Messy house. If you've overcome yours..

[Nefbachmorf]

and have kept it clean and relatively tidy for longer than two months, please come and talk to me. Tell me how you did it.

Tried Flylady years ago, didn't work for me.
Have dabbled with TOMM and would consider giving it another try.

Im just going round in circles not knowing what to do first or how to establish good habits. (I do find being tidy and getting organised a big challenge).

I emigrated. It meant going through all my possessions and deciding what was essential. I found it very cathartic, and while it only took me two years to accumulate a load of stuff again I am now entirely ruthless about getting rid of things i don't need. Getting older helps too, my son is now a teenager and very good at doing his share. You also have to stay on top of it, every night before bed I make sure all shit is put away, or put somewhere it has to be dealt with at least by the next day. Its constant though, but now all we have to do at weekends is a clean that takes an hour and a half tops, and I have a four bedroomed house. Oh and buy a Roomba, you have to keep floors clear and it means the house is always vacuumed with zero effort,, I have two very fluffy cats, I love my Roomba like a child. I used to be a right messy fucker and am still not naturally tidy, but having a tidy house is so good for my mental health. I do think I've turned into my mum sometimes though! She thinks she has a messy house as one of her sisters is a loon who vacuums twice a day, she does not!

I’m struggling with it and making glacially slow progress. My only tip, fwiw, is every tiny bit counts; I’ve spent years in the mindset of ‘well, I can’t do all of that, so there’s no point doing ANY of it..’ but actually every little bit does help.

Following with interest...

I am very organised at work and very disorganised at home (well was). I make tons of lists at work, I realised I needed to apply the same philosophy at home.

Also, I'm still in the process of doing it but I am HUGELY decluttering and that makes a huge difference. I especially recommend decluttering stuff that people don't always think to declutter- I reduced the amount of crockery we have in the kitchen and I'm still in the process of donating clothes because we were still having DC I had literally years worth of kids clothes.

I seem to be permanently on 'clear out' as I live in a place the size of a Butlins chalet!

Following as could have posted this.

What is TOMM? @muddledmidget

Doing a MASSIVE clear out. Being ruthless and non-emotional about all the shit you own but don’t need.
If you have too much stuff, your house will never be tidy. You are just moving the stuff from place to place. GET RID OF IT.

I go room by room and do five tidy jobs, usually the quickest wins in each room. ( picking up laundry, make bed, move any plates, etc)

Then I do two quick cleaning jobs, wipe skirting, wipe doorframe, dust etc

I’m not looking to achieve perfection, just to get it better. The 80/20 rule, so that overall it looks much better

It’s really quick and simple and makes a huge difference if you do it everyday. Once you start you realise how much you can actually do in a few minutes.

Just get rid of stuff

My home is always like a show home.
But easy to do because I live on my own so no one else clutters it up!

I'm naturally organised though and find it easy to have a list in my head of jobs to be done which I then work through.

Over the years I have totally (I mean, seriously) decluttered.

Everything has a "place" to live and always goes back there (eg. the stationery drawer, the filing cabinet, the camera cupboard). It means things are put away, and I always know where everything is (need to find passport or bank statement in an emergency? It's in it's place in the filing cabinet, as always).

And I enjoy cleaning!! Think I should set myself up as a 'house sorter' and sell myself out to others....!

My house is clean. I love cleaning

But it is messy and cluttered and some areas eg the spare bedroom I just despair of completely

The crap escapes into corners of every room and there are piles of unsorted shit in every corner of every room. It's so depressing

DH and kids don't care and don't help so if I do manage to clear one spot they dump it all in another

DH often starts a clear out and abandons it half way leaving shit scattered all over eg spare room bed until I shove it all back under next time anyone comes to stay.

His other tactic is to buy storage. We have so many storage boxes and shit flat pack furniture full of rubbish. Just because it's in a box it's still rubbish!!!

DH is not just a hoarder he's from a line of hoarders. Mother in law brings crap from her house and dumps it in mine eg toys of DHs from the 70s often broken but which he can never throw away. Souvenirs
from holidays he went on as a kid.

It's at critical mass since our loft conversion a few years ago as we can no longer shove crap in the attic. We both work FT and at weekend I just have no motivation at all to spend them endlessly sorting out shit.

I am at the point of wanting to pay someone whatever money it takes to come and do it for me

Examples of shit that is in my house
A roll of fabric from when the chairs were covered years ago. Never gonna use that
A massive piece of MDF DH was going to make a desk out of and never did (he has 2 desks already)
A chest of drawers full of 'craft stuff' that the kids might have used about 5 years ago but never do now

Can I pay someone just to stand over me and get it done do you think??

It's an expensive solution but getting a cleaner has pretty much solved mine. She keeps on top of the day to day stuff and I do the necessary deep cleaning. It forces me to tidy weekly and that keeps the house in a broadly normal state.

For me it's worth every penny.

@aceyace

Just get rid of stuff

Just catch this ball. Go on. It's right there, you can see it. Why can't you catch it? You aren't trying hard enough.

...

Just a little demonstration of how impossible it is for some of us.

I started small and once you get going you start to become motivated, I also noticed dh starting to copy me as well.
I started by sorting out my wardrobes. I sorted clothes into season's. I keep out warmer clothes for autumn and winter and pack away summer and spring clothes into my suitcase or boxes and swap over when it's warmer. I majorly declutterd the wardrobe and got rid of anything I hadn't warn in a year or couldn't fit into or was too big. I sold things which were in good condition. I no longer buy anything unless its replacing something that is beyond repair and this stops me accumulating more. I also declutter every time I swap the clothes over and it takes less time each time I do it.
I then did the same with ds wardrobe and sold anything which was in good condition. I then moved onto his toys, got rid of anything that was broken and sold or donated anything that wasn't played with anymore.
Then just keep going room by room until you have a room you are proud off.
The trick is once you have decluttered make sure you keep up with the tidying which takes less time when you have less stuff and don't bring anything into the house unless you really have to.

For me the main thing was to establish a cleaning habit that wasn’t too overwhelming.

I started off by setting myself a target to clean no more than 20-30 minutes a day and focussed on just the bathroom, while DH looked after the day to day cleaning of the kitchen.

When I ran out of things to clean in the bathroom, I gradually tackled the rest of the house. I now have a daily cleaning routine, which focuses on a different room a day. I have a to-do list for each day, broken down into small tasks, so that if I have a few minutes before work, or during my lunch break I can tick something off the list, which is strangely satisfying.

I still stick to 20-30 minutes a day during the week and a little bit longer at the weekend. I use the extra time to declutter, one cupboard or small area of a room, at a time.

So, in summary don’t try to do it all at once, and don’t try to do it all by yourself. Make a plan, which can be as simple as x amount of minutes of cleaning a day, or a highly detailed tick list. The main thing is to have a (realistic!) plan.

Also, if you haven’t already, and you can afford to, get a robot hoover. It’s one less task to worry about!

All the references to decluttering are exactly right. Less stuff is the only way, then use TOMM. It works without clutter.

Marie Kondo followed up with TOMM, even though I bloody HATE the name and the other human who lives in the house does half.

Tidy definitely breeds tidy, its no effort to put away one thing (or, if you don't, not massively messy either) but to put away lots is demoralising.

I'll preface this by admitting I'm only partially successful, I've cracked downstairs but upstairs is still a work in progress. Decluttering is key, I cleared 30 black bags from one bedroom when I did my 'big clean up' (had workmen coming who needed access to every room 😱) and the rest of the house wasn't much better. And I'm completely ruthless about what comes into the house now, if it doesn't have an immediate use and a designated place to live it doesn't come in!

But the biggest thing for me is other people, I spent years making excuses why folk couldn't come in and then had a lightbulb moment when I realised if I actually invited them I would be forced to keep it clean I accept it wouldn't work for everyone and that it's a big hurdle to get over in the first instance if you're used to keeping people out of your home but it works for me. I basically use my shame to my own advantage, I would be mortified if people saw it how it used to be so having people over regularly stops me letting it get that way again.

I'm at 'big clean up' stage again now with upstairs, got workmen coming to do an electrical check which means they need access to all rooms so I've stocked up on black bags and I'm just gearing up to start. Need to work out how I'm going to keep on top of it once it's done though, unless I can figure out a reason to keep inviting guests upstairs

Watching with interest. Our problems are

We have too much stuff- this is the main problem

DH and the kids don't do their fair share

I don't care enough to do it all. Yes I would love to live in a show home but I'd rather spend that time reading or going for a walk.

Choose one room - doesn't matter which. Take your phone into the room and close the door behind you. Set the timer on the phone for 20 minutes, pick a corner of the room and start tidying and decluttering. After 20 minutes you will be able to see a slight difference and it will encourage you to continue. Focus on one room at a time. Don't think about the whole house as it will only overwhelm you.

Declutter. And make sure everything has a home.
It’s taken me years to realise if everything has a home I can keep my home tidy fairly easily.

I wonder how bad people's houses are on these threads. I always think my house is a shit show but then I try to be realistic there boys and a husband in a semi d, means I'm not going to live in a show home. The one massive area we have an issue us, is storage, our house has no cupboards except the kitchen ones. Also sports equipment in the hallway, there is footballs, hurleys, martial arts, swimming etc and no room for their stuff in their rooms.

Recently watched the home edit on Netflix, it has inspired me to have a good sort out! Half of the kitchen done so far!

Apart from getting rid of stuff, just don't bring stuff into the house. Don't impulse buy. Birthdays and Christmas I ask for consumables (like gin, or nice cooking oils or something) or book tokens or restaurant vouchers etc. If I get bought a toiletries set that I'll never use (I have sensitive skin) then I don't keep it lying around the house for a year or two thinking "Oh well maybe I'll just use the hand lotion out of it". Instead, I just give the whole set to charity straight away and don't feel guilty about it. I don't like receiving stuff off people really. I have everything I need and buy stuff I don't have as I need it if it's essential. So, things like hand cream I buy as I run out of it which isn't very often so if I run out in October, I don't want wait until Christmas so that someone can buy some as a present. Stuff for the house I want to choose for myself, I don't want someone else's taste in decor foisted on me. Even scented candles etc are a personal thing. Jewellery, I have plenty of, I really don't need any more.

This is the problem - we are a consumer culture in the West. Our economy is built round constantly buying things. Which means "things" are brought into the house all the time. This didn't happy years ago. You kept stuff till it wore out. There were no silly things like Christmas Eve boxes, or massive piles of presents on Christmas Day either. No piles of Easter eggs in plastic on Easter Sunday. Too much STUFF!

So that's my advice. Just cut back. Don't buy stuff at all unless you absolutely need it. Otherwise you'll declutter and get despondent as stuff just seems to accumulate.

Be ruthless with books. Old recipe books which you use for just 2 or 3 recipes, take photocopies or scan or write in a "Favourite recipes" notebook. Don't keep every book you buy, there is no need. Or get a kindle instead!

I took a few days to declutter my teenaged son's bedroom. We were really ruthless. There were lots of box games that they rarely played with, or craft sets they weren't bothered about. We sorted the lego sets into the correct boxes, put most away (for grandkids maybe, as I couldn't be arsed ebaying!), and only put a few of his larger Technic vehicles out on display. All the books he'd kept in case his younger brother wanted to read them were giving to charity (sadly his younger brother is not a reader ) so I conceded defeat and sent them somewhere they'd get some use. He just kept a couple of old faves like Harry Potter etc.

His shelves which previously had been packed full actually had room to put his things on nicely, a couple of display items. It looks so much nicer, calmer, and is very easy to tidy and dust now. It's the best decluttered, tidy room in the house now and I need to do every other room in the same way as it will save so miuch time cleaning and tidying.

@Marmunia1975

Keeping up with it every day is key. Our house is immaculate. Crisply clean, steamed, mopped, dusted, vacuumed etc.... I go through two audiobooks a month while cleaning.

The audio books is a good idea!