Authors say clutter and mess trump clean and neat

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Karen Jackson would be the first to admit her desk looks like a disaster area.

Her stacks of papers and photographs are so sloppy that the Texas schoolteacher won first place in a contest to find America's messiest desk.

Sponsored by publisher Little, Brown and Co., the competition promoted "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder", by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, a new book that argues neatness is overrated, costs money, wastes time and quashes creativity.

"We think that being more organised and ordered and neat is a good thing and it turns out, that's not always the case," said Freedman.

"Most of us are messy, and most of us are messy at a level that works very, very well for us," he said in an interview. "In most cases, if we got a lot neater and more organised, we would be less effective."

That's true, said Rochelle Wilson, 57, of Moville, Iowa, whose messy desk earned her a runner-up spot in the contest, in which 50 entries were judged by the book's authors.

She says she hasn't recovered since an incident when members of her family tried to clean up her mess.

"I still haven't really found where the stuff really is," she said. "There were some Girl Scout cookies from last year in that room. Now it's time for some new cookies, and I don't even know where my old ones are."