Clean House - Messiest Home 3

Tomorrow is the reveal of the Third Annual Messiest Home in the Country episode, and - keep your comments about how I apparently have no life to yourself - I can't wait! I look forward to this all year. I mean, I don't have some sort of a weirdo Clean House Advent Calendar or anything, but once they start hyping it on the Style network, I'm right there with them.

This year, they've done a "Search for the Messiest Home" series. Niecy Nash and her capable crew have ventured all over the United States, searching for the family with the most catastrophic crib, and cleaning up the crap of six candidates along the way.

While Las Vegas was one of the featured towns, it sounds as though the Clean House crew hit the jackpot in Cincinnati, Ohio. Yes, the biggest hogs in the USA live right here in my home town. Now Cincinnati has something else to be proud of!

I have to admit, while I do watch the show for inspiration and organizing and cleaning and designing ideas, there is a bit of a freak factor involved in watching Clean House. I mean, what the hell is wrong with these people? I can see having a junk room or a junk drawer or if you have little ones, that the kids can sometimes create a toy-explosion-cheerios-disaster-crayon-nightmare in any given room. Because, you know...that's what kids do.

But at some point, wouldn't you get tired of looking at the piles of junk? I was showing a colleague a bit of footage from last year's Messiest Mess and Trish Suhr was talking, facing the camera, when a mouse scampered across a tower of trash stacked behind her. PEOPLE! If you are sharing your home with rodents, it's time to do something. I'm not talking about a pile of wayward shoes, or some bills that are sitting next to the sofa - temporarily forgivable. I'm saying, these people had coffee grounds, food, pizza boxes, computer equipment and a "petrified turd forest" in their kitchen. (The cat's litter box had been in the pantry. And the cat had died, but the litter box and contents remained. And I'm seriously convinced that the cat's body was probably found once the Clean House folks dug in.) Yes, it was that bad. Check it out for yourself if you simply can't wrap your brain around this image.

Anyway, if you want to be appalled, tune in tomorrow night for Clean House. Seriously. If you're like me, you'll find yourself Windexing the TV screen on the commercial breaks, but that's okay...trust me. The alternative is far worse!