This weekend, I went full fall-cleaning mode. My laundry room, which had been resembling Frankenstein’s laboratory (or maybe Dr. Jekyll’s, the jury’s still out), finally got a facelift. Gone were the beakers of mystery detergent, the crusty caps stashed in corners like forgotten Easter eggs, and the collection of used, burnt-out light bulbs among half-empty spray bottles bubbling like a mad scientist’s rejected experiment.

Feeling triumphant, I took a little field trip to the linen closet and confidently flung open the door… and immediately regretted it. It looked like a hurricane had ripped through it. And not just any hurricane. This was Hurricanus Husbandus. He insists it’s always the dog’s fault, that FU%$#NG dog!, but I’m not buying it unless the dog has suddenly learned how to pull towels off shelves and shove them in at angles that defy both geometry and physics.

Somewhere between folding fitted sheets (an Olympic sport, by the way) and swearing under my breath, I started thinking about tiny houses. Or even better, a treehouse. What if, instead of wrangling with closets, I just lived in a space where there was literally no room for clutter? Minimalist by force. No hurricane of towels because there’s nowhere to shove them.

There’s an undeniable appeal: everything pared down to essentials, no junk drawer overflowing with three dead batteries and an allen wrench that doesn’t fit anything. A tiny house or treehouse practically forces you to live pared down to the essentials, like you’re on standby to pack your life into a shopping cart and bolt.

 Your “kitchen” would be a two-burner stove the size of a Fisher Price playset. Forget about Thanksgiving turkeys, you’re reheating turkey nuggets in your Easy-Bake Oven.

And maybe that’s the beauty of it: simplicity. Less square footage means less to clean, fewer places for Hurricanus Husbandus to wreak havoc, and no excuse for piles of towels that defy gravity.

But let’s be honest. The treehouse fantasy sounds whimsical. Then it all unravels the moment you’re forced to scale down a ladder at 2 a.m. to answer nature’s call. And in a tiny house? Well, let’s say marriage counseling is cheaper than building a house where you can’t escape each other’s chewing noises.

Besides, who would be able to hear chewing noises over the television, blaring every sporting event at 1,556 percent volume. In my house, sporting events are a full-volume production. Every touchdown, strikeout, and bad referee call gets blasted at decibels usually reserved for airport runways. In a tiny house, there’s no escaping that. You’re sitting two feet from the surround sound, feeling your fillings vibrating out of your teeth while your spouse insists, “It’s not that loud!” YES IT IS!!!

Cooking? Adorable at first. Until you realize you’re trying to sear a steak in something that looks like it was marketed for ages three and up: one pan, one burner, one person allowed in the “kitchen” at a time. If you’re not careful, dinner turns into a full-contact sport.

And let’s not forget pets. The dog (yes, the linen closet vandal) would stake his claim immediately, relegating us to the futon like squatters in our own home. Knowing him, he’d have the thermostat set to “sauna,” his food bowls in the prime kitchen spot, and the rest of us tiptoeing around like tenants who forgot to pay rent.

So here I am, standing in my freshly conquered laundry room, thinking of my perfectly organized linen closet with towels folded into perfect rectangles and sheet sets tightly bound with matching pillowcases, and realizing maybe I don’t need a treehouse or a tiny house to live minimally. What I do need is fewer towels, a husband who stops blaming the dog, and maybe a padlock for the linen closet.

Because in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re living in a suburban house, a treehouse, or a shoebox-sized tiny home, chaos always has a way of finding you, especially if you live with Hurricane Husbandus.