In The Conversation, researcher Jamal Abarashi describes his study of 22 New Zealand households, published in the Journal of Business Research. It challenges the conventional wisdom that mess is a problem which must be fixed.
Far from being a symptom of poor organisation, mess can help families function and make life run more smoothly.
Consider the spaces in our homes that serve more than one purpose, and where things tend to pile up: a living room that doubles as a play area, or a bedroom that also serves as a study.
One couple told the researchers how their dining table becomes a "drop zone" for belongings such as bags and drink bottles, before it's cleared each evening. Another person described how leaving something on his kitchen island made him less likely to forget it when leaving the house.
Disorderly as each of those spaces might have appeared, they served daily routines which might have been disrupted for the sake of a tidier-looking home. But often, a messy space is just one that is being useful to us.
Mess can also tell us much about family relationships. One dad would leave his daughter's jumper hanging on the back of a chair rather than pack it away. She had previously left it on the floor, and he wanted to acknowledge her progress. "So I regard that as a win," he said.
When we're making room for other people's ways of living, putting everything in its "proper" place sometimes isn't the most considerate thing to do.
So, should we just stop tidying and embrace chaos? Not quite.
In his account of earlier research, Abarashi notes links between household clutter and stress, embarrassment, and conflict between family members. Mess can make things harder to find, prevent us from using a space, or create more work for someone else.
The study doesn't dispute these problems. Rather, it suggests we need to look beyond how messy a space appears to understand whether that mess is actually causing difficulties.
The researchers found households used three main approaches to managing disorder: clearing things away, tolerating them, or simply hiding them from view.
The findings also suggest tidiness is rarely a permanent state. Spaces become messy as people use them, are cleared when needed, then become messy again. Trying to maintain constant order can mean repeatedly undoing arrangements that serve a useful purpose.
Perhaps the better measure of a well-organised home isn't how tidy it looks, but how well it works for the people who live there.