get the urge to clean, but I might as well have a room in need of it .

One Response to “Cleaning out the cobwebs”

1. Alice Hill Says:
   August 17th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

   Jacky, Happy Birthday in a couple of days. May this August be a “one of a kind” never to be repeated!!!!!You are something else, kid.

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