36 Comments on “Okay, Actually, THIS is the Worst It’s Ever Been”

1. Looks like my home office does on a good day. Now that I think about it, a lot like my office cube; except I’d love to have a couch in my cube.

   Is that just shot at a weird angle or is the couch almost up against the desk?

2. It’s up against the desk. I had to move it so the plumber could have access.

3. Cool, I got that screensaver too :-)

   And it looks a lot like my erstwhile office. I solved the problem by quitting and leaving most of the piles right there.

4. Telescope? Real or fake?

5. Doesn’t everyone keep stacks of books on every available flat surface?

   (I have serveral hundred linear feet of bookshelves, but it’s never enough.)

6. My office at work looks about like that, except I don’t have a couch or a decent monitor. And instead of piles of books, I have stacks of printed-out help desk tickets.

   I decided I was going to get it totally cleaned and organized today, which is why I’m f-ing off reading the internet instead…

   So when you can’t reach your desk, how do you goof off? Baking pies?

7. Well, I have a laptop, you know.

8. I think the best way to think of room organisation is thus: the biggest shelf in your room is the floor. So pile away!

9. I love you people. I feel I’ve come home.

10. Did you ever buy Krissy the REAL Ninja scarf?

    http://www.karatedepot.com/un-sp-11.html

    Or will she be stuck with that plastic bag again?

11. Just had to replace the CPVC piping in the house. For those who haven’t experienced that joy, all of the piping in the entire house had to be ripped out and replaced with piping that doesn’t dissolve in NOVA’s chlorinated drinking water. We had to strip stuff out of closets which hadn’t been disturbed in years, then live with holes in walls, floors and ceilings for three days.

    I feel your pain, Mr. Scalsi. Now if you can just figure out how to pack the stuff back into the closets, you’ll be ahead of me!

12. My home office looks like that when I’ve *cleaned* it. Housekeeping does not fall under the list of skills that I have put ranks in. I even go so far as to have unlikely bits of furniture shoved against random walls, as Mr. Scalzi has here.

    Still, it’s nice to know that apparently everyone who reads Scalzi finds him or herself alike in that regard. Maybe I’ll use that as my excuse for a while…

    “Well, I’d pick up, but the Hugo and Locus awards are going to be announced, and I’m showing solidarity with my fellow Scalzi fans, see.”

13. @Quarto—Not so! This reader of Scalzi is a neat freak, thankyouverymuch. So much so, that my daily ritual before sitting down at my desk to work includes light dusting and tidying up. I can’t concentrate if there’s clutter. Ah, OCD: a blessing and a curse.

14. I think there’s at least three or four piles of books like that in my living room. And a couple more in the bedroom… the bedroom walls are completely filled with bookshelves, but somehow there’s just never quite enough space for all the books.

    I’m also a knitter… if any of you have a knitter in your life you know what that means. Same idea as the books, except it’s yarn and UFO’s (un-finished objects).

15. Hmm, there’s this picture of Krissy with a bat I seem to remember. Somehow, I picture that as the Scalzi household tonight. I mean, John, it’s only a few months ago she did her super clean thing on the office. I suggest a combination of flowers, chocolate, and shiny things in expensive boxes.

16. @#10: Shirt ninja!

17. I’m sure those two cans of Coke on the top shelf were in the closet. Absolutely.

    And that bottle of vitamins? You keep those in the closet because it would be bad for them to be in light in their opaque bottle. I understand.

    Krissy’s gonna nail your hide. Steve’s right.

18. It wasn’t ALL in the closet.

19. My collection of books is not too far out of control. Only 5 bookcases, 7 boxes of paperbacks, 2 piles on the bedroom floor, and 3 drawers in a pattern cabinet. Now if I just had a clue where to find a particular book, I’d have it knocked.

20. My collection of books is far out of control. But I have all of an extensive sci-fi collection, general fiction, and a technical book collection in all the fields I work in, ranging from computer operations to aerospace engineering.

21. I love that everyone’s analyzing your office. If we all die off tomorrow from some great cosmic event, the alien archaeologists of the future are going to write whole dissertations about your coke cans (…that sounded kind of wrong).

    Happy un-messifying. Tell the plumber to watch out for the Fraggles.

22. off topic (as if your messiness was a topic!) but i came here looking for commentary on the j.k. rowling/harry potter lexicon line-drawing. is your opinion too obvious to speak?

23. Yeah, I think she’s a bit overwrought about it.

24. Actually, my first thought was, Athena has her own tub?

    But then I figured, these are comfortably affluent people, it’s not unusual for them to have more than one bathroom. And Athena’s the only kid in the house, so by default the non-master-bathroom would be hers…

    Still….

    Also, your “my closet puked” office looks like my studio on a good day.

25. I see you are making an effort in the kick the caffeene arena, but Fresca? I’d prefer water.

    My desk is always a mess, thats why my wife makes me have a small desk 6 1/4 square feet
    [(30″x30″)I just measured]
    I guess relying on the local public library for all my reading needs has anti-clutter benefits.

26. Hey, what’s on the screensaver?

    Also, it’d be nice if you had some little widget that would e-mail people further comments on a particular thread. Does WordPress make such a thing?

27. The thing that most disturbs me about this picture is the white walls. Give me a day and a decent budget and I will rock your world.

28. Had to share this one with you:
    An Engineer’s Guide to Cats:
    

29. Doesn’t look as bad as my office does. Imagine about half the space, a bigger desk with more electronics piled on it, and bookshelves running down both walls on either side. Scatter some boxes on the floor with things that haven’t ever gotten unpacked, and…

30. I called Krissy to warn her about the state the room would be in when she came home. If I hadn’t, there is a good chance I would be dead shortly after she came home. See, I think ahead about some things.

    Clever man. You might manage to just walk way with a limp. ;)

31. Now, the major q: who puts it all back?

32. I think your sofa wants to use the computer.

33. For the record, your builder (like most) should be punched in the mouf. Replacing washers or the whole cartridge (depending on your model) for tub faucets is a kind of routine thing for houses that aren’t going to be torn down 8-10 years after construction. I’m assuming that because he had to cut a whole in the wall, you also lived for about 2 hours without water to the entire house, because I’m sure that it didn’t have shut off valves for the fixture. I will never (again) live in a house that doesn’t have one of those nice little access panels to the plumbing fixtures, along with shut off valves for that fixture. It’s one of those cute ways that builders save a hundred or so bucks on construction at the downstream expense of the homeowner.

34. For various reasons, it’s become clear that the home builder in this case was something of a jackass.

    However, now the fixture has a shutoff valve. And we will soon have an access panel.

35. Ugh. Er hole. Not whole.

36. Heh.

    Just had the same thing happen to me…but I wasn’t so lucky to have access through a closet. It was rip out marble in the other bath or cut into the one piece fiberglass tub/shower. Not much of a choice. Oh well , it was time for a remodel anyway.