June 07, 2006

• Yep. I love this site. It's like pr0n for us borderline OCD peeps. Actually the forums here are full of very encouraging, supportive people. I would recommend anyone I knew with this kind of issue to drop by it.
• I have kind of a phobia about ending up like that one day, since my grandmother was exactly this sort of person: she kept every magazine she ever bought, from probably the late fifties, and just kept stacking them up in her living room, on the kitchen table, on the armchairs, in the corners of the room, in the bedrooms. There were recipes that she might want one day, or articles she might want to read. There were mice running rampant through the house and my mother has a horror of rodents that she's passed on to me because of it. When she moved into a retirement unit, she started doing the same thing with knitting wool and more magazines (some of which she brought with her), and two of the three bedrooms in the unit are filled with boxes of knitting wool and things she buys that she might want one day. I went to visit her once with the kids in tow and she went into a room and brought out stuffed toys, books and games that she'd obviously bought brand-new years ago and was waiting for someone to give them to. She doesn't really clean or cook because she lives by herself, and she has cupboards full of packets of chocolate biscuits from who-knows-when. I dread the thought of ending up like that so I get freaked out whenever the place starts to feel cluttered. Hooray for garage sales.
• *thinks of the closets full of old computers, electronic gizmos, magazines, manuals, photocopied manuals, boxes full of every kind of data recording format from the 80s to date, old notebooks, tapes, tapes, tapes...* *sigh*
• I have a one meter shallow sided mountain of worn socks, obscured by the very screen I view monkey-filter on. I just keep on buying more socks, rather than going to the laundry. I'm getting a washer/dryer, but I have to tidy the kitchen first, I can't have the delivery people see the state of it. It's not so much hording as being a lazy bugger. Please don't think less of me because I have a worn sock mountain, it could be taller, and it doesn't smell at all, unless vigorously disturbed.
• You know, you could totally take care of Mt Sockmore by doing two loads at a laundromat in the big machines. It'd take you like an hour and you'd feel better about it afterwards. ;) I like the Squalor Survivors site... it's helpful/inspiring for people who do have messes, and encouraging for people whose messes are not as bad/insurmountable as they think they are. (Most ppl's messy houses are just mildly cluttered.)
• There are those in my household who fret about such things and restore what they call order to the stacks of paper and books and so forth that seem to accumulate in my wake. And of course, then I can't find anything. I keep telling them that what looks like clutter to them is quite organized to me. But they persist, and my reasoning doesn't stop them for long.
• *suddenly doesn't feel so bad about not vacuuming*
• I simply moved a lot, and on each major move, I keep the books, and I throw everything else away. Radical indeed, but is the epitome if light living.
• A good opportunity to dredge out my redneck trailer [Flickr] photos. I've posted 'em here before, nothing new.
• I've come entirely too close to that. Having a roommate helps. He's not the cleanest bloke either, but we both have a vague sense of when things are getting too close to too disgusting. My grandmother, and to a lesser degree my mother, kind of do the same thing. I hope they never die.
• Ye-ikes. Disgusting. Good post....but disgusting.
• It seems the International Space Station is not immune from clutter. WTF? They have all that space! :)
• Who knew astronauts were so messy? (Thanks for the link, un-!)
• Where there are folk, garbage happens.
• Garbage Charlotte Ballard Poetry is nonsense. Yet I pass it around As if it was the Finest caviar Being served to Impatient guests At an outdoor summer part. My poetry is more like Hamburger that has gone Slightly bad And only fit To be slid into the Garbage can This time and the next.
• Didn't that happen on the Satellite of Love? And they had to throw all their garbage into the sun?
• Just to be thorough, the crazy eBay Mom that, I think, lurks inside all of us. I am happy to report that I'm getting rid of everything except the guitar, don't touch the #@%! guitar and now I just want a robot vacuum. Robot vacuum would solve everything.
• I actually had one of those little round robet vacuum thingies. Got it for the dog hair, and sent it back--useless bugger.
• Was it the Discovery SE model? 'Cause that's what teh Intarwebs tells me to buy.
• Yea, I have tile floor with area rugs and it just had hissy fits about that. Plus, unless you have very little furniture, the little bugger gets under a chair or in a corner and bangs it's little head forever--can't get out for 20 minutes. Not to mention, before it could vacuum up the balls of dog hair, it would blow them all around and scatter most of them. *GramMa resigned to living with a dog hair felted floor
• Yeah, I tried to have a reasoned debate with the Terrierist about not shedding all over the floor, but she felt it was rhetorically expedient to keep biting me. I came to see her side of things shortly thereafter.
• I have a cheapish (approx $70) Eureka that does an ok job on the dog hair, but since I get the cheap version it also only lasts for 3-4 years. I aspire to this, but I can't conceive of paying so much for a vacuum cleaner. I tried to find a link to what I have now, but they don't seem to make it any more. It's bagless and has 3 filters, including a HEPA filter, to get rid of allergens (it does well... I'm allergic to the whole world). This is a nicer version of what I have.