The other night my boyfriend and I embarked on a cooking adventure. As typical New Yorkers in our twenties, we rarely use the kitchen for anything but baking, eating cereal, and storing leftovers. But this weekend he and I got excited to try something new—we took on a recipe for a rice and chicken dish to make burritos.

As a perfectionist and a neat freak, it is hard for me to feel 100% comfortable in the kitchen. I hate making a big mess. I prefer to clean up as I go rather than wait until later to clean. And I hate when someone else makes a mess because even if they say they’ll clean it up, it won’t be in a timely fashion and I’ll have to clean it up myself in order to feel more at ease. I also have a hard time relaxing and letting people make mistakes if I already know not to make them. This cooking experience was a simple exercise in collaboration and trying something new, but it was slightly stressful because of my own neuroses.

After a couple of silly mistakes—not realizing that rice needs to be cooked before it is sautéed in oil, and incorrectly estimating the time it takes rice to cook, which is considerably longer than the amount of time that it takes pasta to cook—we ended up with a slightly dried-out and somewhat burnt rice and chicken dish. Luckily, our homemade guacamole and the shredded cheese masked the burnt taste and the burritos still tasted amazing. Nevertheless, I was exhausted from the process of constantly cleaning up and from worrying that things weren’t working out the exact right way.

Later, we started to clean up the remainder of the kitchen mess and my perfectionist neat freak side went on strike. I was holding the pot full of semi-burnt rice, scooping it into the trashcan. Suddenly I felt a giggle rising inside my chest, and I stopped mid-scoop…and dumped the rice on the floor. I couldn’t believe what I had done, and that it had felt so good. I slowly dumped another spoonful on the floor and my boyfriend cried out in utter shock, “baby! What are you doing??” And I started laughing hysterically, saying, “I don’t know! I just want to do something not perfect!” So I dumped the whole pot of rice all over the floor, gasping for breath in between my laughter.

To all my fellow perfectionists and neat freaks: sometimes it’s important to just throw the rice on the floor. It’s exhausting to be perfect all the time.