I have a comfortable desk. It isn’t messy, it isn’t neat. I have a 8 x 10 picture of my son when he was in third grade. I have my really cool stapler, a calendar, a dilbert mug, assorted postcards from all over the place, my gargoyle and voodoo doll, a whole bunch of pictures of family, cartoons, a stuffed badtz maru head, cartoons, a smiley face mug to hold pens - it’s just kind of, well, me, I suppose.
Well, I feel better now that I know I seem to be in the majority of messy deskers.
I wish I had a clean desk(s), not because of any anal-retentive prissybots who may be sneering at my desk but because it would mean I was caught up on everything for once. Every so often I do get either of my home or work desks mostly cleaned but it aways comes back with a vengeance. I, too, know which stack has which papers (mostly) and get really annoyed when someone tries to help me by straightening things up because then I can’t find things. Once I had a stack of papers that I had stacked with some vertical and some horizontal to help me sort them. Someone put them all vertical, I was not happy.
So yes, I am a messy desker but I do yearn to be a clean desker, it’s just never going to happen.
That’s the thing, your physical files are organized. They’re just not organized the way the reviewer would have organized them.
Suffice it to say that my piles have piles!
I usually figure it is time to clean my office when you can walk from door to desk to window without your feet touching any carpet. Of course, the piles that have migrated back into a corner or behind a plant might be a decade old by now …
I don’t really like a messy desk, but unfortunately I seem to be incapable of keeping anything clean for longer than half an hour. So my desk, these days at least, tends to be crowded with stuff, but not completely chaotic havoc.
At least, not in my opinion. Others may have a different view on first sight of it.
Work
Messy most of the time. That is how I know where everything is and how to find it. It seems I know more put something away and I need it. Then I can’t remember where I filed it or what stack I laid it on.
I figure if I just leave it out all the time I never have go searching for it.
Home
Organized most of the time. I file all the paid bills in their own little cubby until I actually need to look at it then I can’t remember what cubby I slid it into and have to go through five cubbies before I find what I am looking for.
You would think that I should put the same bill in its own cubby and I did but now there are electric bills in with the gas bills and the phone bill is fornicating with the rent receipts.
I hate messy desks, both here and at home. I actually have no problem with messy drawers. But the mess should be out of sight. Usually I like only the immediate project on my desk. If I have to have more, it’s in neat staggered piles.
My job entails writing, reading and reviewing proposal drafts, and when I’m in the middle of a project, I usually have stacks of paper all over my desk. I pile up instead of spreading out. After a project’s done, I’ll recycle all the drafts and other pieces of paper, so my desk pretty much goes through cycles of messy to relatively clean.
There are some folks here whose offices are so full of files and paper that they have to retreat to empty cubes to get work done.
I generally only have what I’m working on a given day on my desk at work, and it’s filed away at the end of the day. But I have lots of other stuff on my desk, including my pen collections (every color, every type!) and my plant, my Pink Panther,and my other little touches, plus the candy-jar that keeps me popular.
I have a mostly neat desk. There’s a pile of papers in my inbox and a pile right in front of the computer with the stuff that I’m currently working on. Other than that I can’t stand to have piles of papers on my desk. I have other stuff like pictures and little toys, and I have papers tacked to the walls, but no scattered piles on the desk.
Whew, I was starting to think I was crazy. I also am a clean desker. Usually, the only things on my desk are the things I am using right now, or things that are coming.going somewhere else. I even store my backpack in a drawer.
My home desktop isn’t quite as clean, but that is because I have 3 times the crap and about 1/4 the storage space at home, so it takes a lot more effort to keep my home desk clean.
I’m an absolute messy desker yet I store my back pack in a drawer, too. Well, I store it on a drawer that I leave open for that purpose. That drawer is also quite a mess.
It varies. A lot of the time it’s pretty messy, but I go through periods of organizing. I try to keep some control over the state of my office, because, Lord knows, I don’t have much control over the state of my home right now.
Since I often work on more than one project at a time, my desk is usually very messy, like it is right now. If my desk is tidy it’s for one of two reasons; I’m going on vacation for more that a day or two, or I’m caught up with all of my work. Reason number two doesn’t last for very long.
The beauty of a messy desk is that I know right where everything is…on top of the desk!
Here’s a shot of my desk…bear in mind, I just cleaned it (I had a shit ton of papers, ranging from receipts to a class schedule to old bills that I tossed or shoved in a random drawer.)
I do not have a desk per se; I have more of a wrap around counter in my cube. I think it’s around 25’ overall in length. It incorporates my customer service area, along with a work bench and testing station. I usually either take soundings, or use a snow shovel.
Except for the area where my graphics computer is, which for some strange reason is clean enough to eat off of.
My house is your-typically-older-bachelor-type-guy-cluttered. I usually do not pick up my son’s things after he goes back to the ex; it helps delude me into thinking that he still lives at home.
I like a clean desk, but keep it a bit messy because of all the people who assume (wrongly) that a clean desk is a sign you aren’t working hard.
I’ve always liked to have a nice clean desk, where everything is nice and organized, however, for the last 6 moths, it hasn’t been that way!
Having said that, the whole of my room has gone from organized to slightly messy/disorganized, and so has my storage area at university, so things need to be resolved soon! 
OK, I evidently DO have too much time on my hands… and I still agree with myself, nine years later!
My desk is messy. I’m a slob when it comes to that, I will admit but I do have a system in my messiness so I can find what I need (mostly).