I tried rage cleaning and here’s what happened
I am cynical about Tik Tok trends, but I recently came across one that piqued my interest - Rage Cleaning (a viral trend with over 8 million views). It’s when you’re feeling really angry and use cleaning (rather than hurling insults/objects at people) to vent your feelings, releasing pent up tension and also helping clean up mess.
Who doesn’t want to feel less angry, and have a tidier home?
As a perimenopausal woman rage is my natural resting state. I’ve already got a few tools up my sleeve to manage it (running is one, also making sure I’m breathing, the odd hot bath), but cleaning is already one of my go-to activities. During lockdown (which feels like 7 million years ago now) I felt particularly trapped with two young kids, partner, and elderly cats. All my cleaning was done when I was angry.
By way of example… one of my bug bears is that my partner leaves his dirty socks on the bedroom floor. The socks are not the trigger but more the underlying assumption that I can relax with his socks in my space. Instead of taking a deep breath, and quietly plopping the offending articles into the washing bin, I went through a phase of opening the window in our bedroom, and then throwing them outside. Sometimes I’d swear at the same time. They’d land in the side return.
Later, I’d sometimes take them inside and put them in the bin. If not, perhaps a passing fox customised them into a jaunty snood. Either way, it worked. I felt an immediate calm which a therapist would probably point out was not healthy (why not talk to my partner instead of getting rid of his clothes?)
Nor am I the first in my family to practice rage cleaning. It’s in my blood. I’ve witnessed generations of my female relatives, including my mother and Grandmother, doing angry cleaning. It goes back to the cave woman roused from her sleep, and inadvertently tripping over her partners wolf skin underpants which she then casually throws into the fire, quietly watching them reduced to ash in the flames.
So this Monday morning, I march upstairs with purpose - remembering to breathe, be grateful and also perhaps do some meditation if I have time. I go into the girls room (I have two daughters who share). The furniture, cupboards, and bunk beds swim in front of my eyes like I’m submerged in a red-water-fish- tank.
TOYS HAVE BEEN EMPTIED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR.
Lots of them. These aren’t big items that you can pick up and put away easily. These are headless Lego figures (and will have to be matched to their original bodies), and Sylvanians who are wearing entirely the wrong clothes (everyone knows the Dad Hedgehog wears the yellow dungarees!) Some of them lie naked. A Barbie has something brown rubbed into her face (lip gloss or something more sinister?) A ball of clothing has my dressing gown cord tied around it and inside, when I unwrap it, is a mug of half-eaten cereal with milk that’s emptied onto the carpet.
It’s almost as if it’s been done on purpose to get me going. Especially as I tidied this space only 10 minutes before we left for school. I remember how cleaning is a good therapy for rage so set about it - getting the right bodies on the right Lego figures, re-dressing the Sylvanians (yes I know I’m a control freak), and then arranging all the soft toys on top of the cupboard (biggest to smallest and by breed so all dogs in one place and tigers in another).
Do I feel better? I would like to say it’s worked, that I feel serene. Instead I feel tired. Also a bit like I am a neurotic mess. Of course children play with toys! Perhaps I should accept the mess and never tidy this room until they are adults? I lie on the floor and breathe.
That’s the trouble. Often, I find that cleaning makes me angry instead of being a tool to soak it up. Later, I open a kitchen cupboard, trying to find a relaxing tea blend, and suddenly all the boxes fall on my head. Uncooked rice in a Tupperware with no lid empties onto the floor.
I am angry at the fact that I live in a home where someone (not me) puts rice into a Tuppeware with no lid on it, so that someone else (me) comes along and gets rice tipped all over themselves. I get the hoover out, readying myself for rage cleaning!
Unsure whether I’m doing it right, I pause to watch a few Tik Tok clips on my phone. These women don’t look angry, and their houses seem to be well ordered and tidy before they even start. My anger grows as I watch. Why is my home so much smaller and so much messier? Is it because I made bad life choices? Why is my cleaning cupboard disorganised and containing silver polish from Victorian times? Who has time to clean their silver anyway? I start cleaning out the cleaning cupboard, bagging up old products that are out of date and putting them into the recycling box. The pieces of rice are soon sucked up by the vacuum, though many settle into the cracks between the floorboards.
I don’t feel like I’ve vented my feelings enough. What am I doing wrong? I reach out to Jennifer Cox who is a psychotherapist and author of ‘Women are Angry: Why Your Rage is Hiding and How to Let it Out.’ She says: ‘rage cleaning can be a great strategy for discharging pent-up negative emotion. But we should also give a bit of time to considering what in our lives is causing us so much anger, and whether we can make any longer-term changes to improve our state of mind.’
I think about the things that make me angry. At the heart of most, is this feeling that I am doing TOO MUCH. And also, a bit, the knowledge that I am not successful enough to have an enormous house like the ones I see on Tik Tok.
There isn’t much I can do about that, but I can at least talk to my partner about leaving his dirty socks about the house. I confess to him that I’ve sometimes (not recently mind) thrown them out the window. ‘I wondered where they’d all gone,’ he says looking at me but not seeming surprised, ‘I kept buying new pairs. Remember you screamed at me because I was always ordering socks on Amazon and you said I wasn’t listening? I found a bunch at the bottom of the garden. Some creature had made a little nest down there.’
The thought of those dirty socks providing comfort to a wild animal calms my nervous system. It all makes sense. The natural order- chaos, tidying, chaos and more tidying. How it will always make me angry because it is never over. There was always more to be done.
‘I’ll pick them up in future,’ he said.I realise I needed to let go of the small stuff. Rice in between the floorboards is okay. The Dad Hedgehog can wear a tartan pinafore from now on. Nobody died.
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