Aside from our shoes being in a huge pile in the front closet due to the shoe rack taking an unexpected turn of events, my place is very tidy. I do a little cleaning every day - might be spraying the sink with the 7th generation disinfecting spray, might be wiping around the toilet, might be vacuuming or changing the sheets. A little every day means there’s no massive cleaning spree on the weekend.
I used to have a very bad habit that I didn’t break until my SO came along - I wouldn’t put away clean clothes. I’d leave them in the basket and use them as needed. It’s because I HATE folding clothes. I can’t explain it at all; I don’t have an aversion to any other chore. Now he does it 80% of the time and I play music while I do it.
My house is always neat and tidy (no food mess, counters and tables free of anything, nothing on the floors). I go through once or twice a day and put stuff away/wipe counters and tables.
However, my house is only cleaned every two weeks. If I see something in between I will fix it up but sweeping, dusting, vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms is not happening.
I am perfectly willing to have company at any time, anyone.
If you want to, you’d better get your butt there sooner than later. perfectparanoia lives in Ontario. Brrrrrrr.
Ew, I was just reminded of my co-worker’s house. I picked him up on the way to work (I got extra mileage for it, so why not) and I had to use the bathroom, so I asked if I could. His place was nasty. Dishes littered on every surface in his kitchen (which I saw on the way to the bathroom), clothes strewn everywhere and pubes all over every square inch of the bathroom. He lives alone, so it’s not like a roommate trashed the place either.
I get that cleaning isn’t on your list of priorities if you’re living hand to mouth, in a war zone, on the cure for cancer, etc. But seriously, pubes!?
No one enters our place but us, so neatness is just an illusion. The counter-tops are clean, the sink is clean, the litter boxes are emptied regularly and often. But the floors are littered with cat toys (to cats, everything is a toy!) and I’ve given up trying to keep ahead of the hair. I just wait until enough of it sticks to the couch that I can make a sweater.
In my bedroom, I usually have clean & dirty clothes lying about in their seperate baskets, and if it’s night time I usually don’t feel like bringing my dishes upstairs until the morning. I don’t make my bed unless my boyfriend is coming over. If he’s over, I won’t bother cleaning up our mess till he’s gone so there are usually beer bottles, dvds, games, and clothes scattered about till the afternoon the day after.
I keep my bathroom fairly spotless . I share it with a roomie and he’s messy and won’t clean it but I don’t mind…for whatever reason cleaning the bathroom is therapeutic.
I’m 21 and just moved out of my mom’s home recently so my messy bachelor lifestyle is really not a big deal.
Only a month after I first posted in this thread, my previously Hoarder-filthy home is neat and I have a new room mate! There is a big closet I have to go sift through and organize, but all trash and clutter in the rest of the apartment is disposed of. Things aren’t as clean as I would like just yet (baseboards need scrubbing, we are going to wash/prime/paint the walls for the first time, there are dusty and/or cobwebby areas I haven’t got to and there is still a fair amount of cat hair in the crevices) but there have been visitors to my house for the first time in a long time…
I can’t express how much better I feel. How it got so bad, and what took me so long to get on top of the situation, I don’t know. Never again, I am a clean person now.
My flat is cluttered as it’s so small (studio) and I have boxes of stuff I never opened. It not dirty but looks like it 'cause the boxes are just stacked in a corner. You can dust them and such, but I’m sure when I go to move they’ll be bugs and junk in the boxes. I should probably throw most of it out.
I recall when I moved to Florida in the early 90s, I threw out all my winter clothes and stuff. Why would I ever leave? Of course I am in Chicago and well… You get the idea.
I have a small apartment and a lot of stuff. It’s better than it used to be - I ditched probably an entire room’s worth of junk when I moved here, and have put about half my books into storage and gotten rid of some other clutter since then - but it’s still pretty packed. I tend to let dishes sit in the sink for a while too. One of my cats is a nutter who I have never been able to break of the habit of jumping on the counter, though, so all dishes are always rinsed before I abandon them.
There is cat hair everywhere, but the litter boxes are cleaned religiously once a day.
Like tdn, I need an hour or so warning before people come over so I can ‘man-clean’. A proper tidy would probably take more than a weekend just because of all the tetrising I’d have to do to get everything squared away.
The only area that’s got anything resembling clutter is the computer desk, I dust on an “as-needed/nesting attacks” basis, the bathroom and kitchen are kept clean to the point that for me “cleaning the bathroom” amounts to little more than “putting some WC Duck in”. I wipe the floors every saturday (tile on kitchen and bathroom, parquet on the rest).
I voted “pristine”. The place looks like a show model 99% of the time. But that’s not a result of cleaning every day. It’s the result of not making a mess, not leaving stuff laying out, and having a thorough cleaning once a week.
Not having pets or kids & having more space than stuff makes this a lot easier. I know we’d never be able to maintain this without those 3 things going for us.
Our place is better than it used to be, which is kind of sad. Still, it’s sanitary, if cluttered. There are toys on the floor and, here and there, articles of clothing, usually from where my husband or I changed our daughter’s clothes (we have to crawl after her or we’ll never get her dressed). On a nightly basis, we go through the house to pick them all up.
Then there are the various bags - school bag for my son, daycare bag for my daughter, my breast pump and lunch bag. Our kitchen has stuff on the counters, but at least it’s not food. And I washed all the dishes last night except two, both which need to soak for a long, long time. The bathrooms are relatively clean, though our counters could be wiped down, and we’ve discarded a LOT of stuff from the basement, which we’re glad about. But we have a long, long way to go. At least we’re not in danger of someone calling CPS. Yet.
Boyfriend and I are working our butts off to clean our rooms in our respective parents’ homes whenever we visit. We’re talking books and clothes and papers and computer games and programs from middle school here, people. An* inordinate* amount of crap. My mom always made me feel super welcome at home when I went to college because her parents picked up and moved in the middle of school year. So she never made me do a deep purge. I was always meticulous about vacuuming, straightening, tidying, etc, but actual clutter in my room was absurd. The huge closet and two giant sets of drawers make it appear as though there wasn’t obscene amounts of crap. Things are a burden; the less you have the less you have to clean!
His room has mostly books; the kid must have spent 10k on books throughout his life. Child of professors and all that.
Well…it’s not TOO bad. The garbage is taken out as needed, the bathrooms are fairly clean, dishes either washed or put in the sink for washing. It’s just that things are old and shabby, like the 25 year old linoleum (which was once off white). And the shabby old upholstered living room furniture is draped with covers made from quilts, and coordinating big bath towels cunningly pinned over anything exposed (why? cat claws! - easier to pick up a new $5 bath towel and replace it, than yell at the cat to knock it off!) - so of course the living room looks particularly shabby, and never quite right. But I try, I really do…Just this weekend I got fed up with my very own pre-hoarder habit of piling up newspapers, clippings, junk mail, bank statements recipes, coupons, magazines, all stacked next to where I flop on the couch. As if there’s something important in there to read! So I went through it and am currently storing the ‘keepers’ in an old wicker picnic basket, which also serves as a nice little end table for my coffee mug . Out of sight, out of mind, and when I can’t close the lid down tight, it will be time to sort through the mess again. It’s a big improvement! The old catalogs and magazines have been moved elsewhere (though I should just put them all out in the recycle bin). … Now I’m working on the basement, a box a week of unwanted clothes, pots and pans, knickknacks, books - to go to the thrift store. … I’ll have plenty of time to really clean and wash the floors as I’ll be a home with no car till late in the day, for the foreseeable future. … Frankly, it’s the family’s clutter that messes things up so much. They just drop stuff, and it stays there. But clutter and clean are two different things.
