Above is a nine-point scale ranging from Felix Unger to typical teen.
Felix may be the low end of the scale, but the peak is the Collyer brothers. They famously were killed by the collapse within their home of a pile of their own crap.
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Probably because that second scale is completely ridiculous and seems to serve only as an advertisement for “professional organizers”. The association it comes from is kind of suspect just from their website including that they will train you with courses they offer to give you a certification they have made up. They are accepting donations.
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This sounds like my dad’s widow. She’s got a lot of stuff, and she refuses to get rid of any of it, but for the most part it’s all in nice plastic bins. There’s just far far too many of them. Why are you holding onto enough “Pocahontas” birthday party supplies for 40 people? Your kids are in their 20’s!
When my dad was ill, he started smuggling things out of the house that he wanted people to have. He knew she wouldn’t let anything go after he was gone. We’d wait until she was in the bathroom or out at the store and then we’d hide stuff in my car.
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That’s what my godmothers house (she was in her mid 70s and a widow for 30 years) looked like before I cleaned it. She was at level Orange to Red. It was awful, the house was very very close to teardown condition. I spent a huge amount of time and effort on it, and we were able to move her back in, supervised, for her last couple years.
She made -the best- easter baskets when I was a kid, and sent -the best- care packages to me in college. Least I could do.
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I was trying to find a picture of this guy’s house,
Couldn’t, but here’s the final BBC documentary about him:
The show Hoarders has taught me there is a dead cat somewhere in that picture.
I also found the best way to get cleaning IS to watch Hoarders as I start throwing away things about 15 minutes in.
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That may well be, but having hoarders (boxes in every room, no dead cats) in my family I’ll take any intervention I can shoehorn in before the member reaches their natural life and I throw it all away.
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See, I have the opposite reaction: “Oh, well, my house clearly isn’t messy at ALL in comparison, I’m gonna eat some brownies and fart around on the internet some more.”
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I actually brought up Hoarders the show to my family member, they enjoyed it and said “it makes me feel better about my mess”.
THAT IS NOT THE POINT I WAS TRYING TO MAKE, ACK.
I mean, no missing-and-expectedly dead pets in rubble-valanches is a pretty low bar to hit.
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Has anyone else read this?
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No kidding! I do have at least one roommate that would probably be a hoarder if others didn’t throw shit out.
Really? He needs to keep every bill you ever received and write “Paid” on the envelope? Yeah, I don’t think he will ever need to know how much he paid 20 years ago to his auto insurance.
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I’m not disorganized, I’m an expert in APM…Advanced Pile Management! It just looks like chaos. There’s a deep sublime order to it. I have a chart…somewhere…just, uh, give me a bit and I’ll show you.
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How is any of that different from a university?
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I’m a 2-4/Lvl II
Ugh.
It is almost like it does not register with me unless mywife is specifically pointing it out, like a mental blindspot.
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I thought that was a Bill O’Reilly reference at first.
I thought I was bad, but I’m about a 2 or a 3. A solid II. It’s mostly just disorganized piles of clothes and papers, plus literally thousands of books. My neat freak friends get weirded out by my place. However, I have a good friend who’s about a 5 or a 6. Every flat surface has big piles of garbage on it, nothing is sanitary, floors are filthy, etc. It’s enough to even gross me out.
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You only have “too many fridge magnets” when the appliance over balances and crushes you.
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Closets are the key to staying organized:
Personally, I think the actual level of clutter matters less than whoever lives together agreeing on acceptable thresholds that trigger cleaning. My wife is triggered at a much lower level than I am, which causes a certain amount of trouble.
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My hoarding level is like, zero. I hate clutter. You can’t keep clean with too much stuff. Too low-maintenance, I know, but I gotta be me…
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That picture gets knocked askew awfully quickly, doesn’t it? And why is there a painting of Kim Jong-Un?
Another axis should be “clutter” vs. “mess.” My mom is a bit of a hoarder but she doesn’t just throw stuff around chaotically like in those pictures 2-9, everything’s clean and in fairly orderly stacks.
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