While at the office yesterday, I was quite tickled to read this tagline to a story in the Toronto Star:

You may see a disaster, a desk that looks hurricane-ravaged, strewn with papers and debris. Josh Freed sees creativity in the making.

This is the office of Josh Freed, a journalist who has just made a documentary about the “evangelism of neat freaks”.  He suggests that they worship at big churches otherwise known as container shops.  But he’s had it with being judged as a lazy slob just because he is messy.

His theory: a messy office means a creative mind:

I find almost everything fairly quickly. I think the issue with a mess is the aesthetics. There is an organizing principle underneath. I work with the archaeological system – the farther down in the pile, the more years back. While thrashing through, you find other things that give you ideas. It creates accidental thinking.

I love this guy! So, there is a method to my madness in not cleaning up that spare room after all!

Now, ironically enough, the head office of the organisation I work for just instituted a “clean desk policy”.  Ordinarily a neat freak myself at the workplace, I’ve noticed that clutter seems to have built up on my des, perhaps as a form of rebellion.  How dare some big shadowy boss/CEO make rules about how I organise my work, anyway! Sheesh!

Perhaps I could bring a constitutional challenge on the grounds that the clean desk policy stifles my inner creativity… hmm.

Anyone care to join me?!

Happy Saturday.  Now that I don’t have to tidy up the house, I’m going to indulge in some knitting.