There is a Venezuelan story about a woman who is extremely stressed and unhappy and decides to commit suicide. The narrator's description of this character's house is evidence of what might be going on inside it: disorder, dirt, accumulation of things. But at a certain point, the woman thinks that if she ends her life, photos will be taken of her and the house, which will appear in the city's newspapers, so she decides to tidy up the house and make herself look presentable. In the end, when she finished cleaning and tidying everything up, she sighed with contentment and went to sleep between clean sheets with a smile on her face.

I don't know if we all feel the same way as this character: cleaning our surroundings can bring us indescribable happiness. Personally, I'm not a fanatic about tidiness, I'm not one of those people who tidies everything up as they go along, but I do like everything to be where it should be and clean: when things are dirty or “scattered” everywhere, it overwhelms me and creates a huge visual noise.

That's why I try to keep the bathroom and bedroom clean every day. On the other hand, I don't like it when dirty pots or dishes pile up in the sink, for example. At home, everyone washes what they dirty, and after washing and drying the utensils, they must be returned to their place in the cupboard. The same goes for clothes: I have one basket for dirty clothes and another for clean clothes. The laundry basket for ironing is in a separate room, with the clothes folded so they don't get wrinkled.

Twice a year I clean out my closet: in August and December. I usually organize my clothes by color and according to the occasion: clothes for home, work, and parties. The ones that no longer fit or that I don't like, I simply give away. I have friends and family members who keep an eye on this cleaning, and they even point out the pieces they want in advance so that I don't give them to someone else.

As you probably know, due to my profession, what takes me the longest to organize are my books and work papers. Now that I'm on vacation, I throw away useless papers such as exams and forms (I have a friend who makes beautiful pieces with recycled paper), and I arrange my books in alphabetical order. This way of organizing allows me to find books quickly and makes searching much easier.

I firmly believe that there are cleaning tasks we can do weekly, monthly, and even annually, but there are others that we must do every day. Not doing so would lead to accumulation, deterioration, and even disease. It is a matter of hygiene and even civility. For example, we may be able to cut our hair once a year, but brushing our teeth and bathing are daily tasks. The same goes for our homes: making the bed, washing the dishes, cleaning the toilet—these are cleaning activities that cannot be postponed.

Returning to the story at the beginning, we can infer that just as our environment is, so too can our inner selves be, and vice versa: one is a reflection of the other. When the protagonist decided to end her life, chaos was surely inside her; but it was enough for her to begin to tidy up her surroundings, her environment, for her ideas to become organized and her thoughts to be aired, as if instead of opening the windows of her house, she had opened the windows of her soul.