What’s your clutter quotient?
The authors of “Put Your House on a Diet: Declutter Your Home and Reclaim Your Life,” by Ed Morrow, Sheree Bykofsky, and Rita Rosenkranz, offer this quiz.
Click on the headline so that only this post is selected. Print out the quiz, record a score for each section, add your scores, and compare your clutteriness to television icons.
Illustration by Ed Morrow
Your general housekeeping principles
__There is a place for everything, everything is in its place, and everything is dusted. (4 points)
__There is a place for most things, and most things are in their place. Most are dusted. (3 points)
__There is a place for most things but hardly anything is in its place, and many more things are in something else’s place. All places and all things are dusty. (2 points)
__There isn’t a place for anything, but you’ve never noticed because everything is hidden under an inch of dust. (1 point)
Your toothpaste habits
__You always put the cap back on the toothpaste and put the tube back in the medicine cabinet. You never squeeze from the middle. (4 points)
__You put the cap back and leave the tube on the bathroom counter. You sometimes squeeze from the middle but immediately regret it and contritely squeeze the tube back into shape. (3 points)
__You often squeeze from the middle, forget the cap, and leave the tube on your bedroom dresser. Toothpaste gets on your socks. You wear them anyway. (2 points)
__You always squeeze from the middle, lost the cap a month ago, and left the tube on the kitchen counter beside the toaster, where the toaster’s heat melted it, gluing the tube to the counter. Rather than pry it up, you now brush your teeth in the kitchen. (1 point)
Your laundry
__Your hamper is clean and nearly empty. Thanks to a sachet of dried apples and spices hanging inside it, it smells like Mom’s warm apple pie. (4 points)
__Your hamper is nearly clean and nearly full and smells of apple pie-scented disinfectant spray. (3 points)
__Your hamper is full and smells like spoiled apple pie. (2 points)
__Your hamper is full and you’ve pile more dirty laundry on top of it. The thing smells like Johnny Appleseed’s feet after a 20-mile stretch of his frontier wanderings. (1 point)
Your refrigerator
__There is plenty of room in your refrigerator, its shelves are clean, and nothing in it is spoiled. You have a fresh box of baking soda on each shelf. (4 points)
__Your refrigerator is full, and a few items need to be tossed out. You have leftovers from last night. There’s one box of backing soda. (3 points)
__Your refrigerator is full, the shelves are crusty, and there are items inside that are spoiled. You have three-day-old leftovers. The baking soda has turned green. (2 points)
__Your refrigerator is crammed full, things are cemented to the shelves by sticky goo, and there is a pool of brown glop at the bottom. Many items are soft with decay or blue-green with mold. There are leftovers from meals you can’t remember. (1 point)
Your work space
__There are no loose papers on your desk. Your pens are functioning, the pencils are sharpened, and they all are neatly collected in a china penholder. (4 points)
__There are a few papers scattered on your desk. Some of your pens are dry, and one or two pencils are dull. Your penholder is a souvenir mug. (3 points)
__There is a mix of papers, books, and junk mail on your desk. Your penholder is an old, chipped coffee mug. It contains many pens and pencils, but only one pen works and only one pencil has a point. (2 points)
__You can’t see your desktop for the papers, books, and candy wrappers piled on top of it. There are broken pens, a fistful of pointless (and, hence, pointless to possess) pencils, and a spatula in the unwashed beer mug that serves as your penholder. A torn sneaker rests on top of your computer. (1 point)
Your acquiring habits
__You buy things only when necessary, and then only after waiting a day or two to be sure you need them. (4 points)
__You buy things when they’re needed but also pick up items when they’re on sale or you have a coupon. (3 points)
__You buy things on impulse and save things because they may be useful someday. If you have a coupon, you buy two. (2 points)
__You see something shiny. You buy it. Then you buy another for a spare, in case the first shiny thing gets dull. You cram both into your home, where you have hundreds of other once-shiny things, all of which are now dull, but you promise yourself to polish them one day. You buy polish. (1 point)
Your disposal habits
__You dispose of possessions as soon as you no longer need them. You also generously dispose of other people’s possessions when you think they no longer need them. You get lots of healthful aerobic exercise running away from these people when they learn you’ve disposed of their possessions. (4 points)
__You dispose of unneeded possessions regularly, keeping your home tidy. (3 points)
__You dispose of possessions when they fall from the piles in which you’ve stacked them, and they hit you on the head. (2 points)
__You dispose of things when they’re pulled from your cold, dead fingers. (1 point)
Your results
28-24: Felix Unger
23-20: June Cleaver
19-16: Roseanne Barr
15-12: Fred Sanford
11-7: Oscar Madison
Copyright 2008, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
