My brother sent me a link to an interesting article in the UK times about messy people. Here are some extracts for your enjoyment. Read the whole thing here.
"Even in the absence of underlying causes, negotiations between the tidy and untidy are rarely smooth. The tidy person, for instance, tends to assume that he or she is right. But look at tidy people in history and who do you see? Dictators, secret policemen and oppressors. Hitler was known for his love of neatness and order; Mussolini kept an immaculately tidy desk. Saddam Hussein's guards have told of the former Iraqi dictator's obsession with cleanliness - he washed his hands after every handshake."
“Some people find disorder a threat, others are much more comfortable with it. Artists often find that mixing things up, having things collide, is where they get their most inspirational thought.”
"Researchers at Columbia Business School found that people who kept a neat desk spent 36 per cent more time looking for things than people who kept a “fairly messy” desk. Filing and retrieving things from files takes time."
"This is what makes tidy people so exasperated with us slovenly sorts. They have a strong connection to the world outside and think we have the same connection. They assume that we have taken that coffee cup and thought: “Shall I put this in the dishwasher? No, I can't be bothered”. But, as soon as we have finished with the coffee cup, it is invisible to us. We simply don't see it. It's like that stage of a baby's development at which, if something leaves its grasp, it ceases to exist. Some of us never got beyond that."
