Americans spend billions and billions on all kinds of organization paraphernalia, such as accordion file folders, plastic bins, pantry jars, drawer organizers, magazine holders, shoe racks, and tons of other things. In fact, I've been known to buy books on how to manage all the clutter.

And yet, many of us are still downright messy.

According to some folks, however, a little disorder is the sign of active, imaginative minds. And, it seems, messy people are often more highly-paid than folks with perfectly-maintained cubicles.

The New York Times quotes lots of pro-clutter experts who say that the neat freaks of the world are, well, kind of boring.

A friend (a neat freak, but not a dull one) emailed the article to me, thinking perhaps that I'd be comforted by this news. After all, there's always a small degree of chaos at my house.

Magazines and catalogs are piled high on the coffee table, random stuff seems to collect on my kitchen counters, and there are always, always stray papers covering up my desk.... even after I've cleaned it up.

So even people who know me well might be surprised to learn that beneath that thin layer of clutter, I'm actually bizarrely organized. And I do mean bizarrely. I'd probably be hyper-organized, except that in the midst of any given organization project, I make choices based on style rather than common sense.

Recently, for instance, I set out to buy practical labels for several boxes of clutter the multitude of important items that I'd amassed and painstakingly organized into various categories. But instead of labels, I returned with stamps featuring vintage travel scenes.

And now there are several boxes on my shelves bearing images of the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal, instead of informative labels. So, they look good, even though I can't remember what's in any given box.

I'm not sure if this puts me in the pro-clutter or anti-clutter camp. I have no idea what it does to my home's feng shui. But my shelves, which are piled with all those boxes, do look nice.