So…I’m a slob. A lifelong slob, at that. I’ve always had a tendency to create clutter, a high tolerance for it, and little to no desire to expend the energy to eliminate it. I have (and am treated for) ADHD, which a therapist once told me could almost be defined as a pathologic inability to organize, so that’s a little of what I’m working against.
At 33 years old, fulfilled and successful in most other aspects of my life, I’m tempted to just write this off as they way I am and live with it like I always have. But it’s bothering me a lot lately. For one thing, I get really frustrated by the amount of time I spend every day looking for stuff, and it exhausts me. (I joke that for every hour I spend doing anything I spend three hours looking for the stuff to do it with. I’m just barely joking.) For another thing, I’m not the only one who lives in my space. My wife is certainly no neat freak, but I don’t want her to have to deal with my messiness.
So is it possible for such a long-term, deeply-ingrained slob to reform himself? Can I learn to organize the space around me and keep it organized? I need more than a system; I’ve had dozens of systems, and they all fall apart. I need to make a fundamental change in the way I interact with the physical world.
Can this be done? I’d really love to hear from anyone who has left slobbitude behind, or who knows someone who has.
First, get RID of crap you don’t need, don’t use, or shouldnt save. If you cant do that, at least box it up and stick in the attic. Also don’t buy or bring home stuff you don’t need, won’t use, or already have. This usually applies more to hoarders, but it helps with slobs too. If you have WAY LESS crap to sort through, it at least makes finding the crap you need much easier.
I am not good at putting stuff back up EXACTLY where it belongs. I’ll keep it from damage due to improper storage though and it at least usually ends up in the general area it needs to be in. I try to go through all my “piles” every 3 to 6 months where they get thinned out and somewhat reorganized to last until the next time.
Not sure what kind of stuff you’re hanging on to, but in my (slob) experience there are only a handful of ways you’ll get rid of it: if you can recognize it as complete trash (especially if it’s broken), if you believe it’s going to a better place (donating to charity or giving to a friend) or, I guess, if you can sell it (prompting you to get rid of stuff you don’t want to ditch but don’t truly need). The problem with the last one is that I’ve seen hoarders get caught up in it – ‘Someone might want this on eBay!’ (‘But you don’t even have an eBay account…’) – but donating to charity has helped me get rid of tons of stuff I couldn’t have beared ot part with otherwise. It often adds that last little nudge when I’m deciding whether or not to keep something (usually clothes).
None of this will help if you need all your clutter, just in a more organized layout. I’m not sure if those habits can be reformed – but there are people who make it their life’s work to try, whether through a business (e.g. closet reorganizing – or did that end as a career in the '90s?) or by marrying a slob.
I am a slob through and through. However, I usually only spend time looking for things if someone has come in and picked up. Otherwise, I mostly know where my stuff is.
One thing to start with: If you’re keeping things because you just know someone will need it or you’re ‘going to donate it’ make a firm deadline. Donate it, give it, or toss it by the deadline date.
Are you like this at work? I am a total slob at home, but at work I’m organized. This has been true for almost a decade. I think it’s because at work there are so many people in my space that stuff has to be organized.
One thing I’ve considered trying is hiring someone to come in. You have to pick up somewhat or else the housekeeper can’t do their job and you get the positive reinforcement of having the house actually totally clean once a week.
There are different slobs. I wouldn’t be embarrassed if someone came in to my house without warning and given ten minutes notice some would think I was a neat freak unless… they happened to open a random closet. Yikes. Closet organization does not compute in my world and drawer organization is a close second.
I did manage to organize my office closet last month. It took a full day and all I really accomplished was shuttling the unneeded crap from the closet into the attic. I have issues with throwing things away. I wish I could be helpful but I feel your pain man.
I keep trying. I started a Slob Reform club here, like, twice. I go through periods of trying really hard, but they never stick. Right now the kitchen is messy but not gross, which is fine, and I’m on top of it, but the living room has backslid. It’s actively horrible to have a messy house and a cast on your leg, by the way, so this is one time you’d actually clean it up except you can’t because you have a cast on your leg.
I think it’s certainly possible, but it’s not easy-peasy. I’m something of a slob and have been trying to reform for years. I have certainly improved, but I’m not where I want to be either. If I concentrated on it more than I do, I could be further along, though.
We’ve had a SDMB slob reform club before. You could look up the old threads, but I don’t know that it would help you much. All of seem to need a slightly different approach, so maybe you can think of what might work for you and try it out. Some big decluttering sessions are usually in order to get started.
I am working on the decluttering; just yesterday I took two full bags of old clothes to Goodwill. I’m far from a hoarder, but I can definitely stand to get rid of some junk. Still, once I get the stuff I don’t need/don’t use out of the way I will still make an unholy mess with what’s left.
I am like this everywhere–home, work, car, all wrecks. I’m pretty good at organizing time, but it’s the only thing in my life I’d call organized.
We do have someone who comes to clean once a week, and my wife usually straightens up before she comes. Still, all I have to do is cook dinner and it looks like a bomb has gone off once again.
Cooking is a big issue, since I do it almost every night and the mess in the kitchen gets unwieldy in a hurry. I know the answer is to clean as I go. I know that intellectually. What I want to know is how to make myself into the sort of person who cleans as he goes. I know that I should have a place for everything and keep everything in its place, but I don’t know how to make myself do that.
I do have one case report of a reformed slob. My best friend from med school was at least my equal in the slob department, but her house these days is neat as a pin. What happened is that she married someone who is a bit of an OCD neat freak, so she had him as a daily motivator and a role model, and then she had two kids and it became all about survival.
The problem is that I don’t have anything like that to sustain my motivation; even if I get off to a good start, I’ll eventually get tired and distracted and I’ll know that nobody other than me especially cares. So the challenge is less about organizing and decluttering and more about sustaining a commitment.
Admittedly, I’ve never been much of a slob (having grown up in a slobby home makes one somehow less likely to tends towards slobbishness??) but I despise kitchen clutter. I clean while I cook by taking advantage of natural breaks in the cooking process… like if something needs to sautee for a few minutes, rather than hovering or going into the other room to watch tv or whatever, I will use that time to start rinsing stuff, wiping down counters, putting spices away, etc.
I know it’s not much of a revelatory tip, but that’s how I manage
I’ve gotten a LITTLE better at the cooking mess thing. My goal, rarely achieved, is to never go to bed with clean dishes in the dishwasher. That way there wouldn’t be dishes in the sink/on the floor where the dog cleaned them up/sitting on the stove because there’s no room in the sink. If I could unload the clean ones and start shoving dirties in there, it would really improve things.
You know what has really saved me with the whole ‘clean dishes in the dishwasher’ thing? An 8yo daughter who has to put the clean dishes away before breakfast. It is a huge help. That is probably pathetic, but it’s true! (If not terribly helpful to the rest of you folks without 8yos.)
You know what has really NOT saved me? Picking a life partner who is just as slobbish as I am. I made a Sim of him in Sims 3 and even the damned fictional computer representation of him just picks up dishes and takes them to the counter and puts them back down again.
Dating and spending almost all of my free time with a neat-freak (though not really OCD about it) really improved my slobbish tendencies, but I’d still say I’m pretty messy. What helped about being with him was that the mess really bothered him, and so it really bothered me. Now that we’re no longer in that situation, the mess doesn’t bother me as much, but it still bothers me some. And that’s enough to help me move from “slob” to “disorganized and messy”.
So, my basic theory is that you have to actually SEE the mess, and most slobs/messy people just don’t. When we’re looking for something, we see the disorganization and the frustration, but never do we see and get aggravated by the flat out mess. The only times we do get annoyed by the mess is when it’s hindering something else, and thus we’re distracted by it.
I don’t know how you can learn to see the mess in such a way that it actively bothers you, though.
Even if I do use a break like that to start cleaning, I will quickly get distracted by something else and leave it. I’ve considered getting a timer that goes off every ten minutes or so while I cook, at which time I stop whatever I’m doing (if it can be stopped) and clean for a minute.
Know where your stuff is so you don’t have to ransack your kitchen to even get started. This goes for both food and equipment. If you’re going to be using the tumeric, find it in the spice rack first, so you don’t pull the spice rack apart looking for it later. If you’re using the madeline pan, pull it out of the back of the cupboard to the front of the cupboard. Always put stuff back in the same place, and re-stock to the same place, and soon you’ll know where everything is, but until then, make sure you can find everything before you need it.
Allow youself one set of equipment to use. If you use the spoon and then need it again for something else, rinse the spoon off and re-use it instead of reaching for a second spoon. If you use the small mixing bowl and then need it again, rinse it and re-use it instead of reaching for another. If you are reaching for a “second” of anything, pause and ask if you’ve already used that item. If “yes,” and if it isn’t still currently in use, rinse it and re-use it. The only exception should be your cutting boards – one for meat, poultry, fish, one for everything else, no more than two. Anything you’re absolutely done with, and sure you’re done with, goes in the sink.
Before you start, think of how you can consolidate your ingredients. Instead of putting six dry ingredients in six little bowls, put all of them that are to be combined together in a single bowl. You’re not running a cooking show in your kitchen; stuff doesn’t have to be pre-measured into little ramekins.
For each ingredient, re-cap it and put it back immediately after use. The only ingredients you should have standing out are those you will need repeatedly to adjust your recipe: Salt, pepper, maybe chicken stock or wine, whatever, depending on what you’re making. Same rule for any non-food item you might have pulled out, like your tinfoil or your thermometer.
Keep a thoroughly damped cloth or rag by the sink or tucked in your apron strings at all times. Wipe up any spill immediately but not thoroughly – you’re looking to clear the mess, not clean the counter. Don’t worry about how dirty or messy this rag gets, so long as it’s clean enough to still function (if it’s such a mess that it creates a mess, throw it aside and pull out another one).
IOW, cook like a professional cook. Know your kitchen, take a few minutes to be organized before you get started, limit the mess you allow yourself to make, and put stuff away as you go. This doesn’t make “cleaning” a separate task from “cooking,” one you can become distracted from – it incorporates minimizing mess as a part of the process of cooking. You’re not “cooking” and then “cleaning,” you’re cutting back on the necessary cleaning by changing how you cook. Not every recipe will allow for a break every ten minutes and one-minute intervals won’t allow you to accomplish much anyway. But very, very few recipes will not allow you to recap a bottle and toss it back in the fridge or rinse off a measuring spoon, and do that type of 30 second task any number of times if necessary.
That’s probably it for some people, but unfortunately, not for me. I’m quite bothered by it, but at the same time, seem unable to effectively deal with it.
**Jodi **makes lots of excellent points about cooking above! I use many of these strategies to great success, especially the “one set of equipment” rule. Here’s a few more of my own.
Make sure your prep area is neat before you cook. It’s discouraging to clean up more mess than you actually generated during a cooking session. Starting with an empty countertop will encourage you to leave it empty when you’re done.
Always have a waste bag/bowl/corner handy on your counter or in your sink. Having to walk over to the garbage can every time you peel or cut a vegetable (for example) is a waste of time and effort. Keep the trimmings in one place and dump them near the end of your cooking process.
Prep all your dry ingredients first, then your veggies, then your meats. This maintains neatness and hygiene. You’ll be measuring your dry ingredients while your hands and counter are still dry, then chopping veggies in an area you know isn’t contaminated by meat or fish bacteria. Also, you’ll reduce the amount of time your protein spends at an unsafe temperature.
When you’re finished with a dirty, hot pan or baking dish, fill it immediately with hot water and let it sit. This will save you time later when you’re trying to scrub it out. (I’m suggesting hot water because it will cause less thermal stress to the material the pan or dish is made of.)
In order to deal with the issue, you’re going to have to expend a lot of energy. Get used to the idea. I used to have slobbish tendencies, but I spent a fair number of years when I was younger moving from place to place, so I had to pare down my belongings to what was important/could be carried. Now that habit is ingrained, and my house is pretty well free from clutter.
The key is to simply expend the energy to get rid of everything you don’t need. The Ronco juicer that you’ve had in the box for 4 years? You’re not going to use it. Get rid of it. The 17 Christmas sweaters? Get rid of them. All the ketchup packets in the bottom drawer of the fridge? Toss 'em. Make the decision to cut close to the bone.
We do this about once every other year. It makes it easy to keep the place neat and uncluttered. At this point, it’s an investment of a day or two, but to start out with, it may take you longer.
