To hate myself for being so fucking organised!!

[Birthdaycakemondays]

Please tell me I’m not alone?

‘You’ll need to bring your passport/kids birth certificates as ID’
Shit - where are they? Long delay always till I find the time to rummage through half the house to find them.

Washing on again where I’ve forgotten to hang it for the THIRD time.

Need to sort all old kids clothes/toys take to charity shop - needed to for months haven’t done it, dreading Christmas when more shit arrives.

Need to do a tip run, crap just taking up space that never gets done.

On the surface my house looks ‘tidy’ but I know I have these messes all around lurking in cupboards/my brain driving me INSANE!

I’m just scatty & unorganised & really piss myself off because of it.

Are other people like this? Because everyone else doesn’t seem half as chaotic!

I really do try to be more organised but I just fail after a week or so of ‘keeping on top of things.’

Wise mumsnetters with immaculate houses, how do you do it?!?!

I do have a 2 year old & 4 month old but must stop using them as an excuse because I’ve always been like this

AIBU to think I am the only one that struggles?

I used to be worse than you OP I'll admit it. Had no car to go to the tip, got hoards and hoards of toys for DC's birthdays/xmas, small house. Clothes & shoes and coats covered the floor; It was suffocating and so depressing. I stopped bothering because it was that whole "shovelling snow in a snowstorm thing"..

Best thing I EVER did was rent a huge skip and throw away half the house. Emptied all cupboards, chucked away 80% of toys (they never played with them) 90% of clothes, shoes... people kept nicking crap out of the skip so I kept putting more in! think the skip was about £300. I moved house then to a bigger, nicer place (more incentive to keep it tidy, and a blank canvas) and wow....it's been a year of clutter-free in every single room/cupboard and I'm soo much happier!

And no man about the place to mess it up!

I still need to do the DC's clothes/charity bags/tip (I also cut some up into cloth ) but that's a job for October half term when kids are with GPs. Doing another toy tidy out as xmas approaches. Helps that my dad has a big car with a big boot for the tip!

I'm also so strict with the kids - toys out then away as soon as they've finished. It's a slog keeping every room clean and tidy but definitely worth it.

I am ruthlessly organised 😀
I feel stressed if things are out of place or jumbled, so it soothes me to keep on top of everything.
At one point I was divorcing, selling a house, renting one and buying another. That was a challenge!
I am paperless as much as possible. Everything online. And I have a shit hot shredder so no build up of unnecessary paperwork.

Ised to be exactly like this until a couple of years ago. Something in me just clicked. I hated the unorganised mess. Now everything has a place and it's very easy to keep on top of.

Take a room a weekend. Bag for charity. Bag for tip.

Lots of strange boxes in various sizes, to help everything has a home.

Get a label maker. (Honestly changed my life )

You would be surprised how much you can get done in an hour. Set your self an hour then a tea break.

I'm terrible and I really hate myself for it!

I need my passport in three weeks? Sure, I'll get it out the night before because I 100% know where it is que it not being there and a mad panic pulling everything out in the house! Repeat for other items and I never learn.

I've recently tried to get myself more motivated so if I see things which need doing I'll force myself to do it there and then. I'm normally really bad for seeing something that needs moving/picking up and thinking oh I'll do that in a bit after I've done dinner or whatever but really I could have just done it there and then, so that's when I'm trying to change my mindset to just do it straight away. It's 75% working.

You need a filing cabinet for your important documents.

Have a regular cleanse of the house, about once every season I have a big clean out, throw out what isn't needed. Swap out the kids clothes etc.

I am naturally messy and disorganised and always have been. My dmum was the most organised person ive ever known with a home that consistently looked like a show house.

I have by no means cracked it but what i found helps:

Shared calendar

Meal planning and prepping stuff the night before. Pack ups always done night before school

Load of washing each day - my machine can do a small load for a short cycle if theres not much

Putting clothes away straight away (not living out of clean washing baskets)

Hand held stick Hoover - downstairs gets done once or twice a day (kitchen mainly)

Decluttering - ongoing for me

Organised mum was a great starting point and then ive adapted it abit for us. Also having lived through a house extension the new areas are kept really tidy and not rammed with stuff. Gradually this is filtering through to the rest of the house making sure everything "lives" somewhere. Im much more mindful about stuff - do i really need it? If things are broken either fix them asap or recycle (we have stuff waiting for ages to be fixed just hanging around the house!)

Sounds simple. Really hasnt been easy. Im always looking for more tips

Mmmmm

I am at the point where I'd actually pay for a consultation for someone to point out what I am doing wrong and guide me as to how to improve it. I am not very domesticated, but it feels like I am doing my best, and I still constantly have this moments where I discover a foot high pile of urgent paperwork in the corner, mixed with children's birthday invites I never RSVP'd to and unpaid bills.

I’m somewhere in the middle
Really need to de clutter n have spent s few hours on eBay last night listing clothes that don’t fit

I am quite organised - and everything has a place.

Also - am ruthless. Not much room for sentimentality here.

However - DS (21) back at home after Uni has a room PACKED with stuff. Old books from childhood that he is unlikely to read again. Games machines which don't even work. I keep suggesting that he sells them or trades them in for up to date games/machines but it's all push from me.

DH is a hoarder. He's better than he was but we recently moved house and I've discovered boxes and boxes of old children's vhs tapes? We don't have a video machine OR young children. Also boxes and boxed and boxes of photo albums. He's a techie too so could quite easily have all these stored on a hard drive or in the cloud. He IS a sentimental hoarder.

So sometimes there is a limit as to how much 'clutter' one can remove.

I'm working on them both.

I’m currently surrounded by clutter in my bedroom (pulled everything out; clean laundry, things that need putting away etc) and I find it paralysing. I’m just staring at it.

I keep saying to myself- “start at the beginning”........

I'm very organised but I need to be for my own mental health otherwise I just feel stressed. I have a filing cabinet for my paperwork. I just found one someone was giving away. It's not in perfect condition but it is kept in the garage anyway so I don't care what it looks like!

My house isn't always tidy but I have one long cleaning session a week and keep on top of the important bits like washing/cleaning loos/washing dishes by doing a bit every day. If I lived alone it would be perfect all the time but I live with 3 messy people

I have one to do list that I keep on my computer and check every day (several times). It goes ahead several months so I can add things in the future that I don't want to forget. I couldn't function without it!

I also have a list of things that need to be done around the house (DIY, gardening etc) that is split into rooms/garden with bullet points of tasks that need to be done (tiny things like clean paint off bathroom floor - little splatters from decorating, through to big things like redecorate bedroom). This is on the fridge so at weekends when we are at a loose end we can get something done.

FInances are on a spreadsheet and I check them on a weekly basis.

Kids have a magnetic small whiteboard on the fridge where their homework gets written down by day it needs to be handed in. They both have magazine files for all subjects and all books/loose paperwork go there at the end of the day.

I try and go through cupboards/drawers once or twice a year to have a clean out or stuff would just pile up.

See I find that easy Brutus. I just pile everything in the middle of the room then get rid of rubbish first, dirty dishes next, move anything that is in the wrong room back to where it belongs, put away clean laundry (if you can't fit it all in you don't have enough storage or you have too many clothes) then you should be left with a pile of miscellaneous stuff and just group that to where it is going and take it to each place in piles (make sure you put it away neatly, don't just chuck it in). Finally when all is clear clean all surfaces and hoover.

Not everyone has good organisational skills for those of us that don't and I include me lists and planners are your best friend
E.g
Calendar on your phone
Shopping list app
Set days for chores, changing bed linen slung the grocery shopping etc
Never go to bed with a dirty sink
Menu plan and shop accordingly
Tackle jobs in bursts of 15 mins

I am very organised but I think it stems from anxiety. I can't relax when there is something to be done. If I have somewhere to be then I plan it out to a ridiculous extent, especially holidays. When I move house I am always unpacked and organised within a couple of days maximum.

I think for me everything has a place and things that don't, go. I have a fireproof box for my documents, which are all labelled and a tray where I put the stuff not organised yet. I have a box for charity things and I clear things out every six months or so. For holidays I have a file and I print and file everything as I book it, or I save electronically in folders in my inbox. In my case, I also have one evening a week where I sort things out e.g. tip runs, dropping off at charity shops, shredding paperwork.

I thought I was doing great organising for us to have wills made. FINALLY.

Now I can't find them. 🤪

@MitziK, thank you as I have just copied and pasted your tips above. I so needed to read that

It's a pleasure, Duck.

I need to get more organised, the paperwork really builds up.

I used to lose so much stuff as I'd put things down to deal with but then have to move them out of the way of the children in a hurry and forget where I'd moved them to. That's improved a lot now they're both teens, however, I do still have to put things where I can see them to remind me to deal with them.

As far as knowing where things are I have important documents in a particular drawer, keys on hooks on the stairs. In an attempt to tidy I have improved the storage and now there are items which have to be put away in the right place. There is also a mantra I read some time ago, which is 'don't put it down, put it away' and I live by that as much as possible. It really does help.

But I still need to find the energy to deal with the backlog of paperwork.

It's a bit of a recurrent theme that disorganised people on here 'hate themselves', get fed up with themselves, feel somehow morally inferior to the Kondo Brigade. Having read some of the posts on here, though, I'm feeling a whole lot more positive about being disorganised, if the alternative is spreadsheets and colour-coded wardrobes.

I am still laughing at the typo in the thread name. You aren't alone OP!