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

by Jennifer McCartney

  B. put on your jogging pants and order pizza and watch 40 hours of Netflix until 6 a.m. Eat the pizza on paper plates. Being an adult is amazing.

  C. feed your cat.

  2. In the bathroom, your soap and shampoo:

  A. are wiped dry after every use, and placed out of sight in the cupboard.

  B. sit on the side of the tub, open, mildewed, and ready for action.

  C. don’t exist. You don’t use soap and shampoo because you’re really into the no-poo method where everything is natural and chemical-free and can't harm your cats.

  3. When you open your closet, you see:

  A. your clothes, blessed with holy water and organized by category, with darker, cool-weather clothes on the left and light, warm-weather clothes on the right. God, what great friends you have in your clothes!

  B. clean clothes hung on hangers, and dirty clothes on the ground. Shoes are usually under the dirty clothes.

  C. your cats.

  Answer Key:

  Mostly As: You have some issues. Read more of this book to learn how to chill out.

  Mostly Bs: Congrats on being cool. On your death bed you’ll be like, “It was worth it.”

  Mostly Cs: You probably like animals. Specifically, cats.

  Here are the last five things I bought:

  1. Jane Kramer’s Lone Patriot, a book about some militiamen who thought the New World Order was threatening their way of life and who decided to overthrow the US government. Spoiler: They were not successful.

  2. A reading light, because my husband won’t let me have the overhead light on until 4 a.m. while I finish my book about militiamen.

  3. An air purifier, because New York is generally full of urine molecules and hipster effluent that must be filtered.

  4. A new laptop case. It’s gray and orange!

  5. A fucking diptyque candle. I’m a grown-up and if I want a 60 dollar candle from France, what’s it to you? They smell good and look pretty. Not that I can ever burn it. That’ll cost me 10 bucks an hour and then what am I left with? A headache from some overly perfumed wax and an empty glass jar to put makeup brushes or wooden matchsticks in.

  And the best part is, I have no proper place to put any of it! Inspired? I thought so. Now it’s your turn. Check out the resources section of this book, where I list a few excellent places to begin acquiring more things you don’t have room for that will help you make a better mess.

  Never discard anything

  Here’s a detailed breakdown of clutter strategies to employ. When I do content marketing or white papers for PR firms, I’ll write stuff like, “By leveraging these strategies across all channels, the opportunity for growth is exponential.” Here, I’ll just say strategies like “always have booze in the house” and “don’t talk to your clothing” will be helpful to learn if you want to be a normal person. The key is keeping everything in order to ward off regret later. My friend donated a bunch of her mom’s clothing after she died, and 20 years later is kicking herself. Who wouldn’t love a green pantsuit right now? And that’s all stuff you can pass down to your own kids so they can wear it for Halloween and make fun of how fashion sucked back then and kind of shit all over your cherished memories of your mother because kids are assholes.

  In doubt? Keep it. It doesn’t bring you joy? Too bad. Probably because it’s a fucking sweater and not a winning Powerball ticket. Make sense? Read on.

  Save all booze. It never goes bad.

  Having a well-stocked booze cabinet is handy for a number of reasons:

  1. If you ever get the urge to tidy you can do a shot of vodka or drink a bottle of Tempranillo and remember/forget your priorities.

  2. When your friend’s pretentious boyfriend who got a book about whiskey for Christmas asks if you have any Japanese whisky, you can ask from which prefecture he’d prefer.

  3. It’s expected of normal adults.

  Unless you’re a recovering alcoholic or Mormon or have liver problems, you should always have booze in the house. We were once invited to an acquaintance’s place for brunch and they offered us green tea and salad and it was a fucking nightmare. Obviously salad isn’t a brunch food but whatever. Not having coffee is a pretty dick move—strike two. But, if you invite someone over, you better at least have a bottle of vodka in the freezer or some weird dark ale leftover from your last dinner party to offer your guests, or they will hate you. If you’re still in college or whatever, just having a massive case of beer handy is acceptable. Preferably somewhere people will trip over it.

  Keep lots of empty bags in your house

  Plastic bags are great for storing stuff, so you should always have a lot of those on hand—empty or otherwise. Tote bags are also great. You can literally own 40 tote bags and it’s never enough. I have tote bags from the Hoover Dam, a Turkish literary agency, and Niagara Falls. I also have totes with things like watermelons and geese on them. If you ever go to any event ever, for any reason, they will give you a tote bag. Medical conference? Tote bag. Wedding? Tote bag. Syrian refugee arriving in Canada? Maple leaf tote bag. My orthodontist gave me a tote bag. And a t-shirt. Which I put in the tote bag. And laundry bags and baskets should obviously always be full.

  Keep paper relics for all time

  I had a boss once who would open her mail and then rip it all into tiny pieces and recycle it like a maniac. It didn’t matter what it was. Bills. Sentimental letters. Jury summons. She figured if it was really important the sender would call or email or send another letter. This strategy makes sense on the one hand, but on the other, this is a fucking terrifying way to live. Paper is meant to be collected and kept for all time. This is why I still have all the dragons my high school boyfriend drew me. And the mini golf score sheet from St. Ignace where I went with my Michigan boyfriend on our day off from work. More broadly, this includes old photographs, like the photobooth strips from your trips to the mall; every business card handed to you at awkward networking luncheons; your energy bills going back 10 years; engagement cards; sympathy cards; emails you printed back when you weren’t sure how long the Internet was going to last; etc. When my parents moved from a house to a condo in 2012, we discovered every phone book going back to 1995 in my dad’s office. This is how you do it. Keep it all and let your kids deal with it when you go. Hopefully not in a fiery inferno fueled by all your paper relics.

  PILE THINGS TO MAKE MORE ROOM FOR MORE STUFF

  In their book, A Perfect Mess, Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman explain that “piles have a chronological meaning to them . . . people know how many inches they have to go down on a pile to get so many weeks or months back in time, and that makes it very easy to find things.”

  I don’t need a book to tell me that. Mess piles are just good science. Every time you want to wear your favorite sweater, it’s like going on an archeological dig. Remember when you wanted to be an archeologist? We all did. Because of dinosaurs. So, basically, by piling stuff in heaps, we’re fulfilling a childhood dream.

  Don’t overthink it. Your stuff doesn’t have feelings.

  Your socks are not sad that they are balled up in your drawer. Your sweater is not sad that it’s on the floor. Your bag is not sad that you didn’t thank it for its service today. If these things were true, your shoes would be sad that you’re walking on them all the time and your jeans would be like, please don’t keep sitting on me or at least wash me once in a while, for fuck’s sake. Normal people have enough to feel guilty about over the course of a day (climate change, not caring about climate change, leaving our cats behind while we’re at work), so ditch that clothes-have-feelings nonsense. It’s completely weird and we all know this. That is the end of that.

  Make sure you inherit everything

  You can only acquire so much stuff of your own volition. That’s why inheriting stuff is so important. It’s basically like winning the stuff lottery and is never stressful or overwhelming at all. But you’ve got to plan ahead. My friend used to work at a company that handled a lot of
estate planning. When a client died, he’d suddenly be fielding a bunch of calls from shady family members wanting to know how much they’d inherited and whether their sister did indeed get the ski chalet in Tahoe. The point is, these greedy fuckers were off their game. If you want to inherit shit, you’ve got to earn it, and you’ve got to lay the groundwork years in advance. Be the best daughter or son or sibling the world has ever seen. Don’t like helping change your dad’s poopy diapers or driving your aunt to her hospital appointments? Don’t love reading Nicholas Sparks’ latest novel aloud to your grandmother with failing eyesight? Kiss your inheritance goodbye. And enjoy looking at your grandmother’s brass candlesticks you specifically told grandma you wanted sitting on your sister’s mantel every time you go over to her house.

  2.

  The clutter blame game

  “Some people look at a shelf stacked with coffee mugs and see only mugs. But people with serious disorganization problems might see each one as a unique item—a souvenir from Yellowstone or a treasured gift from Grandma.”

  —CERTIFIED ORGANIZER COACH® 5

  Oh fuck! Some of you (who have a serious disorganization problem) actually see items you own as having some kind of sentimental value. I’d like to meet all these well-adjusted sociopaths who don’t give a shit about a treasured gift from their grandmother.

  Let’s be real: There’s a lot of scaremongering about clutter’s negative effect on our lives. We’re all hyper-consumers and we’re out of control and it’s making us fat and miserable. This is what we’re being told. Researchers at UCLA published a study called “Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century” that observed 32 families in Los Angeles and how they interacted with their material surroundings. Turns out, every time the women had to deal with their belongings, their stress level rose. Think about it. Just touching shit you own makes you stressed. The study is saying that unless you’re planning to pull a Chris McCandless and burn all your belongings and move to Alaska and die in a bus, you’re totally fucked. That’s lifted verbatim from the conclusion of the study.

  Here are more real things articles tell you about clutter. This kind of pearl clutching is usually reserved for local TV broadcasts about fraternity bros butt-chugging vodka.

  • Clutter will give you germs. (You will kill your family with a clutter-related zombie virus because you didn’t buy a pantry-organizing system.)

  • In the above-referenced New York Times article, a doctor asserts, “If you can’t find your sneakers, you aren’t taking a walk.” (You are going to develop health problems because you’re an idiot and can no longer walk anywhere due to lack of footwear.)

  • In addition, clutter will prevent you from shooting hoops with your son because you won’t be able to find the basketball. (Don't worry, he'll be a meth-addict before you know it.)

  • You may need cognitive behavioral therapy to help you tidy better. (You need professional help because you’re so bad at life.)

  • You’re going to buy duplicate things because you can’t find anything. (Like owning two lint rollers is going to bankrupt you.)

  • And finally, clutter makes you fat. (Tidying makes you skinny.)

  Many of these articles then go on to recommend a must-have book about decluttering (see earlier section: Self-Help Books Are Bullshit). Or a professional home organizer service. Or a therapist. Or a weight loss specialist. I read that one woman, whose garage was “a solid cube of clutter,” cleaned it up and lost 50 pounds. Right. Look, tidying your house will not make you drop a bunch of weight. You will just have a tidy house for a while. Then it will be messy again. That’s the real science.

  The storage system conspiracy

  You know who wants you to be tidy? The people at The Container Store. The CEO of Crate and Barrel. The accountant over at BINS BINS BINS. And why is that? Being neat is big business. The Clean Cartel wants you to feel ashamed of your mess. And thanks to capitalism, the only way to lose your shame is to buy things. Want to be a better person? Be more organized? Guess what? Buy all the things! But these things aren’t really things. These are things to organize your things. Plastic storage bins. Wicker storage bins. Fabric-lined bins. Drawer dividers. But you can’t buy just one of these things. You must buy the system. See how that works? A simple basket isn’t enough to organize you. Now you must purchase a storage system—for your bedroom, your office, your pantry. …

  These are actual things you can buy at a store:

  • Crystal cosmetic stacking organizer

  • Premium stacking shoe bin

  • Box with lid

  Hundreds of dollars later, you’ve got more debt on your credit card and you’ve still got shit lying everywhere. Why is that? Mess cannot be contained. It wants to be FREE. Embrace it. Save your money and go on a road trip to Nashville or to see the world’s biggest nickel (that’s in Sudbury, fools). Buy a flight to South Beach or Edmonton. Buy something that is as pointless as a closet organizer but way more fun. A waist trainer? A wine club subscription? Step outside the organizing insanity and see it for what it really is.

  I’ll let you in on a little secret. You can put your stuff anywhere. It doesn’t have to be placed in a corporate-sanctioned bin. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have already realized that you don’t have to place your stuff anywhere. But if you must, for example, place a heap of things into a contained space, I recommend a laundry basket. These open-topped beauties are durable, breathable, and easy to lift. Move your shit from place to place with ease. Or let it sit there. Whatever.

  Quiz

  let’s use logic to determine whether you need a storage system

  1. Do you have a lot of extra money?

  2. Have you ever been to Italy?

  If you answered “no” to either question, you don’t need a storage system. Here’s why:

  If you have extra money, and you haven’t been to Italy, do that. It’s amazing. Sure, Venice is expensive and the Amalfi Coast is touristy, but it’s beautiful and the wine is cheap and do you want to die without having Instagrammed a wheel of Italian cheese in Florence? Also when you get older, long plane flights become an issue. Sitting for that long is a bitch. Go now. While you still have time and healthy knees.

  If you don’t have extra money, but you have been to Italy, congrats on your trip, but you can’t afford a storage system. That’s an easy one.

  If you have extra money and you’ve also been to Italy already, congrats on being part of the one percent. You probably also have a cleaning lady, so why are you even reading this?

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

  Just like having a baby will not fix your troubled relationship with your husband or wife, cleaning your house will not enable you to suddenly have better/more frequent/more sex. Books that promise you this are lying to you. If you bought this book looking for sex advice, you have more problems than I can help you with. Oh, you haven’t had sex with your partner in over a year? Organize your closet and see what happens! Nothing will make you want to fuck more than having all your T-shirts neatly folded in a drawer. Here’s a secret: If you want to have sex, just go fuck someone. On a pile of laundry, in a hot tub, in a public bathroom, on a dumpster (or in the dumpster, feel me?), whatever. University and college students are very good at this—eighteen-year-olds will literally have sex with anyone anywhere. If teenagers can find the time and energy to finger each other quietly under the blankets while watching TV in your living room, you can find time to have sex too. If you’re not having sex, the reason isn’t your messy house. In fact, if you’re not having sex, it may be because your house isn’t messy enough.

  Here’s a visualization exercise I’d like you to try: Think of a friend, celebrity, or politician (we know you’re thinking of Trudeau, you dirty Canucks) that you’d like to fuck. Now think about whether your house is clean. Un-fucking-related, right? So chin up and go get what's yours. Booze helps. Here are some other fixes for yo
ur shitty sex life: Is your Tinder profile up to date? Sex (or at least numerous dick pics) is just a swipe away. Are there dogs and cats and children in your bed? Have sex on the floor. Do you need sexier lingerie? Rip the crotch out of some panties. Do you need a wax? Fucking get it done. (Although bush is back these days. So find someone that loves a giant bush and bone them.) Remember: The only books that can fix your sex drive are books by V. C. Andrews. And only if all the pages are there.

  * * *

  5. From “A Clutter Too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves,” New York Times, January 1, 2008.

  3.

  Leave your sh*t all over the house

  “A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. . . . That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.”

  —GEORGE CARLIN

  If you decide that it’s okay for your closet to be cluttered but then freak the fuck out about your messy desk, you’re failing at being messy. You have to take a holistic approach to leaving your shit everywhere. You have to own it. Then buy more stuff and own that, too.

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

  If you’re like me, your desk is your sanctuary. It’s where you get things done or avoid getting things done. These days, depending on your job, your desk probably consists of your laptop and maybe a coaster for your coffee mug. Perhaps you need a notebook and a few pens. Maybe also your phone. And a small, chic lamp with a nice lamp shade so you can see what you’re doing. Likely you need a bright houseplant or succulent or two for inspiration. A few books for reference. Some old bills you’ve been meaning to pay online. A funny snow globe from Vegas. The latest London Review of Books and Us Weekly you’ve been meaning to read.6 Aren’t Andrew O’Hagan and Vanderpump Rules amazing? Maybe a few boxes and baskets from the organization section of your local big box store, filled with papers, photos, cords, a purple stapler, some batteries. An old coffee mug from yesterday. Right. So your desk is a fucking mess. You know who had a messy desk? Einstein. It even had a cookie jar. You know who had a tidy desk? Mussolini. But Einstein wasn’t just an anomaly—the benefits of a messy desk are supported by scientific research.