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Leavenworth sophomore Brian Cordes says his unorganized room matches his laidback, carefree personality.
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spread. According to the ancient Chinese art of Feng in certain places can be detrimental to your health.
s. "I'm not a slobby asshole or anything." Dillard
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Erinardi, Leawood sophomore. Although living in Chioga sorority with three roommates has made more difficult for her to keep clean than when was in high school, Inciardi is still incredibly sized.
get stressed out when things are messy."
Inciardi says. For that reason, she spends about 20 to 30 minutes a day putting things away or organizing her room. Drawers, desktops and laundry all must be neatly arranged before she can relax. "Sometimes I can't sleep until I make sure everything is tidied up," she explains. Indeed, every night before bed, she puts her books into her backpack to get ready for the next day.
Laura Leist, certified professional organizer and author of Eliminate Chaos, a book about how to get organized,says everybody has different ways of doing it. For instance, Leist explains that some people just aren't good at putting things away in
drawers and out-of-sight places.
Visual organizers can forget
visual organizer's can forget
where something is if
it's not out in
plain sight,
while others
like Inciardi
prefer everything
to be tucked away
neatly. That could explain
why Dillard and other students
like Brian Cordes, Leavenworth
sophomore, don't put their clothes in
drawers.
"I seem to forget about things in drawers and find them again months later," Cordes says. Instead, he just piles things up on his floor and on top of his desk. This leaves his room quite a mess, but as long as the clothes and other junk stay on his
side of the room, he says his roommate doesn't seem to mind.
Unfortunately for his roommate, Cordes would probably be messy even if he did use all his drawers. He admits to keeping six pairs of shoes in the room, even though he wears the same ones every day. He hasn't worn one pair in four years.
Leist says that it is common for people to have trouble parting with items that could still be potentially useful."Some people want to keep control of all their things, even if they don't need them, because some other area of their life is out of control." Leist says.
While Cordes doesn't seem to have an emotional attachment to anything in his room save his television, he does say that his parents gave up policing the cleanliness of his room when he was about 12 years old. He hasn't seen the floor since.
Inciardi's household is a little different in that respect. She has always kept her room clean, but her mother, Pam, takes it an extra step by cleaning out drawers and closets a few times a year and donating any unused items to Goodwill. You could say Inciardi inherited her tidiness from her mother, but her
mother says Inciardi's vigilance even surprises her sometimes.
"We were going out to dinner for my birthday last year, and it was the end of the semester, so Erin had just moved all her stuff from school back to her bedroom." Pam remembers. "We had reservations and took two cars to the restaurant. Erin and her sister were supposed to meet us there. They were late because she couldn't stand to leave her room a mess."
Inciardi remembers that night and laughs, though she says she felt a bit more like crying at the time. Even though her neatness can cause her some stress when she least needs it, she thinks it helps her get better grades. She takes all her notes with different colored pens, and intricately highlights handouts and study guides. Daily to-do lists keep her on top of all
her assignments.
Cordes says his personality is much like his room: scattered. "If I tell a story, I can't stay on the same path; I go in different directions," he says. "I can be holding my phone and not know where it is." This leaves him scrambling when it comes time to do schoolwork, and he spends more time looking for things than he does actually studying. Despite this, he doesn't write his assignments down.
"I've got a good memory," he says.
Though Cordes' haphazerard approach to organization may be troublesome when he can't find things, some experts think being messy can actually boost productivity and efficiency. The book A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman says the ability to improvise and deal with random and inevitable changes to plans and routines is an important skill. When such things come up in life, a messy person may be better equipped to improvise a solution, and they could save a lot of time by not organizing things every day.
Leist would argue that Liardi's more structured approach to organization is more efficient and effective than cleaning sporadically or not at all. "It's a lifestyle that you choose, and if there are defined places for things, you want to always have those place be kept constant," Leist says. "It's kind of like a fitness routine. Let's say you go on a diet and lose a bunch of weight. In order to maintain that weight loss, you need to work at it a little bit each day."
Every method of organization has its pros and cons, and everyone is different, so it only stands to reason that everyone will have different ways of arranging their things and their bedrooms.
What does your room say about you?
Messy is best: Brian Cordes says he tends to forget where his things are if he puts them in drawers.
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SUBMARINE
photos by: Rachel Anne Seymour
02.14.2008 09
VOL. 5 ISS. 20