The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place

by Jennifer McCartney

  author's note

  This is not a book about tidying. It’s not about how to organize your life. Or about how to become joyful. It’s not a self-help book, either. It can’t help you determine the color of your parachute or find the power of now. It’s a parody. That’s why you found it in the humor section. Or the humour section, if you’re in Canada.

  contents

  INTRODUCTION

  I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL

  1.

  Reset your life by vowing never to tidy

  The more you buy, the messier you can be

  Quiz: are you too neat?

  Never discard anything

  2.

  The clutter blame game

  The storage system conspiracy

  Quiz: let's use logic to determine whether you need a storage system

  CLUTTER REALITY CHECK: If you’re not having sex, it’s not because you’re messy

  3.

  Leave your sh*t all over the house

  HOME OFFICE: The messier the desk, the more creative the mind

  BATHROOM: Indoor plumbing is a privilege. Don’t fu*k with it

  KITCHEN: You have to eat to live, and that’s going to make a mess

  PANTRY: Buy now, eat later

  BEDROOM: A fu*king glorious mess

  CLOSET: Does it have a door? Shut it

  4.

  Dealing with the actual sh*t in your house

  CLOTHES: Don’t fold them or they’ll wrinkle

  LOUNGEWEAR: It’s all you should wear

  PURSE: 90 items or fewer

  SHOES: Keep them

  Quiz: what's your clutter tolerance level?

  KIDS: The very definition of messy

  CATS: Buy more cats

  DOGS: Ditto

  BOOKS: Buy them, pile them

  5.

  Leave some sh*t outside and in cyberspace

  YARD: Keep plastic and broken stuff hidden behind the house. If there’s room

  HOLIDAY DECORATIONS: Yes

  Quiz: find your holiday clutter style here

  CARS: Out the window or into the backseat

  DIGITAL: Leave a big digital footprint

  Quiz: find your email clutter style

  6.

  Cherish your stuff but do not hoard

  Quiz: how to tell if you're messy or a hoarder

  Shopping is fun

  IN CONCLUSION

  RESOURCES

  CLUTTER CHECKLIST

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Introduction

  “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

  —MARK TWAIN

  Tidy is in. Messy is out. Thanks, minimalism. Thanks, unprecedented household debt. Thanks, KonMari Method.1

  My friends and family fell enthusiastically under the influence of the twelve billion-copy bestseller, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and they all failed, time and again. It’s an ugly thing to witness. Oh, you wish you hadn’t thrown out your grandmother’s crocheted bikini or your son’s ashtray he made in the shape of a leg of lamb? Too fucking bad. They’re gone, thanks to your weird ideas about tidying.

  Break free from the bonds of tidiness and triumph over the boring forces of uniformity and predictability. Every tidy home looks the same—particularly when there’s nothing left in it—but a messy home, now that’s a better way to live. Better, more honorable, and truer to the American Dream in so many ways.

  America is the land of opportunity, and the land of acquisition. Canada even more so because of all the snow-related accessories. “Get rid of your stuff” is a ridiculous suggestion. It’s cowardly, too. Sure, it’s easier to go through your drawers and randomly throw away all your shit—sorry, selectively keep the shit you feel joyful about—than it is to deal with whatever bullshit week you’re having. But isn’t it better to deal with your problems and not blame shit, as if the reason you’re not getting more oral sex has to do with your husband’s massive tie collection? Cleaning is the easy way out. Do not be seduced by that. (But before you deal with your problems, let’s try solving them quickly by firing up your laptop and buying three or more things to make yourself feel better.)

  Everyone likes to buy things and inherit things and collect things, and have said things around. Science has even proven that having a lot of stuff makes you more open to new ideas, more creative, and (obviously) smarter. A study published in Psychological Science “discovered” that “disorderly environments encourage breaking with tradition and convention”—the people in the messy rooms came up with almost five times the number of highly creative responses as did their tidy-room counterparts and were also more likely to choose smoothie flavors that were labeled as “new” as opposed to “classic.”2 This is true. Do not be hung up on being tidy. Think about all the fruits you could be tasting if you were just a little bit messier. Or think about the limited time you have on this planet before you die of Zika virus or from unwashed spinach or, let’s face it, probably heart disease.

  Just how fucking dedicated must you be to a tidy abode? Have you been brainwashed into believing that wanting to have shit, and not worrying where it goes, means there’s something wrong with you? That you ought to be devastated if you and your place will never be featured on Goop or Martha Stewart Living or Apartment Therapy? Reject the KonMari mindset; it will only bring shame and guilt upon your household when you ultimately fail.

  And here’s the biggest load of crap: that being tidy will actually improve your emotional life. Anger issues? Too much stuff. Unhappy marriage? Too much stuff. Can’t sleep? Stuff! Problems with your digestion? It’s not gluten—it’s all your fucking stuff. Look, you know who was very tidy? Patrick Bateman, the serial murderer, from American Psycho. Also, Mussolini was a very tidy man. He loved filing papers. Ted Bundy? Neat as fuck. Now ask yourself, what kind of company do you want to keep?

  In this book, I’m going to provide you with my own system for living a full life, called the FREE Method. It stands for nothing. Frozen Rogaine Eggs Eggs? Fancy Riding Eve Ensler? Sure. But freedom is amazing and we should all strive for it; otherwise we’ll end up fapping our lives away like the FAPpers (Fatally Addicted to Purging [your belongings, not your lunch]). In this book, I will help you transform your life so that you’ll never struggle with cleanliness again. I will break you of the urge to tidy as hard as Tonya Harding’s goons whacked Nancy Kerrigan’s kneecap. Throwback reference.

  It’s time for FAP deprogramming. Some of the KonMari guidelines should make you shudder (if you’re a person who is alive and not susceptible to cults, anyway). With this handy chart, I’ll compare and contrast the beliefs of the FAPs and the FREE.

  Books that you love to read

  FAP Books are clutter. Tear out only the pages you like and keep them in a file. Recycle the rest.

  FREE Don’t be a fucking idiot.

  Old baking dish that reminds you of your mother and childhood tuna casseroles

  FAP Ditch it. Who needs Mom? Your mother isn’t actually a casserole dish. Get it?

  FREE Are you still making tuna casseroles? You’ll need a dish for that, lovely Midwestern housewife from 1970.

  All of your socks

  FAP You only need a few pairs of socks, and you should roll them carefully into little swirls. If you fold them any other way you’re kind of an idiot and your socks will be sad.

  FREE Socks don’t have feelings.

  Not only do FAPpers require their followers to toss out most of their worldly possessions, keeping only possessions that arouse them—I mean, spark pleasure—followers are also encouraged to talk to those items.
Do you have time to empty your purse every day, fold it, place it on a shelf, and thank it for its service?

  Let’s all chill the fuck out.

  DISCLAIMER: SELF-HELP BOOKS ARE BULLSHIT.

  Books don’t solve problems. Alcohol can help and drugs are certainly a good solution, but what color is your parachute? Really? Can you learn to think like a man? Win friends and influence people? Harness the power of now? Fuck off. Even established self-help books like the Bible, the Quran, and the Book of Mormon (based on the popular Broadway play) are still limited in their ability to solve all your problems because they are fucking books. Books don’t fix you. I am not promising to fix you. Indeed, my goal is to destroy any desire you have to help yourself or anyone you know, especially when that desire comes in the form of being neat and tidy, which, let’s face it, is a passing desire most of the time anyway.

  I know you’re always looking for the easy fix, the magic bullet. So am I. But I know from experience that cults are not the answer. Sex parties are not the answer. Nor are any of the pre-organized-religion-yet-still-kind-of-religious concepts that are making a comeback. Astrology. Crystals. Tarot Cards. Wicca. Magic 8-Balls. Yoga. The Container Store. It’s okay to want someone else to steer the ship a bit. It’s normal to want answers to shit like, “Why does his dick look weird—is it an STD?” or “How many personal essays about my bulimia do I have to publish on Huffington Post before I get a book deal?” or “Why did I get married?”3 I get why self-help books are popular and why you pray to L. Ron Hubbard and why cooking contests and real estate shows are broadcast 36 times a day. It’s weirdly satisfying to see people on television fuck up but then also get all their shit together. Same thing with seeing someone make an amazing rose petal cake out of meringue and baby panda’s breath. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your station in life or making changes to things you’re unhappy with, I guess. But be wary of neat slogans and books that promise life-changing magic. The only real magic in the world is from unicorns and the high you get from poppers.

  * * *

  1. It’s okay I guess if you don’t know about this (of course it’s sort of weird if you don’t), but in short, it’s about talking to your socks.

  2. Vohs, Kathleen D., Joseph P. Redden, and Ryan Rahinel. “Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity,” Psychological Science 24, no. 9 (2013).

  3. This was legitimately the fifth Google Autocomplete result when I typed “why,” which is super depressing.

  I’m kind of a big deal

  Messiness is easy. It comes naturally to everyone. You’re born fucking messy and you die messy but someplace in between you get brainwashed into thinking that you should be tidy. No one likes tidy people. They are boring. Basically even writing a book about being messy is pointless because it’s so fucking easy. But here we are.

  I will show you how to renounce the cult-like devotion to tidiness and I will change your life. When you are messy, everything else in your life will fall into place. Your study will be accepted into Scientific American. Your plants will stop dying. Your whisky bottle will never run dry. Your Duane Reade and Shoppers Drug Mart points will finally add up to a free jar of salsa and some nice shampoo. Your Facebook post about motherhood will go viral.

  How can I promise you this? I’ve spent the last [redacted] years of my life being messy. Ask my mother. Or my university housemates that kept passive-aggressively highlighting my name on the chores sheet and leaving me notes under my door like DISHES! and then doing my dishes anyway 40 seconds later because they were pretty uptight. I spend a lot of time traveling to my friends’ houses and leaving my sweaty Coronas on their wooden coffee tables. I’ve spilled nail polish upon multiple surfaces across many states. I display collections of beach rocks and piggy banks and political bobbleheads and men in an apartment that doesn’t even fit a full-size fridge. I have Archie Comics and My Little Ponies in a box under the bed. Two hundred and fifty My Little Ponies.4 Despite society’s best efforts to make me feel guilty about all of this, I don’t. I am a messy person. I’m very good at it. And so are you—but you already know this. In this book, I will liberate you from the daily bullshit of FAPing so that you, too, can live a life of mess and glamour.

  But don’t just listen to me.

  Here are some testimonials from happy clients who email me constantly to say things like:

  • I finally succeeded in finishing Infinite Jest.

  • Kale tastes less bitter now that I’ve read your book.

  • Thanks so much for teaching me how to not give a shit.

  • Just spent 200 dollars at Sephora.

  • My video installation won the Turner Prize.

  • I can’t find my shoes.

  • My teeth are much whiter since I started your program.

  • My husband is sleeping with the nanny.

  And the list goes on.

  My clients are so happy! Now it’s time for the first step on the road to clutter. Promise yourself to fucking cool it with the tidying. Without this step, you cannot go any further. Probably. It’s not an exact science.

  * * *

  4. I was an only child so I was spoiled but also so lonely I played with plastic horses.

  1.

  Reset your life by vowing never to tidy

  “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  Being tidy is a tedious way to live, and no one wants to do it. That’s why there are a hundred books about how to do it properly. You buy those books to feel good, but then you don’t feel anything. There are no books about how to be messy because, guess what? It takes literally no effort and we’re all really fucking good at it. I say, stick with what you’re good at. But it’s hard, in this culture of neatness and minimalism and tidiness. Instead of living your life, you’re stressing about keeping your shit together.

  You’re not able to bake a decent-looking apple pie without Photoshopping it before posting on social media. Your manicure is chipped. You’re just kind of generally muddling through. In order to get the kids to school on time, you skip blow-drying your hair. In order to pick up the dry cleaning, you skip your coffee before heading to your doctor’s appointment. At your doctor’s appointment you re-up your prescription for a bunch of anti-anxiety meds to help keep your anxiety in check. And the cycle continues.

  This isn’t about diagnosing or treating actual medical problems, obviously. This is a book, not WebMD. If you need meds, take them, obviously. Or take wine. But the point is that this low-level anxiety and guilt is a really boring way to expend your mental energy. You can get rid of it. And I can show you how.

  All you need is a bottle of booze. Open, pour, drink. And do the following exercise:

  Take a good look at your living room. Run through the mental checklist you’ve built up over the years relating to that space. Think about all the shit you’ve been meaning to do in this room. Does it need painting? Does it have enough midcentury furniture? Did your kid do a poo in the corner? Is there a canvas with a motivational saying that you’ve been meaning to hang up leaning against the wall, but you can’t find a hammer, or the soles of your shoes aren’t hard enough to serve as a hammer? Are there a bunch of terrible polemics your adjunct professor friends wrote on the coffee table that you’ve been meaning to read so you can face them at their next dinner party and be like, “What a meaningful exploration of femininity as it relates to the Samoan woodlouse”? Is the lamp shade dusty?

  Now imagine not giving a fuck about any of it. I mean, do you actually give a fuck? If you were hooked up to a polygraph machine or super high, and someone asked you if you cared, what would you say? I’m guessing you don’t actually care but you think you should care. Or you care what someone else would think if they saw the mess. If you want to do this new-age style, pretend this is some kind of mystic journey, courtesy of some ayahuasca an
d weed. Ready?

  BE FREE

  Imagine this room as a beautiful landscape. See the pile of unread magazines as a hill, see the boots you keep meaning to sell on eBay but can’t seem to photograph without weird spots showing up that aren’t actually there as maybe a couple of trees, see the couch with its blanket and throw pillows and half-eaten bag of chips as the sand and towels on a beach. Let go of caring, let go of guilt and feelings of failure. Breathe in good messy, breathe out boring tidy. Let it slowly flow out of your body in one continuous breath, or probably a few breaths, until you no longer give any fucks. Imagine accepting this room as it is. Imagine relinquishing your responsibility for this.

  Maybe four months ago you sorted this entire room and were certain that every single item left in it brought you joy. Maybe four months ago you felt like life had changed for the better because you took a few bags of stuff to the charity shop. Perhaps you felt like you were turning over a new leaf. Guess what. Your living room probably looks exactly the fucking same as it did before that deep clean, am I right? So fucking embrace it. This is your natural state, sweetheart. You were born messy.

  The more you buy, the messier you can be

  This may seem counterintuitive. Oh, I bought another cat so I should make more of an effort to be tidy with the ones I already have. Nope. The more stuff you have, the more you’ve been liberated from any obligations to society (see the chapter on hoarding for proof of this). The more you’ve won the race to consume as much and as many resources as possible. The planet thanks you.

  Quiz

  are you too neat?

  1. When you get home after a long trip the first thing you do is:

  A. unpack, transferring your neatly rolled clothing tubes from your suitcase into your closet, wash your hands eleven times, and put on some soothing jazz music while preparing yourself some fragrant green tea.