My understanding of a messy cook is someone who is so focused on the task that they move fast. They might spill a lot more than a non-messy cook. They are not worried about the spillage...they are more worried about the end result. They don't take extra time to cleanup as they go so spills sit longer. They might not take the time crack an egg into a bowl and instead crack it on the side of the pan and throw the shell into the sink (flinging egg drips everywhere). Etc.

I am often a messy cook...sometimes I'm not. Just depends on what I am cooking and why.

I think itsallabouthefood nailed it. I am a decidedly "non-messy" cook. I might make a mess on the countertop, but don't like having a messy stove area. Cooked-on messes are worse than simple spills on a countertop. I probably pay more attention to the mess I'm making than to what it is I'm preparing and, unfortunately, that shows in my cooking. I wonder if it's difficult for messy and non-messy cooks to share a space? That would drive me crazy.

My husband. :)

I love when he cooks breakfast on the weekends, however I don't like the way my kitchen looks afterwards.

I clean as I go, so after using a measuring cup, I toss it in the sink. If I use my mortar and pestle to grind something up and a few bits fall out, I sweep them into the trash.

If I crack an egg and a bit drops on the counter, I immediately wipe it up and sterilize, etc.

When I enter the kitchen after my husband has cooked, the mixing bowl, measuring cups and spoons are sitting on the counter and whatever was inside of them (vanilla, lemon juice, Worcestershire, flour, etc) has almost certainly dripped on the counter.

The worst with him though is grease. He has an antique griddle he loves to cook on. He most frequently cooks burgers, bacon, sausage and eggs on it. When he is done cooking, he scrapes the griddle surface clean then just leaves it sitting on the counter.

I almost always end up putting it up hours later and underneath and around it, the counter will have greasy oily spots from splatters.

I'm glad my counters are bullet proof!

I'm a messy cook as itsallaboutthefood described one, although my cooking is probably along the line of jellytoast's! My husband does the cleaning, and to my chagrin, he likes to clean around me as I cook -- for example, if I turn my back, the spatula with which I was stirring might have disappeared in to the dishwasher. Generally, I don't care how much of a mess I make during cooking, but we do clean up as soon as we're done with dinner - dishes and pots/pans are scraped, dishwasher is loaded, counters and cooktop are wiped clean, fish wrappers are taken out to the trash.

My mom taught me to cook when I was little. She had a cleanup-as-you-go philosophy and made me abide by it. She was pretty much a neat freak throughout the house, so no exceptions in the kitchen.

I still mostly function that way. Besides, having a small kitchen means limited space and I just get uptight when there's more clutter than working space.

I'm more like jellytoast, although I don't think my cooking suffers because I clean up as I go. When timing is critical, I let the mess go till later. I do make a point of taking care of stovetop messes, not only because they can compound themselves, but because it's pretty unsightly. I was a horrible slob in college and I vowed to never be that person again.

I think it would be difficult for me to share a space with a messy cook. Not if they spilled during prep, which is perfectly natural and human. But if they didn't clean up after themselves when the chore was done. I am OCD when it comes to clean counters. I can't abide when someone makes a mess on the counter and walks away.

I also can't really have a relationship with someone who is chronically late. But that's for a different thread. :)

Generally, I don't care how much of a mess I make during cooking, but we do clean up as soon as we're done with dinner - dishes and pots/pans are scraped, dishwasher is loaded, counters and cooktop are wiped clean, fish wrappers are taken out to the trash. - sjhockeyfan

I consider messy cooks the ones who either don't clean up as they go or when the meal is done. Cooking is inherently messy - things drip and splatter and squirt and splash - but living with the mess longer than that day is where the line gets crossed for me. Since moving to NYC with city-sized kitchens, I've become a clean-as-you go cook out of necessity; if I don't clean, there's no place for that hot pan or ready-to-be-tossed salad TO go. When I've had larger kitchens, I was happy to leave the dirty dishes piled on a side counter while I kept cooking but everything got washed or wiped down before bedtime.

I would call my dad a messy cook. He has a black smoothtop electric range that hides spills and he'll just let stuff get dry and crusty on there for days. Some coffee grounds spill on the counter when he's emptying the grinder? No biggie, it'll happen again with tomorrow's coffee, so why wipe up? Needless to say, I scrub down his kitchen when I visit.

I am a messy cook! I love to make spaghetti sauce, but I always end up with sauce on the stove top. I enjoy baking cookies, but flour is everywhere! LOL I create a ton of dishes and do NOT clean up as I go. I wait and clean up, when I'm done. If I'm tired I go to bed...the dishes will be there in the morning. I let my nieces/nephews and friends help in the kitchen and don't walk behind them with a cloth. We have FUN in the kitchen, which I'm sure you can do and be clean...but not here! :)

I would say I definitely fall to the messy cook end of the spectrum. Depending on what I cook, sometimes the kitchen looks like a tornado hit it when dinner is finished...bowls, measuring cups/spoons, wooden spoons, knives, tasting spoons, vegetable prep mess (carrot tops, cucumber peelings, etc) can be found on just about any surface in the kitchen!!! I have tried to clean as I go but I just can't focus on that when I'm chopping, slicing, mixing, stirring, sauteing, frying!!! About the only thing that I force myself to clean up right away is any surface, usually cutting board and knife, that I use to prep chicken...that gets washed/sanitized right away. Everything else can wait until after dinner. Once dinner is over, I typically take a walk and then I will attack the cleaning of the kitchen.

When my DH cooks, he is much cleaner in the process than I am but (and he would kill me for saying this) the distraction usually shows in his food...mainly because he can never get two or more items done at the same time!!! You wouldn't believe how many dinners we've eaten with veggies done first, then protein, then starch or bread. He just can't get the timing down...I think it's because he's too busy worrying about washing a knife!!

DC- I just said the same thing to my husband! In my limited experience with organized cooks, their cleaning style sometimes shows in their finished product. Baking and cooking should be fun! Not a worry about how the kitchen looks as you work.

Disclaimer...I have not been in any kitchens on this forum! LOL

So funny! My husband is the messy cook, as I described above, but he can NOT time dishes to be ready at the same time to save his life.

I can't say I'm the best cook, but I am the one everyone always asks to cook for them for holidays, birthdays, etc so I guess my cooking must be decent and I'm an organized cook.

I was the manager of a Pizza Hut when I was much younger, not exactly fine dining but if you don't keep your kitchen neat, you can't keep making food. I know some of my habits have stemmed from it. Also, I know me and if I don't clean as I go, I WON'T come back and do it later. :)

I don't consider myself a messy cook, but I do consider my kitchen one that has to stand up to a messy cook. I tend to do most cleaning as I go - but I have a house that is often filled with people besides me. My daughters are teens & tweens and we often have their friends over and they do stuff in the kitchen. They had a "cupcake war" last spring break, and I wasn't sure that my counters would recover from the food dye. But they did. The girls and their friends had a blast.

We also have a pool so we have people over pretty regularly. My family uses the kitchen as they would like (I gave up always being in the kitchen and trying to run things). Salsa gets spilled - hopefully it gets cleaned up good... but maybe not. Drinks get spilled (margaritas and red wine and other stain-ish/etch-ish things).

So, I would consider myself an average cook, but one that needs a "messy cook" kitchen. And as much as I don't care for the laminate counter tops that I have right now, they seem to be bullet proof. I worry about what I am going to put in their place.

Great question! I think I am a little bit of a messy cook. Why? Because when I pour things, things spill. Grease splatters on the stove even with a splatter screen. I am generally a coordinated person but don't feel very neat when I cook. Not crazy messy with sauce on the walls but the counters and the stove will be a little covered in stuff. Unfortunately our counters hide everything. I do try to put everything right in the dw as I use it.

The clean-as-you-go concept might have gained importance with me when I remodeled into an open concept. My cooking and dining spaces are now one big space and I don't enjoy my dinner as much when I am looking at destruction in the kitchen. I wish I could pull it off to where the majority of the mess was cleaned up by the time dinner goes on the table, but I can't.

IDK, to me, being a messy cook is kind of like being a klutz. I think Lavender is describing very much my own style. Plus, it just seems that no matter how hard I think I am trying, I spill, I splatter, I splash. And I admit I don't get to it right away and sometimes leave it to the next day.

And I actually clean as I go more than DH. He loves breaking out the cooking magazines and trying some new fancy recipes . . . but, alas, I seem to be the one that pays for it later with both my waist line and my dish pan hands. LOL!

I am not a messy cook. I leave the measuring cup out so I can use it again for a later ingredient rather than using a second one, and when I'm done with everything, I either stack it all neatly by the sink or put it straight into the dishwasher. Trash always goes straight into the can.

My husband, however, is a very messy cook, and it's largely because he just doesn't think. He will choose a small bowl, then realize mid-way through that he needed a larger one . . . So he will transfer the food to another bowl. The result is that he uses 2-3Xs the number of dishes that I do. And he just leaves everything from eggshells to empty packages lying on the counter. He is a lost cause.

To some extent, you can make a kitchen "easier to keep clean". For example, you can plan work spaces in such a way that you have trash cans in handy places, you can plan storage spaces for the perimeter areas so you're not crossing over work areas, etc. Obviously you'll still have grease splatters on the stove -- if you use it, it's going to happen.

One last thought: Mayhap some people are just more sensitive to the kitchen NOT being absolutely pristine, and they're considering themselves "messy cooks", whereas they might actually be creating the same amount of mess as the average cook . . . but might have a lower tolerance for the mess.

This post was edited by MrsPete on Mon, Aug 25, 14 at 21:26

I would consider myself to be very neat at cooking. I clean up as I go, I put away as I go, I wash pots and pans as I go. After a meal there is just the actual meal to clean-up (plates, glasses, knives, forks) and leftovers to put away. All the prep stuff has already been dealt with as I was working.

That comes from only having, for the first 26 years of married life, a 2' x 4' counter to work with and after the kitchen reno during which it was all about the counters and i have a lot of them, the habits stuck.

Baking on the other hand, I shine at being messy. I have to bake by the clean-up sink and next to the DW just so there is some semblance of neatness. I use countless spoons, dishes, cutting boards, spatulas, I spill, I drip. The sink is full of dirty dishes at the end and I don't do any clean-up until the last cookie is baked. If I'm doing a loaf I will clean while it is baking and it will probably take me an hour to do so.

I leave everything out - the flours, the sugars, the nuts, the eggs. Again I did little baking before the kitchen reno as there was so little space. Now, with all my new space, I can, and I do, leave everything out until the end.

.

Texas Gem- There you go! I worked at a restaurant (people did the dishes for the cooks) and we had to get food out at the same time. I wasn't the cook, but I helped get food out to the tables. So...messy cook, but kind of a germ phobe, too. Egg shells on counters or chicken sitting out...NEVER!

I guess that's the difference (IMHO) between messy and dirty. Trash goes out, dishes get rinsed but not always washed that night, unless they're 'icky' as nieces would say! LOL

This post was edited by lavender_lass on Mon, Aug 25, 14 at 18:12

Cooking with abandon. Dripping, splattering, slopping, scattering crumbs, goopy hands that handle nobs and pulls or dials or wiped on dishtowels without rinsing off first. Accumulating dirty items and letting them sit afterwards.

My SO sometimes cleans and organizes for a hoarder who is a very messy cook. She has been "fired" by several regular cleaning services and people who clean for a living.

It can take about 3+ solid hours to clean her 7 x 7 kichen. One lunch preparation and it's all undone. A simple peanut butter sandwich usually means peanut butter on the counter, on the fridge door and handle, on the cabinet where the dishes are kept, and sometimes the floor. My SO also cleaned and organized for someone else like this too, but refuses to do it any more--that person was supposedly worse. So maybe it is not all that uncommon.

Sort of a tangent, but I can't believe how many more dishes we make now when we make dinner vs. what I used to do a lifetime ago when I was the primary cook.

When I would cook it would be two or three simple items, simple seasonings (or not) or maybe a casserole.

Now (and I blame Food Network, for better or worse) we make stacks and stacks of dishes. DH cooked using his wok on the BS for the first time last night. He had three little bowls of things layed out by the stove (soy sauce and I don't recall what else. He stir fried squash, it went into a small/medium sized bowl. He chopped chicken, that went into one bowl before it was cooked, then one after. Other mixed veggies, another bowl. Then there was a big bowl that the squash, chicken, veggies got mixed together in. And I made rice in the rice cooker, sort of another bowl. Then we ate...two more bowls. All that for two people. Granted the only thing that would have changed if it was for more would be the serving. But I don't think my mom owned that many bowls when I was growing up. It's a whole different ball game.

I play sous chef and do most of the clean up. Except since he was the primary push for the BS, and a carbon steel wok and carbon steel knives and other things that need particular treatment, he needs to deal with them. I'm just loving putting (almost) everything else into the new DW!

Since I'm the one who posted in the other thread, I'll chime in.

"I am a messy cook! I love to make spaghetti sauce, but I always end up with sauce on the stove top. I enjoy baking cookies, but flour is everywhere! LOL I create a ton of dishes and do NOT clean up as I go. I wait and clean up, when I'm done. If I'm tired I go to bed...the dishes will be there in the morning. "

^This x 1000. I'm not dirty, but I'm messy and clumsy. If it involves flour, I'll end up wearing some. Chopped veggies? At least a few will end up on the floor. An open can of tomatoes? About a 10% chance that I'll bump it and dump some somewhere. I cook a lot of one-pot meals, so I do try to clean things up while the final cooking is happening. I'll load the dishwasher and put the ingredients away. Ideally, when we finish we have a couple of plates and the pot.

My biggest problem is that I make more work for myself. If I wasn't such a clutz, I would be neater.

I'm much like linelle and blfenton - someone who cleans up throughout the process. I was taught by my Mom, who was known for her cooking. I don't think the meals she made or desserts she baked were compromised at all because she tidied up along the way.

If I had a scullery-type kitchen that was totally closed off from the house I may not have such a need to keep things as neat. But my kitchens have never been tucked away from where we eat and I simply can't enjoy a meal if I'm looking at a messy counter/stove and a pile of dirty pots & dishes.

However, for many years I did drop my standards at Christmas time when I would embark on a 2-day baking marathon to create cookie trays for the kids' teachers' lounge, the bus drivers, elderly neighbors, etc. and all heck broke loose in my kitchen. I made 2 types of fudge as well as a variety of cookies. The kids remember it because we did take-out (a rarity) and every surface in my kitchen was covered with bowls, pans, cooling racks, ingredients and utensils - which never happened otherwise.

It was a fun tradition. The kids loved delivering the trays and folks loved receiving them. But right behind the warm feeling I have thinking about them comes the memory of how unsettling it felt to be surrounded by the mess.

So for me, I just enjoy cooking and baking more when I am working in a neater environment.

I'm like linelle, blfenton, and amck.
Clean as you go.
I try to find efficiencies wherever I can.

A tangent: My uncle lived with 1 fork, 1 knife, 1 spoon, 1 plate, 1 bowl. How liberating that would be? I often think about implementing the '1-thing' method with my kids...and they'd be responsible to for cleaning their set.

I need a double basin sink because I need soapy water for cleaning as I go in one, and a place to put dirty dishes in the other. I throw away trash immediately, put away ingredients when I'm done (so I know I already used them) and wipe counters as I complete steps. But, when I get down to the final moments of prep, much of that falls through as I focus on timing everything so it lands on the table at the same time. And because I have 5 kids involved in multiple activities, we often are eating, throwing the leftovers in the fridge and running, and not getting to dishes until later. That is the part that makes me feel most like a messy cook. Coming home and still having a messy kitchen waiting.

My kids, on the other hand, love to cook and don't clean or throw away anything as they go. I just stay out of their way and enjoy not having to cook!

So we have two kinds of messy cooking going on.

Hydragea, when I had my kitchen remodeled, I relied meals I could microwave. Cleanup was in my guest bath. I allowed myself 1 plate, saucer, bowl, glass, mug, knife, fork spoon. It made life simple and it wasn't the worst part of having no kitchen for 6 weeks.

I find most meals have stages and I like to clean up in between, at least clear my prep space and stuff in the sink. It's my small attempt to hold chaos at bay.

I'm glad I asked this question. I must admit I had a mental image of sauces being flung carelessly about, like an abstract painting. I understand that it's easy to make a mess. If one cleans up one's mess before the long-suffering martyr in the house caves and does it, I have no beef. :)

Wait, there is a long-suffering martyr around here somewhere? The only other person around here is Messy Marvin, who's worse than I am. And the dog, she takes care of the floors. :)

I consider myself a messy-ish cook, but not TOO messy. The reason I am installing a really deep sink in this renovation is because my space is totally open and I want to be able to stash dirty cooking implements in the sink and deal with them later, but not have them staring at me. My husband cleans as he goes almost to a fault, like some others have said - it shows in his cooking. I'm not a filthy slob, but I would rather have a well-timed piping hot meal and have a few dishes to deal with later.

In our house growing up, if you cooked dinner, the other sibling had to clean the kitchen. You can bet I made sure my little brother had plenty to clean when I was done. This is probably where I developed my messy chef tendencies.

I'm in the same boat as SJhockeyfan and a few others - my husband hovers in the periphery wringing his hands just WAITING to clean up around me. Things disappear! STOP CLOSING THE DAMN GARBAGE CABINET I'M NOT DONE WITH IT!!!

I'm of the opinion that I'll make the mess, and when I'm done making a mess, I'll clean! I'm terrible at multi-tasking and a stickler for hot meals on the table.

my husband hovers in the periphery wringing his hands just WAITING to clean up around me

swentastic, my DH learned from his mother - back in the day, she'd wash an ashtray while you were still smoking a cigarette :-)

I watched a friend of mine, while baking bread, clear off the counter by sweeping ALLLLLL the extra flour and gunk onto his old, hardwood, crack filled floor.

Now that's a messy cook (he cooks all the time, too! And he has mice!!!).

I'd be messy if I cooked. Although my husband did manage to spatter the window, window screen, lights and ceiling with tomato sauce within 24h of regaining functional kitchen, he's generally pretty clean.

Haha. This is a funny, revealing thread. I'm messy while cooking, but usually clean while sauces cook or roasts roast, etc. I have a deep Franke sink to hide the unfinished cleaning while we eat. Everything spotless after meal unless there is company--then, it is done when the last guest leaves.
Hydrangea: your 1 fork, etc. reminded me of our childhood vacations. I had 17 first cousins--all of us grouped within 5 years of birth. Our aunts & uncles (N=22) would rent a summer beach house and take turns watching us kids a week at a time while kids stayed almost all summer. Every child had one melamine plate, one melamine cup, one mug, one set of utensils that had our names written in name polish on the bottom. For breakfast and dinner, we were responsible to clean and store our "stuff." We had a chore rotation for dinner: 2 cousins set tables for one week, 2 washed dishes, 2 washed pots and pans, two swept floors in kitchen and dining room after dishes were done, 2 cleaned the stove and 2 mopped floors nightly. All on a rotation and all paired by age--oldest cousin with youngest cousin. It was a blast and a source of great hilarity. Of course, we also slept four or five to a double bed when we were preschoolers. We are all in our late 60's and early 70's and still joke about one another's foibles.

It depends on what I'm cooking, certain meals just make more of a mess. If I'm making chicken enchiladas, tacos, and chili rellenos, I've got stuff everywhere! Something like a meatloaf or mac and cheese, not so much. Some breakfasts can tend to get messy, because trying to get everything up and served at the same time while hot, does not allow for any as you go clean-up. Pizza is another the that can also be a mess!
...and I don't bake a lot, but when I do, I manage to get flour and dough all over the place ;)

There is one downside to being a neat cook. There are times when I serve a one-dish meal - spanakopita, coq au vin, lasagna w/ homemade sauce, etc. - and all my family sees is ONE serving dish on the table. There is no evidence of all the prep dishes, small appliances, cutting boards and utensils that I've washed, dried & put away to create the meal. I think sometimes I make the work of meal prep look a little too easy;-)

I think, in the context of the larger world outside of GW, that "messy cook" = "I cook" (vs I reheat/thaw)

I cook and bake - somewhat decently, I guess. I clean as I go - really doesn't seem to take much effort to wash dishes while waiting for something to heat, wipe the counter/floor as I go, etc. I do it that way because I don't like cleaning dishes/counters that have crusty ick on them - easier to take care of it right away. It does help that I don't have children - it's normally just my dh and me unless we have company (not very often).

As I've already mentioned, I'm a "clean" cook.

This summer, I babysat a friends 9 year old and Itaught him how to cook. Every day he wanted to help me cook. By the end of the summer, he was saying he wanted to be a "cook" when he grows up and he had the routine down.

My main prep area is next to my sink and we made banana nut bread a few weeks ago. We put the wet ingredients in the mixer and turned it on and as it was mixing, we used a wash cloth to wipe the spilled milk and pureed banana into the sink.

Then we turned off the mixer, added the dry ingredients and stirred them in.

Once we poured the batter into a loaf pan and put it in the oven, we wiped all the spilled flour off the counters and cabinets and rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

My kitchen was back to perfectly clean in 10 minutes and an hour later we were eating tasty bread.

I didn't even have to ask him to help me clean, I've ingrained in him that cooking is inherently messy but that we must keep cleaning the messes as they happen so we have a clean area to work in.

I wish my husbands mom had taught him this! ;)
Someone commented earlier that they can't imagine what it's like for a messy and a clean cook to live together, that they must go crazy.
My response to that would be that you pick your battles. I do most of the cooking, if my husband is cooking, its because he is either letting me sleep in or he is trying to be nice because I've had a long day.

After 12 years of marriage, I know it isn't likely to change and I accept that my kitchen being a mess is the trade off for getting to sleep in.

I will admit though that its much easier to accept now that I have 2 dishwashers and even the biggest mess/ stack of dishes can be done in 30 minutes. :)

Yay for new kitchen!!

Wait, does "messy" refer to the cook or the kitchen? I'm a messy cook: my kitchen is usually fairly clean, but I'm wearing much of the meal on my t-shirt by the time I'm done. The apron gets put on *after* the second or third blob of tomato sauce hits my front. I still don't understand exactly what gravitational field pulls salad dressing to my clothing.

Oh, amck, I can so relate! Work all day to create something, and by the time they sit to eat, the kitchen is clean and they have no clue...
BTW, can you share your Spanakopita recipe? I'm 1/2 Greek, and grew up on that stuff..:)

I was thinking the same thing as juliekcmo said: I think, in the context of the larger world outside of GW, that "messy cook" = "I cook" (vs I reheat/thaw)

It goes farther, however. I wasn't feeling well so went for high convenience, low fuss. I asked the butcher to butterfly the chicken for me (i.e., no chicken bits flying because someone got too happy with his cleaver). I did slice an onion but used pre-peeled baby carrots, peewee potatoes, and yellow cherry sized tomatoes. Put all the veg in a sheet pan with the chicken on top, and--look out for the mess!--dumped a bottle of madras sauce over the chicken. Nope. No spills or splashes, just have to rinse down the sink after rinsing the jar for the recycling (waste of water, not mess). Delicious dinner. Passably homecooked, though not from scratch. No mess. One knife and cutting board to be washed. Dished up out of the pan. Pan went in DW.

Some people do that kind of mess free, low prep cooking all the time.

When I make a big kettle of spaghetti sauce, it splatters. It gets on the backsplash, and the counters, and the floor. Not a lot of it. But there's some mess what with the bubbling and the stirring and the ladling and the pouring. And for sure there are little tomato drips on the soapstone (and the tile). Like they could care. People complain about cleaning grout, but I can't even get red paint to stain it. Tomato sauce is a breeze. But by the time the containers are cool enough to refrigerate and the counter is revealed, if it were marble, it would have etched freckles at the least, and they'd probably be red ones. Yes, one could put down paper, or even better, a board, to preserve the marble, but what the hay? It's a kitchen counter! It seems silly to have to cover it in order to be able to ladle out spaghetti sauce. There's enough other clean-up to do as well, without obsessively lifting each container and trying to wipe up unseen freckles well enough that they don't become permanent.

I do clean as I go, and actually wash the counter (and backsplash and floor (unless the housekeeper is coming in the morning, in which case I just wipe)) after everything's packed up, but, yes, I'm too messy a cook for marble.

"I watched a friend of mine, while baking bread, clear off the counter by sweeping ALLLLLL the extra flour and gunk onto his old, hardwood, crack filled floor."

That's not messy, that's dirty. And disgusting.

I'm a clean as you go cook, and my husband cleans as he eats so we're a good pair. Hidden downside: we both tend to gravitate to the kitchen to clean during gatherings at our house. Not a very good habit really, guests should be enjoyed not listened to while you're cleaning up their dishes. We've managed to compromise; one of us is usually cleaning now while the other one socializes. When it's just us, the kitchen stays clean. Honestly, I don't know how or if I could stand to live with some of the messiness described here, it would just make me too uncomfortable!

I am a messy cook in the sense that I am not very coordinated. Especially when I am in a rush to get food on the table. A little bit of salt will spill outside the pot. I go to stir and something will fly out of the pot. Open a can of sauce and a little bit will spill out of the container. You get the idea. My mom is like that too but my aunts are amazing to watch. You can't tell cooking is going on until you see the pots on the stove. I do clean up the counters as I go but the sweeping and vacuum doesn't come till after dinner or (gasp!) the next day!

Oh, I'm just a pig.

Didn't used to be, but my ex-DH rubbed off on me.
It's more like I'll get to it later and sometimes ... not.
I don't leave dirt or garbage around, but just Stuff.

I have learned that since my dog died a couple weeks ago, I have to deal with table and cooking scraps. Everything used to go in her bowl, but now? I find myself at a loss. Even crumbs on the floor I never worried about. Now I scoop it all into a baggie, seal it, and toss it in the garbage.

I find I'm overwhelmed with The Stuff more so than garbage. I have more cabinetry than most commercial kitchens, but nothing in it. I have to hang my kitchen cabs, so I've been reluctant to load them up.

Everywhere else? Just moving things from place to place as I work in something in another.

So there's dirty-clean and disgusting-dirty. I think most of us fall somewhere in between.

I say a messy cook is someone that has everything everywhere no organization. Doesn't clean as they go and has a sink full of dishes. Doesn't cover up the frying pan or pots that might have splashing. They also don't wipe the counters down. Leave food in the sink drain and they never put things back where they found it. Sloppy messy cook. I hate it when someone cooks and it looks like they were fighting with the food. Its drops of food on the floor water that's nasty and sometimes they leave it there. go on the kitchen near the sink full of dishes stuff all on the cabinet on the side cabinet on the other cabinet. Can't even throw away the trash after you open a can or finish cutting up something. It's all throw on the counter.