My dear sister was sometimes critical of me because I have a lot of books. When I was ill someone decided to tidy it up and took my books out of the bookshelves: put them into boxes in a different room and told me,Your sitting room looks a lot better now that it’s in order. Then I was very distressed even angry. I couldn’t find anything.
That’s the conventional view that a room which is half empty with polished furniture and neat sofas and chairs is the perfect home however order to me is not about constant tidying up to the extent that you are not allowed to eat drink or almost breathe in someone’s living room because they’ve just cleaned it.
And of course I knew where all my books were and I knew where all my art books were
And I knew where the cookery boots were as well but it’s taken me a long time to find the books I need again.
I’m not finished the job yet.
So the deeper sort of order is where the owner of the room or the house has an internal map of where everything is which may not be apparent to a stranger or even to a sister.
Interestingly, there is an article today in some of the newspapers saying that experts have found that the desire for total orderliness and minimalism is driving some people crazy when they’re already busy with looking after their family working in a demanding job or a boring job or tiring job.
Because being judged is very painful and if you feel that everybody who comes to visit you is going to judge you on the number of possessions you have and the state of your house then you won’t be able to relax and enjoy their company
I expect one should follow the rule of
Do not take it personally
Yes we need a certain amount of order of the traditional kind. We need to wash our clothes we need to cook and wash up we need to make beds even to change the sheets but where’d you draw the line,?
I must confess that I was shocked when I was a student living in a bed sitter when one of my friends said she only changed sheets once a month.
At that point I was still doing what my mother did which was changing one sheet following the rule of top to bottom. As I got older and more tired and realized that if you are a clean person you might not need to change your sheets every week then that’s what I did… change them once a fortnight. And it’s nice to have clean sheets. So it’s a pleasure which might be worthwhile doing more frequently as long as it doesn’t make you ill and tired
In any case all the cleaning and tidying and washing used to be regarded as women’s work and of no value.
But in fact this work is of value despite my criticism of people who are over orderly and over clean.
As I said to my sister,
A rich person like the author Michael Frayne can afford a big house with lots of bookshelves and so tidiness to some extent is linked with money
For older people and those with asthma and other chronic conditions it may be very important to have a dust free and very clean home.
But it should not be regarded as a moral necessity.
I don’t know why some people feel impelled to judge others constantly.
Someone in my family criticizes another person if they get new furniture but really it wasn’t their business
It wasn’t causing any trouble financially so if this person wanted to have new furniture every five years or 10 years rather than waiing till it fell apart then to me that seemed a reasonable choice because life is not very long and if you don’t like your furniture to get worn out and dirty and you want to get a new sofa or whatever that is your choice and you are entitled to it if you can afford it. And that’s one of the problems about poverty that peopke are not only short of food and heating bills are frightening but also they they have no choice about whether they want a new bed or a fridge or freezer because they can’t afford it anyway even if it’s necessary.
There’s a lot of pain in being poor and it is not acknowledged by many of us. And it’s not surprising that mental illness is more common in the poor.
And if you were a powerful person people will not criticize you for being untidy because they’ll be frightened or you.
Still I would not wish to live the way that I the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch lived because you have to recognize that if your floor is covered in rubbish you are at risk of getting rodents etc
So I’m not advocating for complete ignoring of dirt and mess but saying that having a few piles of books in your living room it’s not really something to be ashamed of.
If I went into a room like that I would long to look at the books and be interested in the person.
I suppose we women don’t always realise what stress we are suffering instead we feel guilty because our home is not perfect like the ones on the television programmes we’ve been having recently.
Since my home was tidied I found it much harder to write because my hands reach out for a book in a shelf but it’s not there. I spend time trying to find it and its fellow books which used to be so near me all the time.
If you want to help another person don’t assume that they want their house to be tidy in the way your house is tidy. That they want all their kitchen utensils in a jug on the windowsill because what looks disorderly to one person is actually the order of somebody else. That’s somebody else is different from you. That they are entitled to their own way of life
And also you may need to tell them that you cannot just borrow books from the public library because they do not have books that are only readable by a small group of people about things like philosophy history poetry music art. It’s become even more true in recent years when governments have cut back on money and the local council is running out of money and so they closed the libraries or they buy fewer books.
And if you want the book as a reference book as you might do if you are a writer or an academic or an artist then borrowing it from the public library is not really sufficient. That’s why people steal sometimes. And that’s selfish but on the other hand is understandable if you can’t afford to buy something that you really need badly.
How my heart sings 