We are messy people. Help me to change!

[WhereAreWeNow]

Just that really! Our house is a tip.

DH has ADHD which means he's a hoarder and quite scatty and messy. He does a bit but he doesn't pull his weight.

DD (13) has about 5 billion books and finds it hard letting go of her old things (toys and books) and she does sod all to help around the house.

I have too much stuff (clothes and shoes) and the house is quite small. I work full time and do nearly all of the cooking, cleaning, food shopping etc. But I'm really not on top of the cleaning bit. Or the cooking actually but that's another story!

So the house is cluttered and messy and therefore also a bit dirty because it's impossible to clean properly when there's so much stuff everywhere.

It's really getting me down. It feels a bit overwhelming and impossible. I've been reading up on TOMM and I've told DH and DD we're going to try it.

Can anyone please hold my hand/give me a good talking to and tell me:
—Where to begin tackling the mountains of clutter?
—How to get DD and DH to do their bit?

Thanks!

I can't help you with the DH and DD. If you work it out let me know!

I have a monthly charity collection with anglo doorstep collections. If I have to take it to a clothes bank or charity shop it won't happen but they come to the door and collect it. I put one thing a day in the charity bag. Every day.

I employed a cleaner and feel the pressure to have the house tidy so that she can clean each week. You could invite a judgey friend over for a cuppa each week if looking to avoid the expense though 😆

I never leave a room empty handed and I don't let the dishwasher load build up before I empty and reload, I stick each individual thing in through the day.

It's just a slow steady continual approach but I'm always visitor ready, I'm sleeping better and I'm proud of my home.

We have several largish baskets in strategic places around the house, one per person. If things are lying about, they get slung in the basket. DH has one (lovingly known as the Basket Of Doom) by the end of the sofa where he sits and all his crap gets put in there.

Could something similar to that work for you? It might at least help with all the surface clutter.

You have to get DH and DD involved or it'll break you.

One technique which works for us (DH has ADHD) is 'mirroring'.

Set a time once a week and all 3 of you tackle the housework at the same time.

Give them both a list of tasks, stop every hour to have a cuppa and admire what each of you has done.

Find a podcast or music you like and listen on headphones as you get on.

You probably need to declutter first - A Slob Comes Clean podcasts have helped me with this. I make DH follow her rules.

We find TOMM good as a guideline to what to do but doing it every day doesn't work for us.

Don't feel overwhelmed by the bigger picture. Start small. Choose one area of your house, or one thing (such as shoes) and sort through them all. Be ruthless. Then make sure you have a place to keep them where they all fit. In future if you want another pair of shoes the rule is you have to get rid of an existing pair. Same for books/clothes/toys. One in one out rule. Be ruthless.

For normal household clutter tackle it little and often. As soon as you get home throw at any junk mail that has been delivered, for example. Don't keep paperwork. Throw things away straight away.

Thanks. These are great tips. @Adhdwife i like the idea of us all tackling our jobs together at the same time.
@hotfroth what happens to the stuff in the baskets? I worry in our house they would just fill up with junk and no one would ever empty them.
@SafariPark I've realised that the state of the house stops me from inviting people round because I'm so ashamed of it 😔Maybe actually I should force myself to invite people round so I can't avoid dealing with it.
Some rooms aren't too bad. The living room and dining room are probably the best rooms. I would be mortified if anyone saw the mess of our bedroom though!

I second the suggestion of starting small. Pick a room and focus on that one first.
Go through what you have: do you need it? why are you keeping it? Then throw it away, give it to charity, sell it, donate it on FB Marketplace or other. What's left, make it tidy. Get boxes or containers for everything as it makes much easier to clean around them vs clean around a million objects scattered around.

You can also ask your DD/DH to do the same. Buy some boxes for them and ask to put what they want to keep in them.

If you get DH involved let me know!

I work 2 jobs & he long hours plus his kids & mine.

I found taking a day & starting with one room that EVERYONE uses so no one feels like you're just picking on them.
make 3 piles - keep, bin, charity.
I also try to stick by the 12 month rule. if it hasn't been needed bin it.
Once you are decluttered you can then deep clean & put your keep pile away.

Don't try & do too much in one day.

I also became weirdly obsessed with Stacey Solomons programme - there's loads of handy tips on there :)

Pick a room. Start there. If it's the living room, clear all the surfaces you want clear. Pile all the stuff up and just sit there and divide the piles.

John's, Lisa's, mine, charity, rubbish, belongs in another room. Bag up John stuff, ditto Lisa's. Bin the rubbish, bag up the charity stuff and take the stuff that belongs in other rooms and dump it in there. Deal properly with your own stuff. Get that room how you want it to look and then, keep it that way. At the end of the day, make sure that room looks how you want it to.

Then you move onto the next room and do the same.

If John and Lisa don't deal with their stuff tell them it will go in the bin, in the bag, wholesale.

You may need to deal with some things as a category rather than a room. Household paperwork is a good example. You can go round and gather up any household paperwork and deal with it as a whole. This is my least favourite job. We have a cupboard that it lives in, usually in a complete mess until I crack. Because I hate it and because o do most other stuff, this is DHs job and I don't care if he doesn't want to do it. He has to do it. Otherwise he can do some of the other stuff I do instead and he'd much rather do the paperwork than anything else, so in the end we all win!

I actually paid a declutterer. She is a local person who said that she had realised that her mind worked in a decluttery way, and she cleared out our attic and put things into cupboards, leaving a map of where everything was.

obviously, I should have done it myself, but I now have a lovely room for guests and all my Christmas, holiday and camping stuff organised in the right sized boxes.

DH does go through his basket from time to time, usually when he can't find his phone charger or credit card bill, or he's written someone's phone number on a random scrap of paper and has to find it because he wants to call them.

DC are adults now, there are certain rooms in this house into which I do not enter. Every now and again I am asked how come they simply cannot find any clean socks, and there are none in the airing cupboard, or even any dirty ones in the laundry basket. I calmly point to their floordrobe and suggest they conduct a search. 😂

1. Decluttering will reduce the amount of things that need to be put away and cleaned around (or cleaned!). It doesn't have to be miserable or an eco disaster: aim for 'what actively deserves a place in my life / wardrobe / fridge' rather than 'what can I throw away?' Which of your three bottle openers is a delight to use, and are the other two in a fit state to be donated, for example.

1. Everything needs a home and everybody needs to know where this home is. When this doesn't happen, clutter happens. Decide together to ensure its logical to everyone. Use labels if needed, photo labels also work great for the more visually minded with closed boxes (I use HP sprocket but it's been discontinued).

1. Maintenance routines are vital. No space will stay tidy if stuff doesn't get put away. Its simply not possible. I don't go for the 'stair baskets' approach. Instead try to be mindful of putting things away straight after they've been used. My (also ADHD) wife struggles massively with this aspect. She likes to have everything on display. It takes a lot of effort at first. Start small.

1. Tidiness is not your job. Your family members need to play an active or equal part in this. Each person should have their own clearly delineated storage. Discuss what will happen if stuff belonging to another person is left out: will it be left on their bed? In their storage space? My wife and I put things 'away' on the other person's side of the bed so we have to deal with them before we get in. Sometimes they end up in a little pile on the floor but they get dealt with soon enough.

(IMPORTANT: Your family members need to know that this is the situation. Huffing about with piles of their stuff does absolutely bugger all as they likely as not won't even notice. Again - not your job).

1. Get your daily routines sorted. TOMM is excellent for this - again, partner and other family members should be playing equal (or at least some) parts here. Print out the schedule, 3 highlighters, one per family member, get those jobs allocated.

I would just plunge straight into the TOMM tbh as the longer you do it for, the cleaner your home is and the faster it becomes (so the more time you have to deal with clutter etc). Don't worry if you don't complete all jobs at first. Pick a couple. Be strict with the timing - some is a lot better than none.

1. For the storage, try to store alike items together. That way you're always going to know where to look, eg all bedding in drawers in spare room bed, all books in living room or child's bookcases.

Disclaimer: I do this for a living. Not all of these will work for every family but with daily work on everyone's part it's doable.
Disclaimer 2: my home is not a sparkling palace because of presence of said family members, but we've got it to a state where generally we can have people over with little to no notice and there aren't any awful smells 😂😂 despite child and dogs. Putting laundry away is a constant battle though....

Yep TW impossible to get anywhere unless you have a serious de-clutter and then how not to let it build up again. Clutter free is the way forward so Id start with a bribe to your daughter to charity shop all her books. Would she consider a kindle going forward? Tidiest way to hoard books!

I'd also not keep things 'just in case' so your husband needs to do similar to your daughter without the bribe 😀

Start with one room and make it nice with lots of clean surfaces (living room where you all spend time?), and maybe then DD will be inspired to declutter her own room.

Have a look on YouTube. I've been feeling so lazy lately and my house has suffered, it's a tip and I live alone so I've no excuse.
Watching stuff like how clean is your house and ocd cleaners makes me want to declutter and clean! It never fails.

I've always done 3 piles; keep, charity, bin whenever a clear out is needed.
If you haven't used/worn it in the last 6 months; out it goes!!

I'm also not naturally organised or tidy but. I am FINALLY on top of my house.

I watched lots of decluttering videos on YouTube. Minimal mum is a good one. The video she put out today is well worth a watch.
I want SAVAGE and got rid of lots but it was all stuff I'd never use, that didn't fit. I didn't wear. Years worth of paperwork with no use. Excess saucepans, kitchen gadgets I don't use. Books we don't read. Lots of stuff went. Then I found everything a home.

I do TOMM daily. This makes a huge difference. I don't leave a room without doing something to make the space better. For example. If I'm going from the front room to the kitchen I will take any washing up or rubbish to the bin. Whilst boiling the kettle I'll put the washing up away.

Any jobs I hate doing i will time myself doing them. For example putting the recycling out take a couple of minutes. Washing up after a meal takes 10 minutes max. And I feel so much better when it's done.

I won't go to sleep with dirty pots in the sink or a dirty sink. I hate DOING it but it feels nice to come down too in the morning.

I got rid of half our plates (the are only 3 of us) and cutlery. We have enough now but not so many that I can leave the washing up all day to pile up. Same with clothes.. now that we have less we need to wash less.

The key really is minimising your stuff and making sure everything has a home. I was constantly trying to organise my way to a tidy home. That never worked because I just had too many things.

So much great advice! Thanks. And it's reassuring to know I'm not alone. I really like the idea of just getting everything off the surfaces and then sorting it into bags. I think that might be where I'm going wrong. When I try to tidy I wander round looking for things to put out/put away and then it's easy to give up/do a half hearted job. If I get it all off the surfaces to start with, that should force us to really deal with all the crap.

It is disheartening to pick something up and go to put it away, only to find that there is no 'away' for it to be put, because every square millimetre is already full. It turns a 30 second job into a 3 hour one, sometimes.

We watched Nick Knowles big house clear out on channel 5 and the Stacey Solomon program on BBC 1Sort Your Life Out. For my sons room I did what they did. Emptied it completely. Sorted through everything and only put back what they were keeping. Oh my God after a few hours I was thinking what on earth have I done. I'd put everything in the living room🙈 It was so much easier to give the room a good clean with nothing in it. I had no choice but to finish it as the living room wasn't usable either. Was 8 hours well spent. 6 months later and we are still managing to maintain it and are more careful now with what we buy so we don't have to have a major clear out again.

You can also ask your DD/DH to do the same. Buy some boxes for them and ask to put what they want to keep in them

This for me is the losing battle because as fast as I get rid of stuff or put away in it’s “home” other stuff is accumulating. My kitchen is full of stuff that belongs in the garage or elsewhere ( eg ant killer, paint brushes) because the person who left it there doesn’t care if it makes it to its home or not. My DD doesn’t want to get rid of stuff ( eg her old schoolbooks) and even if I say “ ok well you need to find a home for it” it doesn’t move because SHE DOESNT CARE if it clutters up the place. Even Marie Kondo doesn’t have a strategy for getting rid of property belonging to other people. It’s all well and good to say “ get your OH to do X Y & Z” but actually if they don’t give a shit they’ll never do it. My OHs idea of tidying is piling things up and pushing them to one side.

"Even Marie Kondo doesn’t have a strategy for getting rid of property belonging to other people."

Marie Kondo might not, but I do. I chuck it away when they're out and then feign innocence in the unlikely event the owner ever goes looking for it again. 😁

If they're so untidy the clutter has built up unmanageably, they wouldn't find it again themselves anyway.

You chip away at it. If you do it in a massive go mentally you think 'But I did it!' and never want to do it again. Instead you do tiny easy chunks each day.
I use old Flylady techniques

Do a 27-thing-flling where you throw out exactly 27 things you no longer need.

Do a 5 minute room rescue. Set a timer for 5 mins and tidy as much as you can before it rings. Go for the big stuff. Hang up coats, shoes and bags, chuck out old newspapers or junk mail, throw clothes in the laundry, dishes in the sink or dishwasher. It's amazing how much you get done in 5 mins.

Get a bin bag, a charity bag and a box. Set a timer for 10 minutes and sort piles of stuff into chuck, give away or put away. When 10 mins is up put the bin bag in the outside bin, the charity bag in the boot of your car to take to charity and the box of things to put away can be done with another 5 minute timer.

Find the Minimal Mom on You Tube. She has such a straightforward, encouraging way of explaining things. I find her videos very motivating.

Bloody hell. Just typed out a long long post & MN ATE it!!

@MNHQ any chance this is going to be fixed?! It has been weeks now & im really losing the will you live post.

bearing in mind I lost my huge, soul bearing post & don't have the energy to type it all out again, I'm just going to jump in here...

@goldfinchonthelawn

see, I don't 'get' this. What sort of things do people have, that they can just find 27 things they don't need?

I mean I could throw out 27 pencils, but why would I? I'd only end up buying more when I need them?

i could throw out 27 Tupperware containers, but then I'd run out.

27 balls of wool...

WHAT are people actually throwing out?