Tamales really aren't that hard...just a little messy.
Pork, Beef or chicken are super easy because you just have to put the meat in a dutch oven pot, lightly season and bake in the oven. Take out, remove meat from pot, add some red, or green enchilada sauce to the pot (if you want a really rich, but maybe a little unhealthy sauce,) just leave the fat in the pot when you add the sauce. Cook the tamale sauce over a medium flame to meld the flavors together, while scraping the brown bits off the bottom. Shred the meat and add to the sauce and you're done with the filling. After you use all of the meat up, use the leftover sauce to pour over the finished tamales when serving. That's it, super easy and all in one pot!
Oh...we always put a pitted, black olive in the center of each tamale when we make them.
For the husks, I clean out my kitchen sink and fill it full of warm water to soak the husks. It keeps the mess mostly in one place. The masa dough is made in a big kitchen-aid mixer bowl and reused without washing for subsequent batches of dough, again to cut down on excess mess. I use a sheet pan to lay out and assemble the tamales and keep a few, clean rags within reach.
You can use a lot of things as steamer baskets in your pot of boiling water. I'm short on space in my kitchen, so I love my fold-up vegetable steamer for small batches. For larger batches, I've used big pots with colanders, crumpled up tin foil and/or pasta baskets to keep the freshly made tamales above the water level. We just fold ours at one end, so they are stacked open end up when placed in the steamer. You can get a lot of tamales in a pot that way.
Lemme know if you need any more tips.
Good luck in your tamale making ventures!
~ C