Make space for creativity
Someone (maybe it was Jordan Peterson – my husband does firmly abide by his rules and regurgitates them to me at regular intervals) once said that you should make one room in your home beautiful. As a someone who lives with three little ones who are hell-bent on making our entire house resemble an episode of Hoarders, I both love and loathe this philosophy.
Love because how truly decadent it would be to have a beautiful room in one’s house in which (I assume) to sit and ponder life (I don’t know about you, but I’m envisioning damask wallpaper and a velvet chaise in some lairy colour). Loath because a beautiful room means either a rigorous cleaning regime on my part that would put an abrupt halt to my current lazy-girl-cleaning style or putting a firm no-kids-allowed rule on said room despite our family of five being crammed into an already too-small house (although, as I would select my office for the beautiful room, an embargo on the frequent movement of kids in and out of my so-called creative space is rather tempting).
But there is something to be said about Jordan’s (or whoever it was) notion of having a beautiful space. Now I’m not sure on the finer points of the rule (you’d have to ask my husband about those) but surely there is something to be gained by having an organised/tidy/visually appealing space in which to be creative. The sort of space that is missing the endless trail of lego, crayons, barbies, hair ties, random items of clothing, half-eaten bananas/pikelets/peanut butter sandwiches (or any other half-eaten food), cockroaches and possibly small rodents (due to the aforementioned food), and laundry baskets (my children use them as small boats and they are frequently sailing the seven seas in them, many of which apparently reside within the four walls of my office. Who knew I worked in such a seafaring space?).
Surely an environment with less clutter equates to a head with less clutter in which one’s creativity is free to roam (or something equally as poetic). In short, I am in much agreeance that, should I have the energy to create a beautiful room within which to write, I would surely find that the muse would be much more inclined to visit me as opposed to being utterly repulsed by the rotting bunch of chewed up grapes in the corner and steering well clear.
The moral of this blog: clean up your workspace.
Photo credit: iStock
