Household Entropy

In My Humble Opinion
1

By “household entropy” I mean the tendency for the house to get messy, dishes to pile up, newspapers/magazines/shoes/mail to cover every surface, clothes to wind up on the floor or draped over pieces of bedroom furniture in the absence of constant vigilance and effort against the natural force that wants to return the world to its primordial state of chaos.

I’m wondering in which particular areas, if any, you maintain the strongest vigilance? Also, do you live alone or with someone? If you live with someone, do you feel like you are equal partners in this battle? Or, more likely, stasis is achieved because one person is fighting chaos at the same rate that the other person is promoting it. (I live alone.)

For example: my coffee table. I clear off my coffee table every night before I go to bed. If I don’t, by the end of the week, it will be piled high with newspapers, books, coffee cups, glasses, mail, and God knows what else. I bought and assembled a new coffee table about three months ago that has helped in this effort. It has two drawers, where I keep nail file & hand lotion, TV remotes, napkins (for eating in front of the tv), pills I take, pens, pencils, and random stuff. There’s also a shelf under it for tissue, salt shaker (for eating in front of the tv).

Another example: shoes. I leave one pair of shoes out on the floor in my bedroom. They’re slides/scuffs that I wear around the house. When I come home from work, I take off my shoes and put on the scuffs, sometimes leaving the shoes I just took off lying out on the floor. But if I go walking and come back and take off my walking shoes, and leave them out-- I stop right then and put all the shoes away. Two pairs out on the floor is my limit. Otherwise, in a very short time, there will be shoes all over the floor and I won’t be able to get to the bed.

Also, I immediately throw away any little scraps of paper to keep them from piling up the kitchen counter-- Sweet 'n Low packets, box tops, strips of paper torn from packages-- otherwise they collect like tumbleweeds. I will let dishes sit in the sink for a day or two, but then I have to wash them or pretty soon the sink will be full of dishes.

I’m not vigilant about everything by any stretch of the imagination…but these are my main fronts in the war against chaos. What are yours?

2

I live alone, and since I just moved, I haven’t settled into patterns in the new place yet (right now it’s ALL BOXES EVERYWHERE and kind of a nightmare).

In the old place, the things that slid into chaos most easily and that I had to be most watchful around were;

Dishes. No dishwasher in the old place, so I’d put the dirty ones in the sink. I finally had to make a point of doing the dishes every evening before bed. It took 5-10 minutes tops, but if I didn’t, they’d pile up for a week after skipping once.

I had a chair where I’d set my work bag when I came in. It was also used for shopping bags, coats, etc. It didn’t have to be a daily clean off, but at least once a week for that.

And the kitchen counter: my main entrance into the apartment was through the kitchen, so mail tended to be tossed on the counter and if I didn’t watch it, it’d be buried.

3

The kitchen.

The rest of the house may look like it was ground zero for a gang war, but the kitchen will be clean before the end of the day.

I think this is because I really dislike the idea of rotting food stuck to plates just sitting in the house. Walking into the kitchen the next morning to eat some breakfast and seeing last night’s dinner just sitting there is just yuck.

A few hours is ok. But it needs to be clean before the morning.

4

I live alone.

The kitchen counter and the dining room table are my bugaboos. I also don’t have a dishwasher so the sink gets full but it actually takes a while, as I tend to rinse and re-use and also use paper plates.

My dining room table gets all the mail that has to be sorted, and anything I buy during the week, or people give me or whatnot.

I do make sure I clean both off once a week. I couldn’t imagine the buildiup if I didn’t!

I keep my living room end tables neat. Mostly because when they are cluttered they are cluttered with food wrappers and I don’t want the dogs getting those. So if I spend time in the living room I always clean up after myself.

5

Kitchen is number one - has to be clean, and can’t be clean if it is cluttered.

Shared living spaces are second. If others have to share the space, or if guest will see, they shouldn’t have to put up with my mess.

Third is bathrooms.

Final - bedroom and any other space where a door can be closed. The only areas that have high permanent clutter are my desk and my car.

Couple of observations, we tend to keep our house pretty neat, tho - believe me - I KNOW that it is not spotless. But putting things away regularly - immediately after use to the extent possible - eliminates the need to do so later. Sounds trite, but it really takes no more effort to put things away after they are used, than to let them pile up. The first makes organization a habit; the second makes it a separate task that can be put off. Actually, it may take less time, since you will know where things are instead of spending time searching for them.

We pretty much try to do a quick clean-up before going to bed. Newspaper and recycling to the bin, dishes washed or in dishwasher, etc. The dishes get cleaned up right after the meals before we do anything else.

You have to be aware of “creep.” For example, it is no big thing to have a pair of shoes near the door - especially if you expect to be using them again soon. But you don’t want that to progress to the same pair(s) of shoes permanently by the door. Really just about as easy to put them in the closet.

We clean the house pretty thoroughly every weekend. Takes the 2 of us less than an hour. Surfaces dusted, floors vaccuumed and washed, bathrooms cleaned. Also have perfected the “10 minute tidy” for when guests are coming over.

My married adult daughter seems not to have developed similar habits. She and her husband seem to almost competitively clutter. If one empties their pockets on the kitchen counter, the other feels they don’t need to empty the wastebasket. I woudn’t want to live that way.

I used to be quite messy. In college one time I packed and moved some dirty dishes. Figured it didn’t matter whether I washed them before or after I moved them. When we discovered them a year later, they went straight to the trash.

I prefer it neat.

6

Oh God, yes. Paper plates are The Best. I never used them before, but my ex-boyfriend introduced me to them. Who knew? I get the cheap three-ply kind. If you peel off one of them, you can use it to cover whatever you’re microwaving on the other two, then slip it on the bottom when you’re ready to dine.

Agree. Much of my clean-up vigilance re food is to keep anything remotely edible or even lickable from the dogs and cats. Because they WILL find it (even at the bottom of a trash basket (if it’s not covered), consume it, and probably regurgitate the inedible parts somewhere in the house.

My thinking is that I’m not in the mood to put it away/clean up now, but I will be 1,000 times LESS in the mood later or God forbid, tomorrow. Especially if leftover food is involved.

“Creep” as you describe it, is really what I’m talking about here. The incremental slide toward chaos.

7

I live with a roommate now but I just came out of a 3ish year period of living alone. Gaining a roommate helped since he’s the neater of the two of us and I started picking up after myself more to avoid the inevitable comparisons to Oscar and Felix. (It’s reached a point where there are things that bug me more than him. I don’t care if you’ve rinsed it, if the dishwasher is empty of clean dishes, put it in the dishwasher. If I can’t leave dishes in the sink, you can’t leave them on the counter.)

I find making it a point to not go to bed until the dishes are done and to include wiping down counters and the stovetop as part of doing the dishes helps keep the kitchen clean. I also go through the dining and living room every night to return missing cutlery, glassware, dishes and so on to the kitchen and throw away papers, napkins, wrappers, etc. Doing it every night means it only ever takes 2 minutes. I also go through all my mail and tear up and throw away all junk mail immediately. That alone seems to stop the mail creep in its tracks.

8

Dishes get washed every day, no fail. Especially in the summer.

Table gets cleared every day. We have a great table, it’s a coffee table, that rises up to the level of a real table. It’s just the right size for us to eat off, so it highly discourages clutter.

Laundry once a week. Garbage, once a week. (it might be more often but once a week guaranteed).

Mail daily - are there people who don’t do this? I love the mail, even now.

Everything else is catch-as-catch-can.

9

I really don’t know how other people do it. I feel like if I actually cleaned everything that needed to be cleaned I would never have an opportunity to sit down ever again. Granted, we have three pets and a preschooler so we have extra mess makers who can’t help cleam up after themselves, but even without the additional mess I feel overwhelmed by cleaning. I make sure the bathroom is done once a week, that the dishwasher is run every night (this does not guarantee all dishes are clean, there may be a pan and some bowls or something in the sink if they didn’t fit in the dishwasher for that round) that cat litter is dealt with every day, and that we always have clean laundry which involves about 4 loads a week, give or take. My husband takes out the trash and picks up the living room as is warranted, but realistically we are just surrounded by low level mess unless we have people coming over. We try to invite people over at least once every 6 weeks to prevent our family from appearing in an episode of Hoarders.

10

This, except that it’s 3 pets, two pre-schoolers, three teens, and the husband is disabled and can’t help with many chores. I’m a lousy housekeeper under the best of circumstances, so you can imagine (or maybe you can’t!) how bad it can get. (The family joke is that my definition of “housekeeping” is “paying the taxes so it doesn’t get sold on the courthouse steps.” That’s uncomfortably close to the truth.)

My only hard-and-fast rule regarding cleaning? Anything related to human or animal waste must be cleaned or outside the house before bed - diapers tied up and put out, doggy accidents cleaned immediately, soiled clothing washed if there’s been an accident, etc. I’m trying to get into the habit of picking up the living room every night, and I usually manage to run the dishwasher every night. Once I master the living room habit, my next goal is to form the habit of cleaning the kitchen each night to the point that the counters, stove, and table are clean before bed. Baby steps.

I’ve also gone on strike regarding cleaning the two front bathrooms, other than making sure that the little girls’ clothes are picked up. I don’t use those bathrooms. The preschoolers bathe in my bathroom, so the only people who shower, shave, color hair, etc. in the two front baths are over the age of 14 - they can damned well scrub the toilet and clean the tub themselves! (But I did buy mesh covers for the tub and sink drains, because I got tired of having to snake out drains due to hair clogs, dammit!)

11

I also sift through junk mail immediately. I used to live in an apartment that had a big garbage can right next to the mailboxes and I stood right there and tossed the junk. It never even made it into the apartment.

OTOH I have a friend who never sorts through her mail, and then about once every couple of months she forces herself to go through it. I do not understand this at all. She was one of the people whose credit cards were hacked in the Target thing, and months later, she tried to use that card and it was declined. Annoyed and mystified, she called the company, and sure enough, they had sent her out a new card the very next day back when it happened, and it was still sitting in the to-be-sorted pile of mail. :smack:

12

As does my apartment complex and I’ll toss flyers and ads straight into it but things like credit card offers, for my peace of mind, I prefer to tear up and throw half away in the bathroom trash bin and half in the kitchen bin.

13

Getchyseff a cheapie paper shredder. Bonus: if you get a rabbit or hamster, you’ll already have a supply of bedding.

14

I seem to always need to reach critical mass before I do anything about my housekeeping. I’m notorious for having a dozen half-finished projects of one type or another littering just about every room. I do a thorough housecleaning every weekend, so I’m not gross, but I do tend to be messy.

The exception is my kitchen which has to be tidy. My mother hated washing dishes and would let them pile up until we were eating soup out of mixing bowls using serving spoons. I developed an abhorrence for piles of dirty dishes and am unable to sleep at night until my dishes are all rinsed and put in the dishwasher. This spills over (pun intended) into the rest of the kitchen. I don’t leave things standing out, I clean out my refrigerator religiously every weekend and am pretty ruthless about it. I have a self-cleaning oven, or I’d have to clean that, too.

15

I only know one family with a child and pets that has a “wow your house is very clean” house. That is my one friend who is and always has been absurd about cleanliness. And she’s a SAHM so she a place in her daily schedule for cleaning, above all else.

My parents watch my nieces at their home, and it’s an absolute wreck every day but somehow they manage to clean it up every night. And they are exhausted. But the kids go home at night and my parents clean up…right now they’ve had the kids overnight for 2 nights and the house is an absolute wreck. Since the kids have been staying later lately (through dinner, not overnight every day) I have been going over there just to clean up for them at the end of the day because it’s too much for them.

Everyone else I know who has kids - pets or no - just is a wreck. And they try, but even when their houses look clean to them they still look like a wreck. It’s “lived-in.” But it’s FINE!

Anyway - no one expects people with kids to have a clean house. Kids and out-of-the-home jobs? Forget it! You shouldn’t expect it of yourself!

16

You are channeling me. My wife and I keep our kitchen spotless. The dining room table is a mess of old newspapers, mail order catalogs and god only knows what else. It (or part of it) gets cleared only when we have dinner guests. The coffee table in the living room has piles. One of old New Yorkers, one of Scientific Americans, several of books and two of mathematics papers that I have referred to in the past year–or two or ten. My easy chair has a swing-out tray that holds my laptop. And there is an end table by it that has a plug-in hard drive, a plug-in floppy drive, a telephone and some other stuff, with a box of batteries underneath. There is a nest of wires under the computer tray.

17

I’m cluttered, but fairly “clean,” and even somewhat organized. The clutter has a system behind it.

Kitchen, clean. I only have one bowl and one spoon, so I have to wash them if I want my next meal!

Like a great many live-alone bachelors, the bathroom is my bete noir. Every so often (months) I make an all-out assault on it with a wire brush.

18

My desk at work resembles the descriptions on here of “Household Entropy”.
About 3 feet deep in paper/reports/other assorted rubbish. It doesn’t matter how many times I attempt to clean it, it still resembles a garbage dump. I’m glad someone’s put a name to the “condition” so I can finally go and get professional help. We’re supposed to have a “clean desk policy” so it looks like my days are numbered… :frowning:

19

I tend to straighten up public areas first, especially walkways and surfaces. I like for the house to look presentable if someone drops by. And I find clutter collects on the surfaces, so if I tackle them, most of the mess is controlled.

I’m less vigilant about the kitchen, but that’s my husband’s bete noir, so it’s usually not far away from being in presentable shape. A few dishes/light clutter is the worst it gets because it wouldn’t occur to us not to clean up after cooking meals.

Our guest rooms are immaculate, and our own bedroom (and my dressing room) are a mess, with clothing everywhere.

20

I live by the motto: Shit don’t get done, unless you do it.

I have some friends that live like they are going to win the cleaning fairies lottery any day now, and she’ll show up and clean up their mess.