The Life-changing Magic of a Little Bit of Mess

DEDICATION

For Kylie, a person living bravely with neatness

CONTENTS

Dedication

An apology from the publisher

A note from the author

PART ONE: THE JOY OF MESS

Introduction: I clean, therefore I am

One: Nature abhors a vacuum (cleaner): debunking the myths of mess

Two: Storm in an unwashed teacup: nobody cares about your mess

Three: Every mess has a silver lining: the rewards of imperfection

Four: Get stuffed: why you should stop throwing out your things

Five: It’s better to be messy than sorry: the perils of home organisation

PART TWO: A GUIDE TO DOMESTIC IMPERFECTION

Six: To clean or not to clean, that is the question?; Or, how much housework should you do?

Seven: If it ain’t broke, don’t clean it: the cautionary tales

Eight: Mess loves company: how to delegate

Nine: A broom in the hand is worth two in the bush: equipment

Ten: Laugh and the world laughs with you, clean and you clean alone: how to manage your household

Eleven: Be the mess you want to see in the world: some notes for the mess-challenged

Twelve: The glass is always cleaner on the other side: banishing judgement

Conclusion: The five stages of mess

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Kerri Sackville

Copyright

AN APOLOGY FROM THE PUBLISHER

DEAR READER,

Many of you will have seen our promotional material for a forthcoming inspirational book on home management. It was advertised in our newsletter late last year as a ‘New domestic Bible from one of this country’s most inspirational women’.

You may therefore be surprised and confused to see that we at HarperCollins have published this book, The Life-changing Magic of a Little Bit of Mess, instead of, say, How to Sanitise Your Home Using Only Water and a Positive Mindset, or The Transformational Power of Throwing All Your Things Away, or Heal Your Pain with Housework.

To clarify, the book you are holding in your hands is the result of a very slight error on the part of one of our junior editors, whose name we cannot print due to ongoing litigation. You see, just over a year ago, we at HarperCollins became enamoured of the work of a prominent social-media influencer in the aspirational home-management space. This influencer – who home-schools her seven children while running her multi-million-dollar kale juice business – shot to fame when photos of her stunning, all-white house and breathtaking glass pantry went viral.

With an Instagram following of over two million, this influencer is one of the leading voices of domestic artistry in the country. We at HarperCollins were keen to offer her a book deal, so that she could bring her message of attainable perfection to a new audience keen to live their best lives in their most pristine homes.

Unfortunately, this influencer has a rather similar-sounding name to another media personality, Kerri Sackville, a ‘lifestyle’ writer with a significantly smaller following. In a deeply regrettable mix-up, the junior HarperCollins editor charged with approaching the influencer accidentally approached Ms Sackville instead. (We are legally obliged to note that this editor was severely exhausted after staying up all night reorganising her pantry.) By the time we realised the junior editor’s mistake, Ms Sackville had signed the book contract.

Now, Kerri Sackville is a competent writer, but she is not what one would call ‘inspirational’, particularly when it comes to the realm of home management. It is well documented that Kerri destroyed her own oven in her first and only attempt to clean it, did a television interview from her bedroom with her wardrobe door open and her bras in full view, and once had a serious weevil infestation in her kitchen. We at HarperCollins champion writers who make all sorts of life choices but, really, no one aspires to have weevils.

Still, the contract was signed, and we are legally obliged to publish, so here is Kerri’s book. The junior editor has since left HarperCollins and is selling her own range of bespoke Mason jars. As for the inspirational influencer with the white house and glass pantry . . . well, she has deactivated her Instagram account after a plagiarism scandal involving hashtags and pantry liners, so it’s probably all for the best.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I WAS SURPRISED and delighted to be asked by HarperCollins to write an inspirational book on home management. To be honest, until I was approached by the HarperCollins editor, I hadn’t considered myself to be an inspirational writer. More specifically, I hadn’t considered myself to be an inspirational person. I haven’t donated a kidney, or climbed Everest on one leg, or raised millions of dollars for charity, or saved a child from a speeding train. (I did once rescue a baby who had fallen out of his pram, but it was my own baby, and he fell out because I’d forgotten to strap him in, so I’m fairly sure that doesn’t count as heroic.)

I’ve certainly not regarded myself as inspirational on the domestic front. My attitude to housework can best be described as ‘relaxed’, although my family use a slightly different term. I have a high tolerance for mess, I take a lot of naps, and – in the spirit of full disclosure – I have had weevils in my kitchen.

Still, one woman’s shame is another’s inspiration. The visionary HarperCollins editor, a lovely young woman called [name redacted], saw something in me that I hadn’t even seen in myself. In her initial email to me last year she wrote: ‘I admire how you juggle work with the demands of a large family and still maintain an aspirational Instagram account.’

Initially I was confused – I mean, my family isn’t that large – and I wondered if perhaps she was confusing me with someone else. But then I reviewed my entire Instagram history, and I began to see myself through [name redacted]’s eyes. The photos include:

Me looking bemused in front of my recently exploded oven.

Me posing for a selfie in my shambolic kitchen.

Me staring sadly at a shattered bottle of wine.

Me doing a live TV interview via Zoom with my wardrobe door open and my bras on full display.

Me asleep, dribbling slightly, on the couch in the middle of the day.

My cat in a sink (not relevant to this narrative, but it’s an adorable pic).

Viewed separately, these are just a few cute snapshots. Viewed together, I realised, they form a cohesive and subversive narrative. My Instagram photos tell a profound and rousing story of cheerful imperfection. They reflect a philosophy of mediocrity that is eminently attainable. They celebrate the fallible, the disorganised and the incomplete.

This, I am sure, is what resonated so strongly with [name redacted] from HarperCollins. This is what led her to offer me a book contract and resulted in this text you now hold in your hands. (At least, I think this is what resonated with [name redacted]. I haven’t been able to confirm this, as she left the publisher shortly after I signed my contract, and her number is disconnected, and I haven’t heard from her since.)

Either way, I am honoured to have been offered this platform from which to inspire and support others. I welcome you all to my world of domestic deficiency. I welcome you to near enough, good enough and OK. I welcome you to putting off today what you can do tomorrow!

I welcome you to the life-changing magic of a little bit of mess.

PART ONE

THE JOY OF MESS

INTRODUCTION

I clean, therefore I am

The turning point

I was ten years old, and I was at my friend Leah’s place. I’d played at Leah’s house many times, but this was my first sleepover, and I was excited.

Leah’s house, I noticed, was extremely neat. It was much neater than mine. My house was clean enough and tidy enough, but ‘enough’ was the operative word. My parents both worked full-time and our house was cluttered and relaxed, and I very much liked it that way. I could leave a toy out in the living room in the morning, and it would still be there in the afternoon when I got home from school.

This was not the case at Leah’s house. Her living room was immaculate. The entire two-storey house was spotless, and more than a little intimidating. Her mother, Barbara Buckman, was a ‘homemaker’, and constantly bustled around in the background. She carried baskets of laundry, wiped down already gleaming surfaces and constantly plumped the throw cushions. I was extremely careful not to spill my juice on their white laminex table, though I needn’t have worried because Barbara whisked my drink away before I’d even finished it.

When I used Leah’s bathroom, I saw that the towels were folded into perfect, fluffy squares. Gosh, I thought, people fold their towels? The towels in my bathroom were slung carelessly on the rails. Sometimes my sister and I even left them on the floor!

‘Want some milk?’ Leah asked me as we climbed into our pyjamas. Her double bed was made up with sheets and blankets with hospital corners. My bed had a duvet that was tossed aside each morning.

‘Sure,’ I said.

We trooped downstairs and, as I entered the kitchen, I was surprised by what I saw. The kitchen table was set as if for a dinner party, although the entire Buckman family had eaten dinner two hours before.

‘Are your parents having people over?’ I asked Leah as I looked admiringly at the table. There were fancy plates and silver cutlery and china cups and linen napkins and a white porcelain jug.

Leah squinted at me. ‘It’s for breakfast,’ she said.

‘You’re going to eat breakfast at night?’

Leah looked at me with pity. Clearly I was not very bright. ‘No,’ she said slowly, as if speaking to a toddler. ‘It’s for breakfast tomorrow morning.’

‘But why is it all out on the table now?’

Poor Leah probably thought she’d made a mistake inviting me over. ‘Mum sets it every night after we finish dinner. Doesn’t your mum do that too?’

I was astonished. ‘Um, sure,’ I said. ‘Yes. Of course she does.’ My mum did not set the breakfast table at night. My mum did not set the breakfast table at all.

When I would wander into the kitchen wanting breakfast, Mum would wish me good morning and gesture towards the pantry. I would grab a box of Corn Flakes, take out a bowl and a spoon, pour some Corn Flakes in the bowl and add a splash of milk from the fridge. I would take my bowl to the couch in the living room, where my sister would be eating her Rice Bubbles in front of the TV. That was breakfast in our neat-enough household. It did not involve a porcelain jug.

I lay in Leah’s spare bed that night thinking about the breakfast table. It was truly a revelation. Mrs Buckman had shown me a way of doing things that I didn’t even know existed. Leah had told me that her mother was descended from Russian royalty, and that made perfect sense. Clearly Mrs Buckman had brought the benefit of her superior aristocratic heritage to the management of her home.

I knew right then that I was at a turning point in my life. I was used to a home that was neat and tidy, but Mrs Buckman elevated housework to another level. To Mrs Buckman, cleaning wasn’t a chore: it was a calling. Mrs Buckman taught me that a person (most likely a female person) could take great pride in domestic artistry. I could be like my mother, and do just enough, or be like Mrs Buckman, and do things perfectly. When I grew up, I too could fold my towels into fluffy squares, set the table for breakfast and tuck my bedsheets into hospital corners.

Nope, I thought as I settled down to sleep, that’s not for me.

It all seemed like far too much trouble for little reward. In that moment, in Leah Buckman’s spare bed, I chose mess.

Editor’s note: According to our fact-checker, Barbara Buckman was Bulgarian, not Russian. Her father was a shoemaker, and her mother a maid. Perhaps this is where she learned the hospital corners.

The Barbaras

When I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, there were no social-media influencers in the home-management space. There were no social-media influencers in any space because there was no such thing as social media. There were passionate homemakers, nearly all of them women, but they were cruelly denied the opportunity to share their #homeinspo handiwork with the world.

Imagine the frustration felt by these poor women. If they colour-coded their wardrobes, or bought new linen, or decanted all their spices into matching glass jars, there was no platform on which to flaunt these achievements to other people. They could invite guests over to marvel at their wardrobe, but this was a slow and ineffective way to reach the masses. They could take artistic photos of their spice jars using their analogue cameras, then pay to develop the photos at a lab, paste the photos into a Spice Jar Album and show the album to their friends at parties, but this would be quite unspeakably weird. There were certainly no forums on which to post artfully filtered photos, or to write inspiring hashtags like #homesweethome or #cleaningmotivation or #minimalistlyfe.

Also, hashtags hadn’t been invented yet.

If Barbara Buckman was a young mum in our internet age, there is every chance her groundbreaking breakfast-setting routine would have gone viral. Barbara would have her own Instagram account and blog, something like Barbara’s World or The Organised Barb or Let’s Watch Barbara