The clean up

Last weekend I attempted to clean my room. I say 'attempted' because after a solid four hours, it didn't look any better. I knew it wasn't a one day job when I started, but I still felt like I hadn't achieved anything.

To paint some kind of picture for you, the last time I cleaned it was before Christmas 2009. My clothes were in a massive pile by the TV, and everything else was in a longer, but not-as-high pile on the opposite side of the room.

(Think this, but tenfold)

The reason I hadn't bothered to clean it at any point throughout the year is because I have been me for long enough now to know that when I do clean it, it will somehow magically become messy again three days later, and I'll end up sitting on my bed, looking at it, thinking 'how does this keep happening?'

.

The trick to maintaining your status as a fully-functional human being while living in such a state is something I like to call 'footholes.' These are small gaps in between the crap on your floor that your foot will fit in. An alternative name for them is 'the only bits of visable carpet.' I like to place a series of footholes across the floor like stepping stones so I can use them to travel from the door to the bed without tripping, falling, and drowning face down in a pile of old magazines.

But don't I hate living this way? No. I like to keep it messy on the off chance that a serial killer comes into my room at night. There's no way that bastard is getting all the way from the door to the bed without tripping over one of the many piles of clothes/cds/dvds/important papers/stuff I still haven't got around to throwing out/scarves (I don't know why I keep buying these) which will then make enough noise to wake me up and give me a chance to arm myself with something that can be used as a weapon. And on top of that, when I put stuff away, I forget where it is. But when the room is messy, I know where everything is: on the floor.

The day wasn't a complete failure though. I cleared out all the clothes from my wardrobe and draws that I don't wear anymore and put all the wearable items that had been living on the floor since last Christmas into the now available space. This was a bad move.

• Massive pile of clothes on the floor = everything is visable and easy to access.
• Clothing put away in the wardrobe = I don't have the energy in the mornings to open a door, and have just been putting yesterday's jeans back on again. For the whole week.

If there's one lesson I can pass on to you, it is this: A drawer puts one too many obsticles between you and your clean t-shirts.