Help me sort out my house, please

[GhoulishGlendaFestersAgain]

My house is an absolute shit tip. Imagine you left 10 feral teenage boys to live unsupervised for several months. Er, teenage boys who knit and buy lots of magazines. ok it's nearly all my mess

Anyway, I have loads of piles of crap everywhere, needs a massive sort out. But I am the sort of person who does either - nothing, or starts by cleaning the kitchen cupboards even though the childrens floor is impossible to walk on.

So - first, some suggestions with what to do with some of this stuff.

Big box full of outgrown shoes - CBA to ebay and some are too worn to sell. Freecycle? Bin? Some sort of recycling?

Massive stack of recentish mags - womens glossies mainly - Red/Easy living etc. GP surgery? Recycling bin? Would anyone want them on freecycle?

Am planning to do the 15 minute chunks thing of flylady when I can get off mumsnet

Are you in my house?

Start with one room

The kitchen

Put the kettle on and put some music on. Set the timer for 30 mins.

Get some bin bags and go through the room putting in all the rubbish.

Make a pile for washing up. Put everything ie jars of coffee on one working surface and clean the other work tops til they sparkle.

Do the washing up.

Mop the floor with hot soapy water.

Job done!

No really, it is awful. You know when you go to someones house and they say, oh, it's such a mess. And you think, no. I know what a mess looks like. The annoying thing is, I don't mind cleaning. Honestly I don't.

I can't start on the tidying up.

My house is too small and I have filled it to the brim with shit

Kitchen less bad than elsewhere TBH. Its the , fuck it, it's the everywhere else It is a small galley kitchen so nowhere to accumulate much stuff.

Laundry gets done, putting away fails.
Have bought a filing cabinet. I like ironing, that's up to date.

The Living Room

Music on. Timer set for 30 mins.

Get some bin bags and sort out piles of crap.

One for the bin, one for recycling and one for keeping. Do a mad rush round now.

Sort all knitting stuff out and buy a decent storage box for it. Tool boxes are often useful for this sort of thing as it has lots of compartments.

Now you are tidy, start cleaning. Dusting with a damp cloth all over the units will keep the dust down.

Sprinkle a little shake n vac and hoover.

Tea and Mumsnet.

Job done!

Go and put the laundry away now and then come back and tell us you have done it.

Put ALL paperwork in a pile and sort it in front of TV later.

Collision is right though, you can't do it all today, no matter how much you'd like to. Start in the kitchen and do it till it's done. Then you'll have one really tidy room, rather than going to bed tonight thinking the whole place still needs done.

It might help if you can completely ignore the rest of the house until the kitchen is done. As Flylady says, your house didn't get how it is overnight, so you can't put it right in one day.

The timer idea is a really good one. I like to set a timer for 25 mins, then have a 5 min break, then set it again for 25 mins then another 5 min break.

OK. I am going to have a fag leave MN, do 30 mins of binning stuff, then come back a bit later.

I need to up my game, badly. DD needs to be able to have friends over and I am too embarassed to let anyone come. I need a massive kick up the arse.

Come back and let us know how you've got on. I've got a whole house to clean too. I'm going to get started now, and I'll come back later.

Charity shop or car boot sale the whole lot. Ebaying is such a hassle and takes longer to do.

OP, I'm in the same boat. Our house is a tip. :(

I really want to make a dent in the mess today. Will be following the tips on here for sure!

Good luck!

Mines a tip too!
Personally I've started and need to finish our room and the bathroom, since both have a great deal of accumulated junk. Once clothes for charity have gone and large numbers of magazines and empty shampoo bottles and out grown bath toys have been sorted, they should look better and be easier to clean for a while.
I have no illusions about having a tidy house for long.
Like the music idea and the fixed time. I'm not a great one forgets, but if I down load a nice 30 min science pod cast I might actually stay on task.
I will report back Monday night and tell you if these jobs are done.
Have bulbs to plant today while I have DH to dig.

For music not forgets auto correct has a field day if you miss spaces

OK I did some. Cleared some toys up in the childrens room and picked up a bag load of rubbish from everywhere I went. Clean stuff has gone upstairs.

Cup of tea now made. Am going to do another 30 mins next, it flew by TBH.

I am such a hoarder. That's one of the main problems. FGS, DS has just potty trained, and I have five unopened packets of pampers in the wardrobe. FIVE. And no children needing nappies. Are you seeing where this is going??

I really need to start keeping on top of stuff. I have just given up work (only just, not been skiving for ages or anything!), if I get a bit better at the housewife stuff I might be able to be a SAHM for a while, but I can't justify it if I am not doing it.

Otherwise I will just be a female version of a cocklodger. DH will rightly moan if I carry on doing nowt the house stays like this. We are both messy but I am by far the worst, by miles.

Keep the tips coming folks, I've got a long long way to go.

Mine is a tip too! I started a thread a couple of weeks ago but have slipped back into my slovenly ways.

Ds and I are currently sharing a room (I sold his bed before ordering a new one ) and in the process of swapping rooms. His old room/my new room is having a new carpet on tuesday so needs to be totally emptied by tomorrow so that the old carpet can be pulled up ready for the new one and at the moment it's 3/4 filled with ds' toys and left over car boot boxes from the summer.

I am a big fan of eBay but tend to only sell stuff in the build up to Christmas so there are loads of things that pile up the rest of the year waiting to be listed.

There are mountains of outgrown/worn out shoes that I keep meaning to send to a recycling bank.

The old carpet is going to have to go to the tip tomorrow so I should get all other recycling ready to at the same time.

I managed to freecycle a very manky carpet in the past, someone had it for the weeds on their allotment. Easier than the tip as they collected it.

Maybe I could offer the shoes to the refuge? Thats what I did with my maternity clothes.

OK. Back to do some more.

That's interesting, ghoulish. I'm not on freecycle, will it take me ages to work it all out and therefore be quicker to take it to the tip? The man in the carpet shop said to cut it into strips while pulling it up to make it easier to get into the car.

Mutt - I didn't know that the stuff in the tip gets recycled. In that case, the carpet can go there this time - haven't enough time to work out freecycle but will definitely look into it for another time.

We are in a 2BR flat with 2 DCs so I have had to teach myself to be utterly ruthless.

1. No wasted space. I have replaced two lamp tables with small chests of drawers. They still hold the lamps but give me storage space that the tables didn't.

1. Identify things that don't currently have a home and find one for them. One of the chests of drawers houses the baby's clothes and the other gift-wrapping stuff, swimming stuff, arts & craft supplies, stationery and chequebooks.

1. As soon as you've realised you don't need something, get rid of it. Don't let it sit around for months while you think about eBaying it. I only eBay stuff that will go for more than about GBP50 and that the buyer will collect. I'm not going to store boxes and bubble wrap and stand in the PO queue for something that I made GBP3 on. Charity shop stuff goes into the boot of the car as soon as I have a full bag, and dropped off within the following week.

1. Minimise what you keep. I love magazines but if there's something I want to read again, I rip out the article and recycle or give away the rest of the magazine.

1. One in one out is a pretty good rule. DC2 will go into a cot this week, and the bassinet will be on Freecycle and gone by the weekend.

I find Freecycle excellent and have got rid of magazines on there, but if you think it's going to take you more than a couple of days to get to grips with, just recycle them.

I forgot no. 6 - buy flowers every week. It sort of shames you into keeping the place worthy of having them. I just get whatever's cheap and cheerful when I do the supermarket shop.