Casual Fridays: Help me prepare tomorrow's study

I'm a total slob. The stack of paperwork in my office is so high, that I'm convinced diamonds (or at least coal) are forming on the bottom layer from all the pressure. My car is trashed, and my clothes are all over the closet floor. However, I will not tolerate wet towels or clothes on the floor, or any filth in the bathroom. And after my husband doesn't clean the kitchen for a couple of days, I get pretty grumpy.

Oh man, this is going to be embarrassing:

1. Dirty dishes, mugs, pots, pans etc - mostly in the kitchen sink, but often *everywhere*
2. Stacks of notes, documents, papers, books, all over desk, floor, chairs...
3. Dirty laundry outside of laundry basket.
4. Electronic messes - seemingly randomly named files, all dumped over the Desktop or My Documents. Downloaded files strewn everywhere, temporary files not cleaned up. Inboxes bulging with old mail.
5. General packaging trash. In particular items too big for the trash can, and so are strewn in random spots.

Broken glass on the sidewalk outside of my dorm on weekend mornings, among other things.

Messes I make (or used to, until my husband begged me to stop):

1. Change dropped on the table, dresser, desk, bookshelf, etc.
2. Shoes kicked off anywhere besides my side of the closet
3. Jackets and sweaters slung over the backs of chairs

My own pet peeve is when someone leaves a box of cereal or crackers open. Don't they realize these things go stale if not closed properly?

#1: Kids toys strewn all over the floor.
#2: Dishes and/or food preparation tools left out on counter.
#3: Cloths left lying about on furniture or floors.

Some new ones that bother me:

Hairballs in the bathtub drain after a shower.
Coats not hung up
Piles of mail on the kitchen table

I'm sure there are others - I'll let other people suggest them!

Stacks and stacks of paper.

Printouts from the computer.

Stacks of magazines.

Stacks of books.

Stacks of stacks, i.e. one stack oriented one way with a second stack oriented at a right angle on top of it.

Add to that stacks of compact discs and stacks of folded clothes and you will begin get a sense of the vertical nature of my household's clutter.

-- SCAM

Here goes. Fair warning, if slobishness were a super-power (or even a real word) I'd have my own comic book.

1. Dirty cloths strewn about bedroom & den
2. Dishes in kitchen sink
3. Dishes, empty microwave dinner boxes, and Dominos pizza boxes on kitchen counter and stove.
4. Opening my refrigerator is not for the faint of heart
5. Papers, DVDs, junk mail, empty food containers, books, loose change, and discarded nicotine lozenge containers on and around coffee table.
6. Empty boxes from Christmas 2005 in hall closet
7. Coffee mugs, paper, wires, electronics, and tradeshow giveaways on two desks in den.
8. Computer desktop overflowing with icons
9. Laundry piled in laundry room aprox 3 ft high and 2 ft in diameter at the base
10. Parts from plastic model of an engine covering dining room table (part of a new invention I'm working on.)
11. Empty toilet paper roll in the holder, half used roll on the back of the toilet tank
12. Inkjet printer in a duffle bag on living room floor.
13. Non-perishable groceries from last Monday in bags on kitchen floor.

1. crumb-covered or grimy kitchen counter (from food prep, etc.)
2. heaps of mail, print-outs, and To Do lists on dining room table
3. heaps of semi-processed bits from #2, now transferred to coffee table and/or couches in family room
4. books and CD's that are waiting to be (re)shelved after use (usually in the right room, but a growing pile by stairs)
5. piles of stuff brought home from work, or projects in various states of progress, in entry hall (esp. on the bench where we theoretically put on our shoes)
6. heaps of clothes on dresser (worn once, need to be put away or into laundry)
7. books, mail, receipts, and other crap on my (home) desk waiting to be processed

[at work, I'm pretty neat, by necessity, although there's always the zone of desk where I eat lunch, from which crumbs and other detritus threaten nearby paperwork.]

We run a fairly tight ship, but here's where it breaks down: files, mail, and random crap. Files on the computer (piling up in the desktop becuase you don't know where to put it or files that exist but you forgot what you named it), paper files with the same problem, and the tons of mail from charities you haven't decided whether you want to give to them or not.

Also, rehabing a house so there is a large component of maybe I'll use this thing later/this will go into the room I'm finishing but for now I'll put it where? A problem with tools is that for them to be at hand, they have to be a mess in the place you are working. Otherwise getting started and cleaning up afterwards takes all the time you have for actually doing work.

Toys around the house can be annoying but we do a sweep after bedtime most nights to clean everything up. We feel better but more importantly, we don't slip on things and end up with broken backs.

1. When I am done with an object I put it down, not away. e.g., my business clothes leave are trailed from the entry door to my dresser. Tools get left on the nearest credenza/bookshelf. Books are found where I was last reading them.

2. I don't throw away things that interest me even if there is little chance I will use/read them. Hence, we have ever growing stacks of National Geographic, The Economist, The New Yorker, etc.

In our house it's paper (from school, the mail, magazines, etc.) books, dirty clothes on the floor, dishes left where they were used. Four backpacks plus my work bag. Coats on chairs instead of hung up, which then fall to the floor. CDs, DVDs, and videos left out of their cases when used and then removed from the player to make way for the next one. It drives me crazy, but not enough to make cleaning a daily part of my day. I'd rather do anything but and it takes a big pile-up to mobilize me.

Piles of books
Piles of Journals
Projects in Process
Computer Messes (Messy Folders etc.)
Potion/Tea Brewing messes of jars and bags and bowls and tools
Pillow Piles that don't get picked up
DVD Calamity (When you pick out a bunch of DVD's you might want to watch, and don't return any of them. Then do the same thing the next day. And the next...)

From the roommate: Piles of dishes accumulating in the sink when they could easily be put in the dishwasher not two feet away. Hairballs in the shower drain.

From myself: Clothes get left on my floor and hanging over my chair longer than I should let them.

The most bothersome mess I have is a messy pile of papers used for revising for my examination during these two months. I carry that all around and I really want to clean it up, but I don't and can't because my file is utterly full; also, putting these papers in my file won't help when I want to take some of those papers out. [Papers]! Books are better, really...
Another thing are those [computer wires] - they can really mess my mind up.
Messy clothes and fabric-like items are tolerable to me, but not to my mom.
One type of mess that I can't tolerate are messes involved with dampness, like wet towels, dirty bathrooms, mud, fungus (including non-editable mushrooms), and anything that is wet and looks dirty. Sometimes they can send chills to my spine. Disgusting!

Some of these comments are so horrific I couldn't get myself to read any further.

I recently took a personality test and scored high on conscientiousness, which helps explain my necessity to clean up around me - unless I want to be constantly plagued with annoyance.

It particularly boggles my mind when I see people operating efficiently (or do they?) in a messy environment. Sometimes I even get jealous - I wish I had that ability...

Similar to what others have identified:

• - Piles of papers. Usually not neat stacks, but kindof mounds. Stacks wouldn't be a problem.
• - Piles of unopened or unprocessed mail. Most of it needs to be shredded (don't dare just throw credit card offers out), some needs to be put in the bill bin, some are catalogs for the ladies.
• - Piles of dishes. This is particularly annoying when I open the dishwasher and find there is one fork and one knife, and nothing else, but a stack of bowls, etc, in the sink.
• - Dirty clothes in balls or knots. Socks balled up, jeans wrapped around underwear, a towel wrapped around a still-wet swimsuit from three days ago, starting to smell funny.
• - Cable spaghetti. When first installed, everything is very neatly layed out, but as power and network cables get fiddled with, entropy sets in, and suddenly it is time to power everything down and rearrange into neatness again. This is one that happens worse in the office, but also happens at home.

A few others:

• - Creeping crud mold and mildew. The back bathroom is rarely used, and every few weeks I lift the seat to discover a black spreading yuck that needs killing. There is a shower in the basement in the office that suffers from the same problem. I avoid it.
• - Leftovers. Not day-old leftovers, but two-week-old leftovers in a Friday's box, now unrecognizable. I'll come home from grocery shopping to find a dozen boxes that need to be tossed. This is one that happens worse at home, but also happens in the office.
• - Two-week-old trash in the big cans. If I don't put the trash out on Friday (because it's not my turn, darnit) then the next Friday it's not only more to move, it's had an extra week to ferment.
• - Horribly designed web pages. celibacy.info, for example.
• - Anything blocking traffic. My lovely daughter has a penchant for dropping her backpack, coat, keys and purse in a direct line between the front door and the television, creating an instant obstacle course for the next person to get home.
• - Dirty sheets. I change the sheets... well, lets just say I like to sleep on clean sheets, and there are several ways to get me to quite happily get out a clean set.
• - Expended personal care products. Empty shampoo bottles, used up razors, empty hair product containers, zero-product antiperspirant sticks, empty toilet paper rolls, etc., in piles or stacks or rows in the bathrooms. Particularly annoying when there's a mostly empty trash can literally inches away.

Those are the ones that spring to mind.

Here is where our cleaning begins to break down:
- Dishes from the night before get left in the sink.
- random pieces of paper - or even important pieces of paper ('Hon, where is the permit application form again? It's due today') get scattered everywhere and placed into piles. These piles then, in an attempt to clean things up a bit, get placed in boxes and magazine holders...the magazine folders and boxes then, in theory, get cleaned out and papers put in the proper places or thrown away...it's been about 3 months since this last happened - our boxes are getting full.
-Clothing never gets put away properly. We have piles on the floor 'clean' 'semi-clean' 'dirty dark' 'dirty light'
-We never make our bed. It's a duvet, we kinda shake it out. Sometimes. Okay, rarely ever.
-We don't hang up jackets. They are slung on chair backs.

The things we nag each other about:
-Hair in the tub after a shower. The boyfriend hates hair. Anywhere. MUST be cleaned.
-I hate when, if someone showers and didn't plaster the liner in the shower against the wall right, it creates a puddle on the floor. Boys never clean that puddle up, and instead, leave it for unsuspecting people to mop up with their socks apparently.
-Dishes being left in the sink. The person who doesn't cook is supposed to clean the dishes. This person doesn't ever do it right away, and the person who cooked gets pretty uptight about it.
-If the kitchen garbage is not taken outside right away, and just left to sit in the kitchen...ewwww...that's just gross.
-Dishes being left in the sink for more than a day are just inexcusable and completely intolerable. Also, dishes that aren't cleaned properly, really are unacceptable.
-Food being forgotten by roommates in the fridge and left there far too long, and despite being reminded - it is still there too long.
-leaving lights on (if that counts)
-Shoes not being left neat in common areas (i.e: front door)
-Not sweeping, or not cleaning up spilled juice drops,etc: or otherwise NOT treating the floors nicely and neatly. My floors are my obsession. They MUST be neat (mostly).
-Any kind of damp mess. Damp towels that have been balled up for awhile. Weird grungy stuff in the corner of the 'boy bathroom', etc.
-Pink stuff in the shower, or around the shower tiles, or something. I cannot tolerate the pink stuff - that means the bathroom has not been cleaned recently enough. Gross. especially if it begins to form around where my feet go...really, really gross.

I think our biggest problem is what "ompus" describes. We/I very rarely put things immediately away again, unless it is DVD's (our baby, our collection). Papers go where they were last used, books, dishes, laundry etc. Same with throwing things out - hence all the boxes/magazine holders of paper.

Messes:

1. The Mail. Big mess, takes too much time to recycle/shred/file the junk from the real stuff, so it piles up.
2. The Laundry.
3. Dishes. Post-cooking dishes, or just general day-to-day ones.
4. Fabric scraps and yarn bits from crafting

Tangled computer cords, especially if they hang down and touch me.

I am the mother of 4 boys : 10 yr, 8 yrs, 4yr, 2yrs. My home is the poster child for the messes that kids can and will make. As soon as you come through the front door the foyer floor is scattered with chips of wood from the hampster cage. The livingroom one side is little boys toys (cars, push toys, stuffed animals), then our piano is covered with the boys favorite books toys and pictures they have created. My husbands eliptical is also in this room and always has something hanging on it. My grandmothers sewing table is being used as a desk and is covered with papers and toys. Now we move into the kitchen- the counters are pretty much covered in what ever the boys decided would be a good experiment(usually consisting of something with vinegar and baking soda). The rest of the counter space is taken up with cereal boxes and other things the boys can fix for themselves in a hurry. Now on to the dinning room- my table is covered with the latest in paper airplane designs(most never made it through a descent test flight). The floor in the dinning room is today covered in baby powder that my two year old thought looked like snow. Now on tho the bath room- this room could be worse but today it is somewhat ok- The new toilet paper is wet and ruined from the boys bath time splashing. The floor covered in discarded clothes and towels. The sink looks like soap and toothpaste has thrown up on it. The toiled well we won't go there- remember 4 little boys- enough said. Ok now on to my room- my bed is un-made, the floor has little shoes and toys at the foot of the bed, my youngest has been sick so his toddler bed is next to my bed and surrounded by medicine, tissue, washcloth, gatorade and a small trash can just in case. I could go on but you get the picture. Our home is just that a working home that gets much use and abuse. I wouldn't change a thing!

I have been blessed to be a stay at home mom, this means that I will at some time have to clean all of these rooms and disinfect and organize/declutter but today I am just going to revel in sitting with my sick little guys and watch scoobydoo.