How to Get Rid of the Shame of the Mess
Scrolling through social media with carefully curated images of beautiful, clutter-free living spaces often leaves you feeling inadequate about your own home. Whether it’s dishes in the kitchen sink, piles of laundry you never get around to putting away, or scattered toys you constantly coax your kids to pick up, there can be a wide chasm between the perfect images you see. see in social networks and the chaotic reality of their own lives.
While it can be all too easy to slip into feelings of inadequacy or shame, or into thinking that clutter is somehow a reflection of who you are as a person, there is another, more functional way of thinking about the value of a clean home. which can help fight some of these feelings.
Cleaning is morally neutral
As C. C. Davis , licensed occupational therapist and author ofHow to Keep a Home When You’re Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organization , often reminds people, you should treat cleaning as morally neutral. She doesn’t mean that it’s unimportant or useless to have a clean space, but that the cleanliness of your home is not a reflection of your worth, accomplishments, or struggles as a person.
For people who always have a clean house, “all that tells you about them is that they keep a beautiful house all the time,” Davis said. It doesn’t tell you anything about their mental health, their successes, or their major problems in life. It just tells you that they prioritize cleaning.
Removing some of these moral judgments about cleaning can help get rid of feelings of shame and inadequacy. A clean house is just a clean house. It is not a reflection of how good or bad you are as a person, and it has nothing to do with your other accomplishments.
People deserve a home that functions for them.
Instead of placing moral value on cleaning your home, Davis stresses that the approach to cleaning should help you live a more functional life and not be a reflection of who you are. “You don’t exist to serve your home, your home exists to serve you,” Davis said. In practice, this means approaching the tasks of organizing and cleaning with the thought of making your space functional for your needs, rather than focusing on how it looks.
Once that happens, “then you can start thinking about how to make your home functional for your brain or body,” Davis said. For people with reduced mobility or those with executive function problems, this can mean organizing your home so you can get to everything you need or remember where everything is.
As for Davis, she was annoyed by having to constantly go upstairs to get a range of items, so she designed a server station in her living room with bins for clean and dirty laundry, outerwear and diapers. Thanks to this, she no longer needs to constantly go up and down the stairs for various items.
For others, this may mean prioritizing easy-to-clean surfaces, placing important items within easy reach, and making sure everything is visible rather than hidden in drawers. “You deserve fixtures in your home that allow you to function,” Davis said.