I bet we've all heard this or something similar from our mothers, "Clean your room or you can't go out with your friends" or "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." While the efforts of our mothers may have had varying degrees of effect upon all of us, the efforts of my mother didn't really strike a chord with me while I was still living at home. Now, however, that I am living alone, I feel the need to exert some control over my life (and room). So here I have imagined a real reason why my room should be clean. It has to do with entropy. (Sorry to any erudite of thermodynamics that I may annoy with my poor description of said subject)
Entropy, as we all know, is a measure of the state of disorder or decay of a system. All systems (including my room) tend to lose order and progress towards a state of entropy or disorder. I feel that one of the greatest purposes of the human race is to be a force of order in the world, and not just let everything happen and continue to disorganize.
When we clean our rooms, we are exerting self control and our personal power upon our personal space. I think that when we can begin to exert this control in one aspect of our lives, it will continue to other aspects as well. When we control our personal space, we can control better our thoughts, our words, and our actions because once we do exercise control we can better apply the same principle and energy to other areas.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that we be control freaks. We have to understand the purpose behind entropic states and be able to use entropy to our advantage (e.g. Chaos is really good for sparking ideas,) but we should not just let our room decay.
Some might say, "but when I don't clean my room I am exercising power, the power to go against what my parents say, because it's one of the few freedoms I've managed to wrest from my parents" That's all very well and good, but when it comes time to leave the house you're not limited to that small area of control of your life, and not cleaning your room just becomes laziness, i.e. giving in to entropy.
So let us join the good fight against entropy by cleaning our rooms and helping others to do the same.
