Tidiness was not something that came naturally to him. It wasn't that things were unclean, though. He preferred the term "disorganized".
Even when Hershel was a teenager, his mother would frantically attempt to clean his room until it was spic and span despite his protests. Of course, his parents put it off as him simply being a teenager, but it was a habit that stuck with him.
At university, at least Clark was a bit better at keeping things neat. He often berated Hershel on the scattered papers and food wrappings that littered his side of the dorm, but they still got along well. Claire was a little gentler with her chiding, but a clean flat would only last a day or so before it was in its original state of disarray.
Layton tried to keep things orderly. He really did. When he had a free space of time he would attempt going through the ever-growing stacks of books that lay around the perimeter of his office, but every time he would be distracted. He would end up spending the rest of that free time cross-legged on the floor, hunched over the second or third book in a stack, paging through it because he had forgotten he even owned it.
Some things really never changed, he supposed.
