Hello everyone, and thank you for returning to “Can a Slob Change?”, my story chronicling my journey from messy to clean. This is my conclusion, From Slob to Neat. If you haven’t read the first two installments, please go back and do so, since the end of the story is nowhere near as interesting without the beginning. Part one is Slob at Heart and Part two is Learn to be Neat?
When we left off, I was distraught. I was down in my room afraid that in the future, I might not be able to maintain a household before the government came and took it from me, due to my inability to clean my space. I was afraid that when I finally got my own freedom to be an adult and go after what I wanted in life, I wouldn’t be able to keep it. And I was paralyzed, thinking there would be nothing I could do about it.
These thoughts didn’t cause me to clean up. They caused me to hate myself more, and while I didn’t make a further mess of my room out of fear, I was still spending most of my energy on trying to create healthy thoughts and habits for myself in therapy. When I came home, I was exhausted from my day of mentally deconstructing. It wasn’t until I fell in love that I finally began to clean up.
Love, the Noblest Motivation
I met a guy at school, and we began interacting more often. I had this crush on him that just wouldn’t go away, and finally I worked up the courage to invite him over for my family’s New Year’s party. He said he might come, and so for all of Winter break, I was in my room, but this time, I was hard at work, trying to pick up. I didn’t want him to see this mess, for the first time, I wanted someone to see me.
When he came over, I invited him down to my room so that we could get away from all the hustle and bustle of the party and just be alone, for the first time. I showed him all that was important to me, my books, my music, and my rock collection. We talked a lot that night, which we had never had time for at school. Until then, I hardly even knew what his voice sounded like since he never really spoke up in class. That was the first night where I let myself be vulnerable in front of a person who could have just rejected me, enough to be seen for who I was instead of hiding behind all the masks and the messes.
Facing my fear of the future
In almost a year, we moved in together. Yet again, I had to deal with packing up all my things, and this time my boyfriend helped me. It was still a nightmare and I still cried. I had to make decisions about what to keep and throw away and maybe what to donate. We were moving into a 500 square foot apartment and had to be realistic with the amount of things we were bringing. By this time, he knew about my messy tendencies, and loved me anyway. But he was a very neat and tidy kind of person, something that I could never identify with.
We moved into our new apartment, and for once I saw what it was like to be in a space that was not messy. It, frankly, challenged me. I still identified as a messy person and now I was living with a neat person. We had many arguments over this. I wasn’t trying to disrespect his values, but I was used to operating in a much more cluttered environment. The cleanliness, in fact, kind of stressed me out.
I felt it was a burden to have to pick up after yourself all the time, whereas he felt it was a burden to have to live in squalor. I tried to consider his side, but no matter how much I examined it, it made no sense to me how someone could feel preference towards picking up after themselves. We lived this way, disjointed philosophies destroying our well-being, for perhaps a year. He grew tired of feeling choked by clutter and I grew tired of his constant remarks on it, like he was saying I was disgusting, instead of my habits.
The End of the Slob
One day, I found a book. It was called, “Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism”. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what minimalism was—even though I knew I had seen a Netflix documentary about it, I hadn’t been paying any attention. I decided to read this book because I liked the way the cover looked, how’s that for a cliche? I’m so glad I judged a book by its cover though, because it led me down a completely unexpected path.
After reading the book, I thought this man was crazy. I remember laughing at him when he said he owned no full-size towels, and dried himself off with a smaller towel, like a hand towel or something. He said it helped him feel so luxurious at hotels when there were full-sized towels for him to use. I remember telling my boyfriend about it and having a laugh together because this guy must be nuts. And yet, he knocked on the door to a part of me that had never been disturbed before. He mentioned feeling weighed down by his possessions, and that the more he got rid of, the more he felt free. I couldn’t imagine feeling free.
After the book, I found another. Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. The book before had mentioned it one once or twice, and I was curious about what she had to say.
If you haven’t read about the KonMari method, I highly recommend you read this book. In it, Marie Kondo presents an alternative to the stress of coming home and cleaning. This world she paints in front of you is a life where coming home brings you so much joy and peace, because you carefully cultivate your possessions to only keep the things that, as she puts it, “spark joy”. I had never thought of my possessions in this way.
Marie Kondo taught me to think about my happiness again, but in a completely new way. As I made my way through her book, I became filled with hope, that I could be the kind of person with a tidy home, I could even become the kind of person whose home was beautiful and brought me joy simply to be in. She assures her readers, even someone with a tendency to be messy can keep a tidy home, and be completely at ease doing so.
With all of this strong and loving reassurance, I began putting my possessions in order. It may seem strange to say that a book on tidying up a home was loving, but that’s what I felt from reading it. I finally felt like I could be included in an identity that I thought impossible before and always berated myself for. The shame I felt for being a messy person, a failure at even the simple act of managing my own things, completely melted away, and I was ready.
Cleaning out my Closet
For the next few days and weeks, I was on fire. More and more things flew into donation bags. I sorted my clothes first, just like she outlines in her book. I also found that to be the easiest way, just as she says. If it didn’t fit, was uncomfortable or embarrassing, it was an obvious donate. But there were things that didn’t bring me joy that were otherwise perfectly good options, and I did as she said and donated them too.
When I was done with my wardrobe, I had probably about fifteen percent of my clothes left. My boyfriend had no idea what had gotten into me, but he liked it so he just watched quietly as I got rid of clothing that I had kept since I was 12 years old.
The Minimalists, Revisited
I moved on to my other possessions, and realized just how much stuff I was keeping as a protection from the world. I donated all of the “insurance-policy possessions”— things I would never need, but would keep because the world is a scary place. It was around this time that I began listening to The Minimalists podcast, and realized they were the guys that made the documentary I had paid no attention to. They helped me think rationally about my possessions. I learned about decisions like “if I haven’t used it for 90 days, am I going to use it in the next 90? If not, why am I keeping it?” I got rid of a lot of little things that way.
Putting my Past in Order
And then there was that category of possessions that Marie Kondo says to save for last, which is your memorabilia/nostalgic items. Any get-well cards and letters from friends, poems from past lovers, old stuffed animals from childhood, etc. She advises to leave these things for last because then you have developed your decision-making process and you are more in tune with what brings you joy.
She’s right to ask you to save it for last, because when I got to it, I truly had the confidence in myself to conquer it. I had come so far and I wasn’t going to stop now. This was the time that the major transformation took place, but this category of possessions took me the longest to sort through.
With this category, many things were easy decisions but came with some feelings I needed to process. I needed to fully mourn my past losses, journal about why things happened as they did. I needed to let myself address old issues that I had never let myself wonder about. In short, I had to put my past in order.
Looking back, I realized that it was these things, on some level, that caused the mess in the first place. Clutter collected around my heart, and so my heart collected around clutter. I hadn’t let myself process these issues, so I couldn’t bear to get rid of the reminders, but I couldn’t bear to look at the reminders so I hid them in the mess. I wasn’t hiding myself, as I had thought. I was hiding my problems, which became my identity. I didn’t want to identify myself by my emotional clutter anymore, and this is what has kept me from reverting back to living in a cripplingly messy home.
Once I began decluttering, I was left with an empty space. In my home, in my mind, in my life. It was this empty space that allowed me to see my future instead of my past— my possibilities instead of my mistakes.
I saw in the empty space this new person who I could become- not someone who had simply survived many terrifying, miserable years, but someone who could help others overcome as I did, and someone who could continue achieving things that frightened and exhausted me. And as I kept my space clear, this idea began to form, of this blog specifically, but also other irons I’ve set in the fire. I’m starting to see where I can stand in my power and use my voice as a force for good. This is what I want to share with the world, and with you.
Are you a messy person or a neat person? Have you ever felt burdened by your possessions or does the idea of decluttering set you in a panic? Leave a comment to document your place in your journey. Please be sure to share this post with loved ones in person and on social media, especially the pack rats, so they know they are not alone and that one of us found a way out.
