Photos of untidy home offices

Geeklogie uncovered this photo gallery of home offices in need of tidying up.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://profile.yahoo.com/5U374XQBP6C5BRWVFPITIGECBI J

Oh god. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.
- TheOven
  
  There’s a keyboard?
  - CH
    
    That was my thought, too, but then I checked out the pictures… and… urgh, I found the keyboard. Gag!!! I need to go scrub my eyes, they were seriously contaminated. Urgh, gag!!!!
http://profile.yahoo.com/5U374XQBP6C5BRWVFPITIGECBI J

Oh god. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.
esquire

Wow – I can’t tell you how much better I feel about my living conditions after seeing those.
http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan

aaaaaaaaaaghhhh
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

I honestly think we need a third “Oh god. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.”
- acerplatanoides
  
  There were two of them. Hell, there were like eleven of them.
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    More like which keyboard isn’t an abomination?
http://twitter.com/Noddy93 Noddy Ninetythree

but they listen to Bauhaus… so everything’s okay
- alissa mower clough
  
  The real Bauhaus would run, screaming!
Lurking_Grue

Oh god. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.
- http://twitter.com/Baanrit Baanrit
  
  Yeah, put that thing in the dishwasher. . . I have seen one like that before, it’s soda spills/sprays that do that.
  - acerplatanoides
    
    dishwasher? Incinerator.
http://twitter.com/sud0er Sten Turpin

Honestly, there’s no excuse for that. It’s 2012, ditch that CRT.
- xzzy
  
  The image is ancient. I remember passing it around online around ten years ago.
  
  Still have it on my webserver even.. has a last modified date of May 19, 2003.
  
  http://xzzy.org/files/jokes/nicedesk.jpg
  - Anonymous Commenter
    
    The whole imgur album is just a collection of reposts that have been passed around 4chan’s /g/ board for ages.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants

….why are so many of them in crawl spaces? Like seriously… W.T.F.!!!?
Also, “Oh god. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.”

And, and, and, and, … I’ve seen Hoarders enough times to know what that gross looking garbage can beside the desk was covered with; hint – it ain’t chocolate.
- bcsizemo
  
  Third picture down…that ain’t Powerade in those bottles (well maybe at one time it was.)
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    How do you tell the difference between Powerade and piss?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Piss tastes better?
voiceinthedistance

Just when you start to feel bad about yourself, something like this comes along. Speaking of “Oh god. That Keyboard. Holy fuck. No.” . . . I think I spotted a couple of multipurpose keyboard/ashtrays. I would think that the person with all of the cigarette butts in front of their keyboard would be easy to spot on the street: look for the forearms covered in ash stains.
el_rey_misterioso

Japanese squatters?
Samsa

Untidy is not the word. Some of these look like serial killer lairs or sets from Hoarders.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  These things always make me think of the kitchen in Withnail and I, a film visual that fills me with the same kind of horror that most people get from the Alien chest-burster or the eye-slashing in Un Chien Andalou.
  - welcomeabored
    
    **shudder**
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5EmCKbWS6c
giantasterisk

Unicorn chaser, anyone?

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/the-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-desk-178354
- hughstimson
  
  Those are almost as depressing in their way.
  - giantasterisk
    
    You must find a lot of stuff depressing.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      You don’t find the idea of people living in piles of garbage depressing?
      - Origami_Isopod
        
        Did you mean to reply to Hugo Stimson?
        
        I think there’s a happy medium between squalor and spotless austerity.
      - giantasterisk
        
        You must have skipped the link.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Weird. I was looking at the context from the back side and it lopped off the top level comment, changing the whole subthread.
- tewsday
  
  THANK YOU.
http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux

Thank god there is no smell tag in HTML 5!
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

This is where that improved version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs comes from. The one with “INTERNET” scrawled across the bottom, underneath food, air etc
blueelm

Ok. Some of these people look like squatters, impoverished people, or homeless people making the best of it. Some look like people with little furniture. Hasn’t everyone had at least one point in there life where they had a computer on a box on the floor? The one with the bed setup, home-made rack mounting, and cat actually looks like a clever down-to-basics type of person with little aesthetic sense.

And the rest look like hoarders and scenes from my worst nightmares. Oh the horror of all that rotting food and…. bottles of pee? Cigarette ash? I feel ill. How could you put your hands on there to type? How how how? I need gloves just looking at it. “Oh god. That Keyboard. Holy fuck. No.”
- http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi
  
  I agree, whilst some of these are “oh god that’s fucking disgusting how can people live in such filth” plenty of others are more like “ok, there’s a tidy room without much furniture”.
  
  The one of the bed and rack, I’m guessing that is someone with a serious back problem or other health reason. That’s plain ingenuity.
hughstimson

Guess which one is Woz’s old office.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=513504196 Matthew Holloway

I have to say, some of those show an impressive dedication to smoking. Now I’m off to clean my office, thanks BoingBoing.
http://twitter.com/burrryson Bryson B.

This was on reddit, taken from a 4chan thread.
- Nate Foote
  
  It was also on Fark a couple days back,
  4Chan < Reddit < Fark < BoingBoing.
  It's like a dirtier Human Centipede.
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    And in two years it’ll be in my mom’s email circle where it will live forever.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants
      
      And two years after that it’ll be in my elderly aunts email circle with an urban legend attached to it.
      - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
        
        Email: where the internet goes to die.
tylerdurden

In what universe does a TV and a Gamecube constitute a home office?
- Boundegar
  
  That’s more computing power than any office of the 1970′s.
  - http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
    
    I didn’t know anyone had written an office suite for Nintendo.
http://anomicofficedrone.com/ AnomicOfficeDrone

Children’s sheets with Marvel super hero names on them being hung as curtains? In that office? No way!
lasermike026

Front page pic, I think I know the guy.
EH

What, no Joe Franklin?
http://www.facebook.com/heather.cristofaro Heather Cristofaro

*cleans all the things*
- EH
  
  clean all the things?
I_of_Horus

Some look staged (no, really? yes, really!)
http://www.facebook.com/paleocinema Terry Frost

Dunno about the office, but I love the curtains.
http://twitter.com/Baanrit Baanrit

It’s like some of these people have never heard of the concept of an ashtray and/or emptying it. . .
http://twitter.com/baroncaveyeti baroncaveyeti

The monitor almost eclipsed by post-its is actually part of a series of miniatures called “Barbie Trashes Her Dream House.” It’s dang impressive. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/barbie-trashes-her-dreamh_n_1181663.html#s585788&title=The_Living_Room
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants
  
  I knew that was familiar! I loved that house! Re-ment has nothing on that lady!
Chuck

Holy crap.

I’m civilized.

(In comparison.)
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

It’s gross and all, but that repurposed hospital bed is quite inspiring once you see past the filth.
http://twitter.com/el_otro_vladi Vladi

And I tought I was messy :-/
Talk about basement dwellers….
http://twitter.com/pickledbeatnik pickledbeatnik

Ya, most of those looked like squatter pads. Still, they all make my apartment look like the Hilton.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

One of the pictures from the photo essay is from this article:
http://swamplot.com/inside-the-messiest-apartment-in-houston-ever/2008-09-23/
Ben_R_R

I’m glad my room doesn’t look like that… Yessiree no mounds of empty Canada Dry bottles here…

“Hey! Who filled the recycling bin with Canada Dry bottles?!”

Whoops, gotta go!
Mister44

I would swear #6 down is my old friends bed room. It was nightmare inducing.
ilikesoccer

My house is as bad if not worse. I am sitting next to a pile of pizza boxes taller than me. If I shake the pile, roaches run out.
- http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi
  
  Don’t shake the pile then. Problem solved!
- John Vance
  
  Insights as to how it got that way?
  - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
    
    It’s the economy, stupid!
pjcamp

Somebody really likes their Mountain Dew in other-brand bottles.

That *is* Mountain Dew, isn’t it?

Oh, and also, “Oh god. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.”
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  How do you tell the difference between Mountain Dew and piss?
  - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
    
    One of them has more bubbles.
ldobe

First reaction: *Shudders*

Then my leg bumps into the full-to-the-brim five-gallon bucket of sunflower hulls. Quitting smoking leaves the keyboard tidier, but is gonna kill me with sodium poisoning……

Garbage night tonight.
- ldobe
  
  The school bus looks pretty tidy actually. Covered in a thick layer of grime, but still tidy. At least not full of bottles or urine, liquor boxes and cigarette butts and ash.
  - freshyill
    
    Glad someone else noticed the urine. http://i.imgur.com/UGoyeh.jpg
    - ldobe
      
      That guy loves Newports, Heineken, and pissing where he sleeps, works and eats.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  Reminds me of how my grampa used to save up nut hulls to use for a rock tumbler. Old man was too cheap to just buy a jar of medium.
acerplatanoides

Not everyone’s mom has a full basement, apparently.
gwailo_joe

The anime otaku dungeon actually looks ok to me…at least it’s organized and not covered in filth. The ‘GET OUT’ and other illegible wall scrawlings add a certain noirish aspect that I can appreciate…

But some of the others…Holy Mary Mother Of God: that’s some impressive foulness right there.

Empty your goddamn ashtrays!!! And…locate a drain. Ugh.
CastanhasDoPara

Just. Wow.
Cowicide

In udder news… too much internets linked to depression….

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/05/22/depression-linked-with-more-internet-use/38998.html
https://plus.google.com/104067355242126774300/posts?hl=en Dennis Smith

I feel so sick after seeing that. My eyes need sterilising.