Grace. M

Be Messy!

By Grace M.

She feels like she is living in a world that hates her. Everyday her mom continuously tells her to clean her room and whenever her friend comes over it’s impossible to not get teased about being a pig. Then one day she stumbled onto a site and her world becomes a lot better. She finds out that living in her untidy environment boosts her creativity, problem solving skills, and improves her health and immune systems. She also learned that being messy is being tidy in her own way. Now she never has to listen to her friends or mom again. She knows being messy is great.

Have you ever been stuck on a problem because you just can’t think of any way to move around it? Well, living in a messy room can help. A study done by students of the University of Minnesota shows that people in a messy room spend the same mental effort producing ideas than in a tidy room,, but their results come out with a higher level of creativity (Vohs). This helps with finding your way out of tough problems. Independent researchers at Northwestern University have confirmed these results and have also confirmed that people in messy rooms are quicker to solve challenging brainteasers than people in tidy rooms (Vohs). As Einstein said “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Does your kid have a tendency to run off with friends and return covered in mud and dirt? If so, no need to put the poor kid in trouble, it’s perfectly fine. It actually helps their immune system improve. Research at Northwestern University shows that when you’re exposed to the common bacteria and microbes of the world it may help your body’s inflammatory systems develop, which plays a very important role with helping your immune systems fight off infections (Simmons). Now, when you see your kid playing in the mud, don’t be afraid to join in. Just don’t forget to take a shower.

As Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman said “On a messy desk, the more important, urgent work tends to stay close by and near the top of the clutter, while the safely ignorable stuff tends to get buried to the bottom or near the back, which makes perfect sense.” (Pena). Anyone who has a messy room has personal experience with this. If your important stuff stays at the top, you will always have it at hand, so you know you won’t forget where you put your important papers you need to bring to work.

You might say that having a messy room looks bad and you can’t walk anywhere because of all the clutter, but when you think about it, you can easily move stuff to the side and arrange it to be more eye pleasing but still not very tidy. Even if some people say that it’s impossible find anything in that mess, it probably is. It’s most likely for someone to be able to find something that you always have around you that you put there than something locked away in a random place that you totally forget about just so you can be organized. Remember, even though you might have dust everywhere or you canʻt get through the doorway, you can easily fix that with a little rearranging and dusting. Then your room is dust free and allows you to move around but still be how you want.

If people live in tidy environments they might miss out on the benefits of having a stronger immune system and having the freedom of having things where you want. You all have reduced creativity while living in a tidy environment. Therefore, having a messy room is good, in fact great!

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