Mess

[Luann]

What level of mess do you all put up with in your houses or workspace / bedrooms?

What do you think living space has to do with metabolism?

 

[ReSTART]

If you've got a lot of things going on, things will inevitably become unordered.

 

[lollipop]

Not much. A messy environment can literally "hurt my skin". Immediately can make my mood drop. And I have a lot of things going on.

Over the course of my life, I developed habits that allow a busy varied full life and maintaining cleanliness and order. I also discovered when I was younger that I hate cleaning and that I was lazy. I learned quickly that it requires much more energy to clean up messes than to keep a somewhat level of order.

The kink in this chain is young children - can be difficult to maintain.

 

[Mufasa]

What level of mess do you all put up with in your houses or workspace / bedrooms?

What do you think living space has to do with metabolism?

When I have an abundance of energy I have more room in my head to look around and see how messy my room is and do something about it.

 

[whodathunkit]

@Liubo, I've found that how messy our living environment is, and how much we're willing to tolerate, is a direct reflection of what's going on in our heads, and if you've got a really messy environment there's something not quite right upstairs. Sorry to be blunt but it's a truth I've lived for some years now, and I've watched others of my friends live it as well.

The shows "Hoarding" and "Hoarding: Buried Alive", while extreme examples, are also very illustrative of much less severe cases like me. Without exception, these hoarders have been emotionally or psychologically damaged in some way, and the damage shows up in disordered thinking that ultimately affects their environments. As we know, psychological damage or extreme trauma/stress alters serotonin metabolism and all other kinds of hormone and body functions. What damages the people in the hoarding shows varies...for some it's a load of stuff like a string of significant deaths and then job loss, others it's a single thing like a divorce. Sometimes childhood abuse or childhood trauma is a factor. All kinds of stuff causes pychological disorder that can manifest int he environment.

Edited to add: an inability to tolerate some level of reasonable messiness can also be a sign of something isn't quite ordered properly upstairs, but that's a whole other topic.

For myself, I was never crazy about cleaning because like @lisaferraro I am sort of lazy but always did it because the mess was intolerable. When I was younger roommates used to make fun of me because I'd get out the toothbrush to scrub tile grout in the bathrooms, stuff like that. Then I suffered a string of personal misfortunes culminating in a significant death where I inherited the home and all the possessions of the deceased. That was the beginning of my downward spiral into CFS and a couple of decades of metabolic problems, and also the beginning of my slide into a very disordered household environment. It was the start of when my brain sort of fell apart, and my formerly excellent memory began to go on the fritz. Of course lots of lifestyle mistakes were made that exacerbated things, including continuing drug and alcohol abuse, poor food choices (pure junk), other poor lifestyle choices (high fat/low carb, straight low carb, etc.). Also other factors contributed, such as under-employment due to full-time education precipitating financial problems and very heavy stress, etc.

But looking back, I realize my slide into disorder on every level (metabolic and environmental) started with that string of emotional traumas. Before that I could not tolerate a messy environment for long, but after that, over time, I just lost the energy and mental wherewithal to clean and make good choices (what to keep or what to toss) like I used to, and so learned to tolerate what I did not have the energy change.

For whatever that's worth to you. I think that metabolism has a very great deal to do with the order in our environment. Can't have a disordered brain and metabolism and then manifest order in the environment. I also believe the amount of disorder you can tolerate is proportional to the amount of energy you have to correct it. It's hard to live with acutely intrusive cognitive dissonance, so when we don't have the energy to clean properly we find ways to mentally "make peace" with the disorder around us. For the Hoarders, they shut out the fact that there is a big problem, but for people like me, I just acknowledge that I don't have the energy to do everything and I have to prioritize what means most to me. I keep the bathrooms and kitchen clean, clothes, catboxes, stuff like that, but the rest is scattershot.

And I'm constantly working on the mental disorder that got me here. It's very slow but I'm sure I will ultimately get back to normal. :)

 

[whodathunkit]

Over the course of my life, I developed habits that allow a busy varied full life and maintaining cleanliness and order.

Care to share any of these strategies? :)

 

[lollipop]

Care to share any of these strategies? :)

Sure @whodathunkit -

*when I have finished with an item - put it away instantly.
*When I cook - I cook most of my meals now - clean dishes as I cook. Then after eating I do not have a kitchen full of mess - just what I used for eating. Makes it WAY easier.
*Part of my morning wake up routine is as I get out of bed, make the bed - so not something I have to circle back around to.
*Building into activity the "clean up" process.
*When I have a trash item - I put in trash bin immediately rather then on the counter and later have to clean off the counter - also for my car, when I arrive at my destination, I take the trash with me and put in the trash bin.

These sort of habits. Now I never have to think about them and zero effort to implement; the habit is strong. Does that adequately explain my process? I can try and think of other habits.

When I used to nanny children, I taught them to put away the toy before taking out another one. Their Mom recently told me this habit has stuck and they are both good at naturally keeping their room clean
＼(^o^)／.

 

[whodathunkit]

*when I have finished with an item - put it away instantly.
*When I cook - I cook most of my meals now - clean dishes as I cook. Then after eating I do not have a kitchen full of mess - just what I used for eating. Makes it WAY easier.
*Part of my morning wake up routine is as I get out of bed, make the bed - so not something I have to circle back around to.
*Building into activity the "clean up" process.
*When I have a trash item - I put in trash bin immediately rather then on the counter and later have to clean off the counter - also for my car, when I arrive at my destination, I take the trash with me and put in the trash bin.

You just made me want to take a nap after bingewatching something on NetFlix.

Seriously, I have tried and tried all these strategies but always always always seem to lapse back. However, lately, after more than a year of mostly-cured physical energy problems, the disorder episodes are becoming less severe and the time I leave between the periods where I tried to bring order is decreasing. If that makes sense. So, progress. But it really isn't just all about the physical. We really do have to rewire the brains. Making habits does that, but for some of us it requires a little more. Keep on truckin', I guess.

 

[lollipop]

You just made me want to take a nap after bingewatching something on NetFlix.

Seriously, I have tried and tried this but always, always always seem to lapse back. However, lately, since I've about cured my physical energy problems, the disorder episodes are becoming less severe and the time I leave between the periods where I tried to bring order is decreasing. If that makes sense. So, progress. But it really isn't just all about the physical. We really do have to rewire the brains. Making habits does that, but for some of us it requires a little more. Keep on truckin', I guess.

LoLoL...you made me chuckle soooo much you are correct - habits are built SLOWLY over long periods of time. Also I want to acknowledge @whodathunkit what you wrote above about external relationship/behavior with internal experience. You are on to something. What is expressed on the outside is arising from an internal condition - sort of internal magnification for it to be expressed externally.

 

[lollipop]

LoL...just as I posted above, this hit my newsfeed. Nice opposing opinion to mine. Had to share:

The psychological benefits of giving up on cleaning and embracing the mess

 

[Luann]

Thanks guys for the answers. @whodathunkit I really agree with you but it's interesting to hear someone else say it: a really disorganized or DIRTY, not just cluttured, space is a bigger problem, beyond itself.

 

[DaveFoster]

Ordered internal environment: ordered external environment.

 

[Luann]

ability to metabolize food =
ability to throw stuff out!!

 

[Waynish]

I would be careful to reduce everything to one aspect (metabolism). There is more than one reason why people keep their places messy: this reason should be found and examined on a case-by-case.