So I work all the time, my husband goes to school, we have a 2-year-old and neither one of us will be crowned King of the Land of the Organized People. So our house is a bit of a mess. OK, a disaster. We try. It’s just that when I get home from an 11-hour day I decide to play with my little boy instead of fold clothes or unload the dishwasher. And on Saturday if I’m not working I take him to the zoo and leave the disaster. But. It’s out of hand - clean clothes piled up all over couch and completely taken over one bedroom, there are papers, shoes, pens, electronics, and miscellaneous crap just everywhere, and we don’t have a garage so the sunroom is completely overrun with storage boxes, tools, etc. etc. I can’t find anything including what to wear. We have about twenty different storage containers of different shapes and sizes filled with an assortment of stuff rather than like with like.
The solution must be multi-pronged, I know; but one of the challenges I face is that my husband, who I love dearly and who is sweet and good, will not throw anything away and he is very stubborn and resistant to change (so that even moving furniture requires Congressional approval – let alone implementing a “system”). Those are issues for another day and a different thread - please not this thread. In the meantime, I have to make our space livable. We are also broke but getting a financial aid check next week plus I get paid on Wednesday. (A financial aid check, sigh. I’m 38. Oh well! Married a six-years younger man who was not done with undergrad. But he is the love of my life.) Anyway, if we weren’t struggling a bit right now I would just have someone come in and clean/organize every week, but can’t afford it.
Therefore on Friday I am taking the day off work and having my niece plus three people I am paying come over to clean and help me to implement a system, for clothes, papers, shoes, office area, etc. I want to make the most of their time. I am going to have one of them clean, one of them fold all the clothes and put them away and organize all the closets, and have the guy organize the sunroom and move tools and put things on the shelves and then consolidate. I am going to try to get rid of a bunch of stuff as well. Maybe this is too general, but your tips - specific - general - anything - are welcome as to how I can make the most of the five hours they will be at my house, and organizational tips/systems that have worked for you. Thanks in advance! (I am also going to use FlyLady going forward, but there has to be a drastic one-day overhaul to start me off.)
When I was a kid doing a mass cleaning of my room I would have a box for “doesn’t belong in here” stuff, along with a trash bag. That way, I didn’t get distracted by leaving the room to put something away. I just emptied the box at the end of the cleaning.
Now as an adult with a whole house to clean, I start at one end (kitchen) and move all the “doesn’t belong in here” stuff to the dining room table. Then I clean off the dining room table, putting all the stuff in its proper room. Then I clean said rooms.
You might be wise to have a “doesn’t belong in here” box in every room you’ll be cleaning so nobody has to stop to figure out where something does go, or make their way across the house to put it away.
As for organizing…bins. Bins are awesome, even inside closets. Things look junky and get dusty on shelves. Or sometimes things are just too small to put on a shelf by themselves. If you get a bunch of bins and line them up all tidy on a shelf, you can put tons of crap in them and still end up with bins tidy on a shelf!
If you have a Container Store or other similar store nearby, spend some time BEFORE cleaning day to look at your options.
Everything has to have a “place”. Clutter happens most of the time because things don’t have a home. After you clean/organize, you have to make a pact that when you use it, you put it back in it’s “home”. Having bins or baskets or boxes makes life sooo much easier.
I thought that I was overwhelmed until I saw a young couple with six kids. The only way their house stays manageable is that they have a system and they stick to it. Momma can even change a diaper while holding a second baby. I admire them.
I don’t know where you live but if it’s near me, I would LOVE the challenge of helping someone organize their clutter. Yes, I know I’m a weirdo. I enjoy painting and weeding too.
Thanks all of you for tips, all good. I like the box in every room for organizing day - definitely. How near is near, Ruby? I’m in San Diego and you’re in Indiana according to your profile…love to have you!
One simple system that saves a lot of time and stress is to have three (shoe) boxes for your incoming administration.
The first box is marked: “** incoming, deal with**”. Everything important in the mail goes in this box. When you have time, you deal with the mail in this box. Also a good place for important papers you need to deal with in a few days. If I have taken my passport out of storage to take it with me in a couple days, that box is where i store my passport untill it goes in my wallet.
the second box is marked: “**dealt with, file”**If you have time, file. If you don’t, do what another Doper did and at the end of the year, empty the entire contents in a bag labeled " papers for safe keeping, year X" .
The third box is marked: “waste paper, shred or throw out”. All junkmail and all envelopes of other mail go here. Empty out once in a while.
(Optional, another box for keepsakes and photos. Every once in a while, paste these in a album or let them live in their own shoebox).
Having these three boxes in a row near the place where you do your administration simplifies life a lot. No more lost bills or piles of papers that you are not sure what to do with.
Also, invest in a large box or chest that sits in a corner permanently and contains everything that you plan to bring to goodwill. If you have something in your hands and are not sure if you want to keep it, it goes in the box. Every three months, clear out this box and bring it to Goodwill. (or in a bag in the garage, if you need more time). If you or your husband hasn’t missed it in the time it has been in the chest or in the bag, out it goes.
A chest is good because then you can use the top for stuff, but it is opened so often that the surface keeps being clutter free.
If you have more stuff than you have space, organizing it will help a bit, but not much.
This is a corrollary to Ruby’s point about everything needing a correct place to be. If you have more stuff than places, well you’ve lost before the game begins.
I know you didn’t want to get into this topic, but IMO you’re doing it backwards. Getting rid of the excess comes first. Organizing the remainder comes second. *Physically *you can do both processes at once. But *psychologically *you need to be ready to trash before you can be ready to organize.
Following ZipperJJ’s lead, at a minimum you need a place to put all the items which “don’t belong here” where “here” really means “inside my house”. This is where external storage like a garage or covered patio works. Once you’ve gone a month without touching any of that stuff, you know you can survive selling, donating, or trashing all of it.
This won’t help much for the big organizational day, but I’ve been doing a very slow “assess and purge” of the house. Every few days, I choose one small area to go through. And by small, I mean something like my bedside table, or a single drawer in the kitchen. I take everything out, clean out the inside, and put back only what really belongs. Everything left over gets put away somewhere else or tossed. The key to the success of this project has been keeping the chunks bite-sized.
My other suggestion is to not overlook underused storage areas. My favorite success has been the wire shelving and paper towel holder I installed on the inside of the linen closet door. These shelves hold all of the upstairs cleaning products on the top shelves, and the first aid supplies on the bottom shelf. Plus, obviously, a roll of paper towels.
Maastricht, I think I will adopt your box system! Love it.
I agree with most of what you said. One of my main roles will be trolling the rooms and the boxes with big bags/boxes to GET RID OF STUFF. But you don’t understand - I am overwhelmed. I don’t even know what we have to get rid of because it’s all stuffed in overflowing bins and the sunroom and in back of closets and under beds…it has to get out in the open so one or two of the organizational team can purge things - and the other two of them will be organizing the stuff that does belong, etc. etc. I fully expect the backyard itself to have piles of stuff for my husband to inspect and tell me if he wants to keep it or not. I am not going to throw away his stuff, but I am going to get it all out in the open so he will SEE there is no room for it. His theory is to store stuff he never looks at again for three years in prime storage space so the clothes and the books and the shoes have no place to be and they end up everywhere. But he insists there’s room for those things in the storage spaces 'cause hey! There they are! They fit! So that’s why he can’t be present. I have to show him what it can be like to have everything in a place and everything where you can find it and then show him, look: these things have to go or else our clothes and our beds and our dressers have to go. He can pay for a bigger storage unit if he wants to. Anyway. Good ideas all. (And this is not all my husband’s fault — I’m not the best organizer but I’m better than he is.) However I’m stymied because he resists every single change I ever want to make even when he ends up liking it. I have learned that I just have to do it and then see if he likes the result. Can’t ask him first because he’ll just say no. He’s so strange about change in the house. It’s weird.
