I'm notoriously anal when it comes to my house being clean. It's not always clean but this was a bit of a wake up call for me. Life really is too short. No one is going to write in my obituary: 'Had a very clean house'.

People drive to work in cars or pirates? :D

My Aunt (by marriage - so no I didn't get the genes) keeps an amazingly clean & organized house and it seems like it takes her no effort. I have seen her plow through the dishes from the family dinner in 10 minutes (just loading the dish washer) but that same task would have taken in me 45 minutes or more. She just seems to have the technique.

People drive to work in cars or pirates. True.

My clothes closet is smaller than that linen closet.

This is not real - things lived in don't look like this.

Could "pirates" be understood as off-medallion taxis?

My sister's closets all look like that. Her home is amazing and somehow she manages to spend a ton of quality time with her five kids. I'm the complete opposite when it comes to my house. Like Amy, it looks ransacked. I've always marveled at how my sister manages it. It must be a gene. She has five kids who could play in mud in white and walk away looking like they've never been near dirt in their life. My kids? If there is dirt within a 5 mile radius it seems to find them.

Hah! My house is so clean you can eat off the floor (and we frequently do!)!

Not. I'm lucky if I get all the laundry done on the same day. My girls are both doing their own laundry now, and BF does his hunting clothes separately from the rest of the stuff. And my linen closet? Don't even go there - not only are there linens and towels in there, but a vast array of cosmetics, shampoo, and paper goods! I have a very wide but not so deep closet. Two sliding doors, lotsa shelves but man! do they fill up fast!

By inclination I am a total slob, and disorganized to boot.

Around the age of 20 I realized how much my lack of organization was hurting me in wasted time and opportunity cost, and I started what has become a 20 year path of becoming more and more organized.

I keep my spices alphabetically, I've got two old card catalogs in my workshop with every drawer labelled and color coded with the type of part inside, etc., etc., etc.

The end result is that I spend ** LESS ** time (much less time) on day to day activities.

Organization works for me.

I'm a notoriously bad housekeeper. Whenever anyone brings it up, they ask why I don't just spend an hour a day, or one weekend day a week cleaning. I always wonder how they can be so cavalier about their time. I have a kid, a job, and a commute--should I spend all of my remaining time decluttering? I started asking these vocal critics about how they kept their houses so clean and: yup, cleaning lady.

We set priorities--kitchen first, then my daughter's room, then as needed. Decluttering (mail, clothes, books, and in our house, massive amounts of multiplying hair accessories) happens every other month or so.

I do daydream about the Martha pr0n though. . .

This is just house porn for women. Kind of like Playboy or whatever for men. We wish our homes had this kind of organization, but getting there would take time away from real living! When I have tried to achieve this kind of result in my own home, I found that I was very cranky at anyone who messed it up. Not good for the marriage!

My mom's house is kind of like this now, but she and my dad are retired and it's what she lives to do. BUT - if you leave anything out of place, or dishes in her sink, look out! That, in my book, is not a way to live.

I'm with TJIC--being organized is a time save. And I hate clutter--it's literally the stuff of nightmares for me.

I'm a pile maker. My sweetie is a professional organizer (I am so glad she has an outlet for this outside of our home).

What TJIC said is true for me, but I'm visual and non-linear in my thinking, hence I keep forming the piles.

Less stuff = fewer piles.

The Vietnam Veterans are my ally in clearing out my space. I keep a large bag or box open on at least 1 floor of our house, and fill it with (clean, usable) items that I realize we rarely use and don't need. When it's half full, I set a date for the Vets to pick up the donations (free, and they leave a receipt for tax deductions). Once the deadline is set, I intentionally go looking for items to fill the bags. They beckon. It becomes a game.

I'm more likely to give away something I know someone else needs.

My weakness is books, but I live near a sweet little library that holds used book sales as a fund raiser, so that motivates me to cull my collection. I have to avoid the library though when they're selling the books.

Some people actually have linen closets? who knew?

Wretched Nurse Ratched doesn't beat people with brooms. Piss her off, she has you lobotomized.

Amy, I question the value of your spam blocker using the same question every day.

I had a snarky comment, but now i must stop and clean this room. Forgive me St. Martha, for i have cluttered.

I find it near impossible to get our one bedroom apartment looking tidy. Trying to cram two offices (and two mountain bikes) into the living room/ dining area doesn't help. So there's minimal opportunity to set up "stations" to catch the stuff that just now piles up. (Stations like a small shelf for catching the shoes we kick off by the door or a spot to catch the mail before it ends up on the kitchen counter)

"I keep my spices alphabetically,"

I deliberately don't organize my spices. In the process of looking for chili powder I may run across three or four things I didn't think of that would go wonderfully in my dish.

After spending 3 months cleaning out my family home after my parents died, I came home with a need to banish all boxes full of "stuff" sitting in closets. I became ruthless in my paring down, and the things I love are now part of my every day life, all else banished to the Good Will or the shredder.

As my life lightened I found myself better able to corral the clutter, though I work from home and struggle with paper paper paper. Housecleaning tends to the "uh oh, company's coming where'd I hide the broom?".

"This is just house porn for women."

THIS is spot on... but there's nothing wrong with that, as long as people realize that it isn't even something to aspire to if it's not your style.

My grandmother has a flawless house, and it was very easy for her to keep it so... but as a kid I never got to go into certain rooms...

This is just a matter of where are you going to pay... are you going to pay your time upfront to keep things spotless, or are you spending your time on the back, cleaning a lot of stuff up?

The correct answer is whatever WORKS for you. I can't stand being that organized, it stresses me out. I know people who can't stand being disorganized and that stresses them out... but the 2 aren't exclusive of each other. If you ask me for a specific document, it is likely I know what pile it's in and approximately where in the pile it is. Once a year prior to tax time, I file all of those documents... It doesn't take me more time to do that than 12x the time to do it every month, maybe less...

This is the way my brain works. Not everyone works that way. It's OK as long as there isn't a buncha clashing over it.

Keeping the house clean is not a huge priority for me but it has to be tidy. Things not put away drive me crazy. That doesn't take much work to keep up though (no kids).

My husband grew up with a mom who is a compulsive cleaner who would often tidy things away and then not know where they went, so he said he didn't mind if I picked things up as long as I could tell him where they went. I leave his office alone though.

Somebody I never met once said the modern American's house looks like no one lives in it (or something to that effect, let's assume this is correct because it sounds good).

My relative is one such American. She manages this feat by employing an army of housekeepers, dogsitters, service people, designers, gardeners, etc etc. Her McMansion is spotless. Her husband's monthly bills must be enormous.

I live and work in my space. My solution was twofold: (1) critical but unused memorabilia went to a safe indoor storage facility and the remaining crap that cluttered my home went to the Goodwill; and (2) I have a timer set for 20 minute intervals - when the place looks disheveled I hit the timer and clean for 20 minutes. Amazing what you can do in 20.

With fewer possessions and frequent straightenings I keep a handle on things. Just a handle, though.

My husband has starting calling the plastic bags I leave around the house "Monica bags." When I get frustrated with the clutter (papers, magazines, random items), I put them in plastic bags to be dealt with later. Later is always sometime later, so if he's looking for something he needs, it's in the Monica bag.

That's about as neat as I get.

>>"After spending 3 months cleaning out my family home after my parents died, I came home with a need to banish all boxes full of "stuff" sitting in closets."

I had a similar experience. When my mom left my dad, I had to come over and help him out. And every room was filled with stupid, random STUFF. Magazines from the 90's, catalogs on top of catalogs, knick-knacks that were broken or so caked with dust that they didn't ever come clean. DVD's that were never taken out of their packaging. Random wires. Everywhere, just junk on top of junk. I came home with renewed fervor that I would *not* become that person. So every few months, I go through our DVD's. I gave my husband his own room in our apt to play in. I culled my collections down (I'm an avid collector of action figures, comics, and books).

While I think the Martha Stewart look is sterile, I also don't want to become my mother, who took a four bedroom, enormous house and made it into a cramped cottage of dust and disuse.

My house is rarely perfect, but is generally a few hours away from being so. If my MIL calls me in the morning and says she will be over that afternoon, I can get it to look great before she gets there (though why I bother I don't know as she is sure to find flaw with something.)

However, my cupboards and closets are rather messy. So I keep the doors closed.

We've moved several times and had to cull, cull, cull.

It's easier to stay on top of things if your house is clean. The reason the relative mentioned above can do the dishes in 10 minutes is because she stays on top of things. If the dishwaser and sink are full of dirty dishes, shit gets backed up and harder to do. It's hard to do the dishes when the sink is already full.

I am happy now that I do not have to kick my way into the house and across the floor the way I did with my first wife.

The dish cloths (tea towels) don't have maggots in them.

Ewwwwwwwwwwww! No thanks for the visual, ken in sc! Yuk!

People drive to work in cars or pirates?

I'd like to see Johnny Depp as Personal Trainer Jack Sparrow in
Pilates of the Caribbean.

"The dish cloths (tea towels) don't have maggots in them."

There's a Full Metal Jacket joke in there somewhere.

I was taught by my mom's strict regime to keep everything perfectly clean. Then when leaving home and living in student's dormitory I haven't even touched anything close to cleaning stuff, but then again when getting married and living with my husband I became exactly SAME like my mom and that's super scary :D