As a second semester senior, I am basically looking for anything to boost my productivity and motivation. Sometimes, it seems that nothing can get me working on my homework or responsibilities with the overwhelming sense that I am mere months away from being done with high school. One of the biggest culprits that add to my outright laziness is having a messy room.

Earlier today, as I sat around trying to start my homework, I found myself distracted. Not by calls asking me to go out and sled, or by my brothers throwing snowballs at me, but by my own messiness. My room is often in shambles with piles of laundry, papers to be collated, and pens strewn every which way. So today, I decided, instead of struggling through my attention-less work, to clean my room.

It is psychologically proven that messiness can lead to distraction and low motivation. So, for an hour, I roped my mom into cleaning my room with me. We had a bit of a dance party- folding laundry into neat little piles while lip-syncing to classics like “Vertigo” by U2. The combination of moving around while cleaning and creating a tidy space granted me the ability to hunker down and get some work done.

It might seem backwards to spend a couple of hours cleaning your room when you have hours of daunting homework in front of you. However, according to The Association for Psychological Science, a clean desk or learning space promotes some pretty great things, such as not engaging in crime or littering, and showing more generosity. Aside from these admirable moral traits, cleaning up your desk can help to organize thoughts and promote faster, better work.

So, if you are like me and need a “Hail Mary” to help you complete procrastinated homework assignments or to just be more productive, try cleaning your room.