12 Struggles Only Messy Neat-Freaks Will Understand | The Odyssey Online
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Student Life

12 Struggles Only Messy Neat-Freaks Will Understand

Being unorganized can be tough when you're obsessed with order.

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12 Struggles Only Messy Neat-Freaks Will Understand
Louise Lyngbo

It's a conflict of interest and it's terrible. Mess stresses you out, but you're not physically or mentally capable of keeping your organization on point and that will infinitely haunt you. You are constantly seeking ways to be neat, and go through periods of great organization, and times of not-so-great organization. It's a life of tremendous struggle, but you can live through it (but you may have to spend a lot of money on organization supplies first.)

1. When people automatically assume you're the most organized person ever.

It makes a lot of sense—you appear so calm and collected all the time, you constantly carry a planner, you line your pencils up perfectly parallel on your desk. But the joke's on them because that's not you at all.

2. Walking into your room and not being able to find something because someone thought it would be nice to "tidy up."

Um no. Just because my belongings are grouped into different piles around my room does not mean it needs to be cleaned. I know where my things are, and moving them will highly distress me. Don't do it. Just don't.

3. Internally dying at the sight of other people's messy houses.

Walking into someone's room where their clutter is everywhere makes you cringe. It's not hypocritical. Yours isn't nearly as bad. Of course not.

4. When you make an effort to clean, and it gets messy in .0000156 seconds.

Sometimes you just get the urge to clean, but all that goes to shambles when you start living normally again.

5. Trying to calm your neat-freak tendencies by being organized at the beginning of each school year.

Starting the school-year off organized is always fun, especially since in a couple weeks your binders will be mixed up, the color coded pen system will your planner look like Christmas, and you will just end up with random stacks of papers.

6. Going to the container store and buying different bins to neatly store your belongings, only to stuff everything into one bin.

You experiment with different organizational strategies, but none come to avail.

7. When you try to help people organize their stuff and they don't follow your exact orders.

Since you can't seem to organize your own life, why not branch out and use your neat-freak skills to help others? But make sure they take notes on exactly what to do, or else you will freak out.

8. That internal dance you do when you handwrite something perfectly.

The worst thing ever is when you are writing something in pen and you misspell a word or want to add something and you have to cross stuff out and scrunch words in. The biggest feat is writing an entire paper with no mistakes—a paper in pristine condition deserves some dancing.

9. Your annual New Year's resolution to be organized utterly fails within three days.

You try so hard, but it's just not possible. Great way to start off the new year!

10. Spending all your money on organization supplies, hoping it will spark some organizational skill within you.

Yeah, apparently spending $50 on planner supplies and special pens doesn't mean you will automatically become the organized planner Youtubers. Oh, the envy.

11. Making to-do lists detailed down to the minute, only to lose the paper and not complete any of your tasks.

It's always nice to spend thirty minutes planning out your day and then not even doing what you were supposed to do.

12. Silent screaming when someone says they want to hang out "sometime" without actually setting a date.

No. Let's plan it now. You need to save the date in your planner right now, but first you'll have to find where you put it.


Maybe next year will be the year you learn how to be organized, but for now you'll just have to internally struggle a little. Or a lot.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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