I can't fucking make my flat look clean and tidy. What can I do?

[FukZake]

We live in a small flat, just over 500 square feet. My mum died and I had to collect a load more of my things from their house, plus some of her own precious things that she left to me.

I'm sitting here trying not to cry because we have so much STUFF for the size of our flat and it doesn't work. There's nowhere to store things, to tidy them away, so now there is dust as well.

We have one large built in wardrobe for 2 of us, and 2 chests of drawers and that's it - our clothes are piled up on top of the chests and then we try to put non seasonal things in plastic storage tubs up high on top of the wardrobe.

I can never find the right thing I want to wear and have nowhere to even try putting out my cosmetics etc. I'm so fucking sick of how tiny the flat is but apart from size it is really nice and perfect location.

I clean the bathroom and kitchen of course so it is always sanitary but I've just had another go as we have someone coming over tomorrow and the bathroom and kitchen just look like shit because again there's too much stuff everywhere.

Is it just pointless to try to have a really clean flat as long as we have too much stuff for the size of the place?

I fucking hate the dust it is disgusting, I just feel really upset by it all today.

We downsized from his three bedroom place and my Four bedroom place (with the associated garages, sheds, lofts) to a two bedroom flat. So I hear you op.

im afraid you really do have to be ruthless. Utterly ruthless. If you haven’t worn it this year or last, get rid. If you haven’t used it in two years, get rid.

I honestly promise you that you will feel like a new woman.

You will NEVER have less if you live based on this thinking. Which means you will remain overwhelmed by your 'stuff'. You need to tell yourself 'I love it, but it needs to go'.
The truth is that you don't need all of these things, you're just used to having them around.
With your towel example, how many times have you had the fridge leak? Are you hoping it will leak again? Can you use the beach towel to collect the water it it happened?

If you had to go on a one month holiday, would you take everything with you? If the answer is no, start from there.
Go into your make up box, anything that is over 6months must go if it's been opened. It IS expired. You wouldn't use expired medicine, would you? Go to the medicine box and just get rid of everything expired.
For kitchen, box up and stack the 'treasures' that you don't use e.g. 12 piece whatever that belonged to great uncle from the 60s. Fill the recycling bin with old Tupperware from takeaway places. Same for plastic cups at the very back that no one uses. You'll have more coming.

For clothes, everything that belonged to a dear old relative is not yours. Let those clothes go to people who will spend their money in them. Take them to the charity shop or into the charity bins. It will go to a good cause in your DMs memory.
Always have a charity bag going where you toss anything that doesn't fit (as you are about to wear something and it's too tight or ripped) immediately. Don't fool yourself into thinking you'll fix it, lose weight or gain weight. Just let it go.

For everything, ask yourself, 'If I were to die right now, would I want my children, partner and siblings spending all their time sorting this?' They will be grieving my death; I would hate that they are also needing to go through granny's stuff or my broken clothes.

Look into Swedish Death Cleaning on YouTube.

I'm a recovering semi-hoarder and I know how hard it is to let go of things. One more question I learned last week:
'if this item were to magically disappear, would I be grateful?' If the answer is yes, then I must toss without considering anything.

Oh and op I’m so sorry about your mom and the associated emotions. That sounds really tough

When we lived in similar size (420sqft - 1bed London flat), then yes we really did have to live minimum.
Towels we didn’t even own regular as they were too bulky to dry without tumble dryer or outside space, so we bought thin hamman towels. Just one large and one small each. Kept two older regular ones in wardrobe if we had guests or leak.

I think you have enough storage, but too much stuff. We now live Larger property, but dh an I share a regular size wardrobe (1/2 each) and a regular size chest or drawers (2 drawers each). Bedside table each. That contains all our clothes. We live somewhere it’s 35 degrees in summer and -20 in winter, so both seasons. With moving abroad, packing for major renovations over the last few years w have just majorly decluttered.

We have less ‘ stuff’ now in a 4 bed large house, than we did in our still fairly minimal tiny flat. Apart for extra furniture like beds and Sofa as extra bedrooms and larger living room. We just swapped Ds from cot to single bed with drawers underneath. We don’t actually have anything to fill the drawers yet so just a change of bedding in one.

honestly. If it’s stressful, it’s the only way to de stress the chaos of you can’t move

Moving the stuff out of your house will feel amazing when it is gone. Everyone is right; you need to be absolutely ruthless. Clear out everything from your sock drawer to your plates, to your larder and keep only things that you need and use regularly, or that are very important to you.

I think unfortunately if you have a small flat and you want it to look tidy, you need to reduce how much stuff you have.

You may want/like all your coats and make an effort to wear them, but do you actually NEED them all?

Is your flat square or are there nooks and crannies? Basically anywhere you can fit storage in...do it! I have built two chest high cupboards in the alcoves in our lounge that fit so much crap in but obviously this won't work if your walls are all flat.
If you can afford to replace furniture, only buy things with storage, beds with drawers in the bottom can hold a lot of extra bits. Coffee tables with drawers, a TV unit with drawers etc.
Things like coats that you won't use for a while can be vac packed.
If your wardrobe is free standing, get rid and have one built in, so much more storage space and they can be customised to include shelving, cosmetic drawers etc.
Lastly, in your bathroom, if you can fit them in get a small cupboard for over the sink and an under sink unit for all your bits and pieces.
Obviously the above, if its possible will cost a fair bit of money so it might be cheaper to move!

It seems to me that this is the key post. I think spending some time grieving your Mum, the injustice around her husband’s occupation of the house and how this had seeped over into how you are now living with too much stuff.

Ultimately you know what you need to do. So write the list and when you are ready it will be much easier to tackle.
Sometimes it is getting into the right mental state first. This is around reclaiming your life from possessions which are physically making things worse but are maybe emotionally a link to your mother.

You need to get rid of stuff. The wardrobe and chest of drawers should be absolutely fine for clothes storage, my husband and I have less clothes storage than this and we manage just fine.

I'm sorry for your loss, the situation sounds really hard.

We live in a house with ample storage but I couldn't cope with all the junk we had collected so yes, we have 2 sets of towels each and 2 lots of bedding per bed. The blanket collection is growing though, I need to have a sort through.

I have one winter coat and a slightly smarter jacket, although my mom just gave me a cagoul, not sure if I'll keep it.

Kids have a winter coat and a cagoul each, thick coats get put away upstairs until the weather gets too cold.

Makeup and toiletries are put away in the bathroom between uses so they have to fit in the cupboard, shoes have to fit on the shelves in the downstairs loo so it's one in, one out.

Basically you do have to get rid of stuff to make it work. If you do ever move somewhere bigger then you can have more stuff, or not, but until then you need to have a good sort out.

We live in a 2 bed flat, 4 of us.

It’s tidy and not cluttered. the trick is to match your ’stuff’ to the space you have available for it rather than constantly trying to increase your storage to cope with your stuff.

So yes, we only keep 2-3 towels per person. Each bed has only two sets of linen - one on, one getting washed / in storage. One set of crockery which is in constant use. If I have space for 2 coats, then 2 coats is what I have. I have one waterproof coat, one trench-coat and one smart blazer / jacket. That’s it. If I have storage space for 6 pairs of shoes, 6 pairs of shoes is what I have. my kids have one set of drawers between them: kondo folding (and the fact there are boys so live in easily foldable jeans / joggers / T-shirts / hoodies) means it all fits easily. Two bookshelves- and if we acquire more books than they can take, some get removed / charity / given away. Overall I am pretty ruthless with stuff: I keep very very little for sentimental reasons or ‘just in case’. Clothes are constantly reviewed - as soon as the boys grow out of something, it’s gone. I should say, we also have a large loft and a cellar (not in the UK) so are able to keep lots of occasional stuff in them - suitcases, extra chairs, camping gear, bikes.

My parents live, just the two of them, in a 4/5 bedrooms house that is crammed with stuff. Every cupboard is full. When we go to stay there’s nowhere to hang our clothes because the wardrobe are full of multiple coats (that never get worn), extra towels (just in case), party wine glasses, old woolies (that never get worn), bits of crockery / cutlery inherited from older relatives (that never gets used), cookbooks from the 1970s (that never get consulted), ideal home magazines from God knows when, broken / dated sports equipment (that will never get used), cooking gadgets that were used once and never again (a fish kettle, a mouli sieve thing, a mandolin slicer). I feel claustrophobic in their place, it’s so crammed with stuff. Ornaments everywhere, books overflowing onto the floor, hobby stuff filling whole rooms. And towels! I counted over 15 white towels stored in the room we were sleeping in - none being used, all just there ‘in case’ or because they were a bargain 🙄.

I live as a family in a flat with no space and IKEA is your friend.

This is our front room storage. We have Pax in the bedrooms which have built in drawers and a hanging rail.

The kitchen has a larder style cupboard to store everything big and bulky.

We couldn't cope with nowhere to put anything.

Maybe you can start by hiring some storage space. Put in there everything that you don't use on a day to day basis, spare linens and towels etc, kitchen implements you use once in a blue moon, etc etc. Put away ALL clothes that you haven't worn in the last year.

Then see how often you actually go there to get things. After another year, it's easier then to see which things you can really do without.

I really sympathise as it takes a while of grieving to be able to get rid of stuff. But I did really learn from the Marie Kondo programmes that it's better to have a few things that I actually use and love that remind me of my mum rather than lots of clutter that just makes me overwhelmed - and I can have happy childhood memories without actually keeping the physical things.

Stuff like books I have culled to tiny amounts nowadays. I like reading, but realistically I don’t read the same book again. And we moved with loads of cooking books and tech work books, but have now given away about 95%. The work related stuff is dated and not even relevant. The cook books I find I use online app far more now, and only kept maybe 6 favourites. They fit on small wall shelf in kitchen. Every l thing else on kindle now.

Ds has the most books as a toddler. But even those I filter out baby books or ones he’s bored off so he has a rotation. I also joined a book club subscription that send him a 8 new books a month, and then we post back when next 8 arrive. Like a postal library.

I think more than 2 sets bedding is madness. One on, one spare. Decent bedding costs a lot and takes up space to store. Donate any excess

Hello! First post here but spotted your thread as got a friend in a similar boat.

I say this gently but I wonder if some of this is related to grief? For example, are you struggling to declutter because it feels like you're losing something?

When I had to clear my mum's things after she died, I put things into two mental categories - 'precious stuff', (photos/jewellery, irreplaceable things) and 'things someone else could love' and it helped enormously. If I just had the one category of 'mum's things' then I would never have given anything away because it would feel like I was losing her or disrespecting her memory in some way. But thinking about how someone else could get great use out of something she owned, really helped me.

I might be totally wrong but thought it was worth mentioning.

In your situation i would start tidying things into storage boxes and bags that are properly labelled in a storage unit, and then work out what to bring back again.

If you can afford it perhaps you could have one permanently as an extension to your house storage?

We have only 1 bedding set for each person, I don't wask bedding unless I know I can get it back on the same day.

Everyone has one bath towel each. Share the hand towels (spare 1 so just rotate)

I would absolutely love an big old house with airing cupboards etc but you have to work with what you've got. Also if you do have guests (I wouldn't in your situation) just ask them to bring their own towel!

@OneRingToRuleThemAll - see we don’t really own anything that you have on your shelves. No collections of mugs, no fiction books bar kids (kindle), no cd or dvd now ( Apple Music/ Netflix, don’t own a device that can even play them now). No random ornaments, no large collection of board games ( we have a few, they live on storage ottoman. I just donate even few years when bored and swap for a few new ones).
Of we had such a large shelving unit in living room, I wouldn’t have space to actually have a sofa

Space for a coat peg by front t door? One large wardrobe and 2 chests of drawers sounds enough.

I think this is really helpful.

Is there any storage rental units nearby? We've rented small units before. And stored all the winter stuff in summer and vice versa. All the Xmas stuff goes there. We managed to find one within 20 min, so was never a big hassle to nip there etc.

Then you won't have boxes on top of wardrobes etc less stuff so everything looks nice, neat and clean.

BTW, I wouldn't go for the storage unit unless you are really determined to sort the stuff, from experience with late DH it just becomes another dumping ground. His storage unit wasn't sorted in 7 years.

I have two coats. One casual and one smart. Sounds like you have far too many/far too much stuff generally. We have s waste/recycle group on Facebook for my area where we gift things on for free/or sell using vinted. Have you thought about cutting the amount of stuff down a bit? A good de clutter can help you feel so much better.

My in laws have an ottoman bed where the mattress lifts up and you can store things inside it. Would that be an option?

Minimise the stuff as much as possible.