Excerpt:
Dr Roderick Orner, a consultant psychologist and expert on obsessive compulsive disorder, says that tidiness is fundamentally about control - whether you want it and why you need it: “Some people find disorder a threat, others are much more comfortable with it. Artists often find that mixing things up, having things collide, is where they get their most inspirational thought.”
Francis Bacon was famous for his filthy studios (see picture, above). “I work much better in chaos,” he explained. And Pablo Picasso forbade his studio to be cleaned, so that “I would know at once if somebody had been meddling with my things”.
So I am not a slob, I am an artist. But this doesn't quite hold up because, like most untidy people, I prefer things tidy. It's just that I am always being distracted, then forgetting that I was meant to be clearing up. This is what life is like with an untidy mind; one that is focused inwards on its own thoughts rather than outwards to meet the demands of the exterior world. Tidiness is a priority - just a very low one; behind, say, looking out of the window blankly.
