Clean Your Room

I hate mess.

With three grandchildren under the age of six, that poses a fairly significant challenge.  

Their room resembles the microcosmic aftermath of a tornado touching down.  

An hour of cleaning and tidying vanishes within moments of their return.  

Simple processes like getting ready for bed leave a trail of clothing from the kitchen, down the hallway to their chest of drawers, where pyjamas stack up like sand dunes—dinosaurs and super-heroes, pink hearts and little bunnies.  

Our couch spawns an endless supply of crayon tips, stray cheerios and plastic army men.

I suffer a love-hate relationship with stuffed animals—the love part extending only for brief periods during which a Beanie-Baby comforts our challenged two-year old. 

After that, if I had the authority (which I don’t), I would opt for the mass cremation and subsequent burial of all things fuzzy, especially those that make obnoxious sounds when squeezed.

Recently I began to question this neurosis.  Could something deeper hide beneath this obsession for order or do I simply need to resign as an overzealous member of the aesthetic police?

Let’s accept my paranoia as a given. 

What else?

What if we consider the robber aspect of clutter?

How much does it steal from us?

Do the math.

12 seconds per day to hang up a coat and throw dirty clothes into a hamper instead of across a chair or on the floor versus how many minutes to find that matching top or favorite socks—you know the ones, those that “must be around here somewhere.”

Five minutes to dig up a hammer and bang a nail into the wall near the front door versus countless aggravating hours of “searching for those dang keys.”

I don’t know about you.  Personally, I find enough ways to create stress in my life without adding unnecessary and avoidable frustration.  

I don’t want to agonize over the temporary loss of my tablet or the misplacement of a critical phone number.

Too much surplus pain.

I could probably even launch a diatribe about mess as the consummate dream-stealer—an insidious parasite that robs us of the precious extra time we need to go after big goals, make miracles happen.

I won’t go there—though it might merit a thought.

Let’s not romanticize, overcomplicate or exaggerate this issue.  

No matter how we look at it, unwanted piles of papers, stacks of catalogs or magazines, jumbled mounds of clothing, hoards of forgotten canned goods, boxes full of pictures, the “miscellaneous” drawer—all of these prevent us from doing what we truly want to do, replace quality possible experiences with wasted, whirling pressure that we could all do without.

Bag it.

It may take me a while to convince our little ones that toys feel happier when they sleep on the shelf or that lions and tigers prefer to snuggle in their own big basket.  

I’ll keep working on it.

Meanwhile, I’ll hide my tools in the toolbox. 

I know they rest most comfortably there.