Overwhelmed with Disorganized Living

[Stendhal_Syndrome]

Start with one room at a time. Get your kids involved and find ways in which you can make clean up fun for them. Give them a garbage bag and tell them to put toys and other things in there that they don’t like much so you can get rid of them. Talk to them about what it means to give away things to other families who don’t have very much. Yes, they are preschoolers, but no harm in planting seeds at an early age. At the end of each month, load up your car and make a Goodwill or Salvation Army drop off.

Like others have said, it does take time and it can be painful and frustrating. Make small reasonable goals for yourself. Even emptying one garbage bag a day or even a week is still progress.

When we moved to a bigger home recently, we put all our belongings in the garage and moved them into the house slowly. It’s been a few months now and we still have some things in the garage that never made it into our living space inside the house. Those are items we decided that that we really don’t need and we will be giving them away.

Good luck!

[salinqmind]

I’ve found doing one wall at a time helps. I’m looking at one wall in my dining room, there is a bookshelf, a china cabinet packed with arts and crafts supplies, stuff on top of that cabinet, a box on the floor, and tubes of wrapping paper standing up in the corner. I could get rid of some books. Get rid of the dried up bottles of paints, bits of jewelry and beads, the half-finished needlepoint (my eyes are getting so bad! I’ll never finish those projects!) Get rid of the stuff in the box (towels, mending) and the box. Put the wrapping paper downstairs where it belongs with all the other wrapping paper. Clean off the top of the china cabinet (coins, an incense burner, two wicker baskets holding bits and pieces, a sewing kit, old file folders that are “still good”. … If you do this on a regular basis, you’ll cut down on clutter. With kids and their toys - oy! Lived through that for years! All I can suggest is stuffing things in containers or closets, weeding out now and then, and when they’re grown and ready to leave the nest, have them pick out the keepers and bag up the rest. (Under the bed in my daughter’s room, after she moved out, I found 20, yes, 20, My Little Ponies she had collected when young, stuffed in an old ripped bookbag. I picked out one good specimen and tossed out the rest.) … On one of Oprah’s shows, she went to different countries to show Americans how other people lived. They went to an apartment in Denmark, it was ALL WHITE, a family with two kids. There was NO clutter. No stacks of magazines or newspapers, coffee mug trees, jars of cooking implements on the kitchen counter. The young boy had a white room with a (nicely made) bed and stuff, and a set of Legos, and that was it. My mother was watching, and she gasped. “Where’s all their STUFF?” Unless they put all their junk away in the basement or in the closets, I guess Americans make up for it and have their share of stuff!

[salinqmind]

Another problem is the actual disposal of things. Old TVs, bed frames, clothes, dishes, bits of wood, tools, framed posters from college, food in bottles and jars from 1989 in the cupboard, old coffee cans, cartoon glasses collected from McDonalds over the years, lamps with frayed cords … it’s easy enough to say “throw it out” but - where? We are limited to one closed trash container per week, picked up at the curb, they don’t take rugs, wood, metal, broken furniture, ten years of old photography magazines, a set of china. We moved everything into the garage, and things that were still “good” I loaded into my car and made several trips to the Rescue Mission. (They might come to the house to get stuff, as we arranged after my mother in law died and we were cleaning out her closets.) All the rest, we called a guy who, for $150, brought a truck, and we loaded everything else on it and he took it away.

[norinew]

@Stendhal Syndrome

Even emptying one garbage bag a day or even a week is still progress.

This is very true, but something else that needs to go hand in hand with this: be careful what you bring into the home. It’s no help if you’re getting rid of one garbage bag of stuff a day, but bringing in a garbage bag and a half’s worth!

I’m not saying you live like this, not at all! But when we lived in MD, I had an acquaintance whose house was in absolute squalor. She always was moaning that she couldn’t find anything, couldn’t keep up with everything, etc. BUT at least three times a week, she was in thrift stores/Goodwill/Salvation Army, etc. bringing in bags and bags of crap!

When you are tempted to buy something ask yourself: do I need this? Will I use this? If I do buy it, where will I put it? And try to answer these questions as honestly as you can.

I like wine, and about four months ago, there was a great deal on a wine refrigerator at a local discount store. I wanted it, and we could easily afford it, and I could see myself using it. But I couldn’t figure out where in my kitchen it would go. . .so ultimately I didn’t buy it.

[MN_Maenad]

@norinew

When you are tempted to buy something ask yourself: do I need this? Will I use this? If I do buy it, where will I put it? And try to answer these questions as honestly as you can.

Also, at least in the U.S., there’s WAY more “good stuff” than you’d ever be able to fit in your house, even if you lived in the Taj Mahal. You will ALWAYS be finding things that are really cool and you just “have to have”. At some point we all need to really accept this, and stop buying more when we don’t even use all that we have.

I’ll let you know when I have that perfected.

[Spice_Weasel]

@alice_in_wonderland

Ahh - that makes more sense. I went back and clicked through a bunch more days and eventually you get to a 5 minute declutter and a 15 minute power tidy/clean.

There’s good stuff in there, it just takes some sifting. She is bizarrely militant about people doing things just as she has directed - once told one of her readers that she obviously wasn’t committed because she wouldn’t wear shoes in the house!

The real value of the site, for me, was learning you really can get it under control 5 minutes at a time. She totally takes the pressure off this idea of cleaning marathons- and I’m really not made for cleaning marathons, I get emotionally overwhelmed by too much junk. At the time I started her site, the apartment was a disaster and there was a mountain of paperwork on my desk. I started committing to filing 5 papers a day. Then I started implementing this rule of putting away one thing before I left a room. My husband and I agreed to spend one hour each weekend cleaning whatever suited us - and in doing so we ended up getting half of our stored stuff out to Goodwill. It took a few months but it made such a difference, and now the daily upkeep is easier.

So yeah, take her with a grain of salt, but I think she could be helpful for a lot of people, like myself, who just don’t know where to start.

[vivalostwages]

@salinqmind

Another problem is the actual disposal of things. Old TVs, bed frames, clothes, dishes, bits of wood, tools, framed posters from college, food in bottles and jars from 1989 in the cupboard, old coffee cans, cartoon glasses collected from McDonalds over the years, lamps with frayed cords … it’s easy enough to say “throw it out” but - where? We are limited to one closed trash container per week, picked up at the curb, they don’t take rugs, wood, metal, broken furniture, ten years of old photography magazines, a set of china. We moved everything into the garage, and things that were still “good” I loaded into my car and made several trips to the Rescue Mission. (They might come to the house to get stuff, as we arranged after my mother in law died and we were cleaning out her closets.) All the rest, we called a guy who, for $150, brought a truck, and we loaded everything else on it and he took it away.

Just a few times, I’ve had to resort to asking neighbors if I could put my overflow into their barrels for pickup. They didn’t mind. I do understand, though, that bulky items and lots of items of any kind can be a pain.

[ZipperJJ]

@norinew

When you are tempted to buy something ask yourself: do I need this? Will I use this? If I do buy it, where will I put it? And try to answer these questions as honestly as you can.

I think this is really important, and I’d go a step further to say that a person that is “really getting serious” about home organization right now needs to avoid shopping altogether for a while. And by “avoid shopping” I mean not going to the store to browse, not going to garage sales even if they are in your neighborhood, unsubscribing from retail store email flyers and tossing paper flyers & catalogs in the recycle bin before they come in the house. When you go grocery shopping make a list and stick to it, and if you need to go to a different store for, say, organizational products (plastic bins, etc) find it online and either make a beeline to the item in the store or do a “store pickup” type thing if available.

IMHO if you have more stuff than you know what to do with, it’s not just because you’re a poor organizer. It’s also because you bring too much stuff into the house. I’m not a person who has too much stuff or is disorganized, but I DID follow the above rules for myself when I was trying very hard to pinch pennies. I realized the only way I could keep from buying stuff I didn’t need or couldn’t afford was to keep myself from being in a situation where I could buy stuff at all. It’s just amazing what you decide to buy if you accompany a friend to Target “just to look around” or visit your neighbor’s garage sale “for the walk.”

It’s also amazing and a little crazy how easy it is to justify a purchase to yourself. My aunt is a shop-a-holic (and broke) (and her house is a wreck) but any time she ever buys anything it was a deal she couldn’t pass up. Her mind can not justify not buying something that was on sale. She might be worse than most, but I think it’s hard for anyone to pass up a good deal.

If you just avoid it altogether and avoid having to fight the “should I buy this?” battle with yourself, you can concentrate on paring down all the stuff you DO have.

Oh and one other thing…don’t fret about whether or not to sell your stuff, because it’s not worth anything. Donate or trash.

[Desert_Nomad]

I make it a point that all my belongings (excluding furniture) will fit in a storage space 10’w x 5’d x 6’h. More than that, get rid of it… you don’t need much stuff to live well.

[norinew]

@olivesmarch4th

So yeah, take her with a grain of salt, but I think she could be helpful for a lot of people, like myself, who just don’t know where to start.

I think the ‘not knowing where to start’ issue is where the shiny sink comes in. It’s not so much that it’s important for your sink to be clean, it’s a matter of the fact that certain people (like me!) will agonize for days, weeks, or months over the ‘perfect’ starting point, so they can do everything just right! With Flylady, you don’t have to do that, because she tells you where to begin!

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Dangerosa

A long time ago I realized two things - I am not a filer…most information I need to go back to is accessible online.

I keep a yearly bin (I keep my tax stuff separate). It goes into the bin. At the end of the year a lid goes on the bin. After five years in my basement, the contents of the bin get shredded.

Understand which activities are required for value. When its a low value return, find a low time way to deal with it.

Toys - similar. Toys would go into laundry baskets. As baskets overflow (as they do), another basket was added. When you pick up toys, you figure out which toys are coming out of the baskets. Once in a while, move the toys that never come out of a basket all into one basket, and the other basket is toys that get used. Move other basket to unused part of home and pass it along.

(Where do toys come from with kids? We almost never bought any, and yet we had so many toys!).

When I’m cleaning or organizing sometimes I run into a pile that I just can’t tackle right now - I dump it all in a box, and at some time in the future, I’ll sit down and sort it while I watch tv. A box of crap is still tidier than little piles of crap everywhere - I’m not aiming for perfection, just better.

@MN_Maenad

Also, at least in the U.S., there’s WAY more “good stuff” than you’d ever be able to fit in your house, even if you lived in the Taj Mahal. You will ALWAYS be finding things that are really cool and you just “have to have”. At some point we all need to really accept this, and stop buying more when we don’t even use all that we have.

I’ll let you know when I have that perfected.

What I do is pick up the cool thing I want, carry it around with me and enjoy it for a while in the store while I look at other stuff, then I put it back and go home. Sometimes it makes it through this process, but it really takes the “impulse” out of “impulse buying.”

[rocking_chair]

another way to shop less is to figure how much it costs in work hours.

if you make 10 dollars an hour, and the new shiney wonderful thing is 30 dollars. is it worth 3 work hours? it is surprizing how many times it isn’t worth the hours.

start slow. set your self 15 minutes a day, and just clear a table top in that time. it will become about as addictive as this place in no time at all.

also you will find there are many things in a room that belongs in another room. put those things in a bin/bag/box and into that room after the 15 minutes are up. if you do it during the 15 minutes you will get distracted. the next day use the 15 to put the things away and clear a bit from that room.

rinse, lather, repeat!

[Cat_Whisperer]

@rocking_chair

another way to shop less is to figure how much it costs in work hours.

if you make 10 dollars an hour, and the new shiney wonderful thing is 30 dollars. is it worth 3 work hours? it is surprizing how many times it isn’t worth the hours.<snip>

I do that, too - it really does put things in perspective.

[norinew]

@rocking chair

another way to shop less is to figure how much it costs in work hours.

if you make 10 dollars an hour, and the new shiney wonderful thing is 30 dollars. is it worth 3 work hours? it is surprizing how many times it isn’t worth the hours.

You can also think of current belonging as well as potential new purchases in terms of ‘real estate dollars’; let’s say (just to keep the math really simple) that you have a 1,000SF dwelling, and your mortgage/rent/whatever is $1,000.00/mo. That means you’re paying $1.00 per month for square foot of space. Let’s further say that the object you wish to buy (or are not sure you should get rid of) takes up 6SF of space. That means you will be ‘paying’ $6.00/mo for the living space that thing takes up. Is it worth $72.00/yr to you to keep/have that item?

[xoferew]

I tend to be overwhelmed with clutter and there are some really good suggestions in this thread. My problem though is not impulse shopping or buying huge amounts of stuff. It’s just that it’s hard to throw out the stuff I do have. Relatives wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas so I said a subscription to Newsweek. I don’t actually find time to read most of them, but I feel too guilty to throw them away – maybe next weekend I’ll skim through them, and THEN I can get rid of them… but they keep piling up. There are times that I’ll go through closets or bookshelves and donate stuff or give it to friends who I know would like it and years later I still feel kind of bad that I don’t have some of that stuff. I hate to be the kind of person who feels defined by her possessions, but it makes me so sad when my quirky shoes or that distinctive hat I wore for three winters needs to go. I tend to have boxes of stuff that stay in boxes forever.

[jabiru]

@norinew

Step 5 probably has something to do with the fact that the site is hosted by Big Tent now, so you probably have to sign up for that in order to get the daily emails, etc.

As for laundry, yes! If you make throwing a load in the washer part of your morning routine (eventually; you’ll get there!), putting it into the drier part of your afternoon routine, and getting it out of the drier and folding it part of your evening routine, you will never end up with what she likes to call “Mount Washmore”! Also, if you have plenty of clean laundry, it’s extra-easy to lay out clothes for tomorrow, which has been a life-saver for me!

Mount Washmore. I like that and it definitely sounds like my post-laundry pile.

I tried to do Fly Lady a few years ago but I must’ve been doing something wrong. I was overwhelmed with emails coming in several times a day. I don’t know how it works but I know you can sign up for a daily email (? or weekly). I just gave up.

It sounds as if she assumes none of her followers work outside the home, however. I do a load of washing each day, just to keep up but I work an evening shift, so doing the afternoon-into-the-dryer thing and fold-the-washing-in-the-evening thing certainly would never work for me.

[norinew]

@jabiru

Mount Washmore. I like that and it definitely sounds like my post-laundry pile.

I tried to do Fly Lady a few years ago but I must’ve been doing something wrong. I was overwhelmed with emails coming in several times a day. I don’t know how it works but I know you can sign up for a daily email (? or weekly). I just gave up.

Well, I ignore many of the daily emails. I use the parts that work for me, and ignore the rest.

It sounds as if she assumes none of her followers work outside the home, however. I do a load of washing each day, just to keep up but I work an evening shift, so doing the afternoon-into-the-dryer thing and fold-the-washing-in-the-evening thing certainly would never work for me.

No, she knows there are work-outside-the-home folks, too. You just need to adapt the routines to suit you. If you work in the evening, then perhaps it would work for you to throw in a load when you get up, put it in the drier before you go to work, pull it out of the drier and put it away when you get home.

[Broomstick]

I’ve never been organized and always prone to clutter. After several years of one family emergency after another it got to the point my front room was unusable because it was so full of stuff.

I had to start cleaning up.

I’m one of those people who find it hard to throw out stuff that’s still usable. It’s a HUGE roadblock for me. So I researched who in my area took usable stuff, and what. When I tackle an area I have a garbage bag for trash and a recycle bin. Yes, yes, I know people say “learn to throw it out!” but I can not do that - so I found what works for me.

The other trick is that if we have something that must go and I’m still having trouble I put it to one side and ask the spouse to “make it disappear”. And he promises to never, ever bring it up or mention its existence ever again. Yes, on a certain level I know damn well he throws it out, but it’s just enough disconnect I can let it happen without leaping out of bed at 2 am and digging through the dumpster to rescue it.

I’m not done yet, but I’m making progress.

I started with the kitchen - because I have to cook a lot and it’s critical for health and safety reasons to keep up with it. I invited a friend over to help me be ruthless. I went through ALL my dishes and put the ones I didn’t want/need into a big plastic bin. Any time I wavered or started to put something back my friend say “WHY do you need that?” If I couldn’t answer coherently without fumbling it went in the bin. At the end of two hours the dishes I was keeping all fit in the dish cabinet and we took the bin down to Goodwill. I instituted new systems to keep pantry items rotated. I now have an aluminum can bin, a tin can/scrap iron bin, a “for the compost pile” bin, and actual garbage (now much smaller than it used to be) set up in the kitchen. The metals get taken to the recyclers every 6-8 weeks (we don’t have curbside recycling in my neighborhood - actually, you have to PAY to get your garbage picked up, no city pickup here)

I cleaned up and organized the bathroom I got buy-in from the spouse on that, in part because being disabled he really does have “special needs” stuff the ordinary household doesn’t, but now he keeps up with the bathroom’s basic cleaning.

Then I cleaned out just the bedroom closet, that is, MY closet. I got the Goodwill bin out again and anything I no longer wanted/needed/fit in to went in the bin. At the end of two days the bin went to Goodwill.

Then we tackled the spouse’s clothes - after consulting with my organizing friend he opted for under-bed storage (so under the bed is now his closet, except for his few formal outfits that really do need to be hung up - they’ve got a sliver of my closet because - >gasp!< - I have room for them!). We got bins on rollers designed specifically for under the bed. So now HIS clothes are organized and put away.

I went through my bookshelves with the “Goodwill bin” next to me, except at the end of two days the bin went to the local library. I want to point out that that was the first time in about 40 years I was able to part with books. I need to do it again some time.

Next stop - the linen closet. I inherited a crap load of linens from when my mom died and my dad moved in with my sister in Buffalo. Theirs were in better shape than mine, so I need to go through them and give what’s usable to good will and ask the spouse to disappear what’s no longer fit to use.

I am tackling paper work on the “30 minutes every other day” plan. We can now find paperwork when we need it in under 5 minutes. It’s WONDERFUL.

Like I said, I still have work to do - it took me the better part of decade to get into this mess, it will take a couple years to get out of it at this pace - but I am getting out of it. I can walk in my front room again. I can find things in my closet and in the desk filing cabinets. My kitchen is still small but it’s so much easier to keep clean and I can find things. It’s getting to the point it’s easier to keep up with the clean areas, and it’s starting to become self-reinforcing.

No, it’s not perfect but I’ve found workarounds for my personal hang ups. I have hung on to some things I probably shouldn’t have, but when I go through an area I throw out about 1/3 to 1/2 of the stuff and it’s better. You don’t need perfect, just better. It’s still in progress, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. One area at a time really does work, as long as you keep grinding away at it. Having someone objective come in to help you is wonderful - it’s easier to be objective about other peoples’ stuff.

[norinew]

@Broomstick

The other trick is that if we have something that must go and I’m still having trouble I put it to one side and ask the spouse to “make it disappear”. And he promises to never, ever bring it up or mention its existence ever again.

As I may have mentioned, my in-laws are terrible hoarders. One of the things they have trouble with is anything that contains The Written Word. Books, magazines, newspapers, even old phone books! My FIL is convinced that the written word, in any form, is sacred (something about how Hitler used to burn books. . .blah, blah, blah, tinfoil hat, blah, blah. . .)

But years ago, when the hubby and I had a wood-burning fireplace, every time they came to visit, he’d bring us boxes of old paper back books and newspapers to use as kindling in the fireplace. I don’t understand why this was OK with him when his whole basis for the sanctity of the written word is that Hitler burned books, but I guess you just can’t apply logic in these cases. Anyway, once when he brought me a box full of magazines, I told him that some of them couldn’t be burned because there was too much glossy stuff in them. He said “Fine, don’t burn them, do what you want with them, but don’t tell me about it!”

So we trashed them, and didn’t tell him about it. Worked for him.

[Broomstick]

@norinew

As I may have mentioned, my in-laws are terrible hoarders. One of the things they have trouble with is anything that contains The Written Word. Books, magazines, newspapers, even old phone books! My FIL is convinced that the written word, in any form, is sacred (something about how Hitler used to burn books. . .blah, blah, blah, tinfoil hat, blah, blah. . .)

I wonder if that’s where my family gets that meme…

The written word is about the only thing my atheist mother held sacred. It rubbed off on my big time. I can’t be the only one - after dropping off a pick up truck full of books at my local library one day (no, not mine - I was helping my landlord clean out a former tenant’s residence, and she was a bookworm, too) the librarian said no problem about the damaged ones, or those they can’t use - she then pointed to the biggest dumpster I’ve ever seen labeled “paper only”. Apparently quite a few people who can’t bear to throw out books just pretend the library doesn’t.

I don’t understand why this was OK with him when his whole basis for the sanctity of the written word is that Hitler burned books, but I guess you just can’t apply logic in these cases.

True. Sometimes logic does not apply. When that happens it’s OK to resort to self-trickery.