Whenever I clean or straighten up around the house, I have an idea for what “clean” feels like. I am also mildly aware when things are getting messy. I’ve read that clutter is something that eventually turns into background noise, i.e you don’t even notice it’s there anymore. But when I make an effort to tidy up or clean, I have a mental image or notion of what “clean” should look or at the very least feel like. Where does that notion come from?

My parents for example are incredibly clean. They’re the type of people that don’t even have dust accumulating on edges of their place. Back when I lived alone in an apartment and I knew my parents were visiting, I’d try to clean my place to that level of clean. Their standard was pretty high. I could claim that my standard of cleanliness was simply passed down from my parents.

My Dad grew up in a city that was dry and dusty. From what I’ve experienced visiting during the summers of my childhood and from what I’ve heard, if you leave windows open, you will end up with a thin layer of sand or dust by afternoon.

So if anything, I would expect his standard of cleanliness to be lower. If dust is going to accumulate anyways, why bother, right? But surprisingly, that’s not the way things turned out. But rather than analyzing my Dad, I’d prefer to introspect.

My hypothesis is that there are two factors:

  1. Standard of cleanliness (i.e. your ideal clean state) is influenced by culture and trends growing up, but…
  2. Reality of cleanliness (i.e. attainable state) is influenced by external and internal motivators and your drive to make reality meet expectations.

For example, I know that in the past decade, I’ve been heavily influenced by the minimalism trend. My standard of clean is the standard that’s been impressed upon my by culture, media, and books related to this.

Unfortunately, if my internal drive, which varies wildly month-to-month, is not high, then that’s a high standard to meet. So I resign to “lower” standards. One that doesn’t really mind dust settling on the edges of door frames.

But I also suspect the visual dissonance plays a factor. For example, suppose you are an avid reader or writer and you have hundreds of books or manuscripts. On one end of the cleanliness spectrum, this person has books scattered throughout the house and papers covering his desks. On the other end is books lined up neatly on shelves and papers stacked or better yet filed away in drawers.

The key distinction is in creating order. What level of visual dissonance are you willing to accept? In modern culture that is increasingly digital, we end up valuing neat rows of text, boxes within boxes separating content, and corners and edges everywhere. Order means straight lines.

Like the “carpentered” hypothesis for the Müller-Lyer illusion, is there a similar explanation for cleanliness? I recently learned that the “carpentered” hypothesis was disproven, but perhaps there is desired cleanliness state that is influenced by straight lines and corners in your surroundings.