Questions for the Organized and Tidy

In My Humble Opinion
1

A question for the organized and tidy: do you actually remember where you put everything? Does everything really have a specific place? Do you always remember where you put everything? Do you have a system or a method for storing or remembering where you put unusual items? If a particular kind of item is useful in multiple locations, do you put it in multiple locations? (example: gloves. Good in the kitchen and the bathroom and maybe elsewhere. All kept in one spot?)

It’s pretty easy to store and remember things you buy and use all the time, especially when you have many similar things or they are used exclusively in one location. But there’s a lot of things that don’t really fall into those categories.

Examples of things which might live in multiple locations, and how do you decide and remember which you picked:

[ul]
[li]Gloves[/li][li]dog products, mediciines, tools[/li][li]lint remover rolls[/li][li]electronic miscellaney: tapes, dvds, cables, accessories[/li][li]matches[/li][li]keys and keychains[/li][li]cable ties[/li][li]pens and pencils of varying kinds[/li][/ul]

I realize that part of the reason I find these things confounding is because I am unusual in that I do use these things in multiple locations whereas other people might only use them in one. But if you are like me, do you keep everything in one spot, go get it, use it, and put it back? If you are organized and tidy and you acheived it without being Spartan, how do you remember that X thing is in Y drawer?

What about really weird shit…I’m trying to think of specific examples… but I have lots of odd things. If I think of some examples I’ll list them.

I watched an episode of Anderson the other day and the anti-clutter expert was recommending various kinds of baskets and boxes and so forth and all I could think was: dude, don’t you realize that for crazy clutter freaks (especially ones that have ADD, I’ve learned) part of the clutter is the boxes and bags and baskets you bought to sort through everything?

Oy.

So share your organized tidy reality.

(Note to the purgers: that has limited interest for me. My best friend is a purger - she can afford to be, because she has the money to replace what she needs after she’s purged it. And she very frequently needs to do exactly that. Since every single time I get brutal with my shit I need something I threw out within weeks if not days… I’m less interested in simply dumping stuff than in finding a way to store and find it when I need it. Even my purger friend says when she looks at my boxes and piles of stuff that it’s actually mostly very useful stuff, it’s just disorganized.)

2

I’m fairly organised. Mainly because my brain is disorganised, and I really hate that, so I compensate by being anal about some things.

Gloves: go in the cold-weather accessory shelf along with scarves and hats, or in the tools and miscellaneous shelves in the mudroom, depending on type.
Dog and cat products: A securely latched toolbox in the bathroom.
Electronics stuff: lower shelf in the office cupboard (an old pine armoire with a bunch of shelves and closet space.)*
Keys and keychains: either on a shelf next to the front door, or on top of the freezer in the mudoom.
Pens and pencils and scrap paper: In every room in the house, so I can remind myself of what goes where or what to do when. As a hopelessly ADD person who hates being disorganised, I have useful stuff in multiple locations. Flashlights, spare keys, writing implements, paper - in most rooms.

As a good friend says - I have an excellent memory! It’s just really, really short! (A sense of humor helps.) :slight_smile:

  • I bought the armoire years ago at an antique store for about $100. It has four open shelves, four drawers, and two sets of shelves concealed by doors. I adore it and it’s been a real boon for keeping things in their place. Also the big plastic toolboxes - one for pet stuff, one for go-to home stuff (Gorilla tape, screwdrivers, tape measure, etc) really help.

I also purge quite freely. And, I spend 10-20 concentrated minutes every morning before work sorting or cleaning to loud music. Because I figured out a long time ago - many of us are disorganised and the only way to get organised is to dedicate a little extra time to it on a regular basis.

3

If it gets used in that room, it has a place in that room. That means I have a pair of scissors in the kitchen that live in a specific place, I have a pair of scissors in the bedroom that live in a specific place and so on. I do it this way because when I just have one of something, I either don’t do crap because then I have to go get the scissors or I go get the scissors and leave them where I did crap. Then the next time I go do something in the kitchen, I don’t have my scissors because I left them in the bedroom and fuck me if I’m going all the way back there for scissors, that’s why god made tee-ow!. It’s best for me if I have multiple pairs.

4

There’s nothing wrong with having multiples. Personally I’d do it this way:

[ul]
[li]Gloves - assuming these are cleaning gloves, wherever you need them[/li][li]dog products - all pet stuff goes together[/li][li] medicines - not all medicines have to go together - my allergy meds are in the bathroom, my daily pills are in the kitchen[/li][li] tools - go where you need them. [/li][li] lint remover rolls - no reason not to have these in multiple spots, probably in the bedroom and near the door.[/li][li] electronic miscellaney: tapes, dvds, cables, accessories - I’d keep these together so you don’t have a bunch of duplicates, although if you have multiple computers keeping blank CDs, DVDs, and a couple of extra USB cords nearby is logical[/li][li] matches - wherever you use them[/li][li] keys and keychains - keep them all together (I tend just to put them all on the bunch I carry, but I don’t have very many.) Everybody is responsible for whatever set they carry everyday.[/li][li] cable ties - keep with the tools and electronic misc[/li][li] pens and pencils of varying kinds - put them wherever you use them. Calculators, scissors, and notepads too.[/li][/ul]

5

Yes to most of the above. The way I do it is, I store things near where I’d use them, and put them right back afterwards. If there’s something I need in multiple places, I keep a set in every location where it applies so I don’t have to go running around the house looking for it.

As for your list, gloves (for cleaning) live with the cleaning supplies in the kitchen cupboard and are put away when I put the cleaners away. Winter gloves, scarves etc. either get stuffed in my coat pockets for the season or put on a shelf in the closet in the off season.

Cat food goes in the pantry, fishtank stuff goes in the tank stand cabinets, medicines are in the bathroom cupboard at eye level in a daily pillbox because it’s the only way I can keep track of if I’ve taken them or not. Tools go in a little box in a kitchen drawer and again put away as soon as I’m done with them (just screwdrivers, a hammer, staple gun etc. so it’s not like I’m organizing a workshop.)

I don’t use many portable electronics so I’m able to get away with leaving a couple chargers plugged into a spare outlet for my phone and stuff. It’s by a drawer where I can put adapters, manuals and stuff. Stuff like lint rollers I usually keep one in the junk drawer, one in my desk drawer at work for when I get there and realize I’m cat hair from the knees down.

Office supplies (pens, pencils, notepads, scissors) I keep a set of everywhere I might need them: the kitchen desk, upstairs at the computer table, and my bedroom because if I’m in one room it’s easier just to grab a pen and paper instead of wandering through the house. My drawing stuff I keep in the spare room where I keep my craft stuff.

Odds and ends I try to store where they make sense (i.e. matches and lighters in the cupboard where I keep candles) or in one junk drawer in the kitchen just to give myself an easy starting place to look.

I have one set of car and house keys and my office keys, each on its own keychain in my purse where they get put back after using them. It’s best to carry as few as you can get away with and stash the mystery keys or ones you don’t use often in a little box inside a drawer.

If it seems like I’m hammering on the “I put it back where it belongs when I’m done” thing, well, I am :cool: That means I know exactly where the thing is the next time I need it so I don’t have to tear the house apart and make a mess, because clutter makes me squirrelly.

Honestly, I was raised by a hyperorganized mother and don’t know how else to be, but I have a sister and brother who are total slobs so obviously it didn’t work on all of us :wink: A lot of it comes from the fact that I have a job that requires me to keep about 10,000 pieces of paper a year in order so I can find any given payment or bank deposit slip within seconds.

I label things like crazy.

And another problem with the storage boxes is you then end up with 20 boxes full of random, unorganized stuff and can’t find anything anyway.

I can’t really offer any helpful suggestions for getting through existing clutter, but it’s worth cultivating a few habits that will cut down on future buildup. Like, try to handle everything once: junk mail goes right in the garbage or shredder; bills get paid right away and put the receipts in a box marked “RECEIPTS.” Work stuff gets put in a designated spot in the computer room. Make a point of putting your keys in the same place every time, whether it’s in your purse or on a peg on the wall. Label things, and make a point of putting things back where they came from when you’re done.

6

I’m not exceptionally tidy but I’m pretty well organized. I actually have a terrible memory which is why I am rather strict about things having a place where they live. Otherwise I would never find them.

Keys: I have a wall-mounted keyhook by the door. Keys get hung up while they are still in my hand from unlocking the door. In the past I’ve also used a bowl on an end table that sits right by the door.
Shoes: all the shoes we regularly wear are in a shoe organizer by the door. Come in take off shoes, put in organizer.
Gloves: winter type gloves in a box marked “gloves” in the coat closet.
Rubber Gloves for cleaning: one pair in each place where cleaning supplies are kept.
Cables: There’s a basket in our coffee table that contains all spare misc small cables (ipod chargers, etc), batteries, and unused remotes. We have a “charging station” in the bedroom where all our actively used chargers are plugged in and ready for use.
Animal stuff: extra catnip, treats, in a box in the hall closet with like stuff.

I try to either put like with like (and I classify by function), or have one of thing available every place I use it. I want to either find it where I need it or guess at its spot by association with other like items.

So, if I think, “where did I put the dryer sheets” I might not remember “in the linen closet” but I will remember, “it’s probably with the detergent and the Shout and the wine stain remover and the pee stain remover (ie “laundry things”) … that would be the hall closet.” On the other hand, I have a tube of Clorox Wipes in every place I might use them.

Similarly, I have a spot for “tax things.” If it has to do with taxes, or if it might have something to do with taxes, it goes in that one spot the minute it comes in the door.

I don;t know if I’m explaining it well but makes sense to me. :smiley:

7

Yes! This!

(Um, no, not that you are crazy, but that labeling is very, very efficient and effective!)

I also make up occasional index lists and keep them on my computer. That’s how I keep track of DVDs.

(A friend does it even better, and uses a home bar-coding system! I’m very tempted!)

8

Trinopus:
Nope, I’m crazy :smiley: When I was a kid my mom got me one of those toy label makers where you dial in the letter and it punches it into a piece of tape, and I think I labelled every noun in the house until I ran out of tape. Once in a while, it’s 30 years later but I’ll still come across one in a wierd corner.

9

I am not organized, but I did see my ex-Mother-in-law in action. She labelled and partitioned and plainly enjoyed the time she spent organizing. When I say she partitioned, she spent time making custom partitions in: drawers, closets, cupboards, storage bins, her purse, and basically anywhere she put anything. Her unfinished projects were in boxes on the unfinished projects shelf in the main hall closet.

If things started being out and exposed, she had no hesitation telling her husband, say, we need a nearly triangular set of shelves, with doors, to fit here and hold these things. Here’s the basic drawing for it. And he’d schedule time in the garage to make it and it would work perfectly.

Out in the garage, there was a custom made sports equipment caddy that exactly held the number of footballs, baseballs, and basketballs they had plus a back rack for bats and hockey sticks. By the outside garage door was the trowel used to scoop up after the dog and a collection of milk cartons (this was a pre-plastic bag era) to scoop into and toss. The tools all fit on pegboards on the walls, each tool hanging in the outline drawn around it.

Yes, everything had its place. If she bought something, she looked for a place for it as soon as it was in the house. If it didn’t have a place, she made it or made someone else make it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was thinking about where to put it before she bought it. If she worked on a project, the project had a box and as soon as she was finished for that session, it went in the box and away.

10

My house is only so big. There are only so many places to put things, and things aren’t kept out in the open. And I only have so many things. So it’s just really hard to lose something in my house. It literally could not have gone far!

11

This is key for me as well. I’m not as concerned with putting things where they’ll be used, it’s more about putting them in places where they fit well and can be accessed and put away easily. The whole trick is to put them away when you’re done.

For example I have a lot of gloves and scarves and hats for cold weather, those go in a basket in the closet. I don’t use them in the closet, but that’s usually where I am when I decide to use them and also when I’m ready to put them away, so for me it’s the smart place to keep them.

Pet stuff, cleaning supplies etc stay all together, because it’s not that hard to just go get the bin and bring it to wherever I’m going to clean or clip or whatever. When I’m done I toss it all back into the bin, and then I get up and put the bin away before I move on to doing something else.

I don’t have a lot of trouble remembering where I put things. I lost my keys over the holidays, but that was because I didn’t put them in the key dish when I got home after a long busy day.

12

Whether you have one stash or multiples, you have to put shit back when you’re done. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to find anything because nothing will ever be where it belongs. Remember: Any system will work if you will work the system, and no system will work if you don’t work the system.

We generally have one stash for most things that we keep handy to the place we mostly use it. If usage is equally distributed, we have multiples and keep one in each likely spot. Like chargers. We have a micro and a mini USB cord in our bedroom, in the living room, in each car, in his laptop bag, and in one of the suitcases. I have 3 styluses for my Kindle Fire–one on the nightstand, one on the end table, and one in my storage sleeve.

As for remembering where stuff is, to be totally honest, he often doesn’t. I don’t know if it’s a guy thing, or an ADD thing, or just a him thing.

13

Grin! Being “fun” crazy is wonderful! All of my family are eccentrics in the “British Comedy” sort of fashion!

Heh! I still have one of those, and you can still find the plastic tape for them, so I use it – frequently! – to this very day!

[QUOTE=CrazyCatLady]
Put shit back when you’re done.
[/quote]

This is one of my downfalls… I have a tendency constantly to be moving things closer to where they belong, but not quite all the way there. Things sort of approach where they ought to be in an asymptotic fashion. You can watch piles of things migrating slowly through the apartment, like caterpillars following scent-trails.

Another of my organization techniques is the “Heap.” There are heaps, piles, zones, where things belong, and once they are within that zone, they’re as “put away” as they’re gonna get. Sort of as if there are dozens and dozens of laundry baskets all over the place; once something is in the right basket, well, that’s close enough.

14

While I don’t custom make places to store stuff (I wish I could, that would be awesome), nothing comes into our house that we do not have a place to put. Sometimes we have to get creative (for example, we have more shoes than fit in out closet shoe rack so there is now a kitchen cupboard in our hallway for shoes).

IME, things don’t get put away if they are hard to put away.

For example, we had one bottle of window cleaner that was kept in the downstairs bathroom. So, every time I cleaned upstairs I would have to get it and bring it upstairs (for mirrors and the like). It would eventually make it back down again. After about the fifth time, I bought as second one and made room for it in the upstairs bath.

Also, I have a basket that lives in my coffee table. It contains (off the top of my head), nail clippers, cat claw clippers, floss, a hair tie and a nail file. Why? Because I clip my nails and the cat’s claws and floss on the couch. And it is a PITA to go upstairs when I just need my hair out of my face for a second.

Basically: store it where you use it. Put it away when you are done.

Also, when something needs to go upstairs or downstairs, I put it on the stairs. The next time I go up (for any reason) I grab what’s on the stairs and put it in the proper place.

If, however, things do get out of place (which happens since I am not the only member of my household), I make sure it gets put away before I go to bed. Five minutes each night saves a big job later on (that I am sure to procrastinate about).

15

Here’s my method: For cheap stuff that you need in various rooms (pens, pencil, utility knife aka boxcutter, flashlight, scissors), I keep in every room, sitting out in plain sight in a large mug. Need scissors? Look for the nearest mug. Need pen? Look in the mug. Then the stuff never leaves the room, so it never gets lost. You never have to play the “where the heck are the scissors game.”

16

Okay, while I am a purger, I also live in a too-small home. I wanted to share with you a strategy we use for things that are useful that I don’t need all the time but don’t want to have to buy when I do need it.

Things in our house have four categories:

  1. Daily use
  2. Frequent use
  3. Storage
  4. Semi-permanent storage

For items in category 1, I need to be able to get these items without standing on a step stool in the area where it is going to be used. Think utensils, toothbrushes, everyday clothes.

For category 2, if there is still room in the cupboards or closets to make them easily accessible, I do. If not, I will try to find a fairly easily accessible place for them. Things like casserole dishes that I use once a week, dressy clothes, my hair dryer, extra mittens fall into this category.

For category 3, these are items that I may use once a month or so. Extra toothbrushes, my giant soup pot, cooler, air mattress, extra bottles of wine and beer, unopened condiments. I have curtained off an area of the basement for this kind of thing and put shelves in there to hold it. Smaller things go in bankers boxes (labelled, of course), bigger things just go on the shelves.

Category 4 things are once-a-year items. Christmas decorations, Thanksgiving roasting pan and gravy boats, Halloween stuff, summer (or winter) shoes and coats. They get put in a relatively inaccessible area under the stairs in the basement. It is a bit of a pain to get into but we only do it a few times a year.

That works for me but the only reason it does is because I know exactly what I have in each place in my home. How do I do that, you say? Because I clean each and every cupboard, closet and shelf twice a year.* Yeah, some of that was originally to purge but we don’t have anything left to purge (excepting kids toys and clothes as they out grow them). Now it is just a matter of making sure it stays neat and tidy so that I can use all of my stuff.
*I try to do a cupboard or closet a week. I do not do this all at once. That would be insane. This weekend is my filing cabinet’s turn. Last weekend was the bookshelf.

17

A lot of my problem is my ADD and how it affects my short term memory. I can’t remember to put things away. My kitchen becomes a nightmare time after time because it doesn’t even enter my mind to put things away once they leave my hands. I put it down and it no longer exists until I can’t stand the mess.

It’s a bizarre and difficult way to (not) function and I haven’t come up with a way to overcome it.

18

How can something not have a specific place? Do people own items that just sort of float around? Man, that would drive me bonkers.

And I’m not even tidy. Or maybe I am. :eek:

19

See, there’s your problem right there. You have separated “put things away” from “once they leave my hands”. You need to connect those two into one so that the putting away is done as the reason the item leaves your hands.

20

I am not at all organized, but I have one simple rule that helps me find most things – the “clutter spaces” where I tend to put stuff down and leave it (the end table, the kitchen counter, my bed) must be cleared off and everything put away before I go to bed each night. It’s amazing the amount of clutter that accumulates every day in these locations, even when I’ve spent most of the day at work. If I leave it for even a day or two, I’ve got an enormous mess and will inevitably lose something significant, or at least be unable to find something at the moment that I need it. But since instituting the “clear before bed” approach, I know that gloves (in coat pockets or the glove drawer of my dresser); medicines (in decorative box on end table); electronic miscellany (in television stand); keys (on shelf by front door); and pens (in end table drawer) will all be put away where I can find them.