Do people actually get stressed by messy rooms?

My room is small with minimal storage and gets claustrophobic when it's messy. That's not to say I keep it as tidy as I'd like, but I do prefer being there when I've just cleaned.

But I think the main part of my discomfort when my living space is messy is worrying that someone will come in and I'll be embarrassed. Or if it's a shared space, frustration and anxiety over division of household labour/perceived inconsiderate...ness.
(...My parents are good people but they have some issues surrounding the things above and they're also proto-hoarders. I've been training myself to just get rid of stuff, it's fine, so I think clutter has become more irritating to me than it used to be.)

So it's not really the fact that the room is messy that upsets me, it's the social-relationship-tension that it evokes in my head.

 

I don't mind mess on benches/desks or what have you, but a lot of stuff in the middle of the floor bothers me. I don't like walking on things or having to tip toe around stuff in order to navigate a room. Also food in beds definitely makes me scream internally.

 

Spoiler

Clutter, particularly where there's no open surfaces for putting things on, or where getting at things requires moving other things.

Little things on floor, irritating my feet. Where a freshly carpet is something because of happily running feet back and forth, a floor with dirt and food bits is anti happy.

A cluttered room full of incomplete projects remind me to be sad and ashamed for not having done more.

If I have to make space to make food then I probably won't, and I'll just have something easy and less fulfilling.

Two main ways: when mess makes unwanted obstacles to Doing The Thing, and when the mess is physically uncomfortable.

 

Points loudly with capslock, this

 

@amberbydreams Same hat! Right down to the tension with my mother! I don't notice mess at all, sometimes even when it's gotten to the point where I'm tripping over the laundry on the floor or eating at my computer desk because there's no room for a plate on my table. When I came back from a work trip, the suitcase sat on the floor of my bedroom for five months and I just stepped around it when I needed to get to the closet instead of, y'know, taking the last 3 things out of it and putting it away.

I've gotten slightly better at cleaning stuff up on a regular basis with Habitica dailies set to every week or every two weeks. There's one for dog hair cleanup (sweeping, vacuuming, and changing the sheets), one for unfucking the kitchen, one for cleaning the bathroom, and one for going through the pile of mail and trash that tends to accumulate on my table. I need the daily to remind me that the task even exists!

 

omg same hat!!! I havent moved my suitcase from when I set it down around the end of june when I got back from japan c| it'll probly stay there till I pack up for minnesota in 3 weeks, i mean why bother moving it at this point.

and in college yeahh, my dorm doesn't have a dining table or anything so almost every meal I have is eaten on my bed. Places like my art desk and dresser never stay clean for long enough to be utilized in the intended way (tho tbh we dont have any comfy chairs so why would I use my desk anyways) so all my projects are done on my bed too. I sorta live on my bed tbh.

This is why I didn't mind having a room so small you could only walk 3 steps in it in hong kong. who needs other space? All ya need is a bed (and despite packing one carry-on-sized suitcase and a shoulderbag only, I still managed to clutter the whole room)

 

every single photo shared so far has immediately pinged me as completely clean and i've had to search for the clutter c|;

 

Yeah. You guys would probably see my room and faint... though through no fault of your own; I am the gross clutter queen :V When I was younger my parents tried to make me clean up regularly but now I have given up and the floor and every surface is strewn with trash and miscellaneous objects, a lot of them broken and all of them kinda grossdirty.

 

...see to me those pictures are pictures of completely clean rooms

 

I feel like maybe the "clean" part of it is what throws people off? Because clean can mean a variety of things to different people. Clean can be uncluttered, but it can also be, like, spotless + scrubbed + sanitized (or the equivalent - like, a vacuumed rug or floor). So a cluttered room might be clean in the sense that there's not dirt everywhere or stains on the walls or mold growing or whatever. For me, at least, clutter is not too bad as long as everything is hygienic and isn't grimy or gross or dusty/hairy/whatever (although like I said, sometimes it gets to me).

I don't know if this is even a useful distinction, but I've been thinking about this since last night and these are my conclusions.

 

I guess so- grime is even harder for me to spot though ;-; i don't notice if floors are dirty unless i'm specifically looking for that, which i only look for if mom's having company over and is already freaking out over the fact that the computers that i will continue to use until the guests arrive are still on the main floor, where I use them l:

like. Freshmen year of college I only ever remembered to clean the bathroom once every 6 weeks or so. that's about how long grime has to build up for me to notice

 

I don't like Stuff On Floor and I will try to keep clutter on surfaces like desks etc. contained - I have a particular container designated the Crap Catcher because my brain likes when stuff is organized but can just go *static crackle* when it comes to finding a place for things. Some clutter is cool - like, an empty cup and some magazines and controllers on the coffee table is situation normal, my dog's leash all tangled up, etc., and my bed definitely doesn't get made every day - but yeah, anything more than that makes me irrationally upset. If I don't have to see it I don't care, but it does stress me out. Not to the degree it does my boyfriend or another friend of mine, but a pile of dirty dishes on the sink is definitely an unconscious spoon drain. Right now I'm in the middle of unpacking which means everything is just *tiny internal screams* and I tend to stick to the rooms that are unpacked and look nice when I'm not actively unpacking. And it sucks when I don't have the spoons to do something about it.

 

i have a weird view on clean because my grandma is the type who would find a speck of dust after a huge cleaning day and be like "clean it again" but my mom is the type who doesn't throw away stuff "just in case" and we've always lived in places too small for the amount of people in it so i've learned that clean = how good you are at stacking things and erasing any sign of dust or dirt. i love big open spaces but i can and have happily functioned in closet sized areas too (of my own choice, closets are just nice to sleep in).

that candle room does bother me though, for one there are WAY TOO MANY FUCKING CANDLES and you generally want to pick a wall and work from there when you have more shit than you have storage and no say in the matter. that way you have a bit of open space to breathe.

 

my apartment, especially my bedroom, is pretty cluttered, but stuff has a place that it goes and as long as there's not garbage or things on the floor where I want to walk, it's fine. kind of stressful in that I know it'd take a bunch of work to sort it out and neaten things up, though. and stress that my landlady will see the mess.

eta: ive briefly whined about my college roommates but holy woah they would let things get more messy than i can tolerate, and then go on a cleaning spree when they had people over. and then back to plates on the floor, empty chocolate milk cartons on the floor, their laptops on the living room floor....

 

.......my laptop and cintiq always rest on the living room floor rn when they're not in use. right next to the couch where i use them..

 

Stuff on the floor is too dangerous. I *will* step on it eventually. Endtable with a drawer :)

 

fair. the house is very un-crowded right now, it's giant and only 3 people live here rn, so no one but me really steps in that place.. my parents sit on the other couch