Sometimes more mess means less stress

By Marjorie Ingall

updated 8:41 a.m. ET July 18, 2008

On my desk is a half-empty bag of wasabi peas. Beside it is a disposable razor from a gift bag I received several weeks ago, a bottle of Sally Hansen Sheer Beige Gloss, a flyer from a Tibetan art museum on which I scribbled a reminder to call the pharmacy, an idea for a story, my older daughter's drawing of a robot in a purple minidress, a stack of books I will read someday if it kills me and a festive rainbow of curling Post-its dating back to the Pleistocene era.

On certain days, this mess stirs up all of my anxiety and self-loathing, especially when, in addition to the detritus on my desk, toys cover my living room floor, the cat is stalking a dust bunny the size of a rabbit and I can't find the phone number of the scientist I'm supposed to interview in 20 minutes. I gaze around at it all and, feeling utterly overwhelmed, become convinced that I will never make another deadline or write another book until I frantically straighten up.

I see desks in decor magazines, naked except for one perfect potted plant, and I moan and sigh like someone looking at porn. I'm not alone in my obsession: According to Consumer Reports, Americans spent more than $2 billion in 2004 to impose external, Container Store-like order on their life. “The world is so complicated today, with images and information bombarding us all the time,” says Carol Gould, a marriage and family therapist in San Francisco. Who wouldn't want a home that felt like a serene refuge?

Coping with chaos
Many experts would say that my chronic longing to be neat and tidy has less to do with the state of my stuff than the state of my life: A year ago, my husband was diagnosed with thyroid cancer; ever since, my day-to-day has been nothing if not disorderly. Suddenly, I had to live with the most painful, agonizing kind of messiness. Would Jonathan get better? I wondered again and again. If he didn't, could I handle it? “Controlling your environment allows you to feel that you're at least controlling something,” confirms Julie Holland, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine in New York City. “You can't control Iraq; you can't control the economy; but you can control the amount of dust in your carpet. It's a way to feel as if you're not powerless.”

But although it's possible to impose neatness, at least temporarily, exerting control over life is more challenging, as I discovered when my relatively young, always-healthy husband got sick. Learning to accept occasional messiness and the uncertainty that goes along with it — the life kind as well as the clutter kind — is really about accepting this fundamental lack of control.

That may seem grimly fatalistic, but there's a positive side to letting go. Order and predictability may sound better, but mess, it turns out, has its own rewards, even if you can't always see them at the time. “A chaotic period can be a catalyst for greater understanding,” says Rabbi Irwin Kula, author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” (Hyperion). “Ambivalence, contradictions and tension ultimately give rise to wisdom.”

I relate to that. I am the least Zen person you can imagine, but while Jonathan was having surgery, getting radiation and acting completely zonked-out from his resulting low thyroid levels, I had no time to be a drama queen. I had to earn a living and take care of our daughters, 3 and 6, not to mention my spouse. I had to learn to tolerate untidiness. And a disorganized desk is nothing compared with the messiness of a relationship and the tension that can arise when two people make a life together.

Cultivating tolerance
While Jonathan was sick, for instance, I wanted to talk about it. He didn't. “When there's stress in a marriage and you work through it together, it leads to greater intimacy and depth,” Kula says. “You can run from emotions and ideas that make you uncomfortable, you can repress them as fiercely as possible, or you can step back and figure out what you're struggling with.” I did some figuring, and it led me to realize that I needed to work on my own generosity so I could meet my husband's needs rather than focus on my own desire for reassurance. The last thing my husband felt like doing was discussing what he was going through. I had to accept that, for him, simply being together felt comforting, even if we were sitting in silence. His illness brought us closer not only because we relied more on each other, the two of us clinging against the storm, but because I learned to be more tolerant of his way of coping.

If you happen to be in a crisis, relationship or otherwise, Kula suggests coaxing the process of understanding along by asking yourself, How can this situation help me better grasp who I am? How can it make me more compassionate in my web of connections? “The more you face your frailties and understand yourself, the more empathy you'll be able to muster.”

My struggle to accept that Jonathan and I had different communication styles made me think that perhaps I also needed to view the other imperfections in my life more tolerantly, including the debris on my desk. The two concepts may seem different, but just as discovering how to coexist peacefully with life's emotional messes (and your spouse, for that matter) can make you a stronger, more empathetic person, so, too, can living with a bit of physical clutter. Both, after all, are about letting go of the need to control every last thing and seeing what comes into your life in return. “If you focus all your energy on excessively organizing your time — or your desk — you won't be as open to all kinds of opportunities,” says Eric Abrahamson, co-author of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder” (Little, Brown).

Think of it this way: When you're looking at a variety of things in front of you — pictures, desk toys, disparate stacks of paper — your mind starts jumping around and making intriguing connections. “The more stuff you have out in the open, the more ways there are to arrange the items and the more information you can gain from them,” Abrahamson explains. My friend Tanya, a textile artist, concurs. “I need to see my materials, tools and photos around me. They make me want to create; if I don't see them, I'm not as inspired to move forward with my work.”

The same thing happens when you mix different types of people. “In companies, there's a tendency to put everyone with the same function on the same floor,” Abrahamson says. “But if you sit different departments together so folks mingle at the coffeemaker, there's more chance for an influx of new ideas.”

This isn't to say that we should all throw our papers into the wind, let cat hair coat every surface and allow dishes to pile up to the heavens. The point is to find the level of mess that feels optimal for your work, life and peace of mind. For some people, that may be quite a bit; for others, not so much.

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