Wish I knew your secret besides "shape up for ship out." My hub drives me nuts. If you saw my basement and garage.... I am so ashamed. Meanwhile, my house is beautiful because I am pretty organized and a little bit of a clean/neatness freak. I like everything organized and I don't like clutter at all. It actually makes me nervous. He's very handy and will save parts from various broken things in case another one breaks and he can use the piece from the other broken one; the only problem is he could NEVER find this stuff if he had to.
Just let it go, sister. Just let it go! If the basement and garage are HIS areas, you don't need to apologize for the shape they're in. Don't make it your problem, when it's his.
DH has a machine shed (we live on a farm) where he keeps all of his cr@p (and a lot of it IS cr@p.) He has his beloved brush pile and his beloved scrap metal pile behind the shed. I have my own garage where I keep my potting area and all of my tomato cages, gardening tools and everything related to gardening...which can become a lot! That works for us.
Now, as for ME, I'm the guilty one when it comes to clutteirng up the basement; but I've made great strides in that area and I MAKE myself clean it out 2x a year. Besides, our house is old and it's a creepy "Silence of the Lambs" basement, so one wants to be in and out of there quickly, LOL!
But, you can't change other people...especially husbands. You've just got to work around what you're given. :)
Don't feel alone. Mine does the same thing.
I'm like you. I like nice elegant surroundings, I even fung shei or whatever you call it. I like flow. Wifie though, well, we recently moved, and (this is the truth) she packed, in boxes, old newspapers.
My husband is a pack rat and the thing that makes it bad is that every once in a while, something will break; so he goes out and rumages through the barn for about 20 mins and comes back with just the part to fix it. Something he garbage picked 20 years ago. "I knew I was saving this for some reason." Then it reinforces his disecting out electronic equipment and saving boxes of it. Grrrr!!!!
In the meantime, I need to GET OFF FR and go get something done. *sigh*