Mess is morally neutral; your creative life is not
updates from chez davis-rose || upcoming/delayed courses || Spiral Time and Shame workshop recordings now available for sale for $10
Not for the first time, I am thinking about how much the Protestant Work Ethic, and puritan notions such as “cleanliness is next to godliness” are really fucking toxic.
This time I am thinking about it the context of housework specifically, and interior design more broadly. These are not fully fleshed out thoughts, but once they are, I will likely incorporate them into my book project for paid subscribers. Until then, this is free to all!
First, a quick update from me and mine. We are in a sort of holding pattern while we wait for Joel’s next cancer surgery, which is scheduled for 20 June. The last one, at the end of January, was so much more difficult than we anticipated that we are both pretty anxious and on-edge these days, and I am trying very much to tie up some loose ends and create as much spaciousness around that time as I can. Then if things go exceedingly well—bonus!
What this means is that I may be publishing The Spiral Lab a bit more sporadically than I normally would, and I hope you all, and especially my paid subscribers, will think of it as paid family medical leave ;-). I’ll be back at the Divergent Design book project soon, and with renewed enthusiasm, later in the summer!
But in the midst of my more sporadic publishing schedule, I am excited to announce that several incredible writers and artists from DDS are going to be publishing guest posts over the summer, and I think you are going to love them!
What this also means is that a course I am developing and was planning to offer early this summer will have to be delayed—this is a brand new course called One Small Space, which is all about, well, redesigning—and executing said design—of one small space in your home. The idea came to me when I was teaching the Coming Home to Ourselves course where we were focusing on our studio/creative spaces. For many of us, it turned out that simply redesigning the side table of our bed, or the bookshelf near the couch, was actually what we needed to make our space work for us in our creative lives. For you, your one small space might be a cupboard in the kitchen, or a closet, or a front porch: any small, achievable space that could make a big difference in your life if designed with your real needs and aesthetics in mind.
So, that course is now rescheduled for later in the summer,1 but if you would like to know when tickets go on sale, and any potential discounts etc, please do sign up for the interest list so we don’t lose track of each other!
And now, on to our main event:
Mess is morally neutral… your creative life is not.
I used to ascribe real virtue to having a clean and tidy house, and I felt a lot of shame about not being able to maintain such a house most of the time. I hated when anyone would stop by unannounced, and when I knew someone was coming over, I would spend a LOT of time (and most of my bandwidth) cleaning in anticipation of their visit.
It’s not that I don’t love a neat and tidy home. I do, actually. Very very much, in fact. An aesthetically pleasing home is very soothing to me, and it fills my eyes with beauty.
The only thing is, I like making art better.
When I first moved to this house and went on an exhilarating creative bender, my teenage son was living in the basement, and his space became the social gathering place for his wide network of friends. This meant there were lots of young people in my home day and night. I could tell how many kids were asleep in the basement by the number of bicycles in my living room when I got up in the morning.
Normally I would have put enormous time and bandwidth into keeping up appearances, knowing these kids would always be coming and going (and also knowing that my son is a bit of a neat freak). Initially I felt a LOT of shame about the state of things. But this was the same time that my ideas about shame and its relationship to neurodivergence (as discussed in my Shame and Spiral Time workshops, now available as recordings for $10!), and I was determined to disrupt that shame. I knew it was toxic, and I believed it was possible to overcome it. I basically subjected myself to exposure therapy—I forced myself NOT to clean just for the kids in the basement. Instead I paid attention to how my nervous system was responding to mess, and I determined when I needed to clean based solely on how much the mess was interfering with my ability to keep creating.
I think of this as the tipping point approach to housecleaning.
When mess reaches a tipping point where it is causing me enough anxiety that I can no longer create joyfully, then I pause and clean up.
Not because having messes is shameful. Not because of what someone else might think about my messes. Not because I think any longer that there is something intrinsically virtuous in keeping an “instagram ready” house.
I just clean as an accommodation to the needs of my creative life. I believe that my creativity, and yours too, is a moral good in the world. When we create joyfully, we are contributing to the overall good of the world.
That tipping point will be different for everyone. The degree of mess that you can tolerate is different to mine, and it will change for each of us day-to-day and over time.
This is a photo of my current mess (not counting the dirty dishes I have left all over the house and the huge pile of dirty laundry in the corner). It shows half of what was Joel’s study, which I have now turned into a sewing studio. A very messy sewing studio.
Lately I have become obsessed with sewing. Right now, it’s that sort of all-consuming creative passion that has me diving down rabbit holes and stealing every spare moment. It’s what I think about when I go to sleep and when I wake up. I’m sure my ardore will settle down in a while, but in the meantime, this is a sort of high that doesn’t come along every day. It is a wave I am joyfully riding. I am certainly not going to slow down in order to do laundry!
After all, I’m making myself new clothes—I’ll wear those when everything else is dirty!
This is the dress I am currently working on, made from Joel’s old button down shirts and old sheets and pillow cases:
I kind of doubt that anyone is signed up to The Spiral Lab for sewing content, but in addition to sewing, I am also on a bit of a tear with zines and other DIY “craftivism” stuff, which I will write more about if folks are interested?
In the meantime: Don’t sweat the mess. Dive down rabbit holes and make nice stuff instead!
Let me know what you’re making these days:
The course will include four Monday afternoon (EDT) sessions (recorded) over five weeks in July & August, plus two Sunday body-doubling sessions.
The cost is £75 (about $100), or three equal payments over three months.
Marta, I have been thinking so much about this piece since I read it, chewing on the idea of cleaning when needed, as a reset to support my creativity, instead of out of shame that my mess would be seen and judged. This is such a profound concept, and I appreciate you sharing it! Ironically, my teen had friends over yesterday, and I was frantically running about on a shame-powered tidying spree, trying to mitigate the messes in my home, thinking with chagrin about how I was not following your sage counsel. But even having your ideas in my mind helped to loosen the hold shame had on me, and opened me up to the possibility of playing with cleaning motivated by a desire to care for myself, my creativity, and my loved ones, rather than relying on shame as fuel. Thank you again!
Thanks for your article. Dana k white has a new book on topic , I may not have the title correct: Jesus doesn’t care about your messy house.