to want to hire a skip and just chuck EVERYTHING out?

[sliceofsoup]

I have had enough of all the stuff. Everywhere. There is nowhere to put anything. Even though we have a spare room, a huge store room and an under stairs cupboard. They are all full. We live in a big enough house. 4 large bedrooms and there is just DH, me and 2 DCs.

Its the day to day stuff. The coats, shoes, hats, toys. I tidy the kitchen and living room every morning, takes about 30 mins. And by 2pm its back to the same again. How does this happen when there is only me and a 2 year old here in that time?

So I tidy it again. Another 30 mins. By bedtime it needs done again. Argh.

Our kitchen cupboards are full to bursting. What is in them? What is all this stuff? I haven't a clue.

DH usually cleans on his days off, but he has two modes and they cannot run simultaneously. He is either "cleaning" or "not cleaning". If he is not cleaning then he just leaves his glasses/plates/cups/rubbish wherever he is done with it.

I am not perfect either but I can't tidy around him or he huffs and puffs and moans that I expect him to help. I think I am making him sound a bit useless but hes not. When he is cleaning he cleans much better than I do, and he does do loads around the house. Its just all the effing stuff.

So I need

A coat hanger thingy, maybe over the back of the kitchen door
A shoe rack in the hall
Some kind of basket for all the hats etc?
To sort through all the toys and put some upstairs

How else can I get organised? What do you all do with your paperwork and general stuff?

Yy to Marie Kondo and her life changing method of tidying.

We have just had two skips in. Absolutely wonderful. I do not have the time or inclination to gumtree/ebay/charity shop. I do what I can but find that it holds me back from getting rid of stuff. The end result (of less stuff) is my focus not the process.

You can't clean clutter. You can't tidy clutter.

My mil and SIL both have spotlessly clean houses with VERY little effort. They never have to do the massive tidy and cleans I have to do. Why? Not much stuff and everything has a home. They have empty cupboards ffs.

Oh and as a consequence mil and SIL have very busy lives (though are still home often). As chores aren't such a huge focus on their lives they have so much more time to do things.

If you genuinely think that a lot of the stuff that is taking up space is stuff that you don't need, then yes, get rid of it! Obviously hiring a skip is one way of doing it but it costs money and no one (apart from the skip hire company) really benefits, so if it's stuff that could be useable then I do think donating it (or selling it if you have the time/inclination) is a much better option.
Go through your kitchen cupboards one at a time and take everything out. Look at it, be honest with yourself about how often you use it and whether you're likely to miss it, and then make a keep/chuck decision. I recently had to move house under quite difficult circumstances and when I was packing, if I was wavering about whether to keep something I asked myself whether I was willing to carry that thing around with me wherever I went in the future. You have to choose: you can have the thing, or you can have the freedom that comes from not having the thing, but you can't have both. What's more valuable to you?

WRT taking to the tip, do your research first. Most council tips are now quite strict about stuff being sorted and disposed of in dedicated areas so find out how your local one is organised and separate your chuckable stuff accordingly.

No advice but I feel your pain OP

I have 8 bags of old clothes which I am going to sell to one of those companies which pay by the kilo. I would probably get more for it if I sold it myself but dont have the time to ebay atm.

Now is the time to sell old toys on your local selling pages. Have a big clear out and see if you can do a car boot sale or stall at a nearly new fair before christmas.

Go through drawers/cupboards and get rid/recyle/donate old/unused & broken items.

Have 25 December as your cut pff date to reduce some of the junk as your house will be full again with toys & gifts.

Just declutter in short bursts but regularly. I sit down once a week withpaperwork & sort through while watching NCIS. 60% of it is for the recycling bin.

I would love go be able to donate but I am not sure any of the stuff is good enough to donate. And yes I do need to detach.

Going to get some strong black bags today when I'm doing the shop.

Read the Marie kondo book. Come and join our decluttering thread in good housekeeping section.
You can't tidy clutter! Chuck it out and life will be better

I love getting rid of stuff, my ultimate fantasy would be to have a surprise big skip delivered. The less stuff you have, the easier it is to keep tidy, so be ruthless and send useful things to the charity shops and bin the rest. Nothing makes me happier than when my neighbours go away and I work out that I can actually fill their bins with my rubbish.

I only fantasised about burning it down and starting again the other day myself!

I did the 'get rid of at least 10 things a day' thing a while back and it really blitzed the kitchen which is still decluttered (not the surfaces though) maybe Google that?

Also the clothes thing where you rehang everything on hangers 'backwards' as you wash and out way things go in forwards. After a while you can easily see what you haven't worn in ages.

I need a week without dc and dh then I think I could really make progress. Not going to happen though so I have to squeeze it in in half hour bursts.

Have just sorted DCs clothes (again) as that gets rid of lots.

Dh has lost some weight recently so need to go through his clothes - don't want to keep the big stuff as I don't want him getting that overweight again but we'll see how that goes!

Marie kondo, it's revolutionary. I'm a lurker on the thread mentioned above, but quietly decluttering in a way I have NEVER managed before. She is utterly bonkers, but also a genius!

Yes sort it. I did a car boot last christmas as my DS was desperate to do one..We made £80 with stuff we weren't bothered about it.

DS room I clear out every once in a while while he is at school.

I am taking a cake stand to charity shop today. It was an impulse purchase as it was in the sale and has sat in my kitchen cupboard for 3 years at least never opened.

You need an organisation station!

I recently went to ikea and bought two magazine racks, those wall mounted basket things, a big pinboard, those wall mounted shoe racks, little hooks and transformed the dead space at the bottom of the stairs.

Now we have space for scarves, coats hats, gloves, shoes, takeaway menus, leaflets and catalogue type shit I want to keep, school letters, homework books, post, business cards, the change bag, hairbrushes, envelopes, spare birthday cards and so on.

See Pinterest for more ideas!

Ps. I love having a skip and filling it!

This is me too at the moment. I have decided that next year (and the remainder of this year) will be The Year of Using Stuff Up & Getting Rid of Stuff (snappy title, no?).

We may have to downsize in a few years, so I am starting now.

I have a lot of lovely craft stuff (spare room like a wool shop) - to be used up. I have a bathroom cabinet with loads in - to be used up. DD has loads of colouring & activity books - all to be used up.

I am in exactly the same position and it sounds pathetic but i sometimes could just cry, I literally don't know where to begin or how to get it all sorted.
We also bought a house that needed work so although its almost finished, it still needs some finishing off bits. We currently have our new bathroom suite in the dining room awaiting fitting. I seem to get on top of one room but then I have been neglecting others and its just never ending. I think our main problem is too much stuff and no place for them but I don't find it easy to get rid. My house is beautiful as well and under all this crap I can make it look amazing and function fabulously. I really wanted it done for Xmas but I don't think it will be. There's me, DH, ds(4) and dd(1) living here, toys are a major issue!
Today though kids are going to grandmas and dh and I are gonna try tackle the bloody place! A messy house can really get u down though. I would love someone to just empty my house and then I could just bring back in only what was needed, all put in its place and organised, that's what I want for xmas.
So for me YAmostdefinitelyNBU

I feel your pain op

I have made a start today before Christmas descends

Same here. I thought about buying that book people keep mentioning, but then I thought I'd just have another book to find a place for. :(

Trujay I would love that for Christmas too!

Seabright - I said this year was the year of getting rid and I have got rid of loads but you wouldn't think so if you came here.

I have just gone through the felt tips - small but annoying job and binned lots.

I know the theory but I just can't seem to get started. Not helped by being ground down by dh's recent prolonged illness. He's supposedly better so is going away with work tomorrow until Friday. Hmm.

So I might occupy the dc with technology tomorrow and use school time on Monday to get on top.

I am hoping that DD's presents will be stuff that can be used & used up (craft kits etc).

I've heard a lot about Marie Kondo recently - what's it all about?

Declutter begore you buy any and i mean any storage otherwise the storage just becpmes more clutter.

Regarding paperwork, household bills, documents etc, we have a very useful office-size filing cabinet. It has three drawers. In each drawer are about fifteen folders labelled clearly for example Electricity, Oil, Car, Bank Statements, Council Tax, Pension. The bottom drawer has things like Wills, House Deeds, Marriage Certificate, Passports and other important things. Every January, we go through the entire filing cabinet and every folder is checked for obsolete/unnecessary bills, which are shredded. That way the folders don't get fatter and fatter! It also serves to give us a financial review of utility bills, outgoings and expenses. Honestly, nowadays you need a secretary to keep track of all these documents!

Yes. I have thought about getting a filing cabinet for ages. Theres a second hand place near me that has some going cheap, bit battered but as long as it works..

In my kitchen there are 3 cupboards full of paperwork. Plus a small folder and theres also a pile in the spare room. Gah.

Great tips on here. I think tomorrow I am going to get going with the worst in our living spaces so I can get the xmas decs up, which is mostly toys anyway, and then all next week start sorting through the other stuff.

Create a "launch pad" for you and your family's stuff coming in / ready to go out. Stops you dumping it in lounge / kitchen / wherever. Once you're used to doing that you can start thinking about hooks for coats and bags and shelves / baskets. Has kept our kitchen table relatively clear since I've started doing it (though there is a pile by the door - solution soon to be sorted with new cupboard for purpose so out of sight).

I feel your pain.

We moved house last summer and we ended up skipping 4 loads and taking 20 loads to the dump (in an enormous car)......I couldn't believe that we that much shit stuff in the house! I would seriously recommend working through 1 cupboard or drawer per day for the next 6 months. I started to do this once we knew that we were moving and I found that we started the dump runs after 1 week of this. When I was talking to a friend about this and I mentioned that we had found an entire storage box full of National Geographics in the cupboard (why had I kept them, why???!@) she said that she once found a black bin bag of rubbish in the loft...they had so many bags up there they had mixed them up!!

Well, a bit of progress this afternoon - I made a cake and finished off a tub of sprinkles as the topping.

Also, finished off a bag of liquorish - small steps!

We visited FC and came home with 2 cuddly toys some dinosaurs and some lego.
And I only took 2 out of 3 dc.
Sigh.

Living room floor covered in trains, lego, yoohoo McDs toys, doctor sets and random other bags of stuff - dd's newest phase.