SDMB Slob Reform Club - The Resurrection?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Is anybody interested in reviving the Slob Reform Club for New Year’s? I want to try again. Like I said in the “what are you scared of turning out as” thread, I have a pie on my floor. (Well, I had to get it out of the way somewhere, and obviously there’s no place to put it on the counter… it didn’t turn out anyway.) It’s been there for a week.

I’m building a garage which is supposed to be finished in mid-January, and I have this fantasy of moving all the crap that I can into it, like my bike out of the guest room and my gardening stuff out of the laundry room, and then my house will magically start to clean itself. The fact is, we did clean pretty well last fall, but we failed to then organize so it went back to hell. My pie-in-the-sky (as opposed to pie-on-the-floor) dream is to really, really organize so everything has a place to go to, after the garage is open for business.

Anybody else with me again? I know I can’t be the only complete failure from last year who isn’t totally demoralized. Shine my sink? I can’t even see my sink, take that.

2

I’m in. I’m actually a lot better than I was when we started this task way back at the beginning of this year, but my desk is a disaster and my bathroom drawers are impossible to find anything in.

So, yeah, organization is my big thing as well. I’ll keep up. Maybe I’ll post photos for accountability, but we’ll see. No promises on that one.

3

I desperately need to find some organisational skills. You say this might help? Awesome. How does it work?

4

It’s a pretty simple idea, really. This is a group of dopers who feel that, for whatever reason, they’re disorganized or slobs or both. We share tips and our successes and failures and give each other the support and kicks in the ass we need to keep it going. There were about six of these threads (once a month) last year, if you’d like to look.

Last January.

February

March

April

May

June

And July

These are what was before. Hopefully we can get a group going again. Look around, there’s already some good tips and links in those threads.

5

The thing is, we’re obviously the kind of people who can’t even keep up a commitment to just talk about what slobs we are. :slight_smile: Last year there was a lot of good discussion about systems and such - I ran out and made a “SHE” box and haven’t opened it since. Big shock.

ETA - I am going to try to post Accountability Photos this year.

6

I was thinking of resurrecting this too, I’m in! My system is there, but I don’t stick to it any better than I did last year. But I’m better at getting rid of junk, so I think that’s progress. My laundry skills are excellent right now!

The hoarding threads have really gotten to me and I’m throwing out a bunch of junk. I looked in the kids’ bathroom closet (which is huge) and found a whole bunch. I’m having the kids pick out toys to give away, and yesterday we took about 40 books to donate to the library booksale–that’s huge progress for me, since I hate to get rid of books. I usually find that I need the exact book I gave away 6 months later, but I don’t think I’ll miss these ones. And some were outgrown kids’ books, they really need the space.

So yep, I’m in. Pictures are a good idea!

7

Oh, hey, great idea for a thread! Did you find it under the sofa or behind the bookshelf? :smiley:

I got a Roomba (his name is Robbie) for Christmas, so that’s been helping. I have to clear the clutter off my floors before he can work, you see!

Plus, of course, my biggest tip for post-holiday decluttering: throw stuff out. Yes, even if it’s brand new. Your mother-in-law will not know if you discard the jeweled cross bookmark*. If you really like everything you got, then it’s time to purge some old stuff to make room for the new. Three bags - you’ve got lots of bags laying around right now holding new presents, right? Take the presents out and put them on your bed (that way, you’ll have to do something with them today before you go to bed). Label one bag Donate and one bag Garbage and one bag Re-gift. Fill those bags with stuff - new stuff, old stuff, doesn’t matter. But try very hard to *fill *them - at least equal the volume of stuff you’re bringing in.

I did that with my daughter’s room yesterday, we’re doing my son’s room today, and my room tomorrow.

*yes, that was a real gift, four years ago. And yes, she knows I’m not Christian. Giving me a cross of some sort every year has become her own little personal bitch goal

8

Wow, that is extra rude, WhyNot. Definitely something to get rid of.

I got rid of a great deal of stuff recently. Purged my way down from a one bedroom apartment (with storage) to a furnished bedroom in someone else’s house. I was moving halfway across the country and my goal was to move in a cargo van. Little did I know that no one does one way cargo van rentals…

Still, by using that as my goal, I got rid of a lot more stuff than I would have. And in so doing, I also got rid of stuff that I wouldn’t have needed to get rid of but really didn’t need to keep. My jewelry box is no smaller for the purging of it’s contents, but I’m not carrying around crap I will never in a million years wear.

The trick, for me, was to let go of the idea that it had value. Yes, my stuff had value in general, but not really to me. I needed to sell a lot of it, because I was moving with no job on the other end, but I was willing to take quite a hit on it. And, believe me I did.

I got rid of things I’d handmade that I had grown out of. I got rid of things others had given me. I got rid of things I paid a bundle for. And I probably still have too much stuff. But my space is generally neat now, and it’s not terribly large amounts of stuff.

I’m the type that can’t deal with throwing something out if it still has use in it. This has lead to a specific neat-freak friend really getting irritated with me. But freecycle helps a lot with that. Now I don’t feel quite so much the urge to hoard, because I can offer whatever it is I’ll never use again on Freecycle, and SOMEONE will usually want it.

However, my desk is a disaster, and the space isn’t perfect. I still need plenty of help!

9

Tentatively in. Although I am supposed to have a baby in the next week or so. But I need organizing help anyway, and maybe y’all will help me do one thing a day once the kid is born. I’ll need extra motivation.

We had a friend who specializes in Throwing Stuff Out over a few weeks ago, and got rid of 6 garbage bags full of stuff.

WhyNot, that’s horrible. Get her a little ceremonial dagger or something. Some incense. Something Pagan. Maybe you’ll get the point across.

10

I’d dig being part of a slob reformation society. I too often use being busy with school as an excuse to not clean; I’m spending today cleaning for the first time since… uhh… August (I’m typing this during a little breather before tackling the bathroom), and I’m afraid without guilt to motivate me, I’ll not clean again until the beginning of summer, when the spring semester’s over with.

11

Okay, guys - I can’t believe I’m showing this to people online when I won’t let the phone repairman or the bug man in, but I figure if I post photos that are this humiliating I’ll HAVE to do something about them. You need to go in prepared, though, I’m not one of those people who says, “Oh, god, my house is such a mess! I can’t believe you came over and saw a glob of toothpaste in the sink and a glass on the table! I haven’t vacuumed in hours!” This is a mess.

Photo 1 Photo 2 Kitchen. It looks AWFUL, but the thing is, the kitchen is easy to clean. My boyfriend laughs at me because instead of keeping it clean, I clean the hell out of it maybe every month or two. But it’s so little and so much of the stuff can just be thrown out that it’s really the least problematic of the areas, even though there is a pie (really a skillet cake) on the floor. And all the groceries. But it’s not full of “hell, I don’t know where to put this shit” like the rest of the house is.

Photo Dining room. We’re not drunks, just slobs. Slobs who rarely eat at the table 'cause there’s rarely a table to eat off of. But essentially mostly trash, fleeting. Not mostly an organizational problem.

Photo 1 Photo 2 Living room. Urrrgh. The pile of clothes is my boyfriend’s. He takes his pants off when he walks through the door. Have got to start code enforcement on that, but it’s not like I have a leg to stand on.

Photo 1 Photo 2 Guest bedroom. The bed belongs to the boyfriend and all that stuff IS going out to the garage, upstairs. All the dresser stuff, though, that’s my crap that migrated from the office.

Photo Office - when I clean the rest of the house stuff goes here and in the guest bedroom. These two rooms are the huge organizational problems, the “what the hell do I do with this?” crap. That’s why they never really get clean without just moving stuff to other rooms.

Photo 1 Photo 2 Bedroom. Wonder why I never think I have anything to wear? You can actually see the remnants of last time’s organization spree - empty shoe rack and hanging clothes rack that I actually, believe it or not, do use for work clothes. Yes, a cleaning concept I stuck with. There is also a suitcase on the floor I step over every single time I get in bed. Bonus - that pile of clothes by the mirror? That’s where the Laundry Mountain from last year ended up.

12

Wow, Zsofia, you have a lovely home under all that mess! I hereby order you to clean off that dining room table right now. :slight_smile:

I’m going to Target, but I want to clean off my headboard and dressers when I get back. I’ll take pictures, but I’m not very good at posting them so you’ll have to wait a while.

13

Looking at Zsofia’s pictures make me feel better about my cluttered lifestyle.

Although, actually, my apartment isn’t that bad at the moment. This is partially because I’ve been doing some cleaning so that if certain relatives drop by they won’t be able to tease me, and partially because I did do laundry the other day, and have actually gotten most of the clean laundry put away.

I’ve also been working on the idea that I should wash dishes at least once a day, if not after every meal. Thing is, I hate washing 3 dishes. So I let them pile up a bit. Then I get mad because in my tiny apartment kitchen, it’s a pain to wash dishes if the sink is too full, . . . So I’m back to trying to wash dishes daily.

But I’ve been guilty of eating meals in the living room in the comfy chair because all my table space is covered with junk or papers. Mostly papers of the should be thrown out variety.

14

I’m tentatively thinking of joining you guys. I actually have two apartments - one in Montreal, and one in Pennsylvania. My Montreal apartment (which I share with my boyfriend) is a bit of a disaster - we both have a lot of stuff. I want to get the office in order so that when I move back full-time I have, you know, an office to use.

In PA, I only really use my bedroom, and I have a minimal amount of stuff, which should make it easy to clean. However, I get really busy there and have no time for anything. I need to make time - my bathroom is gross.

I guess my main challenge is figuring out how to work cleaning into my routine when I barely have time to fit sleeping into my routine.

15

You know, you have the makings of a really nice place. The house itself looks nice and you have a nice kitchen. I have tendencies towards keeping stuff that I don’t need.

What I had to do was establish a rule for myself saying that if I don’t use it for a year, to get rid of it.

is that if I don’t wear it for 16 months, then I should donate it. If it is a kitchen utensil that I haven’t used in a year, then donate it as well. Extra piece of furniture that doesn’t really fit in the house but may if I move into a bigger place, get rid of it. Old plates that you don’t use, get rid of them. When parents visited us in 2005, they got sick of eating from mismatched plates so they went to a store and bought us a nice set of matching dishes, bowls, and cups. It took me a few months, but when I finally donated the old mismatched stuff. I just need to force myself to get rid of my collection of mismatched coffee mugs which I haven’t used and are taking up valuable real estate in a cabinet. I also need to make myself get rid of the rice cooker that I haven’t used in a year and some of the extra pans that we don’t use.

16

I’m in! I was a silent participator last year, and just reading the threads worked pretty well to keep me motivated for a while. :slight_smile: I have backslid (is that a word?) horribly since November, though - I started knitting for Christmas and stopped doing anything else, heh.

Zsofia, thank you for posting photos! I feel less guilty that most of my house looks like that, now. If it weren’t for my partners cleaning occasionally, we’d all be living in knee-deep piles of crap by now. We’ve already made a resolution to go through one room a week in the house in January and February - evaluate every item in every room, and throw away, give away or sell everything we are keeping around “just because” or “just in case.” Case in point: my fuck-off huge, heavy sewing table. It was just lovely when I was sewing regularly, for money - now it takes up a ridiculous amount of space, and I never use it, because the room it’s in is so cluttered. I have stopped sewing because I can’t get to my sewing machine! The mind boggles.

So, now that I’ve read and posted and I’m feeling motivated, it’s time to go throw away all the trash I can find in an initial sweep. Wish me luck - if you haven’t heard from me in three days, the cats have mugged me in the master bathroom for throwing away a disemboweled toy.

17

Thanks to everybody who says I have a nice house - that’s the problem! I have all these big dreams for it and a pie on the floor! I’m planning quite seriously on remodeling the kitchen mostly myself, and building the cabinets - I go on to the boyfriend about the pull out cabinet I’ll have just for spices, and he tells me I’m just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, what with the floor pie and all. And he’s totally right. I want to make Arts and Crafts furniture with my own fair hand, and here I can’t find the damned hand-me-down chairs I have under all the crap sitting on them. I’m a really good cook, and I enjoy cooking very much, but it’s hard to enjoy it when you have to step over the groceries on the floor and play Find That Smell! before you can start chopping.

In other words, it’s clearly interfering with me living my life. Also, one day I will trip over the suitcase in the middle of the night and break my neck, and then my mom will come to clean the house up after I die and she will see the pie on the floor.

18

The hoarder thread and the mess got me thinking too.

As I posted in the other thread, my husband and I are both packrats AND we are trying to sell our house. Not a good combo. I know I’m messy and I know that my messiness is fueled by frustration. I try, but don’t seem to be supported in my efforts. (No, really, the spoons go in the silverware drawer, not the cabinet with the bowls)

I had asked my husband to go through his nightmare of a room and purge and pack sensibly. I went through 8 boxes today of his that all had the word “wires” on them. I put all the wires in one box, all the hard drives in another, all the pci cards in another, all the cd/dvd/mp3 drives in another, all the power supplies in another, all his magic tricks in another, put the books in boxes with books and have one medium size “WTF” box of things I have no idea how to categorize. Since packing up a year ago, he has gone through and ripped apart all his boxes looking for things. Well, when you have 8 boxes marked wires and there are CD’s, printers, televisions, cymbals and weekly fliers in them, how the hell do you expect to find anything?

My waterloo is papers and crafty stuff. That being said, I know that the only thing in the box marked “coffe cups” or “snow globes” are exactly those things. My craft stuff is in properly marked boxes.

We now have a garage filled with boxes and a back room filled with boxes and one back room half filled with boxes and our house is still trashed. You still walk into our house and say “holy crap, what a lot of crap.”

I’m trying to get through to my husband to explain to him that how we live is not right. Every flat space is immediately covered, no matter how hard I try to keep it clear. I have a feeling that through the stress of the last 3 years, I am finally going through a bit of a depression. Oh sure, I can keep my shit together when everything is going to hell in a handbasket but now that we can see the light I’m losing it? BAH!

I honestly think having a more “normal” house that had less shit in it would make me feel more normal, more peaceful and a hell of a lot more relaxed. It has been an ongoing struggle for me. I’ve tried flylady, except my mail provider (godaddy) blocks her emails. I tried APOA and found it overly religious for me. I’m contemplating just getting the control journal together piece by piece and trying to work from there. It doesn’t help that I don’t exactly have a schedule that allows me to wake up at 8am with guns blazing, nor go to bed at 10pm, so modifying the flylady thing might work.

I’ve been watching “How clean is your house?” and I like it much more than Clean Sweep even though I think that Clean Sweep addresses the emotional baggage that goes along with clutter better.

But really, I’m tired. I’m the primary breadwinner, childkeeper, cook and cleaner. I’m the one that has to remember things and I am wearing down. I’m frustrated at not selling my house, at the mess that still exists around me, I feel like it reflects the mess that is still inside me and I want it all gone.

In other words, I’m in.

I’ve purged 2 garbage bags of crap today so far.

19

I’m in. Right now, I keep holding on by my fingernails to a non-excess of clutter, basically because I have cleaners that come every two weeks. I have too much “stuff” that I never use, and I need to clear it out ruthlessly. Especially in my book collection.

Susan

20

I am so in. I have way too much stuff, mostly clothes that I either will never wear again–I have a pair of pants that I bought in 1995 or so THAT STILL HAVE THE TAG ON THEM–or that I can’t fit into anyway or that I’m simply tired of…