How do you start to sort your house out when you’re so overwhelmed with stuff and mess?

[confusedlots]

i’ve always suffered with difficulty in organising and tidying things away and am pretty sure I have ADHD which doesn’t help at all. But since having kids the amount of stuff we own has just multiplied. Clothes are the main culprit, but also toys and random things like stones they have become attached to or an empty box they just have to keep.

I am now so overwhelmed with the mess and the stuff that I don’t know where to start and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sort it all out. The house could definitely be on Sort Your Life Out, it’s on a par with the houses on that programme.

I know logically I just need to start somewhere. Pick a cupboard or a corner of a room and just work through it, sort it out and get as much out of the house as I can. But I’m so physically exhausted by the chaos that I just can’t do it, and if I have a go I get so overwhelmed and frustrated that I’m not getting anywhere. I can’t just pick up something on the kitchen table like a letter I need to keep and put it away, because all the paperwork is all over the place and needs sorting out first, but that task is too big to tackle so I try to pick something else to do and go round in circles and get nothing done.

I don’t know what I’m asking for as deep down I know what I need to do, but it’s so hard, and I guess I’m just looking to hear that someone else has felt like this and was able to turn things around.

Get a large bag or box and fill it up with stuff to donate. Make it into a game for the children, give them a bag each and give a prize for the one to donate the most stuff in half an hour.

Take the stuff to charity or organise a collection asap.

When I first started decluttering I got three bags: rubbish, donate, recycle. I did one room at a time. If you do it quickly, you don't have time to change your mind.

I do one of two things to get started both are a bit of a longer game

1. take 3 things with me when I leave a room and put them away, properly
2. pick a type of object (e.g. books) and take any from a room which aren’t in the right place and put them away. Do books for each room. Next day, different type of item (e.g. craft stuff or kids toys). Then paperwork but just create a big pile for this one. Later sort into 3 piles of shredding/recycling/filing

Use chatgpt or goblin tools to make you a plan. Then you can just do that instead of getting overwhelmed with where to start. I have a chat prompt for procrastinating which helps! You can add in NLP support or anything you already know works for you. You can iterate how much to do each day and how simple and small to make the steps until you feel comfortable. Good luck, keep envisioning the final result and hpw much better it will be for you and your family

I totally hear you. It's so hard to start when even an hour of working on they problem will only solve 0.5% of it, it's very easy to just think, what's the point? Reading along for ideas. Personally I need a few days off with kids at school to even start this kind of thing, having to multitask it is way too overwhelming.

Set a time limit, ten mins then stop, have something good to listen to, podcast, music, audio books.
Go armed with what you need eg bin bags or files a folder.
Only tell yourself it's for ten mins that's it'

I really feel for you OP. But what you said about pick a cupboard or a corner is right. It is difficult if you have a load of stuff around you, distracting you, but if you can try to focus on that one little area it’s a very good start. Do you have a DH/DP that could help? And are your DC old enough to join in? You could possibly make it into a game. I can absolutely understand the feeling of being overwhelmed. We don’t have a great deal of storage space & sometimes it’s like living in a warehouse with piles everywhere & lots of bags full of stuff. DD16 doesn’t help as she tries to sort her room out but tends to just chuck everything onto the landing. But it’s gradually getting better & the local charity shops have benefitted for sure.
Have you thought about getting tested for ADHD? Good luck OP 🍀🍀🍀

I would dedicate half an hour to one room. Clean/sort/throw/donate what ever you are able. The next day do half an hour in another room, so that you have all the rooms or areas are on a type of rotation.

If after half an hour you do not want to do anymore, walk away from it guilt free (a lot of the time I’d actually spend another ten minutes or so finishing something off but if I didn’t that room has had half an hour more done to it than yesterday).

I find it easier to chip away at things, and once some of the chaos is cleared it is easier to see what else needs doing.

good luck with which ever method you choose 🤞 I know that overwhelmed feeling to all!

I'm the same but I have to prepare the house to move. I started with....Socks!
Mine, then the DC's. Threw anything with holes in. Paired what was left and threw odd ones in the clean laundry pile until their mates surfaced.
After socks, underwear. Then pj's. T-shirts, jumpers etc. Each time I did mine, then DC's for each type of clothing before moving onto the next type.
Then I did board games and puzzles.
Right now, I'm on books. Which is hard as no one wants second hand books so they'll have to go to recycling.
Toys will probably have to be next.

I’m with you, OP. My problem is that I think “I’ll do that cupboard today and then this one next weekend”, but in the intervening week someone DH has filled the first cupboard with crap again.

You need A Slob Comes Clean (Dana K. White).

Have you read "How to Keep House While Drowning" by KC Davis? I found it very helpful

If I were you I would get someone to do it for me the first time. If the house looks that bad, it will take you forever to sort it and eventually you will not want to do it at all. Get someone to come and clean it all. You go out with the kids for the day. Once the house is clean and tidy, it is only then, that any kind of planning and organizing should take place. Simple advice is, keep doing it. When you move something, put it away after you stop using it, before kids go to bed, ask them to put their toys away, when you do laundry, wash, dry, fold and put away immediately. If you want to live in a clatter free and clean space you have to prioritize cleanliness. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not.

It is definitely possible to do. I have three kids (now all grown up) and always had a full time job. Also, my husband worked opposite shifts, so I was always alone with the kids; homework, after school activities, cooking and cleaning, it all fit there somewhere. My house was always neat and tidy. Never perfect thought, but good enough.

Listen to her podcast, or the audiobook of Decluttering at the Speed of Life. She talks about how to do it in a way that works whether you only have 5 mins free to work or five hours, and she really gets it.

A Slob Comes Clean is a wonderful book. She has ADHD I think.
Another trick is to start with easy wins not difficult things. Start by just taking the rubbish out and the recycling. Start by throwing away some old yoghurt pots or cardboard boxes you had been saving for junk modelling or some sweetpapers.
Old shampoo bottles from the bathroom.

That's enough for one day.

See how that feels. At the start I could hardly throw away old yoghurt pots or jam jars ..I kept thinking they might come in useful. But remember there will always be more!

Put everything in piles , gather all the dirty laundry together , all the clean laundry in another , toys in another then work through the piles and put away in the right wardrobe / bedroom / kitchen drawer etc

Following with interest. My house is much the same OP, kids stuff everywhere, school bags, paper work, shoes, clothes, toys. It doesn’t end! I started on Monday and cleared out 80% of one big cupboard and took 5 bags of stuff to the charity shop and 2 bags to the clothing bank and you wouldn’t think I’d done anything. It took me all day. I’m heavily pregnant and have 2 young kids. I need some sort of system or to learn how to be a bit more ruthless.

A slob comes.clean sounds good

I was never the greatest housekeeper, I'd have one bit scrubbed and shined while the rest was chaos, then I went through a bad depression when I struggled with decision making so couldn't throw anything out. It is twee as fuck, but the Flylady method helped.

Things I stand by:
It isn't decluttered until it has left your property. Until that point you are just moving it about. So get to the tip, charity shop, whatever. If it is in the car you haven't decluttered it yet.

Sometimes you have to make time for the impactful job. I've always been good at having a clean bathroom. If I had a task that needed doing I skipped the bathroom clean and used the time to do the job that I won't have to redo. In a weeks time I'll have cleaned the bathroom again and I can still benefit from the random task I did instead (eg cleaned out the junk from the dining room).
You'll feel great once it is done, so good luck, and enjoy!

I love a clearance but i also have a husband who likes clutter 😡

I’ve taken leave from work and decorated our bedroom. We have 3 double wardrobes and 5 drawer chest each and its more than enough space. So we had a clear out. Bin/recycling/clothing bank.

its overwhelming but you can do it. Don’t think of it as the whole house, one room at a time

You need to lump all similar things together.

stuff like

Towels. How many do you need? 2 per person. 1 swim towel. 2 hair towels for long hair ones. 2 hand towels per bathroom.

PJs. How many do you need in a week. Ditch the rest.

Paperwork - all in one place. Then sort. Don’t keep unless needed. Scan things. Go paperless.

Toys. Be ruthless. Rotate toys if necessary.

Post - set aside time to open and deal with it.

Tbh what works for me is moving all the junk to one room. So I clean downstairs and any stuff I don’t know what to do with I make a doom pile in my bedroom. Then downstairs is spotless and then I spent 1-2 weeks slowly tackling the doom pile. But I need to see some instant results to feel good. So if decluttering the kitchen tables gives me a hit then I can keep going.

Reading this thread has made me get up off my backside and do 5 minutes of tidying. 😁

Absolute solidarity @confusedlots I have never been the tidiest, I am rubbish at cleaning etc but the amount of stuff we have now with the kids and the nature of our work means we have SO much stuff, it is utterly overwhelming. I fully sympathise! I have invited people over tomorrow and now I have to have it at least somewhat presentable so that it a bit of motivation, although I really can't be arsed! Would be happy to try and be a motivational buddy. Vinted is definitely helping me a bit too, I sold 7 things today so just popped to post them so they are gone and I dropped plastic bag recycling at Sainsbury's while I was out. It feels never ending but I think I am making a tiny bit of progress!

I started listening to the Slob Comes Clean podcast, from the beginning and enjoyed listening. Gradually I learnt the habits Dana used to get her house under control. Habits like always washing the dishes and tidying up for 5 minutes start to make a difference. Getting rid of rubbish, things that are not needed anymore and stopping more clutter from entering the house, she has advice on every aspect of this, in great detail.

For my adhd teen DD she has only plastic clear boxes in her waldrobe with labels. They include things like black tops & coloured tops. Joggers. Socks. Etc. simplified as much as possible so it all has a home. Prior to this she really struggled to get dressed or put away washing. I have to break down the steps to so many very simple tasks. Try using AI like goblin tools stand a room and verbal say all the things you can see which need doing, get it to write a list, then start. Even set a timer like 15mins a day.