Confessions of a chronic shed slob

The oddest thing was what happened once I had cleared out a work space. I had no desire for a Smith & Hawken potting table. I liked my wheelbarrow around the side of the house, halfway between front and back. My tools belonged right inside the stable door, exactly where they'd been for 10 years, and could be grabbed quickly and from memory. The more expensive hand tools that need routine cleaning and sharpening were better off living in a kit in the kitchen, where I could treat them with bleach and oil while drinking morning coffee.

Being a shed slob came as no surprise. But that it could be a good thing never occurred to me until I stumbled across the recently released paperback "A Perfect Mess" by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman. This book cuts straight to the heart of the myth about how organized people are more efficient. They're efficient at being organized, says Freedman in a phone interview. But if you want to be a good gardener, being a moderate slob is probably the way to go. "How do you want to spend your time?" he asks. "Organizing or doing?"

"One of the real nice things about allowing yourself to be a little bit messy," he says, "is you get to wing it. You may make connections between different things. Creativity can be intimately tied with being somewhat messy."

Safety, he says, is an excellent reason to stray over to the dark side and do a bit of clearing. So if you've got paint thinner, petroleum, pesticides or dangerous building materials in your shed, you'll have no argument from Freedman that the time is ripe to get thee to a city hazardous waste drop-off.

But otherwise, if your garden looks good and your shed doesn't, it's probably as it should be. In a parting e-mail, Freedman signs off, "My goal is to make the world a slightly messier place every day. Fortunately, I've got physics, human nature, and all of history on my side."

Spoken like a true gardener.

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