If you have ever lived in the same space for an extended period of time (if you haven’t I sincerely hope that it's of your own free will) you have probably found yourself in a situation where your living areas have become covered in an impressive array of objects and when looked at from a distance could almost be called a mess. Even people who like to keep everything organized can fall victim to the clutter, although they will probably clean it up much more frequently than a normal person. Only the most devoted neat-freaks can escape, and I think I may know why.
This past week people have been cleaning out their rooms in preparation for going home for winter break, and every time someone passes through the common room of my floor with garbage bags, it's more than one and they’re always about to burst (myself included.) Not only that, but there have been very few times where I went into someone’s room since being in the dorm and I saw a desk that wasn’t covered with who-knows-what.
One might argue that it’s the size of the dorm rooms, making us fit a normal amount of things in a smaller space than we’re used to. However, if everyone was like I was, there was a way to fit everything in a neat and organized manner somewhere in the room, and my desk had plenty of usable space on it for the first week or so. Then for the first month trash was regularly thrown out once a week and an effort was made to keep things in the semblance of order. Slowly but surely you stop putting that mug back in its spot on the shelf, or keeping your papers in an organized pile. Soon every time you want to use your desk you have to clear off the other stuff that you were using there before, taking out the trash has moved on to being an every-two-weeks activity, and your desk chair is now reserved solely for your pile of sweaters. Sometimes you come back to your room and can’t do anything but lie down on your bed and chill on your phone because there would be too much effort to do anything else. Eventually, it becomes too much, and you go on a cleaning frenzy only to begin the cycle again.
Onto the why, I believe it doesn’t have anything to do with the space available or the individual habits of any person, seeing as it happens to anyone even in a house. Clutter is in fact, the natural response to living in an area for more than a couple of days because of our instinct to be efficient. If you start to take a closer look at the way things are in your area, you will notice that the cups and mugs are all in the same area, the papers in another, the pile of change in another, and so on. Everything has its place where it is going to be most convenient for you, and even though it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing organization, you will always eventually return to there. Some might call it laziness, and while it is true that this is the lazier option it holds some strength in the perspective that it is the most functional layout. There is always a need to be neat, and I am in no way saying that clutter is good, but I do believe that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon with a logical explanation.
