Tidying a Messy Dressing Table

Throughout my whole life I’ve always had a difficult time keeping my room clean. Even now as a thirty year old adult I will find piles of clothes scattered on the floor along with random bits of paper, countless bobby pins, and probably enough cat hair to create a whole fifth cat!! Honestly, I don’t have an excuse for how disorganised and messy I can let things get.

One of the main issues with tidying my room that I share with my partner has been the fact that I have allowed all of the surfaces — my dressing table and each of our dressers — to become completely overwhelmed by a ton of random junk.

Last night when we were about to go up to bed, I asked Alex what I should do tomorrow and he suggested cleaning my dressing table. Sure, I could have told myself to clean it months and months ago, but there’s just something about having somebody else assign a task that can help you actually buckle down and do it. So when I finished cuddling with all four of the cats and finally got out of bed today I put on a BTS playlist and kicked my ass into gear.

It didn’t take me all that long to clean, and when I noticed energy begin to lag I went downstairs to play some video games for an hour and a half. If I could give one major tip for tackling something like this it would be to take a break when you feel like you’re not getting anywhere. Having that time to just kick back on the sofa with Dolores in my lap and a controller in my hands was really what gave me energy to continue cleaning and organising my dressing table. I even set an hour long timer and ended up adding on an extra thirty minutes because I didn’t feel like I had had quite enough time to chill.

Now that my dressing table is all squared away I actually feel really great about it. Obviously I’m going to feel good about having ticked off something that’s been on my to-do list for a super long time! I got a chance to sort through my extensive earring collection and weed out some of the ones that were missing, broken, or I’d noticed that I never reached for them anymore. I paired up the ones that were still in good condition and punched them through some card so I can donate them to a charity shop and maybe someone else will fall in love with them. It was nice to get rid of the ones I wasn’t wearing because now when I look at my earring collection there’s not a single one that doesn’t make me smile!

In addition to organising my collection of earrings, I also cleaned and organised my makeup drawers. I’ve really paired down my makeup in the last few years, or so I thought. There was a surprising amount of products I had been holding onto that were well past their expiration dates! I chucked out a good amount of old makeup, gave their storage compartments a wipe down, and now I can actually see where all my makeup is at once.

Even though I spent the day cleaning, I know that, deep down, I’m actually just a messy girl. What can I say? Some habits die harder than others! It’s okay, though, because most of the time it’s organised mess and all it takes is a little bit of encouragement to get me started. Now that my dressing table is clean, maybe it’ll encourage me to tackle the rest of the bedroom… Or maybe not!