Bless this mess

On learning to embrace my floors

Is there anything more maddening than losing something inside your own house? 

There is, of course, and it’s buying something to replace the thing you lost inside your own house – but the losing of the thing comes a close second.

In my family we call this experience ‘the Chipmunk sweatshirt’, in reference to a sweatshirt featuring erstwhile toothy rockers Alvin, Simon and Theodore, which my mum bought for my brother some time in the early 90s and then lost in the house before he could wear it. 

She searched high and low for that sweatshirt. Inside all manner of knotted pine furniture; beneath the VCR trolley; behind dado rails and swagged curtains etc, but it never resurfaced. Occasionally we used to think we could hear it moving around at night. Squeaking. 

Anyway, family lore has it now that when an object disappears, suddenly and nonsensically, it has ‘gone to join the Chipmunk sweatshirt’.

Items that have gone to join the Chipmunk sweatshirt in my own home of late include: at least a dozen tiny hair bobbles, every pen I have ever enjoyed, half a dozen pairs of sunglasses, a notebook featuring what was almost certainly a Pulitzer-worthy paragraph of something about something that has since entirely vanished from my brain, and all of my daughter’s summer sleep sacks. 

My husband and I both took it in turns to spend an angry, sweaty hour in our extremely hot loft, prodding through bags and bags and boxes and boxes in search of the summer sleep sacks that literally must be there somewhere, before concluding they are not there anywhere and we don’t even have the consolation of blaming each other. The summer sleep sacks from last year probably wouldn’t even fit her anymore, because last year she was about half the length she is now, but that is not the point. The point is that there is nowhere else in the world they can be except under this roof, in this not-large flat, and yet we have lost them. Or they’ve been taken to the underworld by Alvin et al. Do, do. Dodododo. 

Possibly you don’t have this problem, and you know where everything in your house is? Maybe you’re shaking your head in confusion, thinking “but they’d be clearly labelled ‘summer sleep sacks (too small)’ and filed away in the linen cupboard?” 

Maybe you’re one of the people I try to forget exist in the real world, until you invite me casually into your home with no notice, or say something like “I literally can’t sleep until I’ve bleached the sink each night!”. Or until last week, when an invite for the Clean & Tidy Home Show 2024 (with headline guest Marie Kondo) landed in my inbox. 

Now, I’m no stranger to the world of niche consumer shows. In my earlier life as a food journalist, I spent many hours getting dehydrated in overlit exhibition centres, surrounded by coachloads of bloggers from the Home Counties excited to find a new nozzle for their favourite piping bag. I understand that capitalism must keep finding new ways to turn our purest joys into piles of cash. I know the jig. 

But I’ll admit it made me stop and blink a few times to discover there’s a whole one of these devoted to cleaning and tidying up. That people would actually buy tickets, and travel to somewhere as wildly unplaceable as the ExCeL (no ‘Centre’, by the way, we don’t say the ‘Centre’ anymore – it is simply ExCeL, a state of mind, Xanadu for people who get horny for free tote bags) through sheer passion for putting things in cupboards and wiping pan scum off the hob. 

My interiors aesthetic (Photo: @theroyalfamily)

You might think I sound scornful, and at first I thought I was too. Then I realised that my scorn, much like the multiple throws on my sofa, was actually concealing something stickier and much harder to remove. Shame. I am scornful of people with clean and tidy homes because I am ashamed that I do not have one. 

(I’m putting the ‘clean’ in there quite deliberately, because plenty of people will talk about having an untidy house. It’s one of the socially acceptable flaws, to be a messy person, as long as the mess is composed of things like vintage candle holders and old copies of The New Yorker. “Oh, I don’t mind clutter!” they will say, because they are a bohemian and want you to know it. “As long as it’s clean.” 

Fewer people will confess to having a slightly grubby house. We are a brave minority. And don’t get me wrong, I think I would also sleep better in a home that isn’t lightly coated in hair and crumbs, but apparently it is not in my gift to achieve.) 

“Hey, you have a toddler!” people might feel compelled to say, which is sweet – and why do we even have kids if not to use them as tiny scapegoats for our chaos? – but the thing is, I have never lived in a Clean & Tidy Home. In fact, now I have to regularly Dettol a highchair and move choking hazards out of arm’s reach, there’s an argument to say it’s cleaner and tidier than it was before.  

I don’t think my parents (who are both reading this, hi guys, drink some water) would argue too strenuously if I said that domestic fussiness just isn’t in my DNA. We are not Clean & Tidy Home people. We’re knick-knack people, piles-of-post people, has-anybody-seen-that-Chipmunk-sweatshirt people. It’s the kind of laissez-faire living that the very posh have used to signal their Old Money status for centuries, except we do it without the poshness or the money. My mother loves to quote Quentin Crisp: “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.”' 

Still, none of this is to say I’ve made my peace with not having a Clean & Tidy Home. In fact I’m caught between pillar and post (both mossy). I care enough to feel embarrassed about it, but not enough to actually lug the hoover out of the hall cupboard. For a while I felt guilty about having a cleaner we couldn’t really afford, then she left and now I feel guilty about wanting to hire another one when instead I could simply… clean. One of my worst recurring daydreams involves me being involved in a serious accident, or dying, and my friends and family entering the flat without me being able to tidy it first. About five years ago my friend Caroline opened our bathroom cabinet without warning to look for a tampon, and I have only just recovered.   

My husband, perhaps it goes without saying, feels none of these things. There is a lengthy investigation needed on the phenomenon of men who can’t see dust – if Jon Ronson’s available? – but I do feel confident in saying that statistically, they’re less likely to see judgement. 

“Our friends don’t care,” he will shrug every time I have a hosting meltdown, and I’ll throw a musty sponge at his head because he is right. 

Of course he is right. I don’t care about their messy houses either. In fact if I go to someone’s house and it’s a total shit tip, if anything it makes me like them more. And yet the shame still clings, like that special film of sticky grime on top of the extractor hood in the kitchen. 

All this ties into a larger issue that I like to call Scruffbag Complex, ie. the deep-rooted fear that I am just an irredeemable scruffbag. I worry I am person who is destined, despite best efforts, to always have limescale in my kettle, sand in my handbag, food on my face and deodorant marks down my top, while everyone else breezes around smelling of lilacs. 

Sure, there are crumbs of comfort. Every so often those photos of Sophia Coppola’s office do the rounds and I can tell myself I am not a slob, I’m a creative genius. From time to time, real people’s rough-and-ready homes will fight their way up like weeds between all the perfect vases of peonies on my feeds, and I can exhale for a little bit. I found this Insta post from Natasha Lunn and the related article deeply healing. 

But it doesn’t stop me wondering if a different life could be out there. A life where surfaces gleam, visitors can be invited in freely without notice or apology, and we don’t lose a whole tote bag of summer sleep sacks UNDER OUR OWN DAMN ROOF. And if there is, could it be mine for a £10 ticket (£15 for the whole weekend)?

“You are invited. You are welcome. You are one of us,” reads the copy on the Clean & Tidy Home Show website, which sounds very normal and not at all like a sex cult.

It then promises attendees “the tips, tricks, tools and motivation you need to clean, organise and take control of your home.” 

Motivation, you say? Is it possible a day at the ExCeL will not only fill my tote with cleaning products but my heart with the desire to use them? Will Marie Kondo spark a joy to organise the Tupperware graveyard? If I buy a VIP pass, will Mrs Hinch herself take me into a private room and scream “DUST YOUR DRAWERS YOU LAZY HARLOT” in my face? If I breathe in enough Zoflora fumes, will the Chipmunks appear and dance the dance of a thousand lost hair bobbles? 

Sadly the Clean & Tidy Home Show isn’t on until October, so I must remain a grotty little goblin until then. But in the meantime we’re taking the most drastic possible measure to clean up the house, which is: selling it and starting again in a different one. 

I’ve given up on the summer sleep sacks by now – but if that lost notebook resurfaces during the move, you’re in for a treat.