26 thoughts on “Weekend Question Thread”

  1. I am a classic bachelor slob… and I am suffering for it right now. Mom and Dad are less than 5 hours away, coming down from Michigan, and I still have loads of cleaning to do.
    But, I DO have to say that the place looks fantastic when it is all cleaned up and everything is where it belongs.
    Living out in the country, I am usually the one who travels to gatherings. With few visitors, I let things pile up around me, while I take care of other things– like the garden or hunting– until I get pissed at my sloth, and start shoveling.
    So, here I am, up at 6am to finish the last of the cleaning. I’ll tell my folks that they’ve brought me TWO gifts– the gift of their company for a week, and the gift of a clean house, which wouldn’t have happened without them.
    Cheers!
    –mf

  3. Good luck MF! I am a neat freak living in a semi-slob’s bod. I am STILL settling in from moving…in LATE SEPT!!!??!! I am making strides, and now that the holidaze are essentially behind me, I can focus on getting stuff done now. I love The Container Store, so I have that going for me! 😉 As of this week, I unpacked 7 boxes, put up artwork… I still need to paint, but all in good time. I just want floorspace opened up so that guests aren’t appalled, and so that I can put my Wii to good use! 🙂
    Elspeth

  4. I clean homes, DEEP clean not just vacuuming and dusting, for a living and when I leave people can actually walk around in their homes. I can’t be a slob. I am a combination of uber neat freak and semi neat freak. At my home, it looks cleaner than it is because everything is put away. That’s the true secret of having a clean house. Put everything away and your house will look immaculate even if it hasn’t been vacuumed or dusted in weeks.

  5. Yeah, Gindy, and that’s exactly why I’m solidly in the slob camp. Nothing ever gets put away until my mother is coming to visit.
    And I simply do not comprehend the need for dusting. It’s just going to get dusty again in seconds, so why bother?
    That said, I’m not dirty. I don’t let the sink get filled with icky dishes. I don’t leave dirty dishes in the living room. And I do throw away trash when I create it. All of which are why, after 7 years of marriage, Mr. BuggyQ no longer gets to tell people I’m as bad as he is.

  6. I am cluttery, not filthy. Having moved recently, I am reviewing my organizational options since in the move, I discovered I could open a sub-store for one of the major craft store chains. That is what I am tripping over at present. And, like Buggy, I can’t abide a filthy sink, I keep it as pristine as possible. And now that I have my new (as of yesterday) Breville c’top convection oven, the whole kitchen is now ready for baking action.
    Having once worked in an antiques store, I actually love to dust (yeah, I am weird…heck, I even love to polish silverware!). So, Buggy, if I am ever in your neck o’the woods, I will happily dust anything needing it! 🙂 Then we’ll have a beer or whatnot!
    Elspeth

  8. recovering slob. I have ADD, so I tend to walk away from a mess without noticing that I’ve made one. That being said, I’m pretty vigilant about clutter.

  9. In between, too.
    I tend to let papers (mail, news and magazine articles, books) pile up around my desk area but my kitchen is spotless. (I used to live in a place with cockroaches…you learn and adapt.)
    (Just like the roaches, come to think.)
    (Huh.)
    .

  10. I’m a neat freak who married a slob, so after 27 years I have become a hybrid. Most of the house is clean and orderly, but one room, where I store all the evidence of my depression, is a disaster. A closed door is a wonderful thing.
    Peace, V.

  12. More a clutterbug than a slob. Things are folded neatly, piles are lined up and tidy but still things are in piles and not in drawers or closets. But with college in between semesters, this is my time to rise and organize. Plus we’re putting the house on the market (worst time to sell has to be the best time to buy, and we are leaving Las Vegas for a more rural setting in Louisiana), so next week will be spent deep cleaning, touching up paint and trimming the yard. If you know anyone moving to Vegas who would like a four bedroom, three bath home on large lot with a swimming pool which includes the now-banned diving board, my emails down below.

  15. i blame the desk on cats. i don’t care if sybil insists on pushing stuff off. can’t clean while cats are splayed across it.

  16. Semi-slob except for one thing, and this may seem weird, but I’m a total neat freak about the kitchen. You can throw your socks in the air in my living room, no sweat, but if I want to cook, or even make coffee, (and I cook a fair bit), I get irritated at the sight of dirty dishes or coffee grounds etc., etc. I’m probably one of the few men in the world who enjoys washing dishes, but god do I hate doing laundry still.
    Jellymista

  17. You can’t be a neat freak when your house is a dust trap. The house is about 100 years old and dust literally comes out of the walls.
    That said, I do make a genuine effort to keep the clutter down. I don’t always succeed, but I try.

  19. Ooooo! Late back to the party, but I’ll definitely take you up on your offer, Elspeth. Next time you’re in CO, I’ll let you dust, and ply you with the best beer you’ll ever have (we have some GREAT microbrews ’round here)! 😉

  23. I’ve got two jobs and a physical disability. I’d be doomed to be a slob even if I weren’t inclined that way. Right now, the place is so dirty it’s starting to bug me like crazy, but I’m feeling sick enough nothing is going to get done about it until I feel better. I seriously need to find someone I can hire just to break the back of some of this crap and then, once it’s done, I should be able to maintain it okay for quite a while. I think I’m still not caught up from the backlog of stuff that piled up three years ago after the accident that left me bedridden for four months…

  24. Both. Remember that pig of a roommate you had back in your twenties that drove you friggin’ crazy, especially when fruit flies started breeding in the sink? And remember that other roommate who was, like, the exact opposite, always trying to assign chores and stuff? I’m both of ’em. In an almost literal sense, I can barely live with myself.
    Call me Oslix.

  25. Confirmed slob, but a reasonably neat kitchen, since I do a lot of cooking (more chicken and sausage gumbo for Christmas–even got a compliment from my mom on it.) This past month, though, I FINALLY cut up and set out my moving boxes for the recycled trash…um, I moved in 2005.
    Also shredded about half a dozen bagfuls of paper waste–I won’t throw it away without doing the shredding thing, because I had to deal with identity theft once. Ouch.
    That said, I’ll bet Dick Cheney’s doing a fair bit of shredding these days, too.
    Still have plenty of dust and cat hair around the house…and I pretend Tigger’s the reason for not being neater…but that’s not true. My slobdom is my own fault.

  26. I am a slob, married to a neatfreak for almost 18 years. He has come a long way toward accepting my clutter – though not always graciously – and I have tried hard to become a better steward of our household. We try our best to be a team: he does the laundry and I fold it; I cook and he cleans; I get up with our son if he gets sick in the middle of the night, and he lets me sleep in every Saturday morning; he mans the toilet plunger when necessary, and I hem his pants and sew buttons back on when they fall off. It may take me a while to find the needles, though…

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