I'm not sure if this is just my problem, but from an early age I have always been the master of creating messes. I am constantly being lectured by my parents for making messes, even now at age 19. The frustrating part is I don't ever remember making the messes most the time. Like when I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you can bet your life on it there is going to be jelly on the table, on the floor, and in some random spot you wouldn't expect it. I recall as a kid there being food all around my plate after I was done eating dinner, and me not knowing how it all fell off the plate. Then there is the fun of making macaroni and cheese, the pasta noodles somehow end up on the stove, on the floor, the cheese packet sprays some cheese powder all over the place. Then there is garbage, like when I would take a snack cake, I would simply throw the wrapper wherever I opened it and not even remember doing that. I'm not sure if it's ADD, or I'm just a huge slob with bad habits.

Do your piles have piles? Do your dustbunnies have grandchildren?

Sounds familiar. :)

I'm so sorry, I had to giggle with your post, you kind of sound like my son, like, he so leaves a trail of whatever he has done for the day, and just cannot help it either. He's just not aware.......

I have to remeber, with just a touch of humor and a lot of love, that someday he will be gone and I will no longer have a trail to remind me of his existence in my houshold.

it requires SUCH effort for me to get garbage into the trash can, instead of on the kitchen counter. Why, why, why? How do people keep things tidy all the time?

Your post triggered a memory of how my mom used to ask me as a child how I managed to get my food on teh back of my shirt.

One of the few ways I know my medication has worn off is the tattle tail trail of crap I leave laying around. I am normally pretty good at putting up my things when I am done. I guess my medication allows my brain to acknowledge "done" whereas with out medications I am simply unaware I "finished" before wandering off and getting distracted by some thing else and forgetting about previous project still laying on the dinning room table.

Weather it's a personal problem or not... I can relate!! The worst for me is when I leave milk sitting around my room for too long and it begins to morph into a soild.
I hate it when my CD cases are crushed and my clean clothes get mixed in with the dirty ones because I've left everything in piles on the floor.
The junk piles just keeps building and building!!
Recently I've been desiring a plain white room with nothing in it but the essentials. Ahh bliss!
But then I joke with myself and think... the only reason my brain wants a clean room is so it can mess up a whole new room!

P.S. I'm 18 and my mom still complains about the state of my room.

I keep saying I'm going to keep my dresser tidy, and I don't know what happens. Gnomes must come into the room when I'm not looking and scatter things all over it!

I'm really bad when I'm at at calligraphy classes. My stuff seems to spread all by itself. I bring masking tape with me to put down the middle of the table so I don't encroach on my neighbour's space. :D (Okay, not really, but there's been a couple people who wanted to do that.)

I scatter things around the whole house too. I just set things down at random and they stay there forever, or until someone trips over them or needs the space.

Why don't the gnomes clean up instead of making more of a mess? :eyebrow:

I am a walking mess. no horizontal surface is safe in my apartment.

I've set things down, boxes, receipts, christmas gifts, bottles of water, and not touched them for two or more years (sometimes drinking the water after..?).

The kitchen never gets cleaned until some cataclysmic event like I can't stand the smell or there are little black things flying around the trash. I reduced the place settings down to just two and that helped a lot, however, I end up running them under water, wiping them off and spreading the butter I didn't put away the day before on toast.

I just can't deal with it; or I can't move; what ever. I've made some progress in getting rid of the 2yr old stuff but the semi-valuable things from dead relatives, I am having a lot of trouble getting the willingness to get rid of.

My car is strangely clean and orderly on the inside. What's that about?

Yeah, seriously how is your car clean inside? I can barely fathom that concept.

I am a constant flurry of unfinished projects and dirty dishes and half-done laundry and piles of paper that have no designated home. I think the only things in my room that really stay where they should are my books. Two bookcases full of books. Plus the bookcase in the other room... Thats a lot of books.

I read in a book that one woman described it as "spontaneous disorganization". It also takes a lot of effort for me to just put things away instead of throwing them on the counter or a flat surface or *next* to where they actually go. I just looked up and I have a dry cleaned sweater hanging RIGHT beside my closet but not IN my closet, and I honestly have no clue as to how long it's been there. I would guess at least a year.

I try not to create dirty messy messes, just cluttery messes. I don't like grit or sticky surfaces and I have to clean that up right away, but everything else just happens and it's just too hard to make myself put things away.

When I actually clean my room it stays that way for about a day if i'm lucky, and that only happens if I clean my room at night then work and have class all day the next day. If i'm actually in my room it falls to pieces instantaneously unless i'm sleeping.

So yeah I don't think you are alone in your messy ways ;)

My rooms always a mess, and everytime I walk into my room, I scratch my head and wonder how it got in such a mess in the first place! :D

Yeah, seriously how is your car clean inside? I can barely fathom that concept.

I can't stand having stuff roll around where I can see it as I drive; so I put it in the trunk ;)

I experience organization as a confrontation, it's like pushing a huge rock up a hill. I attach emotional significance to every object, and in general, I have lots of trouble processing emotion.

My dad used to call me master mess when i was younger. He would throw all my misplaced possessions out the window.
Nowadays I own very few items. I still manage to make a mess though.

I can somehow make a mess when I am cleaning. I call it a gift.:rolleyes: Who else can clean a dish and get dirty water all over themselves and the floor and the counter...hench why I hate dishes and cleaning.
I feel that the "dishwasher" should wash the dishes not me. Of course they dont seem to work like that, you have to clean things before you put them in:mad:....they should really call them "dish sanitizers", sorry it annoys me. :soapbox:

Who else can clean a dish and get dirty water all over themselves and the floor and the counter
Me! Miraculously I managed to wash dishes today without soaking the front of my shirt, but that was unusual. I was really trying to stay dry as I was going out after.

I love those commercials where they show someone cleaning and they're wearing nice clothes. Come on! Cleaning the bathroom, I end up with the cleaner all over myself. Dusting - there's more dust on me than on the duster. It truly is a gift. :D

I managed to make another huge mess yesterday. I was making coffee and I overfilled the filter and it got clogged and overflowed out the top. Coffee on the counter, all over the coffee pot, all over the floor, all over everything....

Sanitationwise, I am a clean freak but as far as piles are concerned, they multiply like rabbits breeding.

I love those commercials where they show someone cleaning and they're wearing nice clothes. Come on! Cleaning the bathroom, I end up with the cleaner all over myself. Dusting - there's more dust on me than on the duster. It truly is a gift. :DI know!!!Like i'm gonna do dishes in a nice pretty white dress. I dont even own white cloths let alone clean in them. :eyebrow:
But its a mystery to me how people keep there houses clean and tidy...when do they have time to do this and the energy:confused::faint:

"Oh the coffee flood" she says fondly. That used to be a regualar occurence throughout my childhood and up until like a year ago when my mom finally got a coffee maker that doesn't require that you know what you are doing. I just have someone else make my coffee and I pay them for it. If I didn't I would be cleaning up coffee grains and filters ALL the time.

AWE MAN! Now this is a topic I can relate to. Horizontal surface...not for long, you will soon be covered with receipts that I don't know if I should keep(for those that don't know, most of the receipts you get are printed by a warm stencil, the heat makes the paper dark so there is no need for ink. those suckers eventually become so dark that they're completely unreadable), empty water bottles...but mostly paper...what the heck is it with paper. It's everywhere. My car is clean however. I think it's because I feel the pressure of keeping it clean so I'm not embarrassed when others get in my car, so the panic mechanism triggers me to keep the car clean. Dear clothing...I am sorry that after I wash you I never fold or hang you up. I just leave you in the basket and wear you wrinkly, or use the human iron(i.e. wet hands, moisten shirt, let body heat slowly iron the shirt). Or I'll leave you in the dryer for days...Dear mail, Please leave me alone. I know it's important to pay the bills. I just keep forgetting, or I remember at 2 a.m. when it's too late to call customer service. or well, you don't stop coming. I have mail stacked to the rafters at times. There are times when I have to go through more than fifty pieces of mail. I read Driven to Distraction, the mantra I remember is O.H.I.O, only handle it once. the problem is I don't remember the mantra until it's too late and I've handled the darn things like a hundred times. O.k....I like piles, I like the organized disorganization that I have. As was said before, everything does not have a place, it has an area. Some things have larger areas than others. for instance the dirty laundry's area is my entire bedroom floor. The clean clothes' area is in the hamper. My dirty clothes are never wrinkly...maybe I should keep my clean clothes on the floor and my dirty clothes in the hamper......Naw, I have a system.

i always make messes is part of my daily routine

I've found that if I stand over the trash I can throw the junk away, I'm cool. (just leave the trash can to overflow; but at least I know it's trash)

Then I pull out all the bill-y looking things, open them with an opener (that takes me a minuet to find; and it was right in front of me);

pull the stuff out, throw everything out but the part that says how much I owe (I use bill pay online)

And leave it till two or three days after it is due and then "schedule" a time to sit down and really do it.

To summarize: break it down into simple easy steps, and then don't do the last part until you wonder why the phone is dead and the lights won't work.

I've found that if I stand over the trash I can throw the junk away, I'm cool. (just leave the trash can to overflow; but at least I know it's trash)

Then I pull out all the bill-y looking things, open them with an opener (that takes me a minuet to find; and it was right in front of me);

pull the stuff out, throw everything out but the part that says how much I owe (I use bill pay online)

And leave it till two or three days after it is due and then "schedule" a time to sit down and really do it.
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Is this something that most people do? Or just ADD people... I guess I've always just assumed that its just a "people thing" not an "add thing" because I know I have more than once used the term "bill-y looking things". The problem is, I just now have a pile of the bill-y looking things NEXT to the pile of the envelopes and such that they came out of that is next to the pile of my 9 year old sons unfinished homework that i cant remember to make him do! They usually go next to the piles of half used notebooks that I put my half thought out thoughts on... ugh. This is too much for me. I think I'm losing it.