My Dresser Drawers Are a Representation of my Mental Health
Sometimes I am Kondo-ing, Sometimes I am stuffing things in drawers.
I wanted to start this by saying that “today is laundry day” but in reality, laundry day is spread across multiple days.
- Day 1: putting clothes in the washer.
- Day 2: remembering that I started laundry and then forgot to dry the clothes and having to run the wash again because things smelled a little too musty.
- Day 3: Repeating days 1 and 2 until I finally remember to put the clothing in the dryer.
- Days 4–7: essentially using the dryer as my dresser. I will just get ready in the laundry room, I have to start my mornings here anyway to feed the dog.
- Repeat until I get my life together.
I think you get the point. Most days, I am just trying to play catch up until I get my life together enough to actually put my clothes away properly.
Diagnosing Disarray
While this is (slightly) a joke, there is some seriousness to the fact that when my internal/emotional world is out of line, my external/environmental world is out of line as well. Sometimes it is easy for me to chalk up my messy room, cluttered desk, and a pile of laundry to being “too busy” but in reality, it is more often due to my mental health being neglected.
The tricky thing about this is that it creates a feedback loop wherein the more stressed or depressed I am, the more cluttered my surroundings become. The more cluttered my surroundings, the more stressed and potentially depressed I become. As things pile up, literally, they become more and more overwhelming until they reach the potential to become debilitating.
Unless I do something about it.
The good thing, counterintuitively, about this is that it gives me an opportunity to allow my external environment to tell me something about my internal world that I may be overlooking. My pile of laundry and stack of dirty dishes can make me up to some of the emotional things I need to add to my to-do-list. And this can be a chore but it must be done.
Monitoring Mental Health
The truth of the matter is that, in order for me to keep my clothes folded, the dishes clean, and baby bottles clean, I need to ensure that I am taking care of myself emotionally. Of course, keeping an eye on my emotions will not magically make the clothes fold themselves like I am some sort of Disney princess but it will give me the energy to start and finish what I need to get done.
Emotional struggles use up our energy in the same way that physical exertion does. In fact, it may drain us quicker and lead us into a position wherein we are less able to rebuild our energy. If we are physically exhausted, we can rest, eat a good mean, or sleep and will likely wake up feeling more recovered than before. This, however, is not the case with emotional exhaustion. On the contrary, if we try to avoid our emotional issues by “sleeping it off” we will wake up to face an even more terrible monster than when we drifted off to sleep. The pile of laundry will still be there.
Instead of avoiding the emotional issues at the root of my cluttered room, I can let the clutter remind me that I need to work on some emotional clutter. When I take the time to process my emotions through writing, speaking with those close to me, exercising, or going on family walks, I end up with a clearer head and then have more energy to invest in other areas of my life — chores included.
Clearing Up the Clutter
Sifting through and cleaning up my cluttered mind doesn’t just allow me the ability to put my clothes away (folded in thirds like Marie Kondo insists upon), it gives me the emotional energy to do other things that I actually enjoy. Like playing with my daughter or taking my dog on longer walks. Like investing in my relationship with my wife and being more emotionally available to her and for her. Admittedly, she is also just happy about me putting clothes away more often and getting to the dishes more quickly.
Sometimes a cluttered house is the wake-up call I need to recognize that mess has more to do with what is going on internally than what is going on externally.
