Last week I decided to clean my room. To actually clean your room takes a lot more work than you might imagine. Cleaning your room is not just an act of physical labour, but also emotional and intellectual labour, if you’re doing it properly.
There are three stages of having a clean room. These phases are “making it clean”, “keeping it clean” and “making it beautiful”.
Making it Clean
The important first step of taking on any sizeable task is finding the “why”. Without a strong “why” we simply don’t have the motivation to follow it through, which only leaves us feeling disappointed.
Cleaning your room is not just about your room being clean. It’s about it becoming clean. The process. The decisions you make while cleaning. It’s just as much about cleaning your soul as it is about cleaning your room.
Why does unboxing an Apple product feel so good? There’s no clutter. It’s clean, it’s crisp and you know exactly what’s inside and where it all goes. Imagine getting this same feeling every time you entered your room.
Reasons for Making it Clean
Cleaning your room is an accomplishment. If you do it properly, cleaning your room is not as simple as you might expect before commencing. For instance, I threw out about 30 pens that didn’t work from the top draw of my desk. Why these pens weren’t thrown out when they stopped working, I have no idea. Once you’ve thrown out all your pens, books you haven’t thought about in 10 years and plenty of elastic bands and paper clips (I didn’t know I had so many), you will have achieved something. You can be proud of yourself for cleaning your room.
Cleaning your room will remove unnecessary clutter from your mind. Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist from the University of Toronto advises people wanting to clean up their life to start by cleaning their room. Your room is an extension of yourself. Clean your room, then you have stable foundations to build further life improvements.
Cleaning your room impacts your identity. By consciously deciding that you are the kind of person that wants a clean your room, you are de facto deciding to be more organised. You’ll be less likely to forget about events or arrive late to them. Your bag will contain no lunch wrappers or used water bottles.
People with tidier homes are fitter indicated a study from Indiana University. Whether it’s because cleaning is a physical activity or that those who look after their homes look after their bodies is still unknown. Perhaps there’s something about a clean room that makes one want to exercise. Whichever way later studies explain the correlation, it doesn’t hurt knowing that cleaning your room might make you physically fitter.
Tips for Making it Clean
- Everything in your room should serve a clear purpose. That purpose may be “for beauty’s sake” and that’s okay. All you have to do is know the purpose. We often find ourselves with a bunch of shit and have no idea why we have it. That is what we throw out. Some of it may have served a purpose in the past. That is not enough. It must serve a purpose now.
- Don’t underestimate the task. It will probably take longer than you expect. Much longer. Take your time. Do one drawer a day. You will feel better for it. The little accomplishments a long the way will keep you motivated.
Keeping it Clean
After making it clean, you must keep it clean. This can be easy or hard. It only requires small amounts of discipline but it requires so consistently.
Reasons for Keeping it Clean
A clean room saves you time. You will always know where things are. When you need something you grab it. You also know what you have. Maybe your pen runs out and you’re checking if you have another full pen. If your stationary is a mess, you might not be able to find a fresh pen. You’ll drive down to the store to buy more pens. What a waste of time (and money).
You sleep better with a clean room. Clutter creates stress. No clutter means less stress. Less stress equals better sleep. A simple formula, yet one that you might not have thought of yourself. I didn’t. A clean room also means a made bed. There’s something about walking into your room to sleep, finding a made bed. It’s certainly more sleep-inducing than an unmade bed. You can’t beat crisp sheets.
Keeping a clean room requires discipline. Consistently. This makes you a disciplined person. Discipline is a muscle that can be trained. The more disciplined you are, the more disciplined you become. If you can keep your room clean, maybe you will stick to your exercise schedule.
Tips for Keeping it Clean
- Habitually throw stuff out. Just because it’s new does not mean it has a purpose. Throw it out.
- If you’re not going to use it again, throw it out.
- Own less stuff. Material goods won’t make you happy. In fact, if they create clutter it will definitely make you less happy.
- Only buy things you need.
Making it Beautiful
After the cleaning process is complete, Jordan Peterson advocates us to take it one step further. Make it beautiful.
You might be proud just at the fact it’s clean. Imagine if you made it beautiful. If you put up a poster of your idol, removed ugly textbooks from your bookshelf and left only your most valued books. Positioning the books such that they create an artwork of organisation in themselves. The possibilities are endless and it’s all up to you.
Tips for Making it Beautiful
- You probably don’t need a painting for your wall, so should you buy it? I’d say if it moves you in positive way, go for it. It must be the sort of thing you won’t get bored of. In this way, it has a purpose. Adding beauty to your room.
- Don’t go overboard. Before making it beautiful by adding stuff (what most people do), try making it beautiful by removing stuff. Once that’s done you might look around and say “that wall looks bare”. Only then you can add the artwork to a wall.
