Tidy vs. Messy

I'm currently sharing a room with the younger sibling. It's all family politics. Basically every year the two younger siblings share and I get my own room. They tear each other to shreds and everyone is miserable by the end of day one. It's largely because they're only two years apart and seem to take a sadistic pleasure in causing each other pain. I keep my sadistic pleasures out of the family.

This year in an attempt to keep the peace a little I volunteered to share with someone. I knew it would be the younger sibling which suited me better than the older. The older is a very light sleeper and she goes to sleep reasonably early in comparison to me. She can't stand my music and I can't stand hers. The younger sibling and I are both a touch more laid back and because she's a heavier sleeper I can put the light back on once she's asleep and carry on reading. Likewise, she can jump from her bed onto mine and just blame any aches I get on all the surfing. Everyone's happy.

Except for one thing. She is what you might call mildly disorganised. If you were disillusioned that is. She's essentially one of the messiest people on the planet to the point where my messiest friend's room looks like a haven in comparison. I'm a touch OCD as far as being tidy and orderly is concerned. If you imagine a room where if you stand the middle you can reach both walls and in that room you slap 2 single beds, a bedside table, a wall shelf stretching right across the walls and at the foot of one bed, a cupboard. There is also 2 hooks on the door and a mirror on the wall.

We both got a shelf of the bedside table and half of the wall shelf and we share the cupboard space. In theory. In reality, I have a quarter of the wall shelf, one shelf of the bedside table and the hooks on the back of the door. The rest of the space is chock a block full with the younger siblings stuff. It also floods out from under her bed and sits in big piles on her (unmade) bed. I'm ok with that.

The only thing I can't have is when her stuff starts flowing out from under her bed onto the minimal floorspace that we have. So I couple of times a day I tell her to go and clear her stuff off the floor on the basis that I don't want to stand on her £500 laptop and be liable to pay for it. It seems like a perfectly fair way of doing it and I'm being more than tolerant as far as the mess is concerned, so I might have got a little vocal when she refused to take her stuff off the floor. Once I threatened to move her out, she tidied very fast. Particularly because I threatened to move her outside. Through the window.

Who said you couldn't inspire through fear?