My boyfriend is a slob too, but the differenc is, it doesn't seem to bother him, whereas I am really frustrated, depressed and irritated by my messiness. I'm just so lazy! When I come home from work, I'd rather read, flop in front of the tv, or veg out in front of the computer than clean, yet I'm mortified if anyone comes over because my place is such a disaster. I'm not like one of those people on Oprah who have to have the officials take their kids away because they are sleeping in garbage, but I'm really unhappy about the way I live. Plus, my bf and I have been thinking of moving in together, and I shudder to think about the potentially disastrous consequences of two such messies sharing an apartment. Also, I don't want him to think I like living like this, and not making an effort to keep our place at least habitable.

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Originally posted by Jezabel:
Just wondering if anyone else can relate?

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Jezabel, I am a great big slob. I've been unemployed for some time, and having alll day to keep things tidy has generally led me to do so, but then I get a little temp work and it all goes to pot. I realize that I am not the best person to advise you (it got to the point a couple of weeks back where I'd drop something, like my lotion, and not bother to pick it up, cuz what was the point?), but I can definitely relate to the shame of being a messy girl, and I definitely have friends who are lovely, wonderful people, but far beyond me in slobbery. You are not alone.

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Originally posted by Beach:
The other option is to let it go to pot all week and then take a few hours on the weekend and go nuts.
I get bitter at the thought of having to do any cleaning after a day at work so I just let it all go until the weekend. So my place is a mess 5 days of the week. =)

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Here are my strategies:

Don't let stuff accumulate, because then it's hell to clean.

I do little patrols twice a day to check that my desk is clean, that there's nothing on the bedroom floor, that all dirty dishes are in the kitchen and not on a coffee table, etc... This takes me about 5 minutes.

Same thing applies to dirty dishes. Every night, I put some swing music and wash a bit of dishes before it gets out of control. If there's more than I can stand to wash in one setting (about 10 minutes is my personal limit: I just hate washing dishes), I do another period in the morning or at lunch time.

Have a "messy organising" approach.

-I stopped folding my underwear years ago: I just have plastic baskets in my drawer where I dump my underwear in categories (socks, bras, panties).

-I have a three-layer paper sorter near my desk: things that I have to take care of someday, things to be filed for long term, school stuff in progress. It might not be perfect, but I know where to look for my stuff when I need it. And it's better than the top of my desk. About twice a month, I do a little purge to sort/take care of/throw away those papers.

Get rid of stuff

I figure that the more stuff I have, the more stuff I have to take care of. If I don't love and use a thing enough to bother to find a proper and convenient place for it, I get rid of it.

Things that make me feel guilty (ugly gifts, stupid purchases, projects that will never get finished...) all go to the recycling bin/salvation's army/garbage.

When we moved in together, we turned into thisexplosion of STUFF. Paperwork, mostly, and computers and school stuff and electronics and exercise crap and his mine and ours just ARRGGHHHHHH....

In our apartment now, there is no real storage -- the cupboards have no doors, there aren't real closets, no good functional shelves, and renting means we aren't going to invest in anything that we won't keep, anddon't want to buy stuff that might not work with the unknown house.

Now that we are looking, its even more daunting to think about cleaning -- sort of like the 'why make the bed when we're just going to mess it up again in a few hours' idea.

I LOVE the show Clean Sweep, and have actually started following the rules in some ways -- as we pack, I try to throw out one bag for every box I keep. I'm bad with associating sentiment with objects (and weird objects, too) so I'm trying to keep the memory and get rid of the junk.

In our new house, I want shelves and file drawers and an office area and CUPBOARD DOORS. Sigh. I can't wait to move if only to have a clean slate.

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Originally posted by Nieci:
I'm not a complete slob, but I'm TOTALLY lazy about putting things away.

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1. Let things fall where they may. Ignore mess. Think about cleaning: get overwhelmed at the thought of such a daunting task: ignore mess some more.

2. Repeat step 1 until conditions have grown so disgusting and unlivable that you absolutely CANNOT TAKE IT anymore.

3. Become possessed with the need for room (apt.) to be clean: clean obsessively like a crazed maniac until everything is sparklingly, perfectly clean and orderly.

4. Go back to step 1 and repeat.

When I was little (like 6) I used to pretend that the Queen of England was coming to visit all the clean rooms and give out a clean room prize to the cleanest room so I'd clean and clean and clean for an entire day cuz I wanted to win the clean room prize...this was done complete with me running to the window to see if she was coming yet.

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Originally posted by ng-la:
Maybe I should take pictures of my apartment as it is right now. A total disaster.

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Hehe. I put the pictures of my apartment up in "Show Off Your Nests" after I'd been cleaning for over a week for my sister's impending visit!

The Flylady has saved my sanity. I am SO much tidier than I have ever been. Still not perfect, still need to really work on it all the time but the things I've learned:

I don't think of myself as a slob so much as just disorganized. I used to think that if I had more space - I would be better about this - but since moving into a three bedroom house (from a one bedroom apt) - I've learned this is not the case.

Right now - I'm trying to weed out everything that I don't need. This has mostly been clothes so far. For example: I have a pair of hunter green pants that are about 3 sizes too small - clearly remember them being in my posession in 1993. Do I still need them? No.
So all of those clothes are going into a pile and then that entire pile is going to goodwill.

I'm also putting together a "yard sale" box that will be all of the things I don't need. It's tough weeding through stuff - but I'm being ruthless with it.
I hope that if I get rid of all this extra crap that I don't need - I will have more room to store what I do need...

Everytime I would try to keep my appartment perfect, I would fail and then beat myself up over it. Nowadays, I'm more patient. There are still dust bunnies in the corners, and my bathroom still isn't pristine, but at least things are going slowly better. I've made my bed most mornings for the past year. I know where my things are most of the time. There's usually less than an half an hour worth of dirty dishes in my kitchen.

Things still get totally out of control, but less often. And I now know I can work at them slowly and get back to normal.

I am a weird kind of slob. I have to keep certain areas neat and tidy, and all the rest just goes to hell. It's really sad. I like for everything to be clean and organized, but since getting married (nearly 7 years ago), I have lowered my standards more and more as time has gone on because my husband is a complete and total slob. He just doesn't seem to SEE the mess. I just tend to leave it that way because it gets too overwhelming to deal with. Ugh.

Anyway, so yesterday, I made up this little chart on the computer. It has a table with seven columns for the seven days of the week, and there are 3-4 chores listed under each day. You know, maintenance kind of stuff like, "dust", "clean bathroom", "load dishwasher", "clean cat litter", etc. I decided that we would just continue to live in filth unless I tried something. I love to make lists in every other area of my life and it seems to keep me organized and on track, so I thought I'd apply this concept to housekeeping as well. So, each night, we'll do our chores, and over the course of the week, everything's done so that we never have to have a "mass cleanup" ever again! Yeah, right. We'll see.

Now the task is getting the house to the point where we can actually start the maintenance cleaning.

I've done a pretty good job in the last six months of purging clutter but the day to day stuff is a disaster. There are bits of paper and mail and flyers everywhere. Clothes go on the floor in whatever room I feel like taking them off in. My hubby tried to vacuum and my loose hair (which is all over the place) wrapped around the brush and broke it!

I have absolutely no interest in cleaning anything and while I would like it to look nice, I'm not motivated enough to maintain it. Every time my parents come into town, I stay up half the night cleaning to try to make it presentable before they get here.

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Originally posted by Sophie:
[B]In fact, I am going to confess to you something I have never told anyone who knows me in real life: when I was a child we had an intruder in the house (he just walked in through an open door, didn't take anything). When the police came, they looked everywhere to make sure he'd gone, but they thought my bedroom had been ransacked.

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Originally posted by chitowngal:

When I was little (like 6) I used to pretend that the Queen of England was coming to visit all the clean rooms and give out a clean room prize to the cleanest room so I'd clean and clean and clean for an entire day cuz I wanted to win the clean room prize...this was done complete with me running to the window to see if she was coming yet.

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Hilarious!

I am the kind of slob who leaves all my stuff everywhere for several days, then I'll finally get fed up with the mess and spend an hour or so cleaning.

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Originally posted by rocyn:
My hubby tried to vacuum and my loose hair (which is all over the place) wrapped around the brush and broke it!

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We ended up having to replace the bag half way through & then leaving a lot of the cat hair there for the pros because we could NOT get it all cleared up.

I usually try to break it down into rooms or tasks. Like "If I clean up the dishes in the kitchen - that will be enough". And I let myself stop after that. If I continue -that's fine too.
My problem, I find, is that I hate half-assed cleaning jobs. If I'm going to clean - I'm going to go all out - the chrome in the bathroom will glisten when I'm done. Everything will be put away, the floor in the kitchen will be scrubbed (on my hands & knees since I find mops useless) etc. Since I rarely have time to actually DO this - I usually don't even start.
Hubby & I also have different views of clean. To him - if everything is in neat little piles (or the bag of garbage is in the closet under the stairs) that is clean.
I don't think it's truly clean if you have piles everywhere - why not put them away? And if it's garbage - throw it OUT - don't store it somewhere.

I have been working to purge crap though - I have a whole bag or two of clothes to go to charity - in fact - I will do that today.

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Originally posted by meggo:

My problem, I find, is that I hate half-assed cleaning jobs. If I'm going to clean - I'm going to go all out - the chrome in the bathroom will glisten when I'm done. Everything will be put away, the floor in the kitchen will be scrubbed (on my hands & knees since I find mops useless) etc. Since I rarely have time to actually DO this - I usually don't even start.

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I am the exact same way. If I don't feel like devoting a good couple hours to a room, I won't even bother straightening it a little.

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Hubby & I also have different views of clean. To him - if everything is in neat little piles (or the bag of garbage is in the closet under the stairs) that is clean.
I don't think it's truly clean if you have piles everywhere - why not put them away? And if it's garbage - throw it OUT - don't store it somewhere.

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My brother is a neat freak, which always astounded me, coming from a family of slobs, until I realized that he is really just "the king of secret hidden piles." Sometimes if he comes over to my house and gets bored, he'll start putting all my mess into piles, and sticking them in empty drawers, etc., and then he leaves and I can't find ANYTHING for months.

Also, my mom is a slob. But she has gotten better since she got a cleaning lady to comes once a week. It also makes her have to do the other housework that said cleaning lady doesn't do (ie. pick up & do dirty laundry, clean off countertops, wash dishes) before the cleaning lady shows up and needs to clean sink, bathroom fixtures, mop floors, etc.
I wish I could afford it. My mom pays her $60/week, which isn't even that bad, but right now every dollar of mine is already accounted for.

And oh yeah, the whole point of my post:
This thread motivated me to spend several hours cleaning (with emphasis on the organizing/functionality) my kitchen, which we moved into 4 months ago and still was a complete disarray.
Also I disassembled and put in the attic all the Christmas lights and decorations.

Today i shall be working on the home office....argh.