Unravelling... from being unorganised
A beautiful disaster or disorganised chaos? My journey to reclaiming structure at home.
Hi, I’m Holly — chaos personified. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but if you peek into my personal life, you’d see what I mean. We’re often told that “a tidy home equals a tidy mind,” and while I don’t live in squalor (I have standards!), I constantly grapple with the demands of life and the elusive goal of making my home a well-oiled machine. Marie Kondo says everything should have a place and only the joyful should stay. But seriously — where are we supposed to find the time to give everything a place in the chaos of modern life?
Now, you might be wondering: is this disarray spilling into my professional life too? The answer is no — absolutely not. At work, I’m a spreadsheet-wielding, colour-coding machine. Diaries, calendars, checklists — I have them all, and I use them religiously. Professionally, I thrive on structure, and I can’t function without my systems keeping me in check.
And yet, at home, it’s a different story. The other night, as I lay in bed reading
, I came across a line that made me feel profoundly seen: “You might assume that since I’m messy, I must be disorganised too — but in contrast, my (writing) process is somewhere between methodical and neurotic.”A sigh of relief escaped me — I wasn’t alone in this paradox.
I’ve often wondered how I can be so meticulously organised in one area of my life and yet so unravelling in another. I forget birthdays, show up late to social gatherings, and wing it daily when it comes to meal planning. Meanwhile, I marvel at my friends with their chalkboard midweek dinner plans, perfectly coordinated family calendars, and spare-clothes-packed playdates. These are the people with labelled jars in their kitchens — the ones who seem to have cracked the code for both work and home.
Can you be organised at work and at home? Or is there only so much organisational energy to go around? Maybe I’ve spent almost two decades as a journalist relying on deadlines to keep me motivated, and since there’s no looming due date for tidying up my life, I keep kicking that can down the road.
My husband loves to joke that I don’t tidy — I hide things. And honestly, he’s not wrong. I’m an “out of sight, out of mind” kind of gal. But this year, I’ve decided to make a change. I’ve even added “a tidy, organised home” to my vision board for 2025, right next to vague aspirations about writing a book and travelling the world.
The truth is, I get an undeniable serotonin boost when I start organising. When my cousin bought me drawer organisers from IKEA, I was elated. My son’s room went from a chaotic black hole of toys and clothes to a neatly folded haven of order. This month, we’ve gone even bigger: tackling the spare room and the garage. We’ve been binning, donating, and keeping a dizzying array of objects. Who needs a gym workout when you’re dragging a chest of drawers up and down the stairs?
But here’s the kicker: for every thing we organise, two more things seem to appear in its place. It’s like we tugged at a loose thread and now the whole jumper is unravelling. Right now, the spare room looks worse than when we started. So, naturally, I’ve done the sensible thing — I’ve shut the door on it. For now.
Crisell’s musings have done more than just make me feel seen — they’ve given me hope. If my professional rituals, routines, and my undying love of a deadline can keep my career on track, maybe they can help me in my desire to write a book. Whether I’ll be writing in a tidy, organised room is an entirely different question.
Just like there’s no single formula for writing a novel, maybe there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for having it together at home either. Sure, some of it could be chalked up to personality quirks (hi, out-of-sight-out-of-mind me), but it’s hard to ignore the societal pressures at play.
Modern women may no longer be expected to stay home and keep everything pristine, but there’s still this lingering expectation that we’re the default gender to “keep house.” And then there’s the toxic social media trend of Tradwives — those perfectly polished homemakers who glorify domestic life. Picture it: vintage dresses, flawless make-up, homemade bread, all while balancing a baby on their hip. And let’s not forget the viral sensation of women showing up demure and mindful, “having it all together.”
Meanwhile, I feel very... not that. I feel very chaotic, very messy, and very much in the realm of “just keeping my shit together.” Very, well… human.
But I hold onto Brené Brown’s words: “It’s messy in the middle, but it’s also where the magic happens.” Maybe the magic isn’t in achieving perfection but in learning to live with — and even embrace — the imperfection. A life with flexibility and flow allows room for spontaneity, creativity, and growth, after all.
So perhaps it’s time to stop chasing the impossible dream of having it all perfectly together. Maybe I can lean into the chaos, find joy in the process, and sprinkle in a few more IKEA storage hacks along the way.