Everyone has one, whether it's a junk drawer or an entire garage. What giant hulking mess gives you nightmares? Have you tackled one recently? If so, have you managed to keep it nice and neat, or did the giant hulking mess monster take over again?

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

Answers

My giant mess?

My whole fucking apartment. It never recovered from the holidays and work has had me in a foo foo. It has to get clean this weekend for I have a visitor coming in, and it MUST GET CLEAN.

Other than that, my checkbook could use a makeover.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

My linen closet is going to kill me one day. I have piles of poorly-folded sheets and towels smashed on top of each other, threatening to collapse on me. On top of and smashed between the layers I have items such as ankle weights, a camera tripod, a fire-proof box, a plunger, cleaning supplies, light bulbs, and random beauty supplies. Of course, instead of tackling the mess it's much more fun to tug the sheet or towel that you need, and then slam the door before the imminent collapse.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

My taxes. Why did I think it was a good idea to become a freelance editor? Why oh why??

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

My nonexistent garden. I just registered for a class at the Botanic Gardens called Garden Design for Novices but I wonder what I'll manage and what I'll just continue to fantasize about.

Taxes I refuse to think about.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

The back patio. It's so giant and hulking I can't even describe it.

I had it clean two years ago. Really, I did.

And honestly, I can say that of my livingroom on a daily basis, as my two giant hulking mess monsters leave their crap everywhere.

I should never have had kids; I should have had well-organized neat freaks.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

our basement. it's unfinished. we just bought a treadmill and it is being delivered next week. it's supposed to go in the basement. right now there is a mess of stuff we never unpacked (we moved in over three years ago) and my husband's car stuff. tires, rims, tools, miscellaneous bottles of oil, wax, cleaner, etc. and all of his paperwork/files from before we lived together.

writing this, it sounds like HE should be the one to do the major overhaul, since it's mostly his stuff. but since I'm the one who really wanted the treadmill, and I'm the one who will be the primary user, I guess I'll be the one to clean things out.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

You will note that I didn't even mention my basement. My secret dream is to have it all organized, with everything on shelves against the wall, so that we can finish the rooms, one by one, and put a little exercise room down there. Maybe by 2007.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

Our garage. It is COMPLETELY filled with boxes of stuff of every type and kind. We have, let's see, 5 or 6 bookcases, plus a built in one that's 7 feet high and 12 feet long. But those still don't hold all of our books. I keep trying to figure out other places where we could put bookcases, when we buy them.

Then there are boxes and boxes of magazines that I'm saving. I don't konw what to do about those, if anything. Also boxes of miscellaneous stuff that we don't have room for in the house.

There's also a lot of stuff like three microwave ovens that my spouse is saving for a garage sale. I can't wait to get rid of that, but not enought to just haul it to goodwill.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

My whole apartment. I moved in two months ago, but then I was nearing the end of another giant hulking mess called a dissertation and managed to put together my bedroom only well enough to have a place to sleep/ eat/watch tv/talk on the phone while collapsing into tears at all the stress. Everything else was put on hold. Last weekend, I tackled the bathroom. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but the woman who lived in the apartment before me was a complete pig. I saw it before the landlords did some cleaning, and the inside of the fridge was encrusted with I don't know what, and there were jelly/soda/I don't want to know stains all over the floors. Unfortunately the landlords didn't clean up as well as I would have liked, so I've slowly done things like scrape the grime and scunge of possibly a decade off floors/cabinets/ toilets etc. Doesn't help that the previous tenant had a young son that I don't think ever learned to pee straight. Yuck yuck yuck yuck. I still kind of feel dirty. BUT, I was able to celebrate the finishing of the bathroom at least with a scented bath on Sunday night. Ohhh, the relaxation. BTW, my bathroom might not be in the disrepair that Beth's is, but I'm not sure a grown man can stand in front of the toilet and pee without having to almost stradle the toilet, given how little leg room there is. And when inside the door has to be closed to be able to stand in front of the sink (which is badly mounted on the wall, with no cabinet underneath, such that it will wobble if leaned on causing the pipes underneath to come out of alignment and spill water all over the floor). Lusting for a living room sized bathroom with an old claw-footed can-swim-laps-in-it tub as I type ...

Meanwhile, the boxes and packing paper and receipts from two months and just everything else are strewn widely and wildly. And all must be cleaned up before Mom arrives next weekend. At least that is a motivator. I tend to be insanely neat, so I can't tell if my ability to live with the recent mess is a good psychological development or the beginning of a big lazy slobby phase.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

You have all made me feel so much better. Really - you have no idea.

My pantry is frightening. We just shove stuff in there, plus there is a cat box and a bunny hutch on the floor. Our whole house looks very tidy, on the surface, as long as you don't open any drawers, or doors, or enter the studio.

I look at the linen cupboard and I want to cry.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

i have to agree with 'the basement'. the dog's part is neat and clean as i have a kennel girl come and help out with that on a regular basis, but the rest is a mish mash of books i haven't read yet (or ones that are so good i might want to read them again), magazines that i am saving (why??? good question), unused exercise equipment and sports gear and toys for my non-existant human children (hand me downs from friends). my cleaning lady found a dead mouse down there a few weeks ago and now refuses to have anything to do with that entire floor! [big sigh] any volunteers?

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

I don't even want to think about them. The biggest hulking mess is really my whole graduate school career/future decision I don't want to make. But in terms of the physical things:

Our office/second bedroom is full of the boxes of things we haven't unpacked since we moved in six months ago. It also has an old futon we keep meaning to give away. The desk is so covered in crap it can't be used as a desk. Which is why:

I haven't balanced my checkbook in three months and I know I've got overdue bills hiding in those piles.

I plan to tackle the checkbook and the bills tonight, but the office is just going to have to wait for spring.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

First: My files. I have six years of files in no particular order stored all over the place, and I can't find anything. I may have done a dozen motions to change venue in the last six years, but I can I find even one? No. I have to borrow it from someone else. God forbid any of my settled cases should ever re-open. It would require the FAA crash reconstruction team to reassemble the file.

Similarly, my closet. I have this fantasy that one day it will look like Ray Liotta's closet in Goodfellas -- tidy row of dark pants on hangers, tidy row of light shirts on hangers. Instead it's a jungle of plastic bags and twist ties. My dry cleaner is a sadist and ties knots KNOTS! in the twist-ties that he loops through the hangers, so you have to rip the bag down the side to liberate a pair of trousers. I never seem to entirely empty a bag, so I have this row of ripped and tangled plastic that's held on six cardboard-coated hangers only by knotted bits of wire and paper, but in each bag of six hangers there is exactly one article of clothing. Yeccccch.

Let's not even start on the garage, the attic, and the shelf next to the phone.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

My old computer. The new one showed up in August, and I set the two up together on my desk until I had a chance to transfer files from old to new. 5 months later it's still sitting there untouched. It's not that it's such a huge task, but I worry that once I transfer things and give away the old one, I'll suddenly discover something important I left there. And since it's been sitting there for so long already, another week can't hurt, right? Inertia is a powerful force around here.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2001

My wardrobe is the place where clothes go to die. I try and be really disciplined about getting rid of stuff I no longer wear, but it still seems to contain piles of crap. I honestly don't know when I buy all this stuff ... I must be a sleep-shopper.

The rest of the flat was fairly scary as well, but Tristan came back from Australia in full-on tidy mode and sorted and filed all the paperwork, which has improved things considerably.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2001

Man, everywhere you look in my house there's some pile of crap that really needs to be organized.

Downstairs we have three big closets that are jam packed with stuff. They all need to be sifted through and extra stuff gotten rid of and crap thrown out.

Then there's my office. I have two four drawer filing cabinets that really need to be organized. But I did finally go through all my magazines and throw out a lot of them. I was saving them because I thought I was going to read them someday, but I know I'm not so I threw them out. I guess I could have donated them to the library but then they would have gone downstairs till I took them over to the library and that would have just been sifting the mess. I also threw out a whole lot of extra catalogs too.

I just take it step by step, trying to tackle one thing at a time. The problem is that it takes so long to make rounds to everything that it's time to start over once i'm done. I really wish I could find a system where I could keep everything organized all the time.

I'm hopeless!

Colleen

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2001

My whole house and my life! It wouldn't be so bad, but my MOTHER has been living me while she finds a new job. It was just supposed to be for a couple of months, but it was a couple of months more than a year ago. Consequently, we have my furniture and her furniture plus all her stuff in boxes in my two bedroom house that I had moved into just two months before she did. Thank God there's plenty of storage space upstairs and in the storage shed.

Does anyone else feel like they can't be themselves around their mothers?

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2001

My whole house and my life! It wouldn't be so bad, but my MOTHER has been living me while she finds a new job. It was just supposed to be for a couple of months, but it was a couple of months more than a year ago. Consequently, we have my furniture and her furniture plus all her stuff in boxes in my two bedroom house that I had moved into just two months before she did. Thank God there's plenty of storage space upstairs and in the storage shed, but it's still pretty close quarters.

Does anyone else feel like they can't be themselves around their mothers?

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2001

We are in the process of listing our house for sale so I've been cleaning out junk for a month. The Salvation Army is great here. They come and pick stuff up in our area on Saturdays. I've had them here 3 times already. 26 huge garbage bags of clothes have gone out of here. I think I'm finally resigned that the size 6 jeans I have from high school are never going over these hips again!

My husband's mother lived in an in-law apartment downstairs until she died in December. I had to clean out her apartment and the basement. She was a real packrat. I found a huge drawer completely packed with rubberbands that came on the paper everyday. I didn't count but I bet there were over 5,000 in the drawer. Two days after I tossed the rubberbands, I needed one to wrap up some stuff I was packing. I had to go to the store and buy a box of 500.

It took 3 dump truck loads to the dump and 2 Salvation Army pickups to get rid of her stuff. It made me feel terrible throwing out her things like that. We have our own stuff though. We just don't have room for all of hers. I am keeping some of the nicer furniture she had.

Anyway, our house looks so good now, I'm not sure I want to move. I swear I'm going to keep up the new one so I never have to go through this process again!

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2001

At the bottom of my closet is about a foot of stuff, among it a backpack with my camera gear in it (unused for about 6 months), a backpack with a set of picnic stuff in it (unused ever except when I lent it to my sister-in-law -- why I bought a picnic backpack when my husband doesn't like to be outside in summer I can't tell you), a rug, a bag of potting soil (I can't have plants anymore because my marmalade cat eats them), and a folder of art supplies from when I took a drawing class in university. I graduated in 1995. I don't know what else is down there. I don't really want to, but I would like to see the closet floor, and maybe give my formal dresses a place to hang.

A couple of weeks ago we spent $300 at a storage place, and beat our linen closet (actually the top shelf of my closet, where we keep the bedlinens) into submission. It's now a set of shelves with linens in Martha-esque stacks. Whoo! However, in the actual linen closet, the bottom shelf contains empty plant pots (see cat, above), paint thinner (my life is a series of failed attempts to indulge my artistic side, see camera and drawing supplies, above), a whole buttload of that rubbery stuff you put under your rugs so your guests don't break a leg and sue you, and some bits of ceramic knick-knackery. I lack flat, unused surfaces where knick-knacks can go, so they live in a closet.

Those are my battles.

I did win another one yesterday -- we got a bookcase which we custom-ordered to have lots of shelves, and that's where all our CDs live now, as opposed to in five (5) different, unrelated CD-storage devices. However, I'm baffled as to how we can get rid of one bookshelf, buy another that's twice as tall, fill it up, and still have the same number of homeless books as before. Do they reproduce overnight?

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2001

Oy. First on my list for tonight. The bathroom. The dustbin in there is overflowing (which isn't good for any bin, especially not the one in there.) There are about 12 towels mouldering on the floor along with a pair of jeans, two sweaters and assorted bits of undergarments. I've recently been painting, so the sink has had a paint tray unceremoniously dumped in it, complete with a roller and two paintbrushes. Underneath that are two tint brushes and a cup from the last time I dyed my hair. Three weeks ago. The bottle of dye is still on the edge of the sink, complete with purplish splatters around it.

Next is my closet. Where all my clothes are stored. In a large pile on the floor. Also contained within, 30+ pairs of shoes. Two small bookcases (one with books, the other with t-shirts). A Mac II. A basket full of old tapes that I will never listen to again (David Gilmour or Hanson anyone?). A set of 12 pint glasses. And seven sets of Fiestaware, still in their boxes (rose, cobalt, periwinkle, yellow, peach, rose, chartreuse).

I don't even want to talk about the guest room yet. Except for the fact that I've recently added my old mattress and box spring, a nightstand, a table which holds a sewing machine, and a bookcase to the mess inside.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2001

Um ... Hanson? Oh, Mar. Mar, Mar, Mar.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2001

Oh, I sympathize, juno! I also feel like I can't be myself around my mother. Nothing major, just self consciousness about spending money, being lazy, eating junk food, going to the nudist camp...etc.

Another mess that I've been avoiding is that I bought a domain name last year and need to move files over to it. But while I'm at that, I might as well re-design my web site; nobody's interested in seeing my wedding pictures any more. So the domain site sits there with nothing on it...and I keep paying for it...

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2001

Uhmm... did I say Hanson?

Because I meant MANSON... yeah that's it. Marilyn Manson.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2001