Clutter Vs. Neat Freak?
- Started
- Last post
- 16 Responses
- mg33
Which one are you?
I was picking my place up tonight, sorting some new books in my bookshelf and just basically started to feel like I was having a slight panic attack trying to get things situated then scanning the room at other things I had no immediate place to put. I'm not messy by any means, it's more of just wanting a place for every little thing, kind of OCD like I guess.
Is anyone else this way? I operate on a very simple principle when it comes to keeping my apartment clean, my self-invented "ABC Rule": Always Be expecting Company. I know that sounds somewhat silly, but I'm friends with a few people who are just constantly messy and I guess I like making a good impression.
Would love to hear how some of you keep your apartments and houses in order. Anything you keep multiples of? Personally, I don't throw away magazines - thank God for tons of cabinets in my kitchen/office.
- mg330
I'll also add that my particular affliction is lining things up and making nice right angles of stacks of things or aligning edges of books or magazines. I have always done that. I think it's one of the few truly cursed things I got out of my 2 1/2 years of Architecture school.
- YOU'D MAKE A GREAT SUPPORTING CHARACTER ON AN AMERICAN SIT-COM.********
- YOU'D MAKE A GREAT SUPPORTING CHARACTER ON AN AMERICAN SIT-COM.
- Point50
I'm a mix of both. I tend to be neat an organized where it won't count for other people's opinion... my cupboards, refrigerator and pantry for example, I have all my spices, vitamins, supplements, condiments, beverages, soups, baking ingredients, pastas etc. organized for no good reason; only to have my wife or kids destroy that order and have me re-do it every other week or two. My closet: shirts are hung in order of type, then divided by color. CD collection has to be in alphabetical order. Everything else though, a wreck: the garage, DVD collection, art closet, letterbox, sock drawer
- I think having CDs in general just adds to clutter. I have an album that holds 500 disks and mp3s.********
- I think having CDs in general just adds to clutter. I have an album that holds 500 disks and mp3s.
- _salisae_0
Having learned from my mom that cleaning can be a kind of escape from your troubles, that ordering objects can give one the false sense of an ordered emotional life, I've tried to live within a reasonably healthy clutter. Although, i may be reaching an age where I can no longer afford such lazy philosophies.
- jevad0
I clean, tidy and reorganize every few weeks or so. I'm not a neat freak but I'm not a messy maloy either. Somewhere in between I guess...
- JerseyRaindog0
Having a kid destroyed the OCD in me. It still resurfaces every now and again in a fit of organisation but generally I'm much more laidback than I used to be.
- mbr0
"ABC" Rule!! Haha!!
I love that. I think I am gonna have to borrow that one.
Magazines are horrible. I have something like 8 subscriptions now. I hate throwing away design and architecture mags, even though I never go back and look at them.
- mg330
I think I'm so constantly trying to keep things neat because, if everything is in order, I can come home at the end of the day and get right to whatever I need/want to do without these distractions.
But, organizing has become my #1 method of procrastination when I should be doing something else.
- mrdobolina0
NO WIRE HANGERS!
- EVVVVVVEERRRRRR!blaw
- fawk no! always wooden hangers!!!mirrorball
- ********0
I'm clutter with occasional episodes of neatfrenzy. I just straightened out my workspace for 2008 and discovered that someone has purloined a lot of my 12" vinyls. Not stuff I play but copies of my work... things I don't have any more copies of which are also out of pressing now. I am VERY PEEVED ABOUT THAT and feel I need to be a neatfreak full time now. I also have to venture onto ebay to buy copies of the things I've had stolen... probably the very items that were once mine anyway.
- detritus0
I'm a schizoid mix of the two. Responsible Detritus is organized and actually a bit of an order fascist. Sadly, he's often quelled by weed, so it's up to dishevelled stoner Detritus to poke his way around the morass of Stuff that is his life and try and make sense of it all.
Once every couple of weeks, responsible Detritus breaks free of his mental shackles and razes the house and [sad excuse for an] office in an effort to start afresh. Sadly, stoner Detritus usually demands an award for all of this effort, whereupon he quashes any further ambition and does his utmost to return both Detrituses ('Detrii'?) to a state of entropy.
- In sum - Marihuana is evil.detritus
- Which is to say, I'm a victim in all of this. Cry for me, Argentina.detritus
- I promise to cry once I stop laughing.********
- eerily familiar...paraselene
- mg330
I have started a project, though, of clipping important articles from the magazines I've had around for years and throwing them out. Recipes, travel information, interviews, great photos, etc. from all sorts of magazines. I don't tear up or throw out art magazines though, or the dozens and dozens of issues I have of Q and NME.
- mirrorball0
I got 'THE FACE' magazines going as far back to 1984! Couldn't live with meself to give them to Oxfam. Computer arts Mags too! Even me MacUsers with defunct operating system tips! grrrrr
- ********0
total slob
- Jaline0
Like jevad....somewhere in-between.
I lean more towards the tidy side, but I believe that people need their own space in their rooms and a healthy amount of clutter in there is not a bad thing. But when it comes to the kitchen or washroom, it should be more clean.
Basically, if I live with others, for the most part I only care if the stuff / area I use it not tidy.
- helloperson0
Neat freak.
My library is organized by subject matter, by copyright date.... I definitely have some OCD tendancies.