Questions for the Organized and Tidy

In My Humble Opinion
61

Yup. A place for everything, everything in its place, and every place a label so I don’t forget what goes there and the other members of the household learn it, too. And boy, what a peace of mind that gives.

Gloves:
When I found a cheap pair I liked, I bought three pairs. Same for my husband I bought him six pair to last the next few years.
My gloves are in my coat pocket, and my second pair lives in my other coat’s pocket. My husband’s gloves ( he rarely wears them) are in the drawer next to his coats. My kids gloves are fastened to a knitted chord and each end is put down one sleeve. Each coat has a pair in them, and a spare for washing.
Cat products, medicines, tools:
Cat medicines are in the drawer with the other cat stuff in the kitche, where I serve their food. Litter box stuff is stored in the basement next to the litterbox.

Lint remover rolls
On a nail on the wall right above my laundry folding table in the basement, which is itself rigth over my washing machine.

Electronic miscellaney: tapes, dvds, cables, accessories
DVDs are on my bookshelves, like books. Tapes; what tapes? Cables: I don’t know, that is my husbands department. If a cable or black plastic electronic looking thingy is in my way and I don’t know what it is, I put it in the bin labeled : *Husband, Please Sort Out This Electronic Stuff. * I have a similar box labeled: Self, Please Sort Out and File These Dealt With Papers

Little parts that look like they might be important but no-one [present knows what they are go in a little kitchen drawer labelled “?”, untill someone asks for them.

Matches: the only place I use them is in the toilet, to light to remove stink. They are on top of the toilet, out of reach and sight of our toddler. I have an automatic stove lighther system. The lighter for votive candles (with a long neck so I don’t burn my fingers) is in the kitchen drawer. The lighter fluid to fill the lighter is in the bos with the spare votive candles.

Keys and keychains: in a nice ceramic bowl on the drawer chest near the coat hangers. A second set of keys hangs on the inside near the back door, but our of sight for someone on the outside looking in, to lock it and open it at night. The keychain is a label with a non-traceable adress where the keys can be sent if I lose them.

Cable ties In the basement box labeled: *cables, fastening and gluiing. * A second set of zip-ties is in the barn to use on plants and plant labels and bird seed thingies.

Pens and pencils of varying kinds.
A little jar with pens and pencils is near the phone, another near the computer, another hanging in the kitchen from the wall in the place where I write grocery lists, and another pen jar is near the coats where we write notes to each other. I always have three pens in my purse.
Pens who don’t work immediately get tossed. Spare pens are in the place with other spare office supplies in the home office.

God, I love having stuff in its place. I love reading declutter and organizing books. It gives me a deep sense of control and peace.

62

That’s how 2 year olds act.

Seriously, this is just pure laziness. If you really wanted to keep track of your keys, for instance, you’d install a key rack by the front door, then make a hard and fast rule for yourself that you place the keys on the rack every single time you enter. No exceptions. No matter how obsessed you are with non-nomming that big “plate of food”.

But you can’t be bothered, right?

63

There’s so many good quotes throughout this thread and I’m just going to have to apologize in advance for not giving credit where it’s due. Basically, what I’ve seen that I want to re-emphasize is…

  1. It’s not about remembering everything, it’s about developing a categorical and hierarchical schema – not only is the stuff organized, but the organizational stuff is organized as well – and remembering the schema. That way there’s much less to have to remember. I’m willing to bet (though not a high wager) that even with your ADD you do some of this already: You don’t keep your dish soap in the hall closet; you don’t keep your lettuce in the bathroom; you have at least some kind of practical sense of where things belong – once you buy your key rack, you won’t mount it on the curbside mailbox (the postal worker doesn’t want them anyway). Your question is about how to extend those organizational tendencies further. Labels[1] help, particularly when you want others to follow your scheme; containers[1] help, and which types depend on your preferences and needs; ultimately, the key is to decide on an organizational pattern, then implement and use it.[2]

  2. Stoid cites his ADD as a problem[3] and a cause of his disorganization. I and a couple others have noticed that his behavior is one of living for NOW – not just today or this minute, but living for this microsecond. He has, however, noted that he may be focused on a future event, like tasting the great meal he’s preparing. I submit that Stoid is focusing not on the NOW but on the most-readily-available hedonistic pleasure-of-the-moment.

But if hedonism is a high priority, I suggest Stoid recognize the benefit of being organized rather than cluttered: More time will be spent enjoying life rather than looking for something needed to accomplish a task – that fish will taste better if you don’t burn it while hunting for the oven mitt. One of the responders explicitly mentioned that his (her?) need to stay organized stems from the desire to keep his (her?) weekends free. [Forgive me for assuming that means ‘free to go have fun’ and not ‘free to organize more stuff’.] You’ll get to the stadium sooner (and have more time for the tailgate party) if you can spend less time hunting for your binoculars and face-paint.

Some of that is a matter of maturity, brain development, and/or life experience. Some of it is a matter of training and/or observation. Young children have trouble understanding that effort in the short run facilitates more enjoyment in the long run. This is partly because they lack the experience and observation of such efforts, and partly because their brains are not developed enough to be able to recognize trends or predict future outcomes of current actions. As we get older, we realize that one can’t enjoy living in a disease and pest infested place for very long and most of us try to teach our kids to clean up after themselves and to get their chores (often a cleaning task or two) done before going out to play. Not everyone will comprehend that keeping things clean and tidy now means fewer sick days over the year[4] and more time, energy, and health to enjoy the play activity when it finally occurs.

  1. The tidy and organized responders seem to agree that lacking organization is costly. Many have mentioned irritation or discomfort associated with untidiness or clutter. Such feelings could be seen as an extreme opposite from Stoid’s, an OCD about cleanliness or organization. Note that letting that OCD go too far can be just as costly, as one spends time and energy on the primary concern of being organized, rather than having one’s organizational habits be a means toward other goals (sanitation, time-allocation, safe movement, etc.).

—G!

Many years I have watched this one.
Always dreaming of the future he is
or dwelling on the past.
Never is his mind on what he is doing, NOW.
[COLOR=White]. Yo-duh!:smack:
. The Empire Strikes Back[/COLOR]
[COLOR=White]. {Yeah, I know I’m paraphrasing and I know the name is spelled wrong}
[/COLOR]

[1] Although I was somewhat organized already, I found myself working my way through college at a company that puts together color-coded filing systems for insurance companies and medical offices and such. Boy did that make a difference in my life. After that I color-coded my filing system, started color-marking my camping gear and shop tools, etc. My father-in-law had trouble discerning his gray pants from his olive-green pants in the low light of his side of the closet, so I suggested to my mother-in-law that she hang his grays on a black plastic hanger and his olives on a bright green plastic hanger – this is a shade of black and this is a shade of green; similarly, the pants hanging on them… They thought it was brilliant; I thought it was obvious.

[2] Implementing and using is the key – and the tough part, of course. And like any system, it should be open to improvement and change as your needs require. Nobody should be able to tell you your system is wrong – unless it’s working so poorly for you that you keep losing the same stuff repeatedly or you keep putting things in impractical places (storing mayonnaise in the furnace closet). You need to start and it will get easier as you get accustomed to it.

[3] It’s not necessarily a problem so much as a behavioral variant, often related to genetics. What was once called ADD and my teachers called Hyperactivity or Hyperkineticism is now disparagingly called ADD by schools and hailed as multi-tasking by businesses and the computer industry. (The difference is that a multi-tasker will complete the tasks while some people with ADD/ADHD will just drop the current task and work on a different one without ever finishing the one left behind. In fact, the computer industry spent decades trying to get their machines to be able to multi-task and now the goal is for hand-sized computers to be able to do more and more tasks in less and less time. Meanwhile, you’ll see in just about every job description that ‘the ability to multi-task’ or similar language is a key requirement for prospective employees.

[4] And of course this is a spectrum issue with many additional factors; one can be personally sanitary or filthy to varying degrees, live and/or work in places of varying degrees of cleanliness, and conduct one’s life in varying degrees of health and fitness. Nobody is accusing anyone here of being a hoarder, a leper, or anything else.