Anyone here a former disorganized slob turned tidy person?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Anyone here who has managed to pull her.his messy, disorganized self up by its bootstraps into habitual tidiness?

If so, how did you do it? I’m getting frustrated with myself and would like to try to follow your example.

I seem to have three problems. First, I am (or have been until very recently) pretty lazy, or at least undisciplined. Second, I seem to lack a sort of “sense” of neatness that most other people seem to have. Third, (which is perhaps just a result of the first two,) I “lack organizational skills.”

I’ll discuss each of these briefly.

First laziness. I have always been lazy, and this has been part of my problem in keeping organized. But I’m overcoming this one by various means. That’s really all I have to say about laziness. I think this is just something I have to (and am) overcom(e/ing) through discipline and practice. Something that has helped here is the fact that I have recently, finally, entered into the “real world” where I actually have to put forth effort to produce quality work or lose my means of supporting myself. This has helped me develop some discipline and lose some laziness, as you can probably imagine.

Another problem I seem to have, though, is this. Say a piece of paper falls to the floor in my living room. Many people seem to have a sort of sense which fires off if something like this happens: They immediately have a sense that something is wrong and needs to be corrected. And they walk across the room, pick up the paper, and place it wherever it’s supposed to be. I seem to lack this sense. If the paper falls to the floor, I either fail entirely to notice it, or I notice it with no sense of urgency at all and simply think “I’ll pick that up later when I’m doing something over there.” Then I forget about it, and of course, never pick it up.

So what happens is, though I actually don’t do much to actively make messiness around me, I allow natural day to day messiness to accumulate around me until my room looks something like a junk-heap. (I exaggerate, actually–lots of people are a lot worse than me–but this is how I feel.)

Now, going through the house at the end of each day and cleaning it up is of course an option. It takes some discipline, but I should be able to do it. (And I am doing it, though it means less time spent on important activities like reading through the SDMB!)

But it does not seem to me as though people who I know who keep a pretty tidy area have to go through a great house-cleaning (or office-cleaning) operation every day. They don’t have to clean up every day (much) because they simply don’t allow the mess to happen in the first place. That’s what I would like to happen with me as well, but I’m really not seeing with any clarity what the difference is between those people and me, save for the possibility that they have a “sense” which I lack.

That brings me to item three. Ever since gradeschool, I have recieved failing marks in “organization.” I just don’t seem to have it in me to maintain a system where there is a “place for every thing and every thing in its place.” But I suspect that another important difference between myself and the tidy people who don’t have to do a sizeable “cleanup” operation every day or so is that they are organized like this, while I am not. When I finish working on something, or when I intend to deal with something later instead of now, I will just place it on whatever the nearest surface at hand might be. On the other hand, tidy people will, I suspect, place it in some properly preassigned place, out of the way, in a shelf somewhere or something.

For whatever reason, such a way of being is not one I have yet been able to grow into.

Is organization something I can acquire at age 28? Or is it something that, if you haven’t got it by the end of childhood, you’re not going to get it? Or is it (shudder) simply genetic? Am I just screwed?

Is there some other way of being which allows one to live a tidy life but which does not involve traditional “organizational skills” like this?

Not sure what I’m looking for–recommended exercises, recommended disciplines, reading on the psychology of organization, anything else that seems relevant.

Thanks for all replies!

-FrL-

2

You can change. I’m changing, and I am SO guilty of all your numbers, especially number 2!

In fact, number 2 leads to more arguments around my house than anything else, including sex or money. I’ll drop something, or the baby will leave a mess, or the cat will puke, and I’ll just literally not see it. I mean, I’m not blind or anything, but it just doesn’t register on my radar. My husband just does not get it. I’ll walk over things, around things, I don’t step in the cat puke or anything, I just don’t notice it enough to actually clean it up. Drives him batty. I can’t blame him, frankly.

I’m trying to be more aware, and when I catch myself thinking, “Oh I’ll grab that after I…” I literally stop in my tracks and say, “No, I’ll just grab it NOW!”

Number 1 - no, I’ll get back to that later. :wink:

Number 3 - organization can be taught. Watch some of those shows on cable: Clean Sweep is one of my favorites. First of all, I don’t care who you are, you have too much stuff. You can’t organize too much stuff to fit into your space. You must throw out some stuff. I like Clean Sweep’s method: 1 pile for stuff to keep, 1 pile for stuff to toss, and 1 pile for stuff to sell (or donate). Do a quick sort of everything in your room in 20 minutes. Just pick something up, put it in a pile and move on. Don’t let yourself agonize. If you start to agonize, put it in Keep and move on.

Once you have your three piles, look at the keep pile. Get rid of half of it. Seriously. Yes, you can do it. Only keep things you A) use or B) display (like on the wall or in a curio) or C) cherish. No more “I might use this someday” or “but my fifth grade boyfriend gave me this!” If you’re a crafter, this can be really hard. The rule becomes: if you don’t have a concrete plan to use something within 12 months, out it goes. If you have specific plans for that felt or those beads, then by all means keep them, but if you’re holding onto 4 dozen AOL CD’s because they might be useful for something, someday - get rid of them!

If you haven’t worn in it the last year, get rid of it. If it doesn’t fit, get rid of it. Chances are, you won’t gain weight, lose weight or grow six inches while it’s still in style. Get rid of it!

Now that you have less stuff, start thinking about where to put it. Shelves are great, and can be as cheap as boards and cinder blocks. Get some cheap storage bins to put on the shelves. Consider a closet organizer. Again, see the aforementioned show for ideas.

NOW, for number 1 - the lazy thing. Here’s what helped me enormously: I figured out that if I keep the house clean, I do *less *work. That’s right! I’m acutally lazier now that I have a relatively clean house! I set up a work system, where each day I do one load of laundry. Do you know how quickly you can do one load of laundry? Neither did I, because I always let it pile up until I had 12 loads to do at once! I also have one room I clean each day. 15-20 minutes, tops. I spend another 10 minutes picking up baby toys after she goes to bed.

I also got one of those new automatic shower cleaners, while I love dearly. It’s such a little thing, but I really, really hate scrubbing the shower. So now, I don’t.

It’s nowhere near perfect, but I’m a ton better than I used to be, just by getting rid of a bunch of stuff (I threw out over 3 dumpsters full of crap when we moved this spring!) and doing a little bit each day.

3

I was a major slob when I was living w the parents and living alone post-college and pre-marriage, to the point that dishes would be so accumulated in the sink that maggots would appear, laundry would only be done 10-12 loads at a time, etc.

Then I married a clean freak.

Now I’m the tidiest person on my side of the family, without exception. It just wore off on me I guess. I can’t stand to see my parents house in disarray so I clean it some whenever we visit, and my sister (bless her heart, I think she lurks here, no offense kid!) keeps a house that is simply horrifying to me now.

Jesus I’m a wuss.

But a clean wuss.

4

I used to be. I got tired of feeling like a booger. Just get motivated and start thinking about how much better things will look and how you’ll feel.

5

Two things did it for me:

  1. I bought a pretty house. I felt I had to keep things nice in order to do the house justice.

  2. I got a housekeeper. (I have a bad back. She just does the mopping and such, not picking up after us.) I’m too embarassed to let the housekeeper into a filthy house, so I have to keep it neat or spend the evening before she comes in a frenzy of cleaning.

6

Yeah, getting the cleaning help was what did it for me. I don’t keep an exceptionally tidy house these days, but it’s always within twenty minutes of being tidy.

I used to do this too. Again, getting someone to come in and clean every couple weeks has made me used to having a clean house, and so I’ve gotten better.

7

First, I was a really bad slob. I’m not reformed, but I’m on the road to redemption. Second, I learned to minimize the time I need to spend on some tasks.

  1. Keep the knick-knack action to a minimum. The less you have, the less you need to dust.

  2. Do laundry whenever a load is accumulated. Then you won’t have that giant pile to overwhelm you.

  3. I try to do one room per day rather than tackle the whole house on a given day. Again, less overwhelmed, less time away from being lazy (which is a hard job).

  4. If you can afford it, get someone in to help with the big stuff once a month. I am going to take my own advice on this one one of these days.

8

I found it was best for me to just have a designated day to get all this stuff done. On Sundays, I go grocery shopping, clean my apartment, do all of the dishes and do my laundry. At first it was a bit of a pain, but now that I’m used to the routine, it’s not so bad. It’s mainly okay because not enough stuff really accumulates in a week to make the task all that daunting. I can get all that stuff done in less than 3 hours these days.

9

Place is a mess right now since I’m suffering a bad back, however - some of it has been here for a while… Sigh - I’m not even a decent slob … a sort of lightweight clean twice a week type slob, there’s an underlying cleanest to it all. Pah! I’ve been really clean line and minimalistic at times and I’d like to get back there. I hope I will once the back starts behaving itself again. I guess I alternate.

I live with my 17 year old. We call her room “The Vortex” or “The Tardis”. It’s amazing, she cleaned up once and there’s a BED in there, and ANOTHER DOOR! There’s a no food in bedrooms rule here, so that’s not an issue.

I function much more positively when the place is clean, why do I let it slide time after time?

10

Lots of good advice so far.

I underwent the slob-to-neatnik transformation when I was a kid (only 8 or 9, I think), and have stayed pretty tidy ever since (although my tolerance of messes has increased since I had kids of our own). My room was such a mess as a kid that I would actually clear a path to the door every night before going to bed, so that I wouldn’t trip over or step on anything in the dark. It wasn’t a matter of filth or rotting, half-eaten sandwiches (my mom would never have tolerated that), but simply junk piled atop clutter piled atop detritus.

I finally just got sick of living under those conditions, realized that it was my own damn fault, and cleaned up. I mercilessly threw out stuff that I didn’t need and no one else would want. Then I made it a point to keep it clean after that. A little bit of work a day is usually enough. Be proactive. I think you have to keep reminding yourself of how you were before, and realize that an ounce of prevention (of slobbishness) is worth a pound of cure.

And no, I don’t think it’s ever too late for someone to become tidy.

11

Two of my favorite websites (because I’m a reforming messy myself <g>)

Organized Home - the forums here are incredibly helpful and supportive.

and Flylady . Flylady is a little “bossy” (okay - a LOT bossy) but there was definately a time in my journey that I needed her style and approach.

Ya see, my mothers house is still a sty. I didn’t learn how to keep a clean and organized home from her - I had to teach myself and the above sites were a big part of my learning curve.

I wish you success, peace, and an occasionally immaculate kitchen :smiley: