The Toxic Link Between My Mental Weight And My Messy Room
The Way Cleaning My Messy Also Cleaned My Mind
When Tidy Spaces Feel Impossible to Keep
I wouldn’t say my daily life is hard, but I often tend to feel like everything goes, somehow, wrong. I’m not writing this to gain compassion at all, I know I have to work with this sadness somehow, but that’s why I’m posting this blog.
One of the things I’m most bothered about is my cluttered room. I usually have these things that are mostly seen in a teenager's life: my clothes on the floor, my chair full of clothes, trash I don’t even need but I keep collecting as a treasure. It may sound sad, right? Well it is.
Once more, I’m not seeking compassion, but I have to explain this somehow. I was sad not only because of my own mindset and troubles, but for how my room looked. It was like a pack of dogs just had a fight and destroyed everything. It even looked gross, and I’m not proud of it.
But, once I started cleaning, the magic happened.
The First Thing I Picked Up
It didn't start with a grand design nor an inspired moment. It started with me staring at a sock lying on the floor. One sock. For days, I had walked beside it, feigning ignorance of it, as though pretending not to notice it could make it magically disappear. Of course, it stayed there, patiently waiting for me, becoming heavier in my mind each time someone mentioned it to me. One afternoon, I just sighed, knelt down, and picked it off the floor. That was the moment. It was not radical nor dramatic. It was me and a sock. But to me, it was a moment of rebirth.
It was a habit to step around the mess. It was a simple thing to shut my eyes, stretch out again on my bed, and convince myself that the following day I was going to deal with it. But tomorrow continued to run again. Every time that I stepped around confronting it, the mess had grown, and the weight in my chest had grown with it. It was my saying, enough. I was finished living within that habit. I wanted to attempt to make a choice of just what was going to happen when I did a thing though it was a little.
Unexpected Relief From These Little Things
When I went to get the sock, my eyes landed on another piece of attire just lying around. So I picked it up. Then I removed a shirt from my chair and folded it. It was a bit absurd at first, just going through the motions of a thing. But inch by inch, something shifted. Each of these little tasks had a tiny moment of respite. The floor was a little more tidy. The chair was a little less depressed.
I didn't do it in one huge piece. My bedroom remained a mess afterwards. But something within me began to awaken. Change is usually not a huge big wave. It will come step by step in ripples. Each piece folded, each piece of trash removed was a ripple. It was taking control back in little increments.
Relief was in unlikely ways. I was a lighter individual, like I had lost something that was weighting me down. My bedroom was still flawed, but my mind only had a slight measure of freedom to move to breathe. It was a step in the correct process that was a humble process that there was a step out to take of my own, even when there was no feeling of an exit.
Magic Beyond The First Step
The more that I went, the more that I was able to watch a miracle occur. No longer was the mess an intimidating creature. Each of these little triumphs prevented the mess from becoming something else. No longer was it cleaning the mess myself. It was relaxing myself from the mess.
The more that I cleaned, the more life was reinstated. I started humming to myself once more, something that had not occurred in weeks. Even when I discovered crumpled-up old art hidden in a notebook under my desk, I chuckled. This cleaning was a rediscovering of little bits of myself that had become detached from me. It was like my room was saying, welcome back.
The magic was neither in the spotless floor and tidy attire. It was in transforming myself through cleaning. That cleaning was neither a punishment for messiness. It was a moment to reclaim my territory and, in reclaiming it, reclaim myself.
How Cleaning Changed My Messed Up Mindset
It Gave Me Energy Again
When the mess started to clear, a burst of new energy struck me. It was like opening a window and letting in light. My body was more inclined to get moving, my mind more inclined to think. I no longer flinched when settling into my desk because it was hidden under books and wrappings. I sat there with my sketchbook flipped open, and ideas started coming more readily.
The blank space rejuvenated me. Rather than having things that I had not written, drawn, nor created around me, I had space around me to create them. That was an energy that kept me inspired to make, to write, to create. It was a process that I desired to continue.
How Organizing Little by Little Gave Me Peace
Until then, cleaning had always seemed to me to be a stressful process. It was to entail boundless hours of scrubbing and folding in my imagination. But then, a new image was posed in front of me. Working things out step by step was completely non-stressful. It was soothing. It was relaxing.
I began to fall into the pattern of it. Fold, stack, put away. Up, toss out, wipe down. Each step was a breath, a conscious and natural one. I was not hurrying. I was not doing everything at once because I had to. I was working at my own tempo, and that seemed right.
The silence was so remarkable because I had never imagined cleaning to be a form of relaxation. But that's precisely what it became for me. To walk slowly, to pay attention to mundane movements, and to observe little things occur just right in front of me.
What My Mess Thought Me.
My Relation With My Environment Was Toxic
I once thought of self-care to be exercise, journaling, meditation, and so on. Now I get that taking care of myself means taking care of my space too. It's taking care of myself to ensure that my room is neat. When waking up to a neat space, I face the day less stressed. When going to bed to a neat room, I do so more calmly.
How I Healed While Cleaning.
Cleaning out my bedroom was more than cleaning. It was a process of recovery. Picking each item of clutter out was like rescuing a piece of myself lost. Each nook and cranny cleared was like making space for hope. Cleaning was me telling myself you deserve better than this. And that was a message of recovery.
The Way It Helps Me To Find Inner Order
The most valuable lesson that I've taken from this is that outside order creates inner order. When my bedroom is a mess, my mind is a mess. When my bedroom is serene, my mind is serene. It's not an absolute rule, but it's an enormous help. My bedroom is not going to stay perfect forever. Life happens, clutter is back. But having cleaning as a resource that's mine to turn to whenever the weight is building again is invaluable because it reminds me that I'm responsible for making little changes that make enormous changes to my emotional life.
Caring Both My Mind and Environment.
What began with taking a sock was something bigger. It was a lesson that the little things truly do make a big impact. Cleaning out my bedroom was more than creating space. It was a process of letting myself feel lighter, more tranquil, and more alive.
I still have bad days and still fall into grossly bad habits from time to time. But I no longer allow the mess to dictate who I am. I get that I can do things with it little by little and find magic along the way. My bedroom taught me that healing isn't necessarily bombastic and huge. Sometimes it is just another quiet and unassuming thing like waking up and cleaning first thing.