Sing when you're tidying

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? 

Albert Einstein.

You know it’s really the summer holidays when you start tidying your room. It’s one of those chores that always goes down on the top of the to-do list, but which I always leave until last, procrastinating wildly to avoid it. However, this year, circumstances have forced me bite the bullet and get stuck in. We’re doing a house-swap with an American family in about a week, and my study was rapidly disappearing underneath a growing tide of paper, sheet music and books of assorted varieties. I think the sticking point is usually getting started. It’s one of those jobs that, once started, has to been seen though to completion in one fell swoop. It’s not that I don’t like the end result; it’s always pleasant to be reminded of what colour the carpet actually is after a year of it being buried under mountains of paper. The actual process itself isn’t that bad either. In fact, I find the whole thing rather cathartic and therapeutic, flinging things into bin bags with cold, dispassionate, adrenaline-fuelled ruthlessness (okay, maybe I got a bit carried away with that description, but you get the idea...) My OCD side has a field-day, gleefully arranging books in alphabetical order and filing papers in the correct folders.

However, for me, the main attraction is listening to music while I do it. I don’t know about you, but, in an ordinary week, I don’t set aside much time to listen to music, so, when I tidy, I usually put Spotify on shuffle and listen away. My music tastes are somewhat eclectic; my ‘favourites’ playlist veers wildly from dubstep to Bruce Springsteen to Shostakovich symphonies. But one thing I’ve noticed is that the music that’s playing dramatically affects how I tidy. For example, slow, thoughtful music is no good to tidy to. I find myself getting more and more lethargic, drifting dolorously around the room, whereas if something fast and punk-y, like Green Day, comes on, I speed up and end up hurling paper into boxes at breakneck speeds. I sometimes even catch myself tidying in time with the music, stacking things in time with the drumbeat. It’s an interesting phenomenon, certainly, and I wonder if psychologists have ever done any experiments to investigate the effects with different artists. The results would definitely make interesting reading: I imagine Pink Floyd would make people take hours to arrange objects in artful, pretentious little piles, whereas the Ramones would make them throw a few things around before leaving after a couple of minutes. As for several hours tidying to Rebecca Black, I shudder to think what effects that would have on the human psyche... The stuff of nightmares...