When Chaos Becomes Routine – My Life Between Paper Stacks and Thermodynamics

If I'm honest, being tidy isn't exactly one of my strengths. You can tell just by looking at my desk – it's buried under piles of paper and random stuff. I haven’t actually been able to work there for quite a while. That’s why I prefer using my husband’s desk, which is significantly more organized.

The desk of my husband - my dream?

I used to think that being messy was simply a bad habit. Something you should unlearn. A parenting failure, perhaps – not enough emphasis on cleanliness and order. But after diving into the Reiss Motivation Profile, I know better. It’s a personality model that explains how strongly people respond to different life motives. And it turns out that every motive has its pros and cons.

My tendency toward disorder has an upside: I’m flexible, good at improvising, and not easily rattled by the unexpected. People with a strong order motive – like my husband – get stressed out when plans change. A downside to that particular strength, if you ask me.

In everyday life, our differing motivational setups collide regularly. For example, whenever my husband explains – once again – how to load the dishwasher correctly. Because, of course, there’s only one right way to load a dishwasher! My standard comment usually defuses the situation with a laugh.

Back to my desk. Every time I’m looking for something – which is often – I curse the chaos and swear I’ll finally tidy everything up. I imagine a Zen-like room with no clutter, no piles of paper. And yes, I do feel like the mess drains me mentally. But here’s the problem: tidying up drains me just as much.

These clean-up operations usually go like this:

1. I move everything onto the bed – it’s the biggest surface.

2. I sort the piles of paper. Somehow, I end up with even more.

3. Now I’m supposed to put everything away – and that’s where it falls apart.

   
   

After sorting, I simply don’t have the mental energy to make decisions about what goes where. So I postpone the final step.

In the meantime, I arrange the stacks neatly on my dresser – and, since that’s not enough space, on the floor in front of it. I mean, I do want to sleep in my bed.

The next day, our maid comes. She’s surprisingly un-Indian when it comes to order and has her own unique system. The stacks get in her way while cleaning, so she puts them all back on the desk. Naturally, all my carefully created structure is lost – and I’m right back where I started.

Sadly, there’s no service here that will sort and file everything for you. Or so I thought. Turns out, there is a small company in Delhi offering Marie Kondo-style organization services. Not for free, of course. But at this point, I’m seriously considering it. My husband isn’t thrilled by the idea and thinks it’s a waste of money. Then again, he doesn’t have a problem with order.

My only comfort is knowing that increasing disorder is actually a law of nature. At least, that’s what the second law of thermodynamics says. And who am I to fight the laws of physics?

I certainly don’t have the energy for that.