I’m going out on a limb with my post today. I’m about to make a confession and am hoping that you guys don’t judge me as sliding down a slippery slope, soon to appearing on Hoarders.
You know how I said we live in a good sized house? One of our bedrooms is a designated guest room, and remains empty most of the year. This guest room is located off the kitchen and opens onto a hallway that includes garage access as well as our laundry room. Because of this prime location it has become a prime candidate for our family’s dumping ground.
In other words, it’s our Puke Room.
When you open the guest room door, you can barely step into the room before you’re hit with a pile of the girls’ school bags.
And empty shoe boxes.
Oh, and what’s that peeking out from underneath Maddie’s lunch tote? Why, it’s a unicorn head! Broken off it’s stick “body.”
And that giant (and quite heavy) cardboard box? We loaned our friends our room air conditioner when their central air was out this summer. When they returned it to us, we moved it alllll the way to our guest room…instead of back upstairs to the attic.
The guest bed makes the ideal landing pad for the *eclectic* mix of pumpkin carving tools, toddler tights, Target bag, “Happy Halloween” sign and empty glasses case.
My drying rack left out after hanging dry a new wool sweater.
And glancing over to the corner on the room, on the floor, you’ll find extra copies of when Kate and Pursey made the Memphis newspaper.
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you have some sort of pile of belongings hiding out in your house? An out-of-control counter area perhaps? A closet or cabinet? Maybe even just a junk drawer that you’ll admit to?
YEA!!! I HAVE A PUKE ROOM, TOO!!!! I’m SO EXCITED!!! My room is called the laundry room, but I am officially changing the name to the Puke Room (thanks to your brilliant mind!!!) WAHOOO! I think I’ll make a sign for it! (Or, is that crossing the line?)
Oh, I’ll definitely admit to it. Our bedroom has become the dumping ground. The rest of the house is perfectly cleaned and organized, but our bedroom is ridiculous. There are stacks of CD’s, VHS tapes, photo albums, and kids artwork everywhere! I once said I would never let that happen, but guess what? It did. This Spring I hope to reclaim our bedroom!
Oh. Em. GEE. This is one of my “things” That I have to get done. Our spare room. Full of stuff just tossed in. And My momma is coming for Christmas so if I don’t clean it up, she’ll be sleeping with me. Whilst I enjoy that thought (she’s a good snuggler) my husband would kick my ass if he had to sleep in the office for 3 weeks.
Just sayin’ I feel ya!
Girl, you are so far from even being considered a candidate for the Hoarders TV show. I watched it once and that was enough for me.
You have lots of ‘Stuff’, we all do, but your stuff is clean and that’s a definite plus, so give yourself credit for that. LOL
I have a basement, and that’s where I store all of our ‘Stuff’, I used to put it in our crawl space, but then found out the crawl space is not made for massive storage, so now we use the basement.
Oh, please. You can still see the bed AND the floor. You aren’t a hoarder until you can’t even get INTO the room to take pictures. I love this post though.
I am the person who has clear out after clear out. We have a good sized house but very little storage space so I am lethal.
My whole house is a dumping ground. Coats land on the floor in the living room, laundry on the couch in the family room and toys are everywhere. Strangely enough, the guest room is the only one that’s clean.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was, to find this to be a post about clutter. You only have one of these rooms. Oh my sweet sweet girl, you have much to learn : )
Dana
Uh, no not us…Actually we had a “puke room” until I got pregnant with our second daughter and we needed the room. It took us two weeks to clean it out. Most of the stuff went to the curb since I just didn’t want to deal with it. Now if it doesn’t fit into the guest bedroom closet it gets tossed. Of course, if you opened the closet in there, you might be shocked.
Oh, yes. Yes I do.
I recently cleaned out my junk drawers and that was such a happy day. I thought about posting pictures of my beautiful, clean drawers (that totally sounds like I could be talking about underwear… anyway…).
Our guest room/office also gets treated like the ugly step sister of bedrooms. There’s currently a pile of pictures and mirrors that need to be re-hung or re-framed or returned. I hate it, but the reality is that unless you’re going to put every thing away every day, you need a catch-all space.
Sadly, my guest room looks worse than that! And…I have way too many junk drawers to boot! Time for some serious cleaning on my part.
It is always nice to know that people are just like me in some ways. I love that you shared this. I have to say that I think you are doing a very good job to only have one room like this. Our entire basement is like this, starting with the top of the stairs. It seriously looks like the main floor barfed down the stairs. At least there is a door that can be shut.
You know, it almost looked bad until the shot of the drying rack. The fact that there is space on the bed not cluttered with crap makes me lose all respect for the slob in you. There is not one spot in my house that I could post a picture of without hating myself in the morning. Take that.
Oh man, we always have different areas like this, depending on where we live. While continuous moving certainly helps us cut down the clutter, stuff, especially kids stuff, multiplies I swear. Daily! So funny, love it!
Puke room? Oh, I love that! I will have to use that term, but hubs will think I’m referring to that time that daughter puked orange soda in her bedroom and it just never came out of the carpet. But our “puke room” has to be the playroom that’s off the kitchen, separated by a door from the actual place where real people live. It’s the room that used to house a Little Tikes store, but now becomes the Wii hangout and my dumping (puking?) ground for all things that have no home.
And hubs rarely ventures in there, so I’m safe. The rest of my house? Very organized.
Oh I think everyone has a “puke” room. Right now it is our double car garage and basement. We moved in a year ago and still have boxes and stuff we dont know what to do with…hoping maybe one day I’ll have enough energy to go through it….but I dont see that for a long time, lol.
I call my entire upstairs the Dung Dump as in the Dung Beetles known as my daughters live up there. It’s a very scary place. I try not to go up there, especially in light of my recent blood pressure issues. When we built this house we should have built them a dungeon, instead.
Oh, EVERYONE has a puke room. We also use part of a guest bedroom. And we have a puke drawer in the kitchen. And there’s the designated puke part of the garage. And please don’t open the door to the coat closet or the playroom closet. Just don’t. You may just find the body of a unicorn.
Hey, you can still see the bed, it’s not that bad!
Seriously, I think everyone has one of those. With us it’s our garage. We’ve only just manage to clear enough space so we can park inside. Mind you we can only partially open the doors and have to squeeze past, bikes, boxes, recycling and the garbage can just to get in the house. I hate it.
Oh, you can still see the bed???
All good signs, dear one..
We don’t have one b/c our house is pretty tiny, but my wife’s desk just past the foyer is our Junk Desk – in the 5 years we’ve lived in our house, I think the desk has been clear maybe twice.
I have to admit… I thought this post was going to be about something else entirely
Man, I can’t wait to have a house… because now I have piles of crap all over the apartment. At least with a house I could designate an entire room to the junk.
The only time our spare bedroom is clean is when someone comes to stay in it! I’d like to say that was our dumping ground, but it’s upstairs and out of the way, so when I clean up the REAL dumping ground, I often use it to hide things if I don’t have time to really clean. The biggest disaster area? Our laundry hallway and kitchen desk. UGH. I am too embarrassed to take pics of it…
Yep, got one. A whole room. Boxes that we haven’t unpacked yet – after 3 years! A single bed and lots of spare pillows and cushions. 2 chests of drawers and a desk and a bookcase – yes, the room is crowded! But the kids think of it as the room where their toys get stashed when they misbehave. For a few weeks there it housed ALL of my son’s cars and trucks!
I used to own the most fabulous old 6 bedroom villa and I had a room like that … only about a million times worse. I don’t think I could actually have gotten in there to take photos …
Oh, so laugh-out-loud funny! The Puke Room!!! hahaha! I think that would be a good term for almost every room in my house! It’s a constant effort to keep things sorted (toys) and put away. I hope to conquer it all someday so I can live a little freer! But for now, its great to have a name for it all! hahaha!
My puke room actually rotates throughout my house. Never at the same time though, thankfully. I swear it has legs. At present, it’s in the dining room. Halloween decs, etc., waiting to be put back in the bins on the storage shelf.
I need a room like this. Instead I sort of have junk drawers, piles and closets all over the house. One of the great things about moving and packing is going through, sorting, organizing and getting rid of!!
Um.. yeah. If you have a Puke Room, then well I think i have a Puke House.
Oh you know I do. That’s why I started my decluttering challenge on my blog. My fans love it! http://stillblondeafteralltheseyears.com/2011/04/100-decluttering-challenge-giveaway-month-3-365-items-in-365-days/