See, I grew up in a family of slobs, so I never got into the habit of keeping things clean, and really didn’t learn how to make a routine of it. About 3 years ago I went away to school and lived in a dorm where we had to clean it every day. EVERY day. We couldn’t leave for breakfast/class in the mornings if we didn’t clean.
I was there for a year and came back home to… ugh. The mess at home drove me nuts, and it seemed I was the only one to see it! But, after awhile I got tired of being the only one that cleaned, and I resented having to clean up after two adults that should’ve known better, so I gave up.
Now I live alone and it’s just a case of old habits dying hard, but at the same time the clutter and mess drive me nuts. I can’t stand it anymore, but I don’t know where to start.
It doesn’t help that with my schedule, I have maybe 2 hours a day of free time, and I really don’t want to spend that time cleaning daily. I get home, I’m tired, I just want to relax. I know if I keep things clean, it doesn’t take long to keep it up, it’s just so hard to get to that point and make it a habit. Plus, I have a small apartment with a tiny kitchen, so even the slightest clutter shows and makes the place unlivable.
I’ve started throwing important receipts and pay stubs in a little chest. Our bills are electronic, as well, so there’s no urgency about keeping the forms organized.
My fridge is clean. I hate doing that, but it’ll stay clean for at least a month.
Wiping the sink down every day? What a good idea! If only I can force myself to do it. I hate cleaning the bathroom.
I’m in. when I had fewer kids, I was actually pretty decent at the housecleaning thing. I wasn’t dusting baseboards, but I wasn’t embarrassed if someone showed up unexpectedly either.
My goal for the next little while is to keep up on the basic pick up (LR, K, FR) and do one deep declutter a day. It would also help if I could get my family to stop using the entertainment center as a dumping ground.
I’m intrigued… tell me more about this thing you call “cleaning.” You say it will make my life less stressed and I will not be embarrassed to have people come in my house??? WOW!!!
I also grew up with slob parents and never really learned to keep anything clean… Mr. Mag, sadly, is the same way.
Which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that in order to do so, I must clean all the crap off the floors in the back bedroom (aka “random stuff dumping area du jour”).
I kicked the clutter habit years ago and that was a giant step, and I’m proud to say I stuck with it.
I did the FlyLady thing for awhile and liked the concept except the emails were useless because I’m just not online enough to take care of them as they come in, and then she got pissy with me when I questioned her authority on the shoe commandment so we parted ways.
Still, it worked in that I keep my sink cleaned out at the end of the day (I don’t always shine it, but just having it empty is a victory if you ask me). My one big shortcoming is putting the laundry away. I don’t know why but I avoid it like the plague. My husband does the bulk of the washing but he only puts his things away when it’s done. My clothes will then linger in the basket for days. I should probably get the bathrooms done more than I do as well.
Anyway, would be nice to get my support here instead of crawling back to FlyLady and begging her Laced-up-put-on-first-thing-in-the-morning-shoes for forgiveness.
A tip I learned awhile back: commercial cleaning. No, not MerryMaids or anything. It’s that when you’re relaxing watching tv, everytime the commercials come on, get up and do some small cleaning (ie - coffee cups in the dishwasher, wipe out a sink, dust the tv stand, etc.)
Good idea for those of us who hate putting away clean laundry. Commercial comes on? Fold clothes until your program comes on again. Commercial comes on? Put away the pants. Next break is the underwear, etc.
Also, keep cleaning supplies where they will be used. I love those sanitizing wipe thingies and keep a big container on my kitchen counter and another next to the bathroom vanity. (Why, yes, I DO have just a one bedroom. And it’s mere feet from one room to the other, but remember, I’m laaaaaazy. If it’s right there, I’ll use it.) Seperate bottles of Windex for the kitchen/bath, seperate rolls of paper towels, seperate sponges. Toilet cleaner sits next to the brush on the floor next to the toilet, etc.
I have several microfiber-like dustcloths. No need for seperate cans of Pledge and paper towels. Use one, then throw it in the wash.
I also like to get in the habit that everytime I’m going to another room something goes with me to put away where I’m going. I’m so guilty of just dropping stuff on the floor when I’m finished with it, so if I’m heading to the kitchen, my coffee cup goes with.
Well, my kitchen looks good and the clutter counter is cleaned off! I had this big pile of Christmas card stuff on top of my housekeeping binder, and so I cleaned that up and looked through my old chore lists. I need to redo them and then post them on the fridge where I will see them–just a list of jobs for the days of the week and FlyLady’s monthly zone chart, which I like. I’ll shrink 'em and laminate them with my brand-new laminator, heh heh. Of course, that means I need to clean off the fridge, with its many kid drawings and old random stuff.
Roller-skating was fun. It was a good workout for me as well as a blast for the kids. It was Homeschool Skate Day, so it was just like a school skating party, only with kids ages 0-16 and from every lifestyle. There were evangelicals and hard-core hippies and evangelical hippie earth mamas, and everything else. Now we are off to karate.
Off to a great start, here! There’s a ton to do, so I’m taking it slow. I don’t want to look at it all and get overwhelmed.
So far I’m doing a small project at a time: Get rid of the obvious garbage in the kitchen and living room, take all of the garbage outside to the dumpster, put away and organize the books and CDs. Next I’m going to put a load of dishes in the dishwasher (it’s a crappy old thing. After I get the dishes under control, I’m going to start hand-washing) and get my dirty clothes together for laundry tomorrow.
In between each project I hang out for a couple of minutes, watching tv or poking around online.
I think that’s been one of my problems in the past. I let things pile up and then look at it all as one big project to work on without taking breaks 'til it’s done. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and give up that way, but so far this isn’t too bad. I just have to remember that it’s okay if I don’t get this all done tonight, that it’s okay if I take it a little at a time until my cramped little space looks good.
My cats will probably appreciate living in a clean home. Poor little guys. At least they don’t try to jump on the counters! :o
I’ll try… My big problem is packrat-ism. I have piles (relatively neat) of clean clothes all over my bedroom. Why? Because my dresser and closet are already crammed full.
A few years ago I bought a nice filing cabinet, and conquered all my paper clutter…but now that cabinet is stuffed to the gills, so I have (wait, let me count) FIVE ‘in baskets’ full of stuff to file, stacked one on top of the other. A paper avalanche is a constant threat.
So. For now, I won’t worry about cleaning beyond the day to day maintenance stuff, I’ll put the extra effort in on Getting Rid of Stuff.
My goal for tonightL I will empty the botton left drawer of my dresser completely. I will reline it with new paper, and put back only things I will actually wear. Everything else that belongs to that drawer’s category will be put into one of two bags (trash and Salvation Army).
AND those bags will be sealed shut and taken out to the garage before I go to bed!
I’m in too (though with the caveat that right now I’m sick and thus even less motivated than usual).
I go to school and work (full time now, part time by the end of the month). I live by myself in a studio apartment. I was raised by clutterbugs and had that tendency reinforced by a period when I was very poor and mostly living in other people’s spaces (why unpack when you’ll just leave again? don’t get rid of that, you may need it, and you can’t afford another one!).
I’ve been in this apartment two years and while it’s better than my last place, it’s still Not OK. I really feel like I’ll never be able to think clearly until it’s mostly organized.
The worst part is that my SO refuses to spend the night here. Partly it’s the parking, but partly it’s because it’s cluttery and he can’t stand it. (Someone in the other thread mentioned her husband who can get rid of something hours after he gets it. That’s my SO.)
My tenative plan right now is to divide the chores into daily, weekly and monthly, not expecting too much of myself on days when I have school and work. As I think of something else I can figure out where it goes, and I can also adjust for school schedules.
Well, I got rid of the recycling. That involved hunting down all of the water bottles (mostly me) and soda bottles (largely my husband) floating around the house. It’s a start, I suppose.
As I read this, and all the good suggestions, and people taking the initiative, it’s almost a little overwhelming to me, and I’m pretty damn good at keeping house. I am familiar with Flylady as well, although she annoys the hell out of me, and is way too structured, there are some ideas I think you’d need to incorporate into the SDMB version to make this work. Like one little step at a time. Someone, or a select few, need to try to focus all this good energy into a reasonable agenda that the rest of us can use, with achievable goals. Like the first week, make your bed every morning, and throw away 20 things, something simple, yet satisfying? Maybe something small? Because I am reading lots of posts from overwhelmed 'Dopers. And as great as all these suggestions are, it’s really hard to focus.
So, who’s going to be in charge?
(Maybe I am completely misreading this situation, and overstepping the bounds of the board, if so, we’ll just keep this between you and me, eh?)
My goal was to do something. I did that, by taking out the recycling, and starting laundry. Tomorrow, I will do something more. Hopefully my husband will chip in.
I get overwhelmed really, really easily. That’s why I’m in this thread. I am feeling a little like a slacker, as I read the other posts, but I’m going to ignore that, and do what I can do. That’s all.
According to my mum: twenty minutes a day is all you need.
Don’t worry about lists, planning, having certain days for laundry or whatever. Just do something, anything, for twenty minutes. Even just picking up crap.
It works. But you’ve got to do it every day. If you start aiming for more than twenty minutes, you’ll start finding excuses to miss days.
Your house won’t feature on the cover of Home Beautiful, but it’ll be clean and non-embarrassing.
Oh, here’s something I actually am good with. I have a list of what paper-type things can be gotten rid of when - pay stubs and bank statements should be saved until the end of the year, but most other things (bills, etc.) can be tossed at the end of the month. Of course, I’m paranoid so I don’t throw things out every month. So I got two accordion files - one with a tab for each month and one with lettered tabs. The month by month stuff (bills, pay stubs, bank statements) gets filed under the appropriate month. After I get my W2 the next year it all gets shredded. In the larger accordion file I put the permanent stuff - cat adoption papers would go under C for “cat” or A for “adoption” (I make a note of what’s where on the tabs). It’s not a perfect system but it’s simple and doesn’t take up much space.
I used to be on the Flylady list, but I work outside the home, so the e-reminders were kind of worthless. I did get some good concepts, though: even a little housework is better than none, do things in small chunks, and if you don’t use or LOOOOOVE something, toss it!
I used to be okay, but I got completely burned out and depressed at my old job, and housework went down the tubes. I left that job in the spring and started a new one this summer, but my lazy habits haven’t left yet! We’re expecting a baby this August, though, so it’s time to get serious about organization and de-cluttering. We hafta make room for another person in this condo!
Paper is my biggest bugaboo – it just keeps coming in! That, and putting clothes away. We’re pretty good about dishes, but not about the rest of the miscellaneous kitchen clutter. We’re not dirty, really, just messy and disorganized. And we have the bad habit of turning the TV on as soon as we get home and not turning it off until bedtime.
So, tonight’s goal is for us both to spend a half hour (TV OFF!) doing some sort of cleaning. I don’t want to set the goal too high, because we’re trying to get out of the habit of doing a major cleaning because people are coming over – we’re trying to train ourselves! And, I’ve got that first-trimester fatigue, so I’ll probably fall asleep.
See, I’m good at following reminders that my computer pops up at me. I set reminders for all my business/medical stuff, and even when a TV show is starting after a hiatus, and if the computer tells me to do it, then I’ll do it. So if I can make lists, and then just have it pop up the list of things for each day, I’ll only have to spend that 20 minutes on the regular cleaning (with a bit extra periodically for things like scrubbing floors and cleaning out the fridge). But if I just plan to do something, anything, for 20 minutes, I’ll spend 15 minutes deciding what I should do and the five minutes actually spent on doing it will be counteracted by 30 scattered minutes of cluttering throughout the day.
So this week my goal is to start small: Pick a few daily tasks to start doing immediately (making the bed, cleaning the sinks), and then spend the rest of my time figuring out what things matter enough to me to do them regularly and how often I want to do them. Then my daughter will crack the whip on me to make us de-clutter the house over the next couple of weeks, and by the time the de-cluttering is done I’ll have a nice system set up that I can follow.
Of course, I’m also the first one to admit that I’m much better at the planning than the execution part of projects…
