I let the dishes pile up for days. In the sink, on the counter, on coffee tables, end tables, nightstands...sometimes they grow things. (I justify it by calling them my "science experiments.")

I hate doing dishes.

The undoubtably most comfortable place to sit in the house is the Papasan chair in our bedroom... which is completely full of clean unfolded laundry i've been too lazy to put away. The bedroom is the place I hide things when people are coming over.

Why Abby, whatever are you talking about? We all live in perfectly clean and orderly homes. However, We're so glad you were able to vent and clear your conscience. Hope you feel better!

My pajamas can usually be found on the bathroom floor, as I'm rarely motivated enough in the morning to move them to the laundry basket, which probably still has a pile of folded clean laundry in it waiting to be put away anyway.

I often store my clean, folded clothes on top of the dryer in my laundry room -- where I also keep my trash can (sans lid). Gross, but true!!

I also you may come in my apartment and admire how clean, organized, and uncluttered it is... until you notice a quarter inch of dust coating every horizontal surface. I hate dusting!

Folded laundry, clothes on hangers, never, ever put away. Ever. I don't know why I hate putting laundry away so much. Washing and folding, fine. When it comes to the 'putting it in the closet' part, my brain flies off.

Also, I have pet rats who love to chew stuff up and then push it out of their cage when they're bored of it. Shredded tissue, cardboard and fabric everywhere within a three foot area. If I kept up with it, I'd be vacuuming every single day. They're potty trained, so at least it's clean trash. :S

Thankfully, both those bad habits stay in the bedroom.

Haha! On Monday everything was neat and clean. Then I had a very busy time. Right now it looks like your description. Even worse, in between all that mess I've started to build a new bird feeder. Cutting and drilling the wood on the floor and all the tools lying around - it's a complete chaos now and I don't know where to start.

That's why I'm on Apartment Therapy now ... ;-)

Some years back I'd piss in the kitchen sink occasionally late at night. And yes, I cleared the sink of dishes first and ran the tap. But then we built a first floor bathroom, so it's just not the same....

Wintergear. Scarves, mittens, hats, headbands, neckgators, third pair of socks, etc etc...They multiply. And yet I never have enough. My place always looks neater and better in the warmer months.

Clutter bothers me so I am neat and organized most of the time. However I can ignore dust on furniture and dust bunnies on the floors much longer than I would care to admit.

Upon entering my apartment, you'd never know I was living with a messy boy. I keep things comfortable with my decor, but for some reason he thinks that means clothes everywhere and shoes strewn about (I swear he has more shoes than I do). So, my dirty secret is my dirty boyfriend.

Cat fur.
I simply don't have the time or energy to keep up with the amount of fur my cat likes to leave about. I have all of the correct tools & appliances to de-fur my apartment, it just takes so much energy to do... and then a day later I have to do it all over again!

That and a kitchen full of dirty dishes, pots and pans... yes kitchen, not just the sink. I really need a dishwasher.

I keep a pretty neat home, but I have a couple of zones I don't really keep clean or super organized! My own closet, for one. My clothes are always in a heap, un-put-away ("maybe I'll wear it again tomorrow") and I just store so much stuff in there, that it's kindof a headache. I also let the office stay kinda cluttery. I think it's healthy to let some places stay a bit more *ahem* "alive," I'll call them.

I also hate cleaning toilets, so I wait until they're embarrassingly streaked with grey mold. Doesn't everyone do that?

This post makes me happy. Thank you!

Arkay - I'm dying laughing. My husband will often pee in the bathtub at night, because he can do that without turning on the light to monitor his aim. Jesus. I just said that in public.

Folding clothes gets me - because I wait till ALL my clothes are dirty before I wash them. I fold the first two or three loads and put them away, then I'm burned out and the last load or two will sit in the basket for two weeks. I hate it. I hate that I don't just do it. And we all know, a pile of clothes attracts more clothes to it. Sweaters now top the current pile, which is unattractively horaded in a wire grocery cart in my bedroom. Oh, god, I've got to home and clean. !!!

Thanks Abby, the honesty here is refreshing and hilarious.

@Arkay - I don't even know what to say.

Just the usual in my home - clothing from the entire week piled on the bedroom chair. I'm trying to be better about not doing that because I HATE putting away all that stuff over the weekend.

just the past few months i've started handling clothes-to-be-ironed differently. everything that needs to be ironed goes on a hanger, but hangs on one side of the closet. when i'm ready, i just take out the whole set, iron, and hang back with the other ready-to-wear things. keeps them off the chair in the room, and from getting more wrinkled while they wait!

Just yesterday I begged my husband to sweep the tumbleweeds of dustbunnies growing in the hallway. I think it was the equivalent of a whole cat! FI fall asleep with everything on the bed now that I am working two jobs; clean laundry, magazines and for some reason; my purse. I have become one of the golden girls. The thing is always right next to me on the bed.

This post makes me feel so much better. Our place usually has a few pairs of shoes between the couch and the coffee table (where I take them off to get comfortable), a pile of "not really dirty" clothes on a chair and the floor surrounding it in the bedroom, some miscellaneous papers on the kitchen counter that never seem to find their way home, and of course the tumbleweeds of cat hair that seem to congregate on the stairs.

Cleaning the bathroom is always the last (and usually ignored) thing on my cleaning list. I just hate to do it.

After years, I finally (mostly) trained myself to fold my laundry as soon as it comes out of the dryer.

I let all the mail and other random things pile up on the kitchen table. Then, I want it gone fast so I put it all into the "important drawer" which I HATE to go through later. I don't like it, but i can't stop it!

My mum called in this morning, unexpectedly (she's always welcome). I forgot I had left a marriage license application on the coffee table. My fiancé and I had decided not to tell anyone until AFTER the wedding (long story). She must have thought I was possessed, because I panicked and started rearranging all the magazines and the books on the table like a madwoman in a pathetic effort to hide the application from her. I'm sure she noticed. Oh dear.

My dirty little secret is the piles of paper -- notes from college courses (still writing my dissertation), pictures and memorabilia (my father's widow sent me everything he had saved from my birth to his death), and unfiled papers. I went from huge undifferentiated piles to undifferentiated file boxes to sorted file boxes to my current task of refining a decent filing system, but the memorabilia/photos are still in over a dozen file boxes in my bedroom. The pile they're in is the size of a dresser. I'm considering just buying an extra dresser and storing them in it. I don't think I can face the task of scanning all of it and don't have shelf space for sufficient photo albums.

Peeing in the bathtub...oh my. My mate doesn't do that but I should do a survey next time we are out with a group of friends. Or maybe not...it might give the guys a new idea & their female partners would probably never forgive me for bringing it up.

Where to start? Children's shoes & socks piled in a heap by the stairs (right by the front door)...the week's newspapers stacked on one of the kitchen chairs...small, random toys (Hot Wheels, a harmonica, a plastic glitter bracelet, etc.) hiding under coffee tables and strewn about. Beds that don't get made on busy mornings (and most mornings are busy).

I run hot & cold with the clutter. Sometimes I'm very, very "on it" and do a big sweep every evening. Other days, I say..."eh." Such is life.

I use my dining room to fold laundry. I have to quickly clean all the clothes up before guests come over

I recently read a news article that with increased pollution in the air, our homes are much dustier. Finally some vindication for my suspicion that the house gets dusty much faster than it used to...not just my imagination. At least, from now on I will use that excuse.

I let things pile up on the kitchen table until the weekend when I will enter an altered state from espresso intake and organize like mad! Then an hour later don't remember where everything was placed. My boyfriend calls it the 'caffeine coma'.

I usually live in a hellhole until the threat of someone coming over becomes imminent.

Then, I spend an hour and a half shoving things in closets and wiping down surfaces and stacking papers and receipts and clearing off clothes and running the effing Scooba, all while sweating profusely. By the time the person comes over, and my place is glowing, I'm too exhausted from my mini-binge, to want them there anymore... and I'm resenting the pile of unfolded laundry hiding in the closet.

I'm also guilty of one or two other things listed above.

my home is typically picked up (I'm anal) and I have cleaners every other week, so my only real secret is that just about every drawer is horribly messy and disorganized and barely shuts.

non-toilet pee-ers have made my husband less gross in my eyes though, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't do it.

Our house is a combination of everything metioned above which is why I have a trick. I schedule at least one dinner party a month to force myself to clean it all. I purge the whole house and make it spotless for the guests then build up again for the next 4 weeks until we have another group of friends over!

I do the same with my week of work clothes. I come home, take them off, and lay them right on top of my dresser which is right next to the closet. Somehow the extra work of trying to decide if something needs to be washed, then either throwing it in the hamper or hanging it up seems impossible after a long day.

I also let magazines pile up until I go on a reading binge. Same with mail on the hall table.

There's also a layer of pet hair on just about everything all the time. I'll vacuum it all up about once a month, or when my allergic friends come to visit. Otherwise, my husband and I live in fuzz. It's pretty gross, but I have no desire to vacuum every week.

I drink straight from the orange juice container. Been doing that since I was a kid (my mom caught me once, but that's a horror story for another day), and no, my girlfriend has no idea.

I don't have a dresser because my bedroom is just entirely too small. Undies hang out around in the "clean" basket in my closet.

I can love my family or I can love order, not both at the same time. I clean filthiness constantly, dishes, garbage, pet dirt, toilets, sinks, etc, but disorder lies where it happens. I refuse to care about it. Bike repair in the living room? OK by me.
The pee confessions are hilarious. Been thinking since the Japanese kneeling bench post that the whole process needs to be reconsidered for men. Some kind of funnel type appliance that is silent, spatter proof and doesn't need much water might be practical.

Pet fur. Oh gosh, how I hate it. Love my animals, hate dealing with their fur.

I don't vacuum nearly often enough. I should was my bedding every day (the two dogs sleep on the bed) but I just don't have the time to deal with it.

I try to stay relatively on top of it but it gets everywhere. My house is an dog/cat allergy sufferers nightmare.

I have a mostly tidy apartment, but tend to leave glasses of water scattered around the place like Bo Hess in "Signs." I get one glass and either forget where I put it or get thirsty downstairs when the glass is upstairs, so I just get another and the cycle continues. My mother swears that she came over once and counted six half-full glasses of water around my home!

Shout out to Rapunzel! I, too, am trying to finish my dissertation! Best of luck to you!
I still have my Christmas tree out! Hopefully it will get put up this weekend.
My 6 year old daughter's bedroom is a mess. Sometimes I dont bother to fold the clean clothes. Putting them on a pile on the floor suffices...
I have work papers in piles...
Yes, just keeping up with the daily grind is organizing efficiency for me!

I keep all mail, even junk mail in a big bulging shoe box and empty it occasionally. All because I once caught a weird neighbor, from another floor, collecting people's discarded personal mail from the trash room on my floor. I was getting off the elevator as he was walking out of the trash room with a handful of mail. How creeepy is that??!!

This post makes me like you all so much more. => I have a pile of "stuff" right near the front door. I go straight to the gym from work so I usually don't get home most nights until 8:30pm, and by then I'm beat. So everything gets dropped right near the front door to be sorted out later/eventually. I also am guilty of letting the dishes pile up a bit and not putting away clean laundry. It will sit in stacks for about a week until I finally get annoyed enough to put it away.

Just had to share this little story.

Last week, while watching a sit-com my hub and I heard the following dialogue:
Wife- If you're nice, I'll do that thing you like.
Husband- The dishes?

The hub just looked at me and then at the sink and just shrugged. Glad I'm not the only one!

how cool - this is like AA for house pride! You must confront your demons before you can overcome them :) For me the bathroom & kitchen are ALWAYS the last rooms to be done and just when they start looking like something off "How Clean Is Your House" - the rest of the place gets regular, thorough cleanings - simply because I love coming through the front door to a spotless living room, and I spend time watching tv in the bedroom, so I work while I watch. But, I'm working on it, afterall what two rooms get more use than the bathroom & kitchen?

Wow, I feel SO much better after reading this. I often live in despair of ever being able to keep it together and wondering how these superwomen and men do it. Now I know that they use the same tricks I do!

I'm totally guilty of letting dishes sit until I have zero dishes left and of letting junkmail pile up. The shoe pile in the foyer grows and grows, even though I put shelves there to hold the darn things (I love them and figured I'd display them but they never make it back onto the shelf). The only way I solved the multiple piles of laundry on the floor was to put a basket in the bathroom and another in the bedroom. Even so, my work clothes pile up on a chair in the bedroom and the floor around it is a tangle of belts. Don't even get me started on the cat fur. I try to forgive myself since most nights there are only 2 hours between when I get home and when I go to bed.

Every so often I'll go on a cleaning binge, but most of the time it's hosting that makes me do it. Sadly, this means the bedroom is always a disaster.

yes to ALL of the above, at one time or another.

i have solved the problem of the "maybe i will wear them again/ too tired to put them away" clothes piled on everything by putting a lot of hooks up in my bedroom. is it airing, maybe needs mending? it just looks more intentional.

I toss my pj's into the bathroom cabinet under the sink each morning...you know, pull 'em off, kick 'em in the cabinet with a toe, never even bend down to pick up.

i have been known to put a "few" dirty dishes in the fridge...figured the cold would keep down any smells and no bugs / ants would get them until I could (meaning got around to) wash them.

And everything looks really neat and clutter free until you open the closet door. It's like monica's closet of shame on Friends. lol

I wash the laundry but it takes a week or so to get folded. I take my clothes off and they stay in a pile on the floor till I clean up. My shoes pile up in the corner in my room. My dishes go unwashed until I nag my husband to death about loading the dishwasher (thats all I ask him to do and he can't seem to get it done until I threaten not to cook). And I procrastinate about mopping my floor because I live in a sea of slate.

My car is spotless, and my purse in always in order... these are probably because my coffee table gets all of the overflow. Bits of paper (junk mail, receipts, health requisitions), hand tools, yesterday's juice glass, parking stubs, whatever necklaces I've worn the last couple days, things from work....

And there is no good solution to storing the empties headed back to the beer store. They are in part on the kitchen counter, on the floor next to the kitchen cabinet and down the steps next to the recycling, and well, on the coffee table.

My furniture is conveniently the color of my cat so pet fur is not problem until a guest shows up wearing a black wool sweater.

My guest room is more like a sorting room for the stuff I'm packing up to give to charity. It also doubles (triples really) as my laundry room as it is directly across from the washer/dryer and I also installed one of those cabinet type ironing boards. It is just very convenient for that and I rarely have guests.

This is the best apartment therapy thread ever! Its like going to confession... with a more fashionable priest.

I have the laundry issue too. What are you supposed to do with not quite clean and not quite dirty clothes? mine wind up on top of my dresser. With all my jeans because my dresser drawer just broke.... the bottom literally fell out darn IKEA /shakes fist. Id rather do all my laundry at the laundry mat in one day, than do it every day one load at a time at home. Doing laundry eats your soul!

My beautiful refinished orig. hardwoods in my living room are generally covered with a light layer (sometimes more than light) of big fat bulldog fur.

My dishes are often soaking, with the intent of being done.

My bed hasnt been made in years! Id love to make it, but my boyfriend is generally in it. (he works from home) so I doubt that will change any time in the near future.

whew. i like these kinda confessions.

** I'm so going home to sniff around my bathtub and sinks for man pee. Do they actually do that???

We pile our "not so dirty just worn once" clothes on the bench at the end of our bed. When I get ready in the mornings, Pjs are thrown back on the bed, under the comforters. Clean laundry gets folded on one of the couches in the living room but take days (even up to a whole week) to get put away. When my husband opens the (junk) mail they get strewn all over the entire dining table. My other dirty secret is I find that my husband's laziness has a tendency to rub off on me.

Laundry seems to actually get done (and even put away)...now that I am single.
On the other hand, my dishes are my never-ending nightmare.
And the mail. I hate sorting mail. I pay all of my bills online, so I probably should just install a shredder in my mailbox...

Like rapunzel, I too have a paper problem. I hate dealing with mail and until recently have had 10 grocery bags full of mail stuffed in closets. Some were from a previous move. I say "until recently" because my Mom visited and spent time each evening sorting through it with me. She found the title to my car! Now I'm down to one bag to sort and shred. I have also stopped all junk mail coming and try to pay everything possible online.

Otherwise my apartment is pretty spotless.

This confession relates to my last apartment, which I was able to leave a few months ago.

It was in a 1929 building, which meant lots of charming built-ins but also areas that were impossible to clean: layers of accumulated paint on kitchen cabinets, worn-out porous porcelain in sinks. The owners had painted the bathtub a gloss paint instead of refinishing it. Plus, I had a cat that was short-haired but shed more than any animal I've ever seen - tufts of blond cat hair everywhere.

I'm a very organized person, and generally neat - but just had such trouble having a clean apartment. So here were my solutions:
1) I always used the bathroom with the door open (I lived alone) to let light from the adjoining hallway come in, and never turned on the light so I couldn't really see how dirty the bathroom was;
2) I never wore contact lenses or glasses indoors except at night when watching TV. Once I came home with contact lenses on during the day and was startled at how dirty my apartment looked. I realized I was seeing it in bright sunshine the way it *really* looked - but then realized that my near-sightedness was a blessing in disguise. Out went the contacts, and suddenly the room was not visible in such sharp and ghastly detail.

Fortunately I moved into a place I love in which I've been able to indulge my 'place for everything and everything in its place' fetish. I just look around it each day and sigh with pleasure. But I must add, I still don't wear contacts indoors. :)

Every night we go to bed with cocktail/wine/beer glasses and snack bowls left on the coffee table; our christmas tree is still up; we sleep on a mattress on the floor in a sleeping bag because we haven't found the right bed yet; our dining room is currently a way station (table coming soon); I'm terrible at folding/putting away laundry; I often throw dirty and clean clothes on the floor; more! You?

I vacuum every 3 days or so and sweep the bathroom every day (I have a messy kitty who tracks litter everywhere, even if I cover the entire bathroom with a litter mat). However, I let clothes pile up on the chair in the closet, mail piles up on the kitchen table, and everything piles up on the desk. There's also a small pile of shoes next to the desk, and some cat hair on the blanket on the bed that's been there since yesterday. And I'm lazy about cleaning the bathroom unless there's company.

My pet rats, actually, are probably the cleanest things in the house. Them and the dishes.

I am SOOO loving this thread!!!

Things i identify with/confess to so far:
1: scheduling parties to force myself to clean up - am having 1 tomorrow night so this evening will be my cleaning frenzy.
2: stacking clothes waiting to into the closet on the bed - both sweaters and clean laundry etc (when its warm laundry it feels like i have company )
3: leaving laundry sitting for days until completing it - The washer & dryer are in the basement so i will often leave loads in either or both when heading out & forget that its there for days - and then have to re-wash everything to make it fresh again and then get around to folding the dry stuff.
4: leaving cups EVERYWHERE - although I am not as bad as an ex who used to leave coffee mugs in the garden wherever he went, only to be found days/weeks later with stuff crawled in them and more stuff growing out of them.
5: stacks of mail. I hate opening bills etc and will throw then to the side to be opened 'later' I recently cleared out 5 moving boxes of bills etc - the shredder almost had a meltdown.
6: PROJECTS! i have fabric, thread, pins, foam stuffing, wood scraps & various other bits and pieces of half-done projects scattered around the house - I have gotten better at organizing but still could use a few days of purging to get it all sorted out.

Luckily I have a roommate who is ANAL about keeping the main parts of the house SPOTLESS so that keeps me in line in the common areas - my room however...

This is fascinating! I'm loving it. I've had big problems with clothes that I've worn but are still clean'ish (let's call them clean dirty clothes). I've done two things that really help me deal with them:

(1) I no longer have a chair in my bedroom -- only a stool and a vanity. The stool is not fun to sit on when covered in clothes (and I really love sitting there when I'm getting ready). This seems to force me to put them away!
(2) The second strategy is just putting them away. You are going to wear them again, right? So why not just put them back in the drawer. They won't contaminate their friends, right? They end up at the top of the drawers, so I am likely to put them on again first and then make their way to dirty dirty status. Only rarely do I open the door and think, oh shoot, this shirt isn't clean clean. Most of the time I think, oh this is clean dirty so I should put it on and not feel bad about spilling/staining it.

OK, my dirty secret (which apparently no one else shares!), is that once I have used a kitchen towel to the point that I think it should be washed, I throw it on the kitchen floor. It usually stays there for a day or two, helpfully cleaning up messes on the floor (I maneuver it with my foot). After a few days, I finally move it to hamper. I always thought this strategy was genius! But my husband thinks it is very weird and, even worse, sometimes just thinks I've dropped the towel and will pick it up and put it on the counter. Ewww! He must think that kitchen floor is clean, which it never is.

OH GOD this post just inspired me to go and vacuum the rug that I've been ignoring for three weeks and sweep the bathroom that I've been ignoring since we moved in... at the beginning of November.

We moved into a new place with carpet ONLY in the bedroom (the rest is laminate faux-wood and real hardwood) and I just vacuumed it for the first time tonight. I sweep the kitchen regularly, but anywhere else just gets overlooked... especially the bathroom. I have really long hair and it's such pain to sweep up so I just... don't do it.

We also have reciepts, bills and random paper EVERYWHERE. I leave half-read books everywhere in case I randomly get the urge to read. Clothes in the bedroom are scattered all over and the second bedroom/office is something I can't even think about. The last two boxes that we'll never unpack are in there so I have no hope that anything useful will happen there.

Our biggest problem is storage... in that we have none of it. Some sort of plan needs to be made to store all the random bric-a-brac that's lying around.

I suspect your kitchen floor is about like mine, kikinyc! I fall over every time I read on this site about people who supposedly sweep every day, mop every week, etc. I do mine only when I HAVE to.

I generally keep things pretty clean, but clutter tends to pile up. Right now I'm thinking about the boxes of Xmas ornaments and new craft project on the dining room table, plus the tree in pieces in the living room, etc. Plus it's my honey's turn to empty the dishwasher, so every surface in the kitchen is covered in dirty dishes. Not my favorite habit, but I live with it.

Paradoxically, he's the one who keeps the house clean through his habit of spontaneously inviting people over. It forces me to clean up more than I ordinarily would, so even though I do most of the cleaning, he's the one who gets me moving to do it.

Thanks for the 1st person singular post. These "are you a slob" posts are really popular, aren't they?

I have a mouse. He lives somewhere behind the stove and the path he takes to and from his home occasionally runs behind the kitchen sink.
All the food in my pantry is mouse-proof, so hes limited to eating food from the dog's bin, and I will get around to trapping him in the spring when I wont feel bad releasing him at the park, but until then I just wipe up stray droppings with a clorox wipe and hope no one notices him on his food runs.
I know that most people think its pretty disgusting, and i dread pulling out the stove come spring to see how many droppings have accumulated over the winter, but I've come to tolerate the little guy, and say hi to him whenever i see him scurry by.

when positive/resolute/things are going my way = neat-n-tidy.

depressed/sad/apathetic = things get messier-n-dirtier. it really isn't until the threat of someone coming over or the landlord needing to be let in that I snap out of it. (then I'm maniacal about keeping it clean for as long as possible.)

ah, the ebbs and flows of modern living!

This is such a refreshing post!
One of my parents growning up was a hoarder (not super extreme, but overwhelming at the very least). So, when I first moved out in college, I acted like a nut-case about cleaning things. I've let this go a but, as its been several years since I've lived away from home. But every time my house gets cluttered to a point with dirty dishes, and semi-clean laundry, and kitty fur- I clean clean clean. Recently, I moved into a wonderful 80 year old adobe house. The age of everything (inside and out) helps disguise dirt/dust/kitty fur a bit, so I generally sweep/mop/do dishes/change sheets/do laundry about every two weeks. One of the simple, yet AWESOME features of this house is that there are 5 or more hooks on the back of every door- so I can easily keep "clean-dirty" cloths off the floor, as well as belts/scarfs and my pjs!

I feel like I should also confess my brothers dirty little secret- he has been known to throw AWAY his dirty dishes if they sit in his sink till they start a science experiment...

I definitely should wipe down the sinks more often than I do. And I don't have a good place for my mail, so it tends to pile up in the entryway. Winter can be tough with various pairs of mittens, gloves, scarves, etc. They always seem to land in the wrong place.

I did finally solve my problem with clothes that I had worn briefly but that were still clean. I hung a row of hooks in my closet. Now that I have the hooks, I actually use them so I no longer have clothes lying around the bedroom. Mentally, it seems much easier to hang a pair of jeans on a hook than it does to hang them on a hanger.

I have really thick, long, dark hair and it sheds like crazy. I have the right hair catcher contraption in the shower, nothing gets past it, and yet everyday, I scoop up the gob of hair and plop it down on edge of the bathtub. And I just keep adding to it day after day until it's basically a mountain of hair. Everyday I see it get even more big and gross, but I just can't bring myself to touch it. I only clean it up just before company arrives (and sometimes that means a couple of weeks!). It's a truly disgusting, bad habit.

Ackkk.. laundry! I'll get it folded and hung right away to avoid ironing... but the stuff I fold never quite makes it back *into* my dresser. On top of, yes, but into, no. My dirty laundry piles up in my walk-in closet/dressing room too.

My sewing and crafty-type projects get out of hand as well. Partly because I live in a studio so everything's multi-functional and if I leave ANYTHING out it seems over-whelming. My goal is to have a place with a dedicated sewing room that I can leave in shambles and just close the door... but I HAVE to have stuff clean when people come over.

I'm lazy with dishes too (but trying to get better because clutter I can deal with, but dirty things I really dislike).

I once threw out all the dishes in my sink because I couldn't bear the thought of washing them.

@talby -- I did the same thing with a mouse. Several, actually.

The ocean isn't the final dumping ground, my table is. I hate it. Once a week it gets cleaned, and looks magazine-ish, but cr@p always creeps back onto it. By the end of the week, it's cluttered with local newspapers (tough-we get 3 a week), fliers, mail, junk mail, books, laptops, backpacks, lunch kits. Sheesh.

That and the laundry. Laundry is not a friend.

we only have one good large skillet so if we use it one night we just leave it on the stove since it's not dishwasher safe, then wash it before we use it again. But sometimes, like when the plumber was coming over, I just threw it in the oven. And sometimes, I forget to tell my husband I do that and he's the one that cooks...that's just recently but in years past I have filled the stove with dirty dishes before in a rush attempt to clean. Then when the person left, I would take them all out and wash.

I'm a messy person and keeping things clean is always a struggle. I'm the "invite someone over so my house will get cleaned" person then I spend 2 hours cleaning and am exhausted when our friends are here.

We just recently moved to a smaller place and the kitchen is out in the open so we both are trying to keep it tidy.

I pee in the sink.

This post is great! I feel so much better about my own bad habits :)

MaySea--I also do the hair blob thing! Its different when you're in the shower and you pull the hair out when theres lots of hot, soapy water running all over it, but picking it up when its gone all cold and slimy is another thing entirely.

Other awful things I do/do not do:

-I can go weeks and weeks without scrubbing the tub
-Like others have mentioned, theres always a thin layer of cat hair on everything
-dining room table and desk are always covered with stuff--currently for instance bills/junk mail, Christmas cards and an advent calendar, books, fruit, receipts, guitar picks, cat toys, cleaning products (ironically), various papers etc etc.
-my fruit fly trap from November is still sitting on top of the fridge with dead fruit flies still floating in it
-clean and dirty laundry often get mixed up in baskets and on the floor

I could go on. This makes me feel way better! I'm glad to have proof that I'm not the only one who struggles with day-to-day cleaning. Thats my biggest problem, if I could just stay on top of small daily clean-ups I'd be much better off!

I haven't vacuumed or dusted or really cleaned much of anything since I hosted Christmas. I also haven't opened the door to the second bedroom where I shoved everything before my mother arrived on Christmas. Its stuffed it the point that when my sister asked if she could change the baby in there, I had to say no. And I had the dogs in my bedroom so she had to change him in the hallway.

I usually let the dishes pile up for three or four days. I always say that I'm going to wash them as soon as I use them, but I don't. Not because I really have anything against doing dishes, I just seem incapable of putting them away once they're dry. I put off the laundry until everything is dirty, and my bedroom chair is covered with the sweaters I've worn this week because I couldn't be bothered to hang them up in the closet that is less than two feet away. Tags from new clothes will pile up on my dresser for months and I stopped bringing the mail in two days ago because the recycling bin is full and its all junk mail. My bed is covered in pet hair, I think the cat must be balding.

And the lovely warm fuzzy blanket my Grandma got me for Christmas? Its shedding all over the rest of my bedding. My sheets are covered with brown fuzz. I washed the slipcover after the blanket and it is covered in brown fuzz. I found brown fuzz in the dogs water bowl this morning.

I know that when my home is clean and organized everything in my life just runs smoother, but I'm so exhausted from work that I just collapse in the evenings and weekends. I think I need a three days weekend so I can sandwich cleaning in between two days to rest. Although that doesn't solve the problem of the second bedroom.

...am I the only one wondering how tall Arkay is?

My worst housekeeping offense is not filing paper as it comes in. We have a system in place; just don't follow through. "Important" paperwork peeks out from every corner of our main living space like a cockroach infestation. It's messy and also costly when we miss deadlines or the few bills we don't e-pay.

I'm considering disguising filing cabinets as end tables in the living room to encourage better filing habits.

i leave my dishes out and have my mom do them for me... ha~ not very proud of it. especially, i have just recently moved back home for financial reasons. (sad face)

I'm neat, clean, and organized. Except for the shower.
I hate cleaning it, especially in the winter, since I always clean it naked and it's just too cold to do it in the winter. So I haven't cleaned it since September. But I'm going to do it this weekend, honest (even though that's what I said last weekend, and the one before that, and...). Sometimes I go in there and just shine the chrome fixtures with some Windex so it gives the impression of being clean.

I had to stop lurking to put in my two cents. Dog hair, dust two inches thick on the furniture and dirty dishes are my vices. Other than that i have a clean apartment. I hate washing dishes so I wait till I start smelling that funny smell. I do not like a lot of furniture and never owned a lot because it is just more dusting to do. My mother came to visit me when I was battling breast cancer. Well, she thought I needed more furniture, so she bought more things for me to dust. I have a Scottish Terrior who sheds like crazy and I am always dusting, and vaccuming my home. That gets old quickly. There are a couple of times I have to go on the patio to put my clothes on because there is so much dog hair that leaps on my clothing. I know it is bad when my dog and I sneeze like crazy and we are both on freaking allergy medications.

I love the acknowlement that we can be both aesthetic and slobs. I have lovely things, stylish vignettes, but with the addition of piles: magazines, books, beads, yarn, clothes, dishes, papers. I aspire to do better; perhaps scheduling a party would work but my friends might fall over in shock at an invitation. Truthfully, my space looks how it does partly due to depression, being a lazy perfectionst, and because the my rented space - floors (crappy vinyl, light, stained carpet), crummy tile and grout
don't meet my standards, especially at my middle age. I must find a way to accept this and do better with what I have. It's just that I have such exquisite taste but not the space and or budget. Thanks for this venue to vent with the like-minded.....

We have an Eichler with the original cabinet doors that slide. I always leave the doors open, and hubs goes around closing them after me.

I lose my shoes. I take them off here and there, and it's not so much that my house is a mess, just that I stop seeing the shoes.

I leave little rolled up wads of hair in one corner of the shower until I finally decide to pick them up. This is ridiculous since I squeege after every shower, but there you have it.

When I drip water in the bathroom, I skooch the rug over with my foot to dry it up. Cork floors make you do these things.

And my studio floor is usually so crowded with stacks of books and piles of fabric, that I get around to sweeping in here about 3 times a year. Ewwww.

my husband never puts his laundry away; just dumps it on the floor beside the bed. he also undresses and dumps that day's clothing on the same patch of floor. which means that in the mornings i catch him pulling up clothes and then SMELLING THEM to see if they're wearable. his standard for what's ok to wear? 'if no one can smell me from 2 feet away it's all good'.

p.s. I have people coming over tonight & got up at 5:00 AM to clean so that it will be ready for them... cleaning means stashing my junk in my roommates' room - they are out of town for the weekend & i will have to move it all back on Sunday evening...I need HELP!!!!!

Piles of tiny pieces of paper everywhere. I empty receipts out of my purse in a hurry and I know I have to sort thru them later but they just pile up until I get sick of looking at them.

kikinyc-I do that with towels. Once they have either touched the floor or become too dirty to use any more, I toss them on the floor and they stay there until I get around to putting them in the hamper.

I don't do dishes every day, but I do have my dog lick them all clean when I'm done. No bugs or mice. I just have to wash the dog germs off.

Weirdest thing I do according to me - my bathroom is always company ready. Nothing around the sink, but the plug in toothbrush (can't keep it in the cabinet) and a candle. I grew up in a small house with a big family. 1 bathroom. It was always a mess.

I hate to vacuum. When I do, I just vacuum the center of the room and not under the furniture, usually only once a month.

My dirty little secret is my family room.

I could go weeks without ever stepping foot in there, but my hubby & 7 yr/old spend tons of time there. When I finally do go in there (usually to use the adjoining bathroom), I find cups, plates, socks (tons of socks) in addition to every lego & hotwheels car in the house strewn across the floor.

The slipcovers will be draped haphazardly across the furniture, granola bar wrappers shoved between the cushions, and all of the pillows will be stacked into forts around the room. By this point, I don't even notice the dust, or the smell emanating from the bathroom because my son always forgets to flush!

whew! sharing with total strangers that have the same issues is a cathartic experience! Now if I could only get the legos from being embedded in my feet.......

I'm with the laundry people. I'll actually live right out of the dryer sometimes in the winter -- wake up, push the button to fluff out the wrinkles, and then get dressed in toasty warm clothes.

Clothes and shoes are the worst of my mess/clutter. I try to keep them contained/restrained but laundry is my least favorite chore.

our closests are the worst. they accumulate stuff until stuff is literally toppiling down from the top shelf. the bottom gets filled with clothes as well. I once did an entire laundry load of dirty socks found in the bottom of my husbands closet.

I just asked my husband if he's peed elsewhere than the toilet and (thank you god) he said no. Was grossed out and asked me where the heck I got that idea from. LoL.

So my biggest secret is having knitting or sewing projects around. Yarn here, yarn there. Fabric over yonder etc. The hubby tends to leave stuff laying around but is pretty good about picking up.

Almost weekly I go on a coffee induced, Saturday cleaning binge. I try to start laundry (like many others it never fully gets done), clean the kitchen counters, and get the f-ing dog hair off of the couch and hardwood floors (seriously it is a whole dust pan of hair each week). Every Sunday I wake up and appreciate the wonderfully clean house and swear that I will keep it clean for good, never put myself through the horror of binge cleaning again. By Tuesday each week I am already planning my next cleaning binge.

I have three boxes in my "living room" (I live in a 400-square-foot studio) that I have not unpacked. I moved in two years ago. And I am not above shoving new things in them in an "Oh, crap, people are coming over and I have nowhere to put this!" cleaning frenzy.

Also, I leave my shoes on the floor by the front door instead of putting them in the shoe cabinet. Which is right by the front door.

I'm a total neat freak so everyone who visits always comments on how clean and tidy... however, they all leave covered in cat hair!! Ha!!! Appearances can be very deceptive...

Personally, piles of clothes - mixed clean and worn. My So is worse, she seems to really refuses to put anything away ever so I have refused to wash anything which isn't in the laundry basket - chucked in the general vicinity doesn't count :-)

Otherwise, I guess my study is my nightmare secret as it is full of things which just won't go anywhere else and is always a tip. When people come to stay I just apologise for it, or keep the door shut.

lets see...
the husband refuses to throw used toilet paper tubes in the garbage (in the bathroom) he tosses them into the hall. I get mad and don't pick them up. Sometimes there are three or 4 out there. He also leaves his clothes on the side of the bed and never picks them up.

I usually wait to load the dishwasher until the sinks are full and the tiny counter I have is covered with glasses.

I do the laundry daily, but never put it away. I just wear them again.. people must think I only have 3 t shirts.

I have a "to file" stack that only gets filed 4 times a year. I still haven't put away 2009 yet....

I don't like to sweep, so it's usually every 10-14 days before I do it and you can imagine what my floors look like with a dog, cat and 5 yr old boy.

The worst is this-I have to have a drink at my bedside. I rarely remember to take the glass back to the kitchen, so I will have 5 or 6 glasses there in various stages of evaporation. Like the movie "signs"....

I have always, and WILL always despise emptying the dishwasher. I can't even really explain where this hatred came from, but I have been known to take a plate out, just the one I need of course, use it, put it BACK in the dishwasher and run it all over again...just hearing the noise of the dishwasher is lovely to me, becuase I know that as long as it's running, I'm not expected to empty it...

I don't unpack. Too many years of being a student and moving into a new apartment for 8 months a year followed by four months of putting everything into storage. A year into a house I plan to stay in- I still have boxes everywhere.

I don't always get laundry put away.... which is not so bad other than the times I've realized I rewashed perfectly clean clothing becuase I didn't differentiate between the clean pile of clothes and the dirty pile (on the boxes, see above) when packing up for the laundromat.

Forget to clean hair from the shower. Or just ignore it. I am often amazed I have any left on my head.

These have made me feel so much better, haha! I'm not alone in my hatred of folding and putting away laundry, unpacking, going through mail, etc. yay!

I LOVE this post. Often when I'm browsing AT, I begin to think I must be an incompetent, infantile idiot to have dishes spill out of the sink and into the surrounding counters, a constant pile of clothes at the foot of my (otherwise beautifully made) bed, and that pile of stuff that somehow never makes it to the thrift store.

Now I know you all just obsess about it, look the other way, and clean for the photos. Brilliant!

This is hilarious, what a great idea! And I'm feeling better about my own tidying-cleaning, seeing as how I don't have used rat-bedding on the floor and no one pees in my bathtub (extreme euw).

(TMI aside, to my dear husband, thank you so much for having such a good aim, and always using the toilet.) (And thank you for cleaning the toilet area when we had the 9-month renovation and the workmen used it and their aims were AWFUL and I just. couldn't. take. it.)

But I'm glad no one is likely to see the floor in the closet, under the hanging clothes, where all the shoes are. I'm sure the dust bunnies are naming their children and sending them to school.

I don't understand people who complain about houses with wall-to-wall carpet everywhere, and who pine for hardwood (hahaha sorry) floors. I've had all carpet (ok, not the kitchen and bathroom) in the past, and it was great. Shove the vac around everywhere, dump out the thingy (NEVER buy a vac that needs those stupid bags) and voila, done. I hate fiddling with brooms, fine dust that the broom doesn't get, fluff that floats up into the air away from me, dust pans, ugh. And then you have to mop it. Feh.

3rd and last: never't fold the laundry. Carry some hangers over to the dryer, pull stuff out and put it right onto the hangers. Straight into the closet. There, done.