If Your House Is a Mess, Nature Is Healing
A new way to think about the chaos of your household
Buried beneath the piles of psychic distress caused by the actual Covid-19 pandemic, there is another — and for many of us, more immediate — epidemic: mess. Specifically, the mess spreading through our homes.
As Anna Solomon, curator of the Unkempt Real Life Instagram project, wrote in the caption for a photograph of an impressive heap of laundry: “The scene here I’ll be the first to admit is not unusual for me… What’s less usual is my feeling of despair about it. Maybe because every other form of order in my life has exploded.”
Friends of mine in a Facebook group moan about the most upsetting messes in their homes: “The ever-full kitchen sink. The noise, the mess, the multiplying dishes… I hear it, I see it, I lament it all the time.” “Basement playroom. I can’t go down there. You can barely even walk on the floor.” “My husband piles things everywhere. Every once in a while I lose my shit.”
