I like to keep my house ready for a Pottery Barn camera crew at all times. Not that I own much from Pottery Barn. “clean” isn`t sufficient to describe my house though. Everything has its perfect little place just like a pottery barn room. There is no clutter. It looks unlived in, but not sterile, rather in that catalog posed room sort of way. It’s really pretty weird, but deliberate.
Y’all seen/heard of the show Hoarders?
We’re the opposite. If it’s not being used, it’s gone. C’ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.
I picked “other”. It’s been a disaster area for awhile and I’m NOT okay with that. Two jobs and a series of sem-incapacitating health issues took it from where it ranged between fairly neat to occasional reasonable clutter to “beyond my messiness threshold”.
Now that I’m moving, I’m getting to have a new slate. I’ve sold and am getting rid of nearly everything. My daughter will be living with me, and she will be able to help me do things I can’t do any longer.
I picked other because our cleaning lady comes every week to clean so it is guest ready most of the time. The day to day is kept reasonably neat considering I have a toddler and cook and use the home with various projects.
Mostly between option 2 and 3.
At any time there may be a few dishes in the sink and a glass or beer can on the coffee table. A book or two or magazine. Some mail and the local paper on the kitchen table. A coat on the chair and a pair of shoes that never made it to the closet.
A bit of laundry in the bed room or ready to go in the laundry room.
Our two dogs and 2 cats share their house with us. We have a gravel drive and live on a dirt road. The dogs pretty much have the run of the place. Paw prints included. We steam clean the carpets twice a year. The dogs have a doggie door and come and go as they please in any weather. The dogs aren’t against dragging in a bone that they found and chew on it. Deer legs mostly. Once a deer skull.
it’s amazing the house looks as good as it does. If for any reason I get shot into space, I want to first wrap myself in the carpet that we have. It’s tough stuff.
My Dad, unfortunately could probably be classified as a hoarder. We have tried to help him, but I’m done banging my head against the wall.
My Mom is the exact opposite (they are divorced). You could perform surgery in any room of her house at any time. My Mom has allergies and needs to keep things very clean.
I think my Wife and I have a pretty comfortable middle ground. It’s life. Sometimes it gets a bit dirty.
Same.
I voted ‘I could be on Hoarders’. Yes, it is that bad and has been for about 2 years now (previously I was quite neat to somewhat messy, depending on my mental state and who I was living with). I have three dogs and two cats in about 300 sq ft, and I lost my mind for a while there. Not only mess, but plenty of utter filth. My poor pets. 
My situation is a little different, because I spend a great deal of time and sleep at my boyfriend’s residence, so it’s been easier for me to shirk my responsibilities at my own home.
But - I’ve been cleaning intensively for about 2 weeks now and am about halfway to being a person with a very clean, neat, organized home that smells good. I will have a room mate (my baby sister!) by this Tuesday, who’s going to help me clean walls, prime, paint, and install the new flooring. I’m done with being a disgusting slob, forever hopefully. I will spend the time every day doing the maintenance I need to in order to keep things up to my standards (probably about an hour’s worth of work 5 days a week and more on my days off, because of the animals). My goal is to keep it clean enough that I don’t have to give a second thought to someone coming in with zero warning.
The thing with me is that I’m actually a control freak perfectionist, and due to my various issues when I can’t maintain my own high standards I give up, check out, and let things go to hell while hating myself and feeling severely depressed and anxious. Ah, mental illness.
I have the Scary Bachelor Apartment vibe going on unless I have some warning. Dishes get washed when the sink is full or I’m out of clean ones, I think rebuilding a bicycle in the living room is perfectly normal.
For us it goes in waves. We don’t let it get disgusting. Paper clutter is a real problem that I’d love to overcome.
I dream of a regular schedule which includes weekly floor washing and dusting rather than waiting until those things are screaming to be done.
I never really learned how to “keep house”. My mom was aces at it until I was six. That’s when my parents split and she more or less gave up. (Partly due to being tired after/around work, and partly “why bother”).
I’ll break my space down into four sections:
Bedroom: Cluttered but clean. Dirty clothes go in the hamper. Sometimes there are piles of clean clothes on the floor that I pick from to wear because I’m too lazy to fold. Lots of stacks of CDs, books, projects.
Bathroom: Clean enough. It doesn’t stink or have mold, but there is usually some toothpaste splash on the counter or mirror. No black junk in the toilet or shower.
Main (common) living space: Very clean. The female roomie usually keeps herself limited to the couch or the computer table. I have to get on her to put her dishes in the kitchen (at least) before she leaves the house or goes to bed.
Kitchen: Here’s where it’s a battle. When I cook, I clean as I go. I won’t eat until all the cooking dishes are clean. Then after I eat, all the eating dishes go straight in the dishwasher. Any cooking mess gets cleaned up immediately. Roomie, on the other hand, will leave dirty dishes in the sink for days on end until I bitch. She isn’t very neat when she cooks either. So sometimes I just have to deal with her mess. I know, it sounds pretty passive-agressive, but I don’t like to clean up after anybody else’s mess.
Bottom line: I’m about a B-/C+. Friends can come over anytime and not get grossed out, but they know that it’s not a Good Housekeeping cover.
Our home is cleaner than most homes I know, also more organized. In fact I blog about it. I still didn’t put us at “pristine” because I have pretty high standards and we are not there.
I could stand to dust and vacuum more frequently than I do, but to make it presentable that’s usually all I have to take care of. Oh, and stick the books and papers in a stack in the closet. 
The kitchen and bathroom are always clean.
I am no longer *quite *as bad as Oscar Madison, but no one would ever think of me as a tidy man.
I have a high tolerance for clutter - but even more, seem to have a blind spot to it. For instance, on Wed mornings I get all the recyclables together. It is always amazing to me how much of it I overlook. I find stuff that I had to have looked at, but not seen, either later that day or over the next day or two.
I’m very cluttered. I have a lot of books and stuff like that. But I’m living in a decent sized house now so I can keep most of them out of the way (I have a side room in the basement I use for storage).
I’m also bad about clothes. I have a spare bedroom and I often have a pile of dirty clothes on the bed in there. Or a basket or two of clothes in the laundry room. It’s not unusual for clothing to go through several cycles of laundry-basket-wearing-pile-laundry without ever making it to a closet or drawer.
But on the plus side I don’t accumulate garbage. I don’t have piles of food or dirty dishes or pet stuff sitting around.
Cluttered.
Two kids in sports and homework papers and school papers that multiply like rabbits.
I work at a thrift store and am always coming home with books.
Laundry is either Clean and in a pile or dirty and in a pile.
We have a clutter problem, but the place is sanitary and usable and all. I have a problem with books and papers on the counters, we have too many books, and the kids leave a trail of destruction behind them (though they have chores and are helpful too).
But the kitchen and bathrooms are clean, the laundry is under control and kept up with, the floors are clean–it’s just the stuff that gets left around.
People come over quite a lot.
As I glance around my house now, i see clutter, but not real mess. I baked some banana bread this morning and washed all the dishes afterward, so there’s just the pan we used to cook the burgers for lunch and a couple of cups in the sink. Most of the clothes are put away; a few on the floor. The coffee table, which is where we eat, needs to have its tablecloth changed.
My house is never mom ready either like Mrs. Whatsit, I can’t live in it and also have it that clean. But it’s never got food around and it would take no more than an hour to make it fairly presentable, and just a few to clean it top to bottom.
Usually about 15 minutes away from visitor ready but if someone just showed up at the door it would be OK.
Of course, any visitors know that we have a 22 year old cat who can hork up a hairball at the drop of a hat, and a parakeet who flings his feathers all over so there may be a bit of hairball, cat fur or bird feathers floating around. Now you can add a pile of barfed on baby clothing/blankets to the pile - I do laundry every day but the little stinker just keeps spitting up on everything.
I clean and pick up daily, but this little house is always cluttered and dirty. The household contains the mess of two kids, four adults, and two cats.
I’m the only one cleaning up, most of the time, so it’s a losing battle, even though I give the kids chores and beg the adults to pitch in. My health is not great.
I find it demoralizing, living in a house of slobs. It’s not that I’m a neat freak. I want it just moderately clean and neat enough so it’s not humiliating to have people drop by.
It’s probably higher than “pretty neat” but lower than pristine. I haven’t hired a cleaning service here because I’m so rarely in the house.
Generally, keeping my space clean and picked up is a huge priority for me, and I get quite depressed if it gets messy. This is in complete contrast to my habits and behaviour growing up. I think my attitude started changing about 4 years ago when I got a housekeeper to come in a couple times a month. She handled all the heavy duty crap, so I got obsessive about keeping everything picked up.
It makes me feel good to come home to a neat apartment.