you may think that a necklace shouldn't be lying beside the laptop and put it away. it may be that a person anticipates wearing it at the end of the week, and now she has to open up twenty small boxes on the dresser looking for it.

you may helpfully straighten some piles of paper on the desk and stack them together to make the desk look neater. but it may be that someone had written an important email address down on the topmost piece, and now that email will not get written.

you may set a desk lamp upright. but it may be lying on its side because someone has carefully arranged the lamp at this angle, so that a light is cast at the right spot on the pillow where she does most of her reading in bed.

you may put a stray pen back into the pencil case. but the pen might have been left on the table because it needed filling. and now someone is going to go to class and find that her pens are dry.

you may grab a dress off the floor and take it to the washing machine. it may be that the dress is a dryclean only which is why whoever wore it didn't throw it in the laundry hamper herself.

you may not think a box of bar soap should be sitting on the bookshelf. and so it shouldn't. you may also think that people who keep soap on bookshelves should at least keep them in the same box. but it may be that the third shelf is at eye level and the last place a person always looks before going out, so that she remembers to pick it up on the way out, when she goes to meet her friend. it may also be that someone had taken ages to choose the particular stray bar of soap from the box, to be given to a different friend.

you may pick up a book that is stacked horizontally, even though there is clearly enough space on the shelf, and slot it in between burton and frye. it may be that it was horizontal because someone meant to lend it to a friend, and like the soap, it was meant to catch the eye on the way out.

you may gather up hairpins and put them in their rightful box on the dresser, muttering to yourself about people who pull off their hairpins just before going to bed and dropping them any old how on the bedstead. it may be that these hairpins have never been worn, and are lying on the bedstead, as a matter of fact, because they were in the middle of being sorted, to go into party bags, and now they have to be rescued and sorted from a box full of other hairpins.

there is method in my messiness! so can people not try to take the initiative when they clean my room please?