Someone is Messier Than Me

I know, I know, this article is tragic. A woman is dead. But still, it makes me feel a bit better about myself. Because this woman suffocated while searching for the phone in a home cluttered floor-to-ceiling with trash and debris. I mean, I may be messy, but you couldn't actually suffocate to death under the clothes and scattered whatnot in my room. At worst, you would maybe go a bit light-headed and woozy from the musky aroma.

Officers found the body of Marie Rose, 62, buried under clothes Thursday, reported KIRO-TV in Seattle.

Her husband reported her missing after he couldn't find her early Thursday morning.

Officers found clothing, dishes and boxes crammed from floor to ceiling in every room of the couple's house.

Do you think it took him a while to realize she may be dead, and just buried under all the crap in the house? Like, he was just going about his business, wandering around, wondering where his wife was, and then it horribly dawned on him in a moment of gruesome understanding that...Marie might be dead in this very room right now! Almost like some kind of slob horror movie.

More likely, he lived daily with the knowledge that his house was so messy, it might kill him. He came home, his old lady was nowhere to be seen, and his first thought was, "Well, it finally happened. She's fallen beneath the garbage. Better call the coroner."

"In some areas, clothes and debris were piled 6 feet high," said Police Chief Terry Davenport of the Shelton Police Department. "Officers were having to climb over the top on their hands and knees. In some areas, their heads were touching the ceiling while they were standing on top of piles of debris."

After 10 hours of searching, officers discovered the woman's body. Investigators Friday said she was smothered under the clutter.

How can your house possibly get this dirty? I mean, not even in a "how could someone let themselves go like this" kind of way. Although, that too. But in a "how, physically, could you allow the trash to pile up in your home such that it almost reached the ceiling."

Like, what if you needed to plug something in. To get to an outlet, you'd have to dig a tunnel through your living room? Were these people actually at the point where they were willing to jettison whole areas of the house in order to avoid throwing stuff away? Like, "Oh, I need the cookbook from that shelf over there...Oh, the hell with it, all those bags of old bras are blocking the way, I'll just guess at the ingredients."

I knwo about these sorts of decisions. I have been in predicaments like this myself. Like, say, if I need a CD with some old program on it that's in a box at the bottom of my closet. Now, if there's some old sheets, blankets or towels down there, not to mention clothes that fell down, or old belts, or shoes, or robes and slippers or whatever, you're talking 5-10 minutes to burrow down there to retrieve the needed item.

So, there's always a moment where I consider..."Do I just forget about playing Civilization III, or do I run a little mission deep into the bowels of my closet?" Usually, I go for it, because slob though I may be, I refuse to allow lazy sloppiness to negatively impact my daily life. Sometimes, though, it's tempting to just let it go and not face the tangled nightmare-mess that is my bedroom's lower closet.

These people must have faced these sorts of grueling decisions every day. "I'd really like to shave today, but my bathroom kit is under 30 pounds of old newspaper...Hmm..."

[Thanks to FARK for the awesomely tragic, or tragically awesome, link.]