Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Messiness Wars”

The ongoing conflict at my house over mess-tolerance has reached new proportions. Up to now my wife and I have maintained a mostly civil debate over the proper level of neatness of such things as the top of my desk and the bedroom closet. For my part, I have stood my ground in the cause of “creative clutter”, while she, the ever white-glove inspector, keeps a standard of neatness that eternally interferes with the many facets of my genius life-style.

Normally we would be able to keep a dynamic balance of power firmly in place for the sake of a vibrant, if not entirely ordered, household. However now, I note with dismay, our little dispute is suffering from the fact that some nuisance persons are attempting to objectify the problem. These opportunists are bringing the issue out of the realm of our happy little house, and putting some of our sacred defenses on the national scene. A new book, “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder” by Freedman and Abrahamson” is upsetting the vital and delicate equilibrium of marriages where one spouse is the disordered while the other is ordered (as seen in the state of the house).

On a recent walk through the streets of my neighborhood I discovered an apparent tragedy. There, in the dawn’s early light, in the neighbors’ driveway was a long row of garbage cans and boxes filled with the obvious results of someone cleaning out their garage: ceiling fans, old National Geographic magazines, and who –knows-what valuable trinkets and treasurers.

You say this could be a good thing. But I say to you it clearly means that one side of the order/disorder equation has won out. The implications are grim because the dynamic of the (unknown) couple who lives in that house must have faltered, allowing for no middle ground.

I hate to see it happen. I’d never want it to happen at my house, but I fear with the new ammunition of evidence from the national media, that my wife will pick up overwhelming advice from these meddling outsiders. She was not impressed with the article I forwarded to her computer in a moment of smugness. The article was about how messy people are creative people. Now I am afraid she is on the verge of writing her own book which will probably be called, “Any Flat Surface”. For some time now she has been assembling a negative critique of how pseudo scientists surround themselves with stacks of paper notes, (filled, incidentally, with good ideas and insightful reflections on various topics.) Where does she get this stuff?

I comfort myself with the memory that the discovery of penicillin grew (literally) out a messy work space. If I am ever evicted from my computer room because it is not neat enough, I will remember Richard Nixon’s defiant posture when he departed the Whitehouse. I will raise my arms in proud gesture and declare, “I am not a clutter criminal”. Nor have I ever been one. Who knows how certain toilet-training glitches in my childhood years may have introduced me to the world of neatness-aversion? Perhaps had I fallen prey to too much orderliness, I would never have developed the other endearing qualities that attracted my wife to me.

It is in the nature of the marriage relationship that there should be one of each type of polarity in the order/disorder department. Every marriage needs both a neatness advocate and a natural clutterer. There should be both a saver and a “thrower-outer” in each couple. It is what keeps the relationship alive and balanced.

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