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February
27, 2007:
Neatness vs. Messiness - Which Is Better?
Interview
with David H. Freedman, author of A
Perfect Mess
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Mike
Carruthers:
Neatness
is the standard in our culture. Messy people should be neater
but you seldom hear the call for neat people to be messier, however…
David H. Freedman:
In some ways you give up a lot when you have a neat,
pristine place - there are real advantages to messiness and what
works best is really having a balance between the two.
David Freedman,
co-author of the book A
Perfect Mess, says the idea of neatness is always good and
messiness is always bad - is nuts.
Neat and very
organized people tend to be extremely judgmental and it's not
just that they want to keep themselves neat and ordered, they
have a lot of trouble with other people's messiness - and they're
constantly trying to get messy people to clean up. And we as
a society have bought into this notion and the thinking is always,
"Well, there's something wrong with the messy person"
and they have to change themselves to become neat. In fact we
should be talking about compromise.
Neat people will
be neat and messy people will be messy.
The thing that's
the big problem is when a naturally messy person, for whom everything
is working fine feels, for whatever reason, obligated to try
to be neat and more ordered. That's the real problematic situation
and that in fact is the situation most of us find ourselves
in.
Trying to get
a messy person to permanently change is fruitless and, Dave
says, it will only cause tension.
And studies back
that idea up that you can't really change your level of messiness
in any permanent way.
Tomorrow, why
neatness isn't all it's cracked up to be - I'm Mike Carruthers
and that's Something You Should Know.
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