Ami Zanders’ tools are scattered around her house, piled and crammed into any space she can find.

Alan Smith used to go for months without shaving when he felt creative.

Christopher Marson often finds inspiration while digging through the mess of his studio.

Don’t judge. According to recent studies their behaviour is perfectly acceptable — for artists. Lifestyle spoke with a bunch of creative types. One camp got a real buzz out of their organisational strategies; the other happily wallowed in utter chaos.

Ms Zanders, 37, is a mixed-media artist.

She recently knitted “yarn bombs”, which she wrapped around the trees in front of City Hall. Her varied work material hogs space in a house she shares with her sister, Karla Ingemann.

“It drives my sister crazy,” Ms Zanders admitted. “I want things to be clean, but it is mostly about time. I have to make a choice between cleaning and working on my projects. I always think, I’ll do the cleaning part next week. Sometimes, I will take a day off intending to clean and then just get caught up in another project.”

Mr Smith is a poet and a visual artist. The 49-year-old falls into the messy camp.

“When I was younger, if I was working on a particularly involved project, my place would become a dump,” he said. “It isn’t that bad now but I still work, both artistically and in my day job, in an organised chaos. I don’t think that messiness equates to disorganisation.”

He straightens things out, every now and then, but it doesn’t stick. Several artists we spoke with said multitasking often led to mess.

“I find both artistically and professionally that I need to multitask and for me that makes tidiness difficult,” said Mr Smith. “Simultaneous tasks and projects mean that I usually have a lot open, be it windows on a single or multiple computers or books and files.”

He said that while his mind felt clear when things were tidy, a clear mind didn’t necessarily lead to heightened creativity for him.

“I’m not sure a clear mind works for me if my default is chaos,” he said.

Mr Marson described his studio as “messy, with moments of tidy”.

The 66-year-old painter said he found it inspiring poking through mess but also needed some level of order.

“On the whole I find that creativity tends to be the result of getting down to work in the cleared space around me,” he said. “One idea leads to another.”

Artist Calix Smith, 31, believed the idea of artists being messy was a stereotype.

“I’m not sure that messiness should be attributed to creativity,” he said. “For example, I definitely can be messy, but my girlfriend cannot function without her space being in order. It affects her creativity in a negative way.”

He said he was highly ordered once a project was underway, but messy at the conceptualisation stage.

“I have ideas scribbled on pieces of cardboard, scrap paper and stuffed in my sketchbook,” he said.

Art therapist and artist Karen Dyer said every person was different.

“There is no easy answer to whether messiness fosters creativity,” she said. She thought it was a misconception that creative people were automatically untidy.

“Artists need to be organised, albeit in their own unique ways,” she said. “As an art therapist I need my materials and work space to be highly organised so that I can easily reach for the required materials the moment they are needed.”

Artist Jonah Jones, 48, said his paint palette was so specifically organised he could find a particular colour in near darkness.

“There is a mess in my studio, but there is a form of organisation among it all,” he said. “On a greater scale there is a misnomer that artists are messy. I think there are some very anal, very tidy artists and some messy and everything in between.”

Mr Jones said he came from a catering background and had also been in the military for five years — both demanded a lot of organisation and discipline.

“Organisation is probably not my natural trait, to be honest,” he said.

“At the end of the day some people are naturally tidy and some people are naturally messy. For parents with creative children, I would say focus on encouraging the creativity and not so much on the mess.”