The Slob BlogBecause slobs need love too!

Look,  I am all about embracing our inner slobs, but we have to admit that, well…yes, at least part of the reason that we’re disorganized is that we’re just plain lazy.  It’s okay.  Is being lazy really so bad?  I mean, suffering from laziness basically just means that you’re an American…like the rest of us.  (If you’re a non-American and you’re reading my blog, I am truly impressed…and thank you profusely…oh and sorry about being so loud, rude, and fat…we can’t help it)

Laziness is a truly underrated quality in people and being motivated is highly overrated.  Nobody likes someone who can finish what he starts.  Who the hell does he think he is?  We would much rather find ourselves in the comfort of other underachievers, who find ourselves loath to even accomplish a fraction of what we set out to do.  Worse yet are self-starters: those obnoxious up early, on-time, ahead of the game m-f-ers who seem to have no trouble at all diving into things that the rest of us would instantly recognize as being uncomfortable, and therefore totally out of the question.  Working, cleaning, cooking, and other productive activities are meant to be unpleasant, daunting, and lacking any appeal when compared to almost any other activity, including colon irrigation.

I say, get over the whole embarrassing stigma attached to the L-word and just embrace it as part of your happily disorganized identity.  It’s not going to change, and maybe it shouldn’t have to.

You are never going to be able to find your keys…ever!  So to prevent hours and hours of frantic searching, followed by binge drinking and furniture throwing, circumvent this problem by storing copies of your keys around the house.  EVERYWHERE!!!  Have copies available in the bathroom medicine cabinet, under the rug in the living room, under lamp shades, in the fridge (cuz that’s probably where you left yours anyway), between the cushions of the couch, on the window sill, and taped to the TV.  You may want to consider storing a copy in the front door keyhole too, cuz that’s the only way you can be certain to find them.

You’ll probably also want to start distributing copies to close friend and family, to not so close friends and family, and to all your neighbors within a five mile radius.  If you’re already locked out, the burglar letting himself in with a key can always be called upon to help as well.

Another useful tip is to use large flashy key chains you’ll definitely be able to spot….like a wallet full of money…or your toaster.

In yet another example of why truly organized people are out of their freakin’ minds, I submit table 20-1 from Organizing for Dummies.  The book suggests that mornings aren’t a great time for clear thinking (I agree wholeheartedly!), so one’s routine for getting out of the house in the morning should be planned just like any other project.  Um…no.  If I’m not thinking clearly, which I never am before about 10:30am, the LAST thing I want to get involved in is a project of any kind.  How does that make my life easier?  Getting out of the house is miserable enough…now it’s a “project”?  Delightful!

But the book goes on to provide this charming little mathematical equation, disguised as a to do list, so those of us hoping to turn around our disorganized ways can easily calculate how much time we’ll need to get out of the house.

Okay, I understand that putting a little thought into just about anything will make it easier to accomplish, but really, I can’t maybe ballpark this?  I need a whole chart?  And they’re not fooling me with this whole checklist concept, I know subtraction when I see it, and that’s my cue to start running.  I promise you that if math is involved, NOTHING is getting done faster.  Working with numbers is one of the most effective ways to slow my life down.  If it hadn’t been for math class, I’d probably have finished junior high school in three months.  I’m just saying.

So here’s the chart that’s supposed to simplify all our lives:

I resent the idea of this kind of chart to begin with,  not to mention the fact that they ask you to calculate coffee drinking and paper reading times, which I think just takes all the fun out of both activities.  I can also assure you that to actually make this chart work, if I was really going to bother with it, I’d have to take into account any number of impossible to predict variables that this chart blatantly ignores.  Oh, and by the way, you’re supposed to work backwards to come to the correct get-out-of-bed-time.  If these people are so efficient, why couldn’t they come up with a chart you can do forwards?

Here’s my version:

To use this chart correctly, I’d probably have to plan to go to bed during lunch the day before, a plan of which I don’t think my boss would approve.  I think I’ll stick with my current strategy of coming up with fabulously creative excuses for my lateness.  It seems to have worked for me this far.

Bills are an area in which many slobs struggle.  There is nothing particularly difficult about writing a check, licking a stamp, and sticking a bill in the mail, but there is nothing particularly interesting about it either.  Bills blend in with the rest of the pile of junk mail, and there is no question what they contain, so why open them?

All we see is an envelope that does not contain any of the mail slobs care about: a birthday card with cash, a personal letter, or items purchased from a catalogue. Companies are often coming out with commercials that claim it is exciting to open their bills, because of all the huge savings.  But slobs don’t think about savings, because we rarely notice or contemplate the amount on the checks we write.  We just know that it is money that we are not going to get to keep or spend on something interesting.  We when we think of exciting savings, we think about how much money we save by not opening our bills at all.  If utilities such as phone services and cable television really want to make opening their bills exciting, they should send us little surprises like:

• Cash
• Candy
• Movie tickets
• Romantic poetry
• The phone numbers of their cutest employees
• And space pens that write even when they’re upside down

If you handle money the same way I do, you’ll probably gonna’ want to check out these tips for how to deal with calls from bill collectors.

With the holiday season well under way,  slobs everywhere are making the ill-advised decision to host their own holiday parties.  Chances are, things won’t go so well, and only the strongest, most self-assured slobs will survive.  Just remember to smile, stay confident, and act like every disastrous mishap was exactly what you had been planning all along.  Just to reassure you that these holidays, too, shall pass, I’ll share a few personal accounts of social slobbery gone wrong.

A big part of what makes us slobs, is our disinterest in details.  We simply don’t have time for them, especially if they involve something we dislike doing…like cooking or cleaning.  Unfortunately, cooking for guests is all about paying attention to details.  It’s just that recipes are full of steps, and as slobs, we naturally find ourselves skipping steps without even noticing we’re doing it, or we may reinterpret the task to suit our own laziness and mood.

When my boyfriend and I were first dating, I wanted to impress him with a delicious pasta dinner.  Really this just involved buying premade ravioli with bottled spaghetti sauce and boiling it all in a pot.  I managed to fully cook the pasta, add the sauce, and transfer it all into a plastic Tupperware container.  Unfortunately, I set the container down on the burner I had just used to cook the pasta.

The container began to melt immediately, turning its bottom into gooey strings of plastic that were indistinguishable from the mozzarella cheese already in the dish.  My boyfriend sweetly ate every last bite, plastic and all, lying to me the whole time about how delicious it was.  I’m still surprised he didn’t die…or sue.  So let that be a lesson to you lovely slobs out there.  It pays to find a man who’s a good liar and who’s willing to risk death in exchange for sex.  Unfortunately, these days my boyfriend has discovered that it’s a lot MORE fun to ruthlessly mock me for my culinary incompetence.

Slobicity must run in my family.  My dad famously served a salad at a dinner party, and offered it to guest to toss.  As she tossed the greens, out flew the plastic pouch of salad toppings that came with the mix.  It hadn’t occurred to my dad that he’d have to unwrap or open anything.

He also made a dish that I can only assume was called “Chicken with Garlic Cloves.”  When my dad saw the word “cloves,” I guess decided that was all the information he needed.  The final disgusting dish was coated in the strong and offputting taste of cloves spice and may or may not have had any garlic in it at all.

My mom is no better.  She made a stew for my dad, when they were first married, that was supposed to include a hot chili pepper.  She mistakenly added a can of chilis instead, and my dad has had a slight lisp ever since.

As a slob, you’re a natural risk-taker, so I’m sure these stories haven’t discouraged you.  Just be prepared for the unexpected, and plan your emergency escape route just in case.

For more ways to cope with a social slob’s worst-case-scenario, check out these 7 Tricks for Fixing a Ruined Dish

Don’t decide!  Whatever you do, don’t let anybody convince you that you ever have to decide between one thing or another.  They’ll try to tell you that making a decision is simple…well it’s NOT.  Decisions are lose, lose situations and the only way to avoid losing is to avoid making the decision altogether.  Get someone else to do your dirty work.  Decisions are good ways to eliminate fun possibilities.  No matter what, something gets sacrificed.  You have to let go of one option to choose another.  I don’t know about you, but that sounds awful to me.

Worse yet, you may have choices that involve people.  Just leave the country or shoot yourself in the head, because there is absolutely no way out of that situation without pissing someone off.  And no, they won’t “understand.”  The better a friend they are, the more they will feel quite justified in being furious at you for choosing front row tickets to see your favorite band with a coworker over bleacher seats at her son’s junior softball game.  No matter how logical your decision may seem, you will be despised for it by one party or the other.  The only reasonable options are to come up with a fantastic lie, or to find a way to get someone else to make the call for you.

Be creative.  Is your friend a germaphobe?  Come down with some horribly contagious airborne illness like the swine flu, and remind her how badly you want to be there to cough all over her and her son.  I’ll bet you’ll find yourself dis-invited quickly.  Rather go to a movie with a friend than attend another friend’s birthday dinner with her parents?  Become a raging alcoholic and work quickly to develop a reputation for stripping down in public.  You’ll be surprised how well she’ll suddenly take the news of your absence.

Decisions are evil, and anyone who says otherwise is probably just trying to get you to make a decision for them.

Being Organized Allows You To Rid Yourself of Clutter

No. Most clutter is made up of things we need but can’t find a place for.  The minute you put these things in specific places, you increase the likelihood that you’ll forget where they are and never have what you need when you need it.

My boyfriend and I love Disneyland, but big crowded theme parks full of children, rides, and distracting snacks can be challenging places for forgetful slobs like us.  A couple of years ago, the two of us went to Disneyland for the day, and my boyfriend lost his cell phone.  He was so upset, it almost ruined the rest of our day.  So this year, when he told me he wanted to bring along his new and very expensive, high-end digital voice recorder I bought him for the holidays, I felt it was my duty to stop him.  He didn’t listen to me of course.  As his girlfriend, my advice is automatically rendered useless.

But how do you lose something that’s attached to your body?  Long before I could take pleasure in telling him “I told you so,” I was was the one who left something behind.  We were getting onto the California Screamin’ roller coaster in California Adventure.  While stepping into the coaster cab, with the natural grace of a linebacker, my flip flop became separated from my foot and managed to fall between the cracks in the platform, landing somewhere ten feet below the track.

Luckily, my boyfriend had insisted on recording and narrating our entire day (not annoying at all!), so we have a complete audio record of the humiliating moment when I realized I’d lost a shoe.  Not wanting to admit what had happened, knowing my boyfriend would have no choice but to ruthlessly mock me for the rest of the day, I considered not mentioning it at all.  I pictured how I would look hobbling around the rest of the day in one shoe, and I came to the unfortunate conclusion that I probably wouldn’t be able to hide it.

“Oh my god,” I said “I dropped my flip flop.”  On the recording you can hear me pathetically asking the ride attendant if there’s any way to get things back from “down there.”  The poor guy rolled his eyes and sighed, “I’ll see what I can do while you’re on the ride.”  So in the minute and a half while we were on the coaster, he was going to climb down below the ride, locate my flip flop, and bring it back?  There’s no way.  It’s gone.

Amazingly, they WERE able to get my shoe back.  I couldn’t believe it, and I thought for a moment our troubles were over for the day.  Not so fast.  We decided to check out the new Toy Story Mania ride.  We were half way through our wait when I realized my camera was no longer around my neck.  Oh god, I had taken it off and put it in the seat pocket while on California Screamin’.  Did it have to be the same ride?  They’re going to think I’m like the guy from Memento, but far less mysterious and tatooey.  Worse yet, there was no good way to cut across the line to get out.  I had to retrace my steps through every single twist and turn repeating, “excuse me, pardon me, thank you,” over and over again, while not a single person stepped out of the way.  It was horrible.

When I got back to the coaster and  asked about my camera, a female ride attendant asked me what car we had been riding in.  Yeah, like I’m going to remember that.  I was on the cell phone with my boyfriend at the time, and instantly he shouted, “The red car!”  “How the hell did you know that?” I asked in shock.  “I took note of which car we were in on the digital recorder right before you dropped your shoe.”  “Thank you geek!”  I couldn’t believe it, I was saved again.  They had my camera.

You have to understand though, that these are two talented slobs you are talking about, and you’ve heard of the rule of three right?  Hours later, my boyfriend and I were on the parking tram, ready to use our very last ounce of energy to drive ourselves home.  He started patting his pants pockets, and instantly, I knew we were in trouble.  “It’s the recorder isn’t it?” I said.

We had to beg the tram driver to give us a solo ride back to the park.  We figured my boyfriend had taken the recorder out of his pocket to get to his wallet to pay for my end-of-the-night-coffee.  Very chivalrous, but clearly stupid.  Miraculously, when we returned to the coffee stand, the merchant was able to find the device and get it back to us.  Three losses in one day!  How do you even do that?  We had made it out unscathed, but generally shamed.

I guess we could take this experience as a sign that two forgetful slobs like us should never again step outside our front door, but what would be the fun in that?  As a natural slob, I’m a risk-taker, a gambler, and I say it’s not worth having cool things if you aren’t constantly terrified of losing them.

When you are organized, you always know whether or not you can afford something.

What’s the fun in that? I don’t want to buy something I KNOW I can afford.  All the good stuff makes me sweat a little with fear that the next day one of those big, hairy, tattoo-covered repo-men will show up at my door, demanding all my property back.  That’s the thrill!