Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess

by Rachel Hoffman

Many people manifest anxiety or

manic episodes with marathon cleaning. This isn’t ideal, because you’re only cleaning when you’re not in a good headspace, and you begin to associate the act of cleaning with being sick or mentally distressed.

Messiness is not a moral failing.

We need to learn to separate the state of our homes from our feelings of worth. Having a clean home doesn’t make you a better person. It just makes you

a person with a clean home. Having a messy home, then, doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, or disgusting, or less of a human being than someone whose linen closet looks like a store display.

Convenience cleaning products exist for a reason: They’re convenient. They save time and effort. They don’t make you a bad person. Life is full of balances and compromises, so just figure out how to balance convenience with environmental and financial responsibility.

Once you stop thinking of your level of messiness as part of your personality, you give yourself the

flexibility to change it. If you no longer say “I’m a slob” like it’s something undeniably true and unchangeable, you allow yourself a whole lot of room to change what you thought of as part of your identity. “Messy” isn’t who you are; it’s a result of what you do or don’t do, and it can change. You can change it.