What Your Mess Means

They say that many of the world’s great geniuses were very messy. The desks of Albert Einstein and Mark Twain, for example, were known to be pigsties. Things were thrown everywhere, papers left in messy piles, garbage piled up…In short, a complete mess.

However, being messy doesn’t make you a genius. Just like being excessively neat also doesn’t make you a better person either.

In our current world, time is scarce. It’s no longer possible to polish the floors until they shine like a mirror, nor can we keep the very last corners of our homes immaculate. Hiring a domestic cleaning service is a luxury not many can afford and finding time to take care of a home is not an easy task nowadays.

However, this doesn’t mean that everything should be left fall into filth. You can maintain a basically organized space, without having to spend too much time on it. It’s all about organizing your time and adopting certain habits. But, why can’t some people manage this? What’s behind their compulsive disorderliness?

The meaning of mess

In general, mess in the spaces we live is a sign of mess within our inner world. Being saturated by objects means that you’re saturated by ideas and unresolved projects. Messiness sends a message of inner confusion, lack of structure and lack of definition.

But furthermore, Feng Shui studies and similar practices claim that a mess has different meanings, depending on the place where it accumulates. This is what they stated about it:

• Clutter and piled up objects in the ares near the entrance of the house means a profound fear of interacting with other people.
• Clutter or piled up objects in the kitchen or the areas where food is prepared means emotional fragility and resentment.
• Clutter and piled up objects in the closets means difficult analyzing and controlling feelings and emotions.
• Clutter and piled up objects under the furniture indicates that the person is very dependent on the opinions of other people and gives great importance to appearances.
• Clutter and piled up objects behind doors is an expression of fear of being rejected by others and a conviction of feeling watched.
• Clutter and piled up objects on the desk or the place of work means fear, frustration and need for control over situations.
• Clutter and piled up objects in the garage implies fear towards new things and lack of ability to become updated.
• Clutter or piled up objects in the hallways means fear of expressing yourself or directly saying what you want.
• Clutter or piled up objects in the living room expresses a fear of being rejected by society.
• Clutter or piled up objects in the dining room has to do with feeling controlled by the family and feeling insecure about yourself.
• Clutter and piled up objects throughout the whole house means that you have repressed anger and that you feel apathetic and disinterested towards life.

The advantages of overcoming your mess

It’s not necessary for us to keep our spaces bright and shiny. In fact, worrying too much about clutter takes away from our energy for more important things and makes us demanding and neurotic.

What is important is being able to live within spaces that we deem pleasant and easy to manage. It’s not reasonable to be looking around for things all the time, because they get lost in all of the mess. We shouldn’t get depressed simply by looking at the state of our home or place of work.

One of the first causes of a mess is that maybe you haven’t classified your things very well, and thus there are many things without a definite “home.” It’s important to analyze the types of objects you have in your house or office, create categories or groups, and determine where each group should go.

The elements on your desk should each have their place, just like your medication, papers, books, notebooks, umbrellas, etc. You might have to assign two or three places to keep the same category of objects, if you have many of one single type.

The next step is to work in your mind to prepare to make room for new things. Whether you keep objects that you no longer need, or keep things simply for the sake of keeping them, it’ll be impossible for you to move forward. You need to get rid of everything that’s not strictly necessary. Anything you haven’t used in the past year should go in the trash or storage.

Convince yourself that cleaning your space is a way of cleaning your mind, purifying your environment, and healing your life.