Jennifer McCartney - The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place: The Art of Being Messy

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

MARK TWAIN

My friends and family fell enthusiastically under the influence of the twelve billion-copy bestseller, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and they all failed, time and again. Its an ugly thing to witness. Oh, you wish you hadnt thrown out your grandmothers crocheted bikini or your sons ashtray he made in the shape of a leg of lamb? Too fucking bad. Theyre gone, thanks to your weird ideas about tidying.

Break free from the bonds of tidiness and triumph over the boring forces of uniformity and predictability. Every tidy home looks the sameparticularly when theres nothing left in itbut a messy home, now thats a better way to live. Better, more honorable, and truer to the American Dream in so many ways.

America is the land of opportunity, and the land of acquisition. Canada even more so because of all the snow-related accessories. Get rid of your stuff is a ridiculous suggestion. Its cowardly, too. Sure, its easier to go through your drawers and randomly throw away all your shitsorry, selectively keep the shit you feel joyful aboutthan it is to deal with whatever bullshit week youre having. But isnt it better to deal with your problems and not blame shit, as if the reason youre not getting more oral sex has to do with your husbands massive tie collection? Cleaning is the easy way out. Do not be seduced by that. (But before you deal with your problems, lets try solving them quickly by firing up your laptop and buying three or more things to make yourself feel better.)

Everyone likes to buy things and inherit things and collect things, and have said things around. Science has even proven that having a die of Zika virus or from unwashed spinach or, lets face it, probably heart disease.

Just how fucking dedicated must you be to a tidy abode? Have you been brainwashed into believing that wanting to have shit, and not worrying where it goes, means theres something wrong with you? That you ought to be devastated if you and your place will never be featured on Goop or Martha Stewart Living or Apartment Therapy? Reject the KonMari mindset; it will only bring shame and guilt upon your household when you ultimately fail.

And heres the biggest load of crap: that being tidy will actually improve your emotional life. Anger issues? Too much stuff. Unhappy marriage? Too much stuff. Cant sleep? Stuff! Problems with your digestion? Its not glutenits all your fucking stuff. Look, you know who was very tidy? Patrick Bateman, the serial murderer, from American Psycho. Also, Mussolini was a very tidy man. He loved filing papers. Ted Bundy? Neat as fuck. Now ask yourself, what kind of company do you want to keep?

In this book, Im going to provide you with my own system for living a full life, called the FREE Method. It stands for nothing. Frozen Rogaine Eggs Eggs? Fancy Riding Eve Ensler? Sure. But freedom is amazing and we should all strive for it; otherwise well end up fapping our lives away like the FAPpers (Fatally Addicted to Purging [your belongings, not your lunch]). In this book, I will help you transform your life so that youll never struggle with cleanliness again. I will break you of the urge to tidy as hard as Tonya Hardings goons whacked Nancy Kerrigans kneecap. Throwback reference.

Its time for FAP deprogramming. Some of the KonMari guidelines should make you shudder (if youre a person who is alive and not susceptible to cults, anyway). With this handy chart, Ill compare and contrast the beliefs of the FAPs and the FREE.

Books that you love to read

FAP Books are clutter. Tear out only the pages you like and keep them in a file. Recycle the rest.

FREE Dont be a fucking idiot.

Old baking dish that reminds you of your mother and childhood tuna casseroles

FAP Ditch it. Who needs Mom? Your mother isnt actually a casserole dish. Get it?

FREE Are you still making tuna casseroles? Youll need a dish for that, lovely Midwestern housewife from 1970.

All of your socks

FAP You only need a few pairs of socks, and you should roll them carefully into little swirls. If you fold them any other way youre kind of an idiot and your socks will be sad.

FREE Socks dont have feelings.

Not only do FAPpers require their followers to toss out most of their worldly possessions, keeping only possessions that arouse themI mean, spark pleasurefollowers are also encouraged to talk to those items. Do you have time to empty your purse every day, fold it, place it on a shelf, and thank it for its service?

Lets all chill the fuck out.

DISCLAIMER: SELF-HELP BOOKS ARE BULLSHIT.

Books dont solve problems. Alcohol can help and drugs are certainly a good solution, but what color is your parachute? Really? Can you learn to think like a man? Win friends and influence people? Harness the power of now? Fuck off. Even established self-help books like the Bible, the Quran, and the Book of Mormon (based on the popular Broadway play) are still limited in their ability to solve all your problems because they are fucking books. Books dont fix you. I am not promising to fix you. Indeed, my goal is to destroy any desire you have to help yourself or anyone you know, especially when that desire comes in the form of being neat and tidy, which, lets face it, is a passing desire most of the time anyway.

on television fuck up but then also get all their shit together. Same thing with seeing someone make an amazing rose petal cake out of meringue and baby pandas breath. Theres nothing wrong with wanting to improve your station in life or making changes to things youre unhappy with, I guess. But be wary of neat slogans and books that promise life-changing magic. The only real magic in the world is from unicorns and the high you get from poppers.