"We think that being more organized 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 organized, we would be less effective."



Barry Izsak, head of the National Association of Professional Organizers, disputes the authors' claims, saying they oversimplify and confuse mess with disorganization.



"The bottom line is, the average person feels negatively affected by disorganization in many ways: increased stress, missed deadlines, lost opportunities, that sinking, drowning feeling," Izsak said. "For the average person, disorganization and chaos simply doesn't feel good."



Freedman argues that it is neatness that is expensive.



"People who are really, really neat, between what it takes to be really neat at the office and at home, typically will spend anywhere from an hour to four hours a day just organizing and neatening," he said.



Yet messy people are often cast in a negative light. In one study cited by NAPO, two-thirds of respondents believed workers with messy desks were seen as less career-driven than their neater colleagues.



"If you walk into my office at home, you would think, 'Oh my God, something just exploded in that room,'" said Jackson, the contest winner. "But it's an organized mess. It's a mess I made, and I know where everything is."



Messiness has overtaken neatness as modern lives have changed, the book argues. Many women used to be at home, cleaning up, rather than working outside the house, while jobs used to be simpler and more linear with less multi-tasking.