Neat person vs Sloppy person.

[santiago]

I have pondered this question for many many years. In its simplest form i think that messy people are saner and more well rounded psychologically than neat freaks, although i do think as a whole that neat freaks would be more successful professionally and probably more successful at things like marital relationships and personal achievments. probably a general way to look at it is your friendly tradesman or a chef for example. Plumbers crack to me is the absolute sign of a sensational tradesman. Why? I dont really understand fully as yet....it might be because in theory the plumbers crack tradie has absolutely no regard for the fact his ass is hanging out of his pants becfause all he is interested in is completing the job, however the tradie with the neat ironed pants and multiple tool belts is so pent up with doing an organised job they really dont have much imagination and skill, they want to really just look professional so that other people think they are professional so that they can then fool themselves into thinking they are professional. Also you have the chef, who cooks the better tasting food? The chef who spends most of his mental energy perparing his working surface to shine with the lustre of a diamond, so much mental energy spent on keeping his surfaces clean that the actual goal or the soup isnt the soup itself but instead the pan that surrounds the soup, or does the better tasting soup come from the chef with a sweat dripping off his forehead whilst he tosses the dirty knives and spoons into the sink next to him, to be worried about later as the messy chefs one true goal and mental power is soley focused on the soup itself and not the peripheral junk that can toxify clear thought.

Well no medals for guessing that im probably a bit more biased towars the messy side of life. I wonder if there has ever been a study into messy vs neat on a university study or a psychological level as it would make quite an interesting result. It would be quite simple really MMPI 100 of each genre ie messy/neat people and see which brand has the most psycopaths, or other weird traits and once and for all prove that neat freaks are in fact borderline mental cases.......well thats my theory anyway. But i suppose you have to weigh up a lot of factors for example, social factors and shames associated with being a messy person as being a messy person as is suggested in the article i will post at the bottom, the messy vs neat factor is really only a trial of our moral judgement. Is burping rude after a meal or is it a compliment.......it really only comes down to morals doesnt it and really there is no right or wrong but somehow society blends us to portray some fake self in order to please others.

Anyway im about to lose my train of thought and start rambling so ill hand it over to the members to comment. Messy vs neat...what is your train of thought on the many and varied factors. I enjoyed the following article i hope you do to.....yay, go team sloppy

source-http://evergreenessays.blogspot.com/2005/11/neat-people-vs-sloppy-people.html

I’ve finally figured out the difference between neat people and sloppy people. The distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner than sloppy people. Sloppy people, you see, are not really sloppy. Their sloppiness is merely the unfortunate consequence of their extreme moral rectitude. Sloppy people carry in their mind’s eye a heavenly vision, a precise plan that is so stupendous, so perfect, it can’t be achieved in this world or the next. Sloppy people live in Never-Never Land. Someday is their métier. Someday they are planning to alphabetize all their books and set up home catalogs. Someday they will go through their wardrobes and mark certain items for tentative mending and certain items for passing on to relatives of similar shape and size. Someday sloppy people will make family scrapbooks into which they will put newspaper clippings, postcards, locks of hair, and the dried corsage from their senior prom. Someday they will file everything on the surface of their desks, including the cash receipts from coffee purchases at the snack shop. Someday they will sit down and read all the back issues of The New Yorker. For all these noble reasons and more, sloppy people never get neat. They aim too high and wide. They save everything, planning someday to file, order, and straighten out the world. But while these ambitious plans take clearer and clearer shape in their heads, the books spill from the shelves onto the floor, the clothes pile up in the hamper and closet, the family mementos accumulate in every drawer, the surface of the desk is buried under mounds of paper, and the unread magazines threaten to reach the ceiling. Sloppy people can’t bear to part with anything. They give loving attention to every detail. When sloppy people say they’re going to tackle the surface of a desk, they really mean it. Not a paper will go unturned; not a rubber band will go unboxed. Four hours or two weeks into the excavation, the desk looks exactly the same, primarily because the sloppy person is meticulously creating new piles of papers with new headings and scrupulously stopping to read all the old book catalogs before he throws them away. A neat person would just bulldoze the desk. Neat people are bums and clods at heart. They have cavalier attitudes toward possessions, including family heirlooms. Everything is just another dust-catcher to them. If anything collects dust, it’s got to go and that’s that. Neat people will toy with the idea of throwing the children out of the house just to cut down on the clutter. Neat people don’t care about process. They like results. What they want to do is get the whole thing over with so they can sit down and watch the rasslin’ on TV. Neat people operate on two unvarying principles: Never handle any item twice, and throw everything away. The only thing messy in a neat person’s house is the trash can. The minute something comes to a neat person’s hand, he will look at it, try to decide if it has immediate use and, finding none, throw it in the trash. Neat people are especially vicious with mail. They never go through their mail unless they are standing directly over a trash can. If the trash can is beside the mailbox, even better. All ads, catalogs, pleas for charitable contributions, church bulletins, and money-saving coupons go straight into the trash can without being opened. All letters from home, postcards from Europe, bills and paychecks are opened, immediately responded to, and then dropped in the trash can. Neat people keep their receipts only for tax purposes. That’s it. No sentimental salvaging of birthday cards or the last letter a dying relative ever wrote. Into the trash it goes. Neat people place neatness above everything else, even economics. They are incredibly wasteful. Neat people throw away several toys every time they walk through the den. I knew a neat person once who threw away a perfectly good dish drainer because it had mold on it. The drainer was too much trouble to wash. And neat people sell their furniture when they move. They will sell a La-Z-Boy recliner while you are reclining in it. Neat people are no good to borrow from. Neat people buy everything in expensive little single portions. They get their flour and sugar in two-pound bags. They wouldn’t consider clipping a coupon, saving a leftover, reusing plastic nondairy whipped cream containers, or rinsing off tin foil and draping it over the unmoldy dish drainer. You can never borrow a neat person’s newspaper to see what’s playing at the movies. Neat people have the paper all wadded up and in the trash by 7:05 AM. Neat people cut a clean swath through the organic as well as the inorganic world. People, animals, and things are all one to them. They are so insensitive. After they’ve finished with the pantry, the medicine cabinet, and the attic, they will throw out the red geranium (too many leaves), sell the dog (too many fleas), and send the children off to boarding school (too many scuff-marks on the hardwood floors). Yeah! Go Sloppy!

[ThunderIdeal]

to start with there's different types of neat people and messy people. i try to be organised and i think about the best way to do things according to the outcomes that matter to me, eg i try not to touch dirty things on clean things, but part of all that is being efficient not wasteful and one of the outcomes i'm going for is eco friendly, i hate plastics whereas some neat freaks might put everything in a plastic bag.

so i try to be organised and part of that is keeping things neat and clean if i have enough energy for it, but that doesn't make me anything like the neat freak described in the quote. i'd say i try to be systematic not neat. i was going to mention the myers-briggs personality system which has four dualities (eg introvert and extrovert) and supposedly everybody has a mild or extreme preference to utilise one of the extremes out of each four dualities eg naturally users introversion instead of extroversion, thinking instead of feeling, perceiving instead of judging and intuition instead of sensing. i'm not sure which, but one of those dualities describes neat vs messy... although maybe it actually describes systematic vs she'll be right bruce

[Zen Peddler]

Id tend to agree. neat freaks are basically control freaks. They cant control everything in the universe that effects them but subconsciously by being neat and orderly in thier households they are trying to demonstrate what they wish they could do to the universe.

Messy more laid back types tend to roll with the punchs better and are more emotionally resillent, but less driven. But despite that they tend to be happier people.

I have a friend who is just fucking lazy though - clothes dropped where he last wore them, dog shit in the corner for two months. I couldnt handle that either.

[botanika]

Ive never seen an obituary or tombstone or reference to anyone famous in history that said 'they were neat and tidy'. That said when I do occassionally get around to doing a big clean, I do feel very satisfied and content afterwards. You need some balance.

Edited September 26, 2011 by botanika

[lofty86]

I live with a guy prone to psychotic episodes the first tell tale sign his becoming unwell is when he starts to clean and re-organise his room.

[ThunderIdeal]

really? house cleaning and psychosis are both symptoms of a drug that people often binge hard on. i don't need to tell you this but i'm wondering if you've ruled that out as a cause.

[OpticalLight]

Hmmm, well I guess I would put myself in the neat/sloppy category. Every once in a while my room will be organised and everything will be easy to find and accessible, and then as time goes by and life gets lived shit ends up on the floor and on my desk, and in the corner of the room. Man I wish I could sit at my desk to do my assignment right now.... but really, if I started cleaning my desk then I wouldn't have time to study, and eat dinner, and type stuff in this little box etc etc.

One thing I am good with is the dishes, yeehaaa! Simply because if dishes don't get washed, then they go mouldy; and cockroaches come, and then it gets complicated.

[etherealdrifter]

Hmmm, well I guess I would put myself in the neat/sloppy category. Every once in a while my room will be organised and everything will be easy to find and accessible, and then as time goes by and life gets lived shit ends up on the floor and on my desk, and in the corner of the room. Man I wish I could sit at my desk to do my assignment right now.... but really, if I started cleaning my desk then I wouldn't have time to study, and eat dinner, and type stuff in this little box etc etc.

One thing I am good with is the dishes, yeehaaa! Simply because if dishes don't get washed, then they go mouldy; and cockroaches come, and then it gets complicated.

 

i'm in the eat/loppy category.

in there,

you eat loppy

..then loppy eats you

edit-sozza ..didn't mean to reply directly to your previous chat harpvr. just random reply

Edited September 26, 2011 by etherealdrifter

[OpticalLight]

i'm in the eat/loppy category.

in there,

you eat loppy

..then loppy eats you

edit-sozza ..didn't mean to reply directly to your previous chat harpvr. just random reply

 

and when loppy eats you, the insects come; and then reality shatters into brilliant shards of spinning coloured glass?

maybe..... maybe not..... maybe both at the same time!

Edited September 26, 2011 by Chattest Hairpie Ever

[santiago]

I live with a guy prone to psychotic episodes the first tell tale sign his becoming unwell is when he starts to clean and re-organise his room.

 

really? house cleaning and psychosis are both symptoms of a drug that people often binge hard on. i don't need to tell you this but i'm wondering if you've ruled that out as a cause.

it can be many things, if you take the drugs out of the equation what lofty describes also describes the symptoms of borderline personality disorder, manic depression and normal everyday depression as well as many other conditions such as diabetes for example.

One thing I am good with is the dishes, yeehaaa! Simply because if dishes don't get washed, then they go mouldy; and cockroaches come, and then it gets complicated.

 

i like the priority listing and makes good sense, even though im generally messy i would have some of the cleanest bins in WA, im also fairly fastidious in removing the inside bins quickly as i believe this is stage one of mess build up, wher-as some of the most anal and clean people i have ever met have the most absolute DISGUSTING smelly bins i have ever seen, its like they have the cleanest house and then somehow didnt realise how disgusting deep down they really are. how can a messy person have a clean bin and a clean person a filthy bin- to me that says that the clean person is actually filthy at the core and they manifest clean-ness to cover their inherant filthyness deep down, i wont even mention the types of people i have seen not wash hands after a crap.

but im well down with the cockroaches, unlucky i was to rent a small flat in inglewood once and the flat was infested with those little german cockroaches-little sons of bitches were everywhere when i first stepped into the lease so i got a pest dude and it was good for a week until i saw a few hundred pop in via the flat communal air vents one night, the whole 100 flat unit block was infested, so i had to move.........i was fastidious in packing and chemi spraying as i didnt want to transfer any to my new place but some came in via my tv's, videos, books and stuff and i got infested again. the pest controllers will tell you there is almost nothing you can do to kill the population once established you can control them only in numbers...........................but i had a stroke of luck and spilt a tin of milo all over my vinyl floor, the stuff was everywhere and i tried mopping and made it worse temporaily, anyway my house became infested with ants, strangely the cockroaches disappeared. i researched it a bit later and apparently there is a type of ant that fights or hates cockroaches and they rid the immediate area of them quite permanently. so there you go.............if you have cockroaches or have a phobia like i do........................................................................................RELEASE THE ANTS.

[botanika]

i'm in the eat/loppy category.

in there,

you eat loppy

..then loppy eats you

edit-sozza ..didn't mean to reply directly to your previous chat harpvr. just random reply

 

Haha and lol @ CHE