Don’t judge me for being MESSY!
She’s always glossy on TV and super-organised at work. But here KATE GARRAWAY dares to admit the one flaw that drives her husband crazy
DURING the last halfterm holidays, my husband was at work and our children had gone to stay with grandparents, so I came home one afternoon to an empty, albeit seriously untidy house.
There were empty bowls in the sink. Coats, shoes, lego, toys and a cardboard box our washing machine was delivered in two years ago (one day the kids say it’s a space ship, the next a tent) littered the living room floor.
I know many mothers would have taken this opportunity to spring clean, but not me: I made the most of every peaceful moment, sitting amidst the chaos, flicking through magazines.
When you’re juggling children, a marriage and a couple of jobs, something has to give — and, for me, it’s living in a perfectly tidy home.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to keep things clean. It’s just the neatness I struggle with.
Good Morning Britain viewers were horrified last week when a photograph was flashed on screen of our spare bedroom, barely an inch of floor visible under the clothes, shoes, underwear, make-up and water bottles.
The cupboard doors and drawers were all flung open, with more clothing spilling out, while dresses and shirts hung haphazardly from the curtain rail.
However, no one was more disgusted than my neat-freak co-presenter Ben Shephard, who got out the hand sanitiser at the sight of all that mess before asking to swap seats with our colleague Charlotte Hawkins, to get further away from me.
It can’t have come as too much of a shock, given that the last time he visited our house he was so stressed by the sight of our kitchen cupboards overflowing, that he insisted on getting down on his hands and knees to reorganise all the pots and pans.
My husband of 13 years, Derek Draper, a leadership psychologist who gets frustrated by my untidy ways, was delighted with Ben’s good work, as untidiness is the only thing that we row about.
But the order didn’t last — within a week the cabinets were once again overflowing. Of course I always mean to keep things tidy, it’s just that somehow life gets in the way.
I realise, of course, that my cluttered existence is deeply unfashionable.
These days you can’t turn on the TV, or open a newspaper, without seeing some cleaning guru preaching the virtues of tidying up.
FRIENDS
who have embraced the teachings of the likes of Marie Kondo declare that their minimalist homes have changed their lives — making them more productive, creative and even emotionally stable.
But tidy doesn’t work for everyone. Some of the most productive people in history have been self- confessed ‘ muck-middens’, as my husband would say: Agatha Christie, Benjamin Franklin and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few.
Albert Einstein even claimed that his untidiness was at the root of his best ideas, arguing that he found everyone else’s notion of chaos the perfect launchpad for creative thought.
Now I’m no Einstein, but I love painting and all sorts of writing, including poetry, and I simply can’t think with a clear desk, the terror of the blankness of it all paralyses me.
Give me a desk overflowing with notes, and articles ripped out of newspapers —– a great source of ideas for both the TV and radio shows I work on —– and I am away.
Agatha Christie used to say to people who told her to tidy up: ‘You see mess, I see hope.’ And she was far from the only bright, successful, smartly-attired woman to thrive on a little disorder.
Even the glossiest highachievers among us enjoy slobbing around in private.
Take the recent images shared by fashion designer Victoria Beckham, who never has a hair out of place in public, surrounded by mess in her hotel room.
And model du jour Cara Delevingne, who once uploaded a photograph of herself in a pair of wacky trainers, while the chest of drawers and desk in the background looked as though they might buckle under the weight of the detritus stacked on top of them. Untidy people are often more flexible and quick-thinking than the more orderly among us.
It came as no surprise to me that when the University of Minnesota conducted an experiment in which two groups of people were set a problemsolving task, one in a tidy space, the other a messy one, those working in chaos came up with the most creative solutions. It can help with emotions too. A few years back I longed for a third child and, way after I realised that it was never going to happen, couldn’t bring myself to give away the pram, or the baby gear that cluttered up our hallway.
It drove Derek, who like me is 51 now, crazy to have it taking up room in the hall, but it helped me, allowing the ‘dream’ to quietly fade rather than having to face reality before I was ready.
Right now, my kitchen is covered in orange plastic after I spent Sunday building a Hot Wheels racing track with my son, Billy, who’s nine that stretches the length of the floor and up over the worktops.
When it was time for bed he begged me to leave it so it would be there to play with again after school the next day — and there it remains.
I said it was fine but it isn’t really because we can’t get to the sink and keep tripping over it.
STILL,
each time I stub my toe I remind myself that he won’t be playing with toys in a few years’ time, and we’ll always have great memories to treasure.
Derek loves the kids having fun, so puts up with their chaos, but he can’t start work until everything is in order and tidies it away.
Our daughter Darcey, who’s 12, will use his computer for homework and once she’s finished he’ll say: ‘Come and clear away all the mess you’ve left on my desk.’ She’ll roll her eyes and say: ‘Dad, I left one notebook!’ The kids are no messier than any others, I don’t think —– who knows, they might end up going the other way and having pristine homes of their own. Derek and I have learnt to compromise.
I keep away from his desk and he lets me make a mess in the spare room.
In our bedroom I’m allowed only a book, my phone and a jar of face cream.
Everything else gets shoved in the spare room, where the door stays firmly shut, so Derek doesn’t have to confront it.
I may arrive everywhere like a tornado — rushing from the Good Morning Britain studios to Smooth Radio, where I present a late morning show, and then on to the school gates — but I couldn’t fit it all in unless I was
highly organised in my own way.
In fact, in other areas of my life, I can be a bit of a control freak.
I am always the first presenter in at GMB and the producers laugh at me because I research every possible angle of a story to make sure that I am completely across it.
None of us, however, can exert such control over all of our lives, and I find a bit of chaos helps me accept things go wrong — kids get sick, fancy dress costumes have to be pulled together overnight and art projects created out of scraps I’ve hoarded under the ‘junk’ on my desk.
And that suits me.
DEREK SAYS:
WHEN I first visited Kate’s house after we started dating, I thought she’d just moved in and was still unpacking. I couldn’t believe it when she said she’d lived in the house for two years.
That first night I reached into a kitchen cupboard and pulled out a crumpled wad of paper stuffed into a pan.
As it unfurled, I realised with utter bemusement that it was her ITV contract.
Kate’s response? ‘Thanks, I wondered where that was’.
The first time that she gave me a lift in her car I recoiled to find it littered with ripped paper, empty crisp packets, cracked CD covers and a mouldy banana skin.
I asked her if it had been broken into and ransacked by some junkie looking for cash and she laughed, not the least embarrassed.
Kate cites psychology in justifying her messiness, but the truth is that how tidy you are doesn’t ‘represent’ anything. People are complicated. You can be a neat freak and still creative, and you can be messy and still think and act in an organised way. So none of that is the issue. The issue, darling, is you no longer live alone. Anyone who does can be as messy as they like. But when you live with other people you take on responsibility to clear away your mess.
So keep yours to yourself — and out of my sight.