When do you find the time to organise?

[Needlifeorganising]

Just read another thread about organising cupboards and drawers etc and I’m desperate to go through our house and do this. Every time I open a drawer I think I really need to clear this out. But… I just don’t have the time and the very little time I do have I just don’t have the energy or the inclination.

AIBU to think that with young children constantly in your care and other things happening in your life that it’s just impossible to get and stay organised?

Or do people really manage it? I’m not talking stay at home mums who’s children are school age (no disrespect intended at all as I know how hard the majority of stay at home mums work).

If you do manage it, and believe IABU, please tell me how you manage it.

One drawer at a time, one section of a room at a time. Still never reach the end but I have accepted this fact and we are slowly making progress - its also not just my job - its a team effort.

When do you find the time to do it? I feel like I’m constantly rushing round just trying to keep afloat with everyday jobs like wiping the kitchen sides, emptying the dishwasher, laundry etc that when that’s done I just don’t have any time left. I think the team effort is a big issue in our household but that’s not going to change any time soon due to our circumstances.

If I open a cupboard or drawer and it's really unorganised and cluttered I just do it there and then. Sometimes only takes 5-10 minutes. Little and often between the chaos of family life and doing all the other jobs. Sometimes I get little ones to 'help' me eg putting things in the bin or stacking things etc.

I was a SAHM to baby and toddler, I still had organised drawers. I just never filled them/let them become disorganised. I bought minimal amounts of stuff (my kids had one pair of shoes, one coat, wellies or sandals and about six seasonally appropriate outfits at a time) and I didn’t have a “junk drawer” or a cupboard for random stuff because everything already had a home and if it didn’t it wasn’t needed and went in the bin (random elastic bands, old keys etc). My food cupboards never had random bits in them, I bought groceries according to a meal plan and made sure we used stuff up. We went paperless for nearly all bills. Kids crafts got admired for a couple of days then binned. Letters from preschool got actioned/photographed if necessary and immediately recycled.

The key for me was just owning less “stuff”. And accepting that organised in my world meant knowing where things were and having a functioning house not one organised in an instagram way - it did not mean cricut stickers on a huge array of plastic containers, labelling my shelves, arranging things in colour/size order for aesthetic reasons etc.

Now organising my tens of thousands of photos is another story….

I read that as when do you have the time to orgasm

That could fall in to this category if we’re organising everything 😂

As Betty Boopy says - when you spot it or dedicate an hour each day of the weekend to sort it. Sort and get rid, we have a box in the garage for the charity shop - when its full it goes.

Everyone can do a bit, my 6 and 8 year old are getting better at it and my and DH do it together to motivate each other. It can get addictive once you start but aim for small wins.

I have a pretty much full time job, plus a full on volunteering role - both create extra shit at home but little and often!

Have you always naturally been minimalist or is this a transition you made? If so, how did you do it and where did you start please?

I found it a lot easier when I was on mat leave and home with the kids most days but these days it just seems an impossible task. Desperately need to clear some stuff out to make it more manageable but I just don’t seem to get the time to clear it so I’m in a never ending cycle.

The other day I worked from home and between finishing at 5 and leaving to collect my son from nursery at 5:40 I quickly did the kitchen cupboard.

Sometimes I will book a day off work and dedicate it to blitzing the house but when you have hours it’s easy to procrastinate and get naff all done.

My DC are older now and it’s much easier but at toddler age I think it probably happened when I literally couldn’t shut a drawer or cupboard or I opened something and it all fell out and I got The Rage. So would end up tidying and chucking out on impulse because it had annoyed me! This only happened at weekends when DH was around, in the week I would have to ignore it as no time with my small high maintenance DC. Bonus, he had to do the childcare as I was doing something crucial. (Decluttering SO much easier than looking after two small children).

Maybe this is where I'm going wrong! My kids have at least 6 pairs of shoes each -school shoes, PE shoes, trainers, wellies, sandals, party shoes plus about 4 coats each -warm coat, light jacket, puddlesuit, smart coat... plus random shit like umbrellas, hats, school bags, backpacks, portable potties and the toys.... so many toys!! I have 3 kids and there's just SO. MUCH. STUFF!!!!

Do the decluttering game for a month. There were a few months of running on Housekeeping. On the first of the month find 1 item to declutter, find 2 on day 2, etc up to 30 on day 30. Or run it in reverse and go from 30 things down to 1 (which I think is way easier). Or write down the numbers 1 to 30 and strike off one each day like Bingo. Keep a tally each day.

I found it really liberating just having to get to a certain number rather than having to finish a whole drawer. By the end of the month I was tackling some long term "drawers of doom" but without it getting overwhelming. It never took a huge number of minutes out of my day. It did feel like a chore some days but it wasn't insurmountable. If your kids have sticker charts, give yourself one too! Key is finite time and manageable goals I think. Long term most systems "fail" (or rather are hard to keep up) so rather than turning over a new leaf forever, give yourself an end point.

Meant to say they can be really small numbers of things, or small things. 10 receipts from your purse. 15 CDs you won't listen to again. 6 random glass jars and 3 jars in the spice rack that you know you haven't touched in years. Out of date medicines or ends of herbal tea packets. Don't do the whole shelf or drawer, just easy wins.

Agree with chucking out a set number of things a day.

Try not to look at it as one huge organisation task. Do one tiny space at a time. It might not be a whole cupboard; maybe just a shelf in one cupboard. It takes 3/4 minutes whilst the kettle is boiling to open a drawer and remove anything that shouldn’t be in there. Then next time, organise some or part of it.

I am also strict about my car. It sounds nuts, but I feel so out of control when the inside of my car is a toy shop/ cafe/ changing room. So everything comes out of the car after every trip, there’s a small bin for rubbish and the children grab a wipe and do the insides for me when we’re stuck in traffic!

I have become more minimalist with age, but not deliberately or consciously, I’m just ever less bothered by owning things. I gradually realised that most of the stuff I was buying/keeping/accumulating was pointless, bad for the environment, expensive, draining and took up my time and energy managing “the stuff”. It wasn’t making me happy.

I also took some time and properly streamlined a lot when I moved house and I’ve just never allowed it to reaccumulate. So I just don’t buy much in the way of kids clothing for example (though I do buy a bit more now they’re at school). I rarely buy purely decorative items for my house, kitchen gadgets, trinkets, souvenirs or things I don’t actually “need”. I do not keep sentimental items beyond one small box per child. When I buy something I consider if I need it, if I want it, how long it will last, where it will go/live in my house and how it will eventually be disposed of - it means I buy less!

I do fight a losing battle with generous grandparents over toys though!

I was also a fan of some ideas on a flylady website - some of it was a bit nuts (always putting your shoes on first thing in the morning for example!), but the concept of just doing little and often, or just making a start even if you can’t do the whole task, is helpful. So for example I might not have half an hour to completely empty a drawer, sort everything etc - but I probably do have two minutes to grab ten things to throw away out of it, or ten things that actually belong somewhere else. While I’m getting a spice jar out to make dinner I might have a few moments to check the rest of the spices are in date and chuck anything that’s gone off, even if I can’t rearrange the whole cupboard. While I’m “playing barbies” with my daughter I’m simultaneously sorting all the barbie stuff back out from the train set box, the sylvanian house etc and returning it to the barbie bucket. At the end of it the playroom might not look much more organised, but a dent has been made!

You probably could have organized a drawer in the time you spent on this thread.

You're overthinking it. Try a Jenga approach. So you're in the kitchen and you open a drawer, it's cluttered. There's three categories of clutter in the drawer so you need to get 3 bags or boxes to put the stuff in

1. Bin.
2. Keep, but doesn't belong there. Needs putting in the right place or a right place being chosen for it. The right place might be long term storage e.g. the garage.
3. Charity shop/sell. If you're drowning in clutter I recommend putting these items in 1. Bin. Don't make it harder or more time consuming than it needs to be.

The goal with the drawer is to take out everything that doesn't belong in the drawer. Do it as quickly as possible and don't get sucked into overthinking it. You don't need to make a final decision on every single item now, you just need to remove the stuff that's in the way.

Box 2 is the "naughty box", lives in a kitchen cupboard or hall way etc and you just keep adding to it, or filling a new naughty box every time you do a little 10 min declutter.

Eventually you'll get round to sorting a naughty box, but don't sweat it. Just shove it somewhere.

You'll realise over time that stuff you use or need you will go and get out of the naughty box. But stuff you don't will stay in there for 6 months and that's great because you can then consider putting it in 1. Bin 🤣

Finally, you have 10 mins, you really do. Stick the tv on for the kids, they won't get damaged.

It is much easier to stay organised than get organised - the latter requires deciding on where everything should live, whereas the former is just returning stuff to their homes.

If you're trying to get organised with small amounts of time you need to be a bit more ruthless about throwing stuff out in the moment. So worn out socks get paired and put in the bin (don't chuck out singles!), too small kids clothes get put in a carrier bag and taken to the charity shop instantly or recycled, do a sweep of your kitchen surfaces next time you're waiting for the kettle to boil and find a home for everything.

I have the time. I just don't have the inclination. My kitchen drawers are full. I have toiletries and makeup in about 4 different places upstairs. Just can't seem to be bothered.

Yes just gradually.
Ie open child’s tops drawer of clothes, take out, fold back in everything that you want to keep. Anything that’s too small put in a bag for charity, anything stained or holey bin.

Do the next drawer the next day if that’s all you had time for.

I always have two small donate bags on the go. One of for anything to charity, one is any children’s things mine outgrown to pass on to younger niece. Both just hang in cupboard under stairs, so if I find one book, or one pair of socks they can just go straight in. The charity bag I take every month minimum.

Also have less to start with

And how do you know what I was doing at the same as starting the thread? 🤔

Thank you for replying. I do the same with the toys, sort them out as we play. that’s one area that’s not actually too bad as I make sure everything has its own place so toys and stuff don’t actually take that long to tidy away / sort out.

It’s very true about “managing stuff” feels like it’s all I do in my spare time.

I’ll check out flylady it might give me a kick up the bum of where to get started once I have some free time.

I like the idea of a naughty box :)
Kids are really good at playing together and do sit and watch TV for short periods but I find I’m usually putting washing away etc when they are. I am a perfectionist so I think that’s maybe a big issue, if I can’t do a job properly I wait until I can but then that time never comes around.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking decluttering and organising are a "one and done" job but it isn't, they're a constant cycle of little and often to keep it that way.

Additionally not everyone organises the same way so it's important to make sure you're actually organising in a way you can keep it organised. There's no point having a Pinterest worthy cupboard with lots of little boxes organised alphabetically if you actually need it to be a more open and flexible system as you won't keep it that way. I am a visual macro organizer, as if it is out of sight then I will forget it exists and if there are too many steps to put something away I won't do it. DD on the other hand is a micro organiser who needs everything out of sight - so her stuff is organised into very specific categories and hidden away.

So, for example in the bathroom we have a sink unit with a cupboard on each side so we have one each. My cupboard has clear open acrylic boxes with categories like "make up" where all my make up is just in one big box and I go through it to find what I want, meanwhile DD has a little drawer unit in her cupboard where her make up is separated into different categories and each one has its own drawer... She couldn't cope with the visual mess of my big box of mixed stuff but I couldn't keep up with having to put everything in a specific drawer each time so we are both organised but in different ways and neither way is wrong, they just work for different people.

When decluttering/organising initially it can seem massively overwhelming so that puts a lot of people off but you can do it in small chunks here and there. Personally I do a mix of "progress not perfection" organising - where I set a timer or have a set time limit eg an ad break in a TV show, waiting for the kettle to boil or the microwave to ping etc and when that time is up then I just stop wherever I'm up to - and intentional organisation - where I set aside time to do a job in its entirety.

Personally when decluttering and organising I try to do it in stages to make things easier. I choose one area - whether it's a whole room or just a drawer - and focus on that exclusively. Unless the rest of the house is burning down I am not bothered if there's clothes all over DDs floor or a pile of post sitting on the counter or the sofa cushions are a mess, my focus is on the one drawer/shelf/cupboard I'm sorting.

Firstly I make a quick initial rubbish sweep - just go through the area and throw away anything that is literal rubbish, whether that's half opened packaging that has been shoved in the drawer, sweet wrappers, dried up pens, broken things, random items that you don't need or want etc, don't think about it, just pick up an item and if it's rubbish, bin it and if it isn't then put it back.

After the rubbish sweep, or sometimes at the same time if it's a small area, I go through and take out anything that I want to keep but doesn't belong in that space and put it in a "crap box" to be dealt with later. I have a small crap box in all the main areas of my home and anything that doesn't live in that room that needs to be returned to its home can be put in there throughout the day and then at the end of the night every week or so I will take 10 mins to return everything to it's rightful place.

Once you've got rid of the rubbish and stuff in the wrong place then you'll often be surprised how few items there actually are to organise. Then you go through and decide if there's anything you want to get rid of and stick that in a box to donate/recycle (or if it's too overwhelming to think about having to donate or sell things, especially in an initial organisation session, then feel free to bin it). Personally I always have a box for donations in my bedroom and in a Kallax unit in my hall so that as soon as I find something to donate (whether it's a top I don't wear, something DD has outgrown or just a whisk I don't use) I just drop it in the box and then when the box is full or it's been a couple of months then I will take it to charity. That way I got into the habit of regular donations, I get the item out of its original home so I can make space without having to deal with it immediately and there is a designated home for the item so it isn't cluttering up my space.

Sometimes I will just do one part of the cycle - either look for rubbish, re-home items, look for things to donate/sell - depending on the time I have available and the inclination I have to do so because I'd rather do a little bit than nothing at all as it's still some sort of progress.

I am a natural hoarder so I really struggle to part with things, especially if they might be useful in future, or if I buy a new X but the old one is still functional then I would often keep the old one "just in case" but now I am really strict about having a 'one in, one out' policy. When I want to buy something I make myself decide what item it is going to be replacing and then get rid of that item first (unless it's a purchase where I need to know I have the new item before disposing of the old one) so that I'm not tempted to buy the new one and then keep the old one anyway.

To supplement that I also set physical limits and if there is more of something than will fit in the designated storage then I have to purge it until it does. Eg I have a drawer for kitchen tools - I can have as many spatulas as I want as long as they all fit in the drawer, however if the drawer no longer shuts I have to decide what things to get rid of to make it shut ... That might mean I have 10 spatulas and no whisk or it might mean I sacrifice a couple of spatulas to make room for the whisk but I get to determine what quantities work for me rather than deciding "I only actually need one spatula at a time so I must throw out the other 9 to make room for the whisk, even though I use all of the spatulas on a regular basis for different things but only use a whisk once a year and without it I could just use a fork if necessary".

As part of that I don't feel bad about getting rid of part of a set of I know I'm not going to use it. In the past I have held on to items that I know I am not going to use but because they are part of a set I felt obliged to keep them - eg hoover attachments I knew I would never use or measuring cups where I only use 3 out of the 7 in the set. Now I have no issue with seeing that in a set of XYZ I only use X and Z so I can throw away Y rather than trying to find space to keep it just because it's part of the XYZ set. It's surprisingly liberating to be able to get rid of those items.

When it comes to getting rid of stuff that might be useful in the future looking at you, random box of cords I haven't needed for years but cannot throw away I justify whether to keep it based on the question: if I get rid of this today and then need it next week, how difficult is it going to be to source a new one? If the answer is it will be a 5 minute job to get a new one and/or will cost pennies to replace the item then I get rid of it. If the answer is it will be really difficult/a lot of effort to replace then I can either keep it indefinitely or set myself a time frame and if I haven't used it in that time frame then I get rid of it anyway as I do not need it enough to justify keeping it.

I keep a box on the top shelf in the playroom, which DD thinks is just “oh, just boring house stuff we haven’t unpacked yet.” In reality it’s empty and I throw in the crap toys to periodically get rid once I’m certain she’s forgotten them.

I agree it’s easier to stay organised than get organised, and stuff is the enemy. We’ve fallen into disarray after a horrendous pregnancy and now a non-sleeping baby as DP, who has ADHD, Amazon Prime, and a belief that stuff fixes everything, has taken over running the house for a bit. Suddenly DD has gone from one pair of wellies to four… and the old ones are sitting in the back porch still waiting to be thrown out. Everything now takes much longer and there’s much more as hoc clearing up to do before doing the thing I’m trying to do!

In terms of time to get it done: last time I needed to do a hard reset declutter, I took annual leave! But I also think scheduling can work: if you were to sign up to a training course with an evening class and some homework, for instance, you’d set aside the evening of the class and do things to make that fit – oven food for dinner that day, for instance; and you’d make time for the homework as you’ve invested in the class. Maybe you’d swap the gym for homework, or more oven food, or bribe children they can have a film and pick and mix on the sofa if they leave you be for 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon. Treat the decluttering task the same: it’s an investment! The time you spend now getting organised buys you back more time in the future.

Other ways to make time: we’re renovating at the moment which uses up time so we claw it back elsewhere, eg by not unloading the dishwasher - just use it as a cupboard and retrieve the stuff you need as you need it. Pile dirty stuff on the side for once instead of stacking as you go. Or we let the place be a bit squalid and unhoovered for a week, it won’t kill us. Make the kids put away clothes or play “let’s live out of a suitcase for the week!” Accept some late nights, buy some strong coffee and nice sweeties and use them as fuel for a week of late night organising sessions, along with easy grab and go breakfasts.