Following Clean Your Room by Jordan Peterson
I’ve followed “Clean Your Room” by Dr. Jordan Peterson and here are the results.
Let me start with a simple question: What do you do when life falls into chaos?
That’s the exact question that I’ve been asking myself lately.
I was unsatisfied with my life and it seemed that everything was spiring out of control and I hated that.
So as many young men with no clue on what to do, I’ve searched all over the internet for a possible solution. I’ve stumbled upon a lot of great advice, but the one that struck me the most was “Clean your room” by dr Peterson due to its simplicity.
So I’ve decided to give it a shot and here’s how it affected my life and thinking.
First of all, Why Cleaning Your Room?
Dr. Peterson points out the fact that the chaos in your room is the physical manifestation of the chaos.
So in order to reorganize our thoughts, we have to organize our living space.
This is a very old concept that derives from ancient Chinese philosophy, where we manifest the thoughts that are deeply ingrained in our unconscious mind.
I’ve was aware of this concept. Orderliness is deeply ingrained into the Chinese culture, but I’ve never really internalized it because I was missing the Why of the matter.
How to Clean Your Room
This process might feel overwhelming and complicated, especially for a hardcore hoarder as I used to be.
The best way to go about is to start organizing the bigger items first and then go and fix the details.
What I did is:
- First, clear all the objects from the surfaces (desks, tops, and chairs) and sort the things that you want to keep and the things you can throw away.
Then separate what’s left in different categories ( clothes, books, hardware, paper) and assign a space in your room for each of the categories, where you will only keep the things from that category. - Organize your wardrobe, take everything out and get rid of the old clothes that you don’t wear anymore.
You’ll be surprised how many old horrible sweaters are lurking around in your closet!
Then again divide the closed into different sections and put only one type of item.
For example: left part only hang coats and jackets, middle for shirts and right for sweaters on the top shelf and pants on the bottom shelf.
Fold everything neatly so it’s easy to find and ready to go. - Clean everything, mop the floor and so on.
- The final step, get into the habit of making your bed every day.
This is just a rough guide. Depending on the level of the mess it can take from hours to days.
You don’t have to do everything in one sitting.
Just set aside some time each day and do it little by little.
Personally, it took me more than two weeks to find the time to rearrange everything and take out the trash.
That’s how much of a mess I was.
How it affected me
For the first couple of days, it felt really strange almost as if this is not me.
My subconscious was trying to get to the previous stage, by littering stuff around, but now I’m more mindful about it and clean it away.
After that, It became my new status quo and a started to see the benefits.
Strange as it may sound, most of my mental fog went away.
In the past, I could never study or focus in my room, so I would have to go to the library.
Now I can work hours at my desk and lose track of time when I get in a state of flow,
where thoughts and ideas would gush out like water from a fountain.
I realized that all the things around me were secretly robbing my mental energy.
Pay close attention to the permanent items you bring in, it might not be worth it
My sleep has improved.
I’ve always struggled with sleep and suffered from insomnia.
This was made worse by me chilling out in the bed during the day.
By making my bad every day, I prevented myself from getting back into bed and nap or mindlessly checking my phone.
This has drastically improved my sleep and now I associate my bed only with bedtime.
Given the results, I’ll keep implementing and documenting here Dr. Peterson’s advice.
0 Comments