[one_half]Messy? Maybe. Organized? Of course. – Birju Dhaduk

You walk into a dorm room. There is dirty laundry piled on the chair. It is not in the laundry basket since the basket has unfolded clean clothes in there instead. Ten half-filled water bottles are scattered throughout the room with food strategically placed for optimal snacking. The desk is filled with piles of papers, textbooks and anything that was handed out at the first-floor meeting of the year. 

This dorm room may not be clean but it sure isn’t messy—or at least not completely. This is an example of an organized mess. 

There may be piles of clothes, papers and food, but everything still has its own spot. The owner of the “messy” room can find everything that they need just as fast as in the “clean” room, if not faster, given that everything is out in the open rather than in drawers and cabinets. In this sense, having a clean room has little to no advantage over having an unclean one.

Cleaning a bedroom or dorm room also takes a lot of time, taking away from more important things such as getting school work done or sleeping. Although some people have enough free time to balance out everything they need to do in order to keep their life together, the reality of the matter is that we are college students, and for most of us this isn’t possible. 

Some people have jobs, others have to commute to campus for 2 hours every day, while most simply just have a life. It is up to each person to prioritize what they do each day and oftentimes, cleaning their room does not fall very high on that list. Overall, being a neat-freak is simply unnecessary and time consuming.

[one_half]Clean Room, Easy Life. – Isaac Scafe

Children and teenagers have always been told to keep their rooms neat and tidy, but as adults, there’s no one telling you how you should keep your room. Whether you have school work piling up or are just too tired to care, bedrooms can get cluttered easily. And there’s nothing wrong with having a messy room—life can be chaotic at times, but the importance of having a clean room is often overlooked.

One of the arguments people have towards keeping a messy room is that they don’t have to keep their stuff organized. Their stance is that it doesn’t matter if their room is a mess, if all of their stuff is in the same place. But that’s not always the case.

Stuff is often misplaced or accidentally moved elsewhere; it’s something that can’t be helped. But when your bedroom is a mess, it’s difficult to find things. People spend hours and hours looking for something they knew was on their bed. Days later, they find what they were looking for, inside a random pair of shoes. No matter how “organized” your mess might be, you’re bound to lose something in it. 

Aside from simply knowing where your stuff is, having a clean room is essential to your mental health. Our minds  seem to prefer it when things are organized and clean, while conversely, a cluttered environment can be detrimental. In a study conducted by Cornell University, 101 female undergraduate students were kept in either standard or chaotic kitchen conditions. During the trial, the students were given cookies, carrots and crackers to taste and rate. In the end, participants kept in the chaotic environment consumed more cookies than those kept in standard conditions. This showed that a messy room could invoke anxiety in people, triggering coping strategies such as eating junk food. Living in a messy bedroom would surely produce the same results.

A clean environment helps the mind rest. Unfortunately, life can get hectic and people don’t have time to clean their rooms, but the quest for a clean room doesn’t have to be accomplished overnight. While decluttering a bedroom might be a hassle, it’ll be worth the effort.