My Room, My Messy, My World
A cluttered room, a desk covered in books, sticky notes, old photos, dried flowers and a few cups of coffee are not synonymous with chaotic life. Sometimes a cluttered room is harmonious with the creative mind. It’s your essence, because order is in control, and an organized environment provides a certain kind of security.
This is true, but we often see disorder as inherently negative. For many people, disorder is a sign of failure, inaction, carelessness, and rejection.
Believe it or not, there is a genuine psychology behind the mess that analyzes the origins of such behavior. The University of Minnesota, for example, has summarized that a confused space supports the creativity of its residents. But there are many nuances to this that we will discuss next.
The psychology behind the confusion
We begin by explaining an interesting fact. Tracey Emin is an English artist who presented a special and influential work of art to the world in 1999. It was simply a messy bed. The bed had clothes, cigarettes, handkerchiefs, vodka bottles. The whole work, far from aesthetic or charming, was a description of personal drama. That personal phase that everyone goes through when their psychic life goes astray.
Named “My Bed”, this work was a Turner Prize finalist in 2014. It was auctioned in London for £ 2.5 million. Modern art is a challenge, but the artist later said, after the uproar caused by the auction, that he tended to work in a confusing environment, and for him confusion was the seed of creativity.
An article published in the New York Times came to the same conclusion. It demonstrates that sometimes a lightly cluttered environment frees the mind from common habits and sends it in all different directions to create new answers, new ideas. Nor can we forget that in the stages of creativity, a “storm of ideas” arrives with chaos, and decisions and innovations get the wind down.
Personal spaces and freedom of thought
A favorable, familiar, and understandable disorder does not create any problems, and it is favorable to you as long as you have a certain amount of control over it. Psychologist Kathleen Vohs specializes in tendencies about clutter and order. He explains that there should always be a sufficient amount of order and efficiency in the work environment.
However, by creating a visual area with a certain amount of chaos in the form of colors and shapes, we can create a stimulus in our brain that relaxes and sharpens its abilities. However, one thing is worth keeping in mind: not all personalities tolerate such a mess. There are a lot of individual differences, which means there are a lot of people who need a completely tidy space to be able to be productive.
Whatever your personal choice, the crux of the matter is that a messy room is not a reflection of a chaotic or irresponsible person. Just like people who care about control and order in their own personal spaces, they may not be perfectionists or suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
We all live freely in our own personal spaces, in our own ways. Every corner is a reflection of our customs and habits, and we should not get criticized or stigmatized for it. It is often said that messy people lack goals, that they have internal conflicts, and that they do not want to throw anything away because they have an unhealthy attachment to the memories of their past.
This type of “general information” is not always true. If you get up today and decide not to make your bed or clean your home, maybe it’s because you have some other priority at the moment. It doesn’t have to mean anything. A disorder that is chosen, controlled, and not overwhelming can reassure the mind that is associated with the things it owns.
