I don’t know how your week’s going, but on Monday I broke an entire glass bottle of olive oil on my kitchen floor. I’m kind of hoping the thin film of grease just … goes away. JK, JK, I’m not a total bum. I’ll call in the cleaners!

I’m not a neat person. Some might even go so far as to call me “horrifying.” I barely held it together during my years of roommating and now that I live alone, I’m just unable.

Still, I like those articles about simple steps to a neater home – basically every third article published on Apartment Therapy – because they make me think there’s hope for me yet. Yet, I always think they skip a few essential steps. Well, good news, you guys. I FOUND THE MISSING STEPS. Here they are, the missing steps to a cleaner, neater, more organized living space:

Step 1: Be a fundamentally different person than you are, in every way.

Step 2: Start really really caring about something you honestly don’t care about at all right now.

Step 5: Think about how this reflects on your poor mother.

Step 8: Imagine that your grandmother or an attractive minor lord is always about to pop by for a visit.

Step 11: Rediscover your sense of horror at letting things get this bad.

Step 26: Remind yourself constantly that if you slip and fall in the shower, this is what the police are going to find when they bust down the door.

Phew, glad we tracked those down! I trust these will make all the difference for me – best of luck to you, too!