A question for those of you who have had experience of a really untidy or unclean house who now follow Flylady or TOMM or similar?

[Frayedcarpet888]

I would appreciate an honest answer please!

Do these little and often systems work if your house has really got badly out of control and is mucky and bordering on hoarder levels in some areas?

In other words, if you tackle the master bedroom for thirty minutes on a Tuesday or whenever, and just do that limited amount of cleaning in that specific area at that time ONLY once a week or whatever, will it eventually come right or will the mess in the interim take over again?

Or do you have to do a massive home re-set and start with a clean slate for these systems to really work?

Also, is it true you can declutter a massive house 15 minutes at a time?

Thank you.

Both. We seem to have lots of books and clothes that do not have a home.

And the young adults I live with are not good at tidying up after themselves. Lots of bags, clothes and papers strewn around. They are all students.

I got resentful and thought “sod it why should I pick up after them?” But then no one did it and add to that an operation for me with an eight week recovery period and everything has now gone downhill really badly.

Treading water is a good start. That means it's working and not getting worse.

Short rounds of decluttering on top will make it better. The other benefit of short rounds is that the clutter is easy to shift. It will fit in the bin/ recycling/ be managable for the charity shop etc.

This video by Dana K White is great. She's literally sorting out a cupboard using her decluttering questions. Because it's one item at a time, she's not making a mess that gets left when life gets in the way and attention/ time runs out.

Break it down into small patches. A drawer, a shelf, that patch of worktop... It's managable then and it does add up. It's not like getting overwhelmed at dealing with a whole room and then finding that you've got a whole room of organised chaos that needs dealing with later and then it slips back rapidly.

You want to see a small defined improvement without hitting overwhelm and shutting down. The stuff must leave the house too.

I also find that mess is the stuff I use regularly, but the worst clutter is loitering ignored and redundant in the drawers. Clear that out, and you can put the active mess away more easily. It's the clothes you wear in the washing pile, and the clothes you don't wear in the wardobe, so a 15 min sort in there to make space makes the treading water easier.

Thank you to the posters who have suggested putting individual people’s clutter back in their rooms.

It sounds so obvious but when you get overwhelmed it’s hard to think straight. Lame though that sounds!

I will start by reclaiming the public rooms. The kitchen and bathrooms are ok. But the floor is partially obscured in both the sitting room, the dining room and hall.

Could everyone get on Kindles? In my family, I was slow to get on board as LOVE my books, but we're on it now and I got rid of dozens and dozens of books.

We've also gone digital for movies and music, so bye-bye hundreds of DVDs and CDs!

I am sorry you had an operation and no-one did a thing to help. I think it's time to start instilling a bit of give-and-take with the young adults.

I understand how daunting it is to keep trying to make a difference when those around you do nothing to help and even more annoying when they actively make it worse!

There is no need for them to leave bags, clothes and papers strewn around the living area.

There needs to be a family discussion about this and if they won't comply, just start dumping all their stuff in their rooms. Don't even bother to sort out what belongs to whom. Let is be mixed up in anyone's room. Let them battle it out. Make it so inconvenient for them to be messy that they'll find it easier to look after their own belongings!

Also join one of the fb pages for one of the methods. Even if you don't truely follow the method, it's so motivating to see real homes with real messes and how people make them better around real lives.

I don't know the detail as I only read the headlines but Amazon are doing a recycling scheme with their packaging.
Which might be worth looking at if they are constantly getting delivery boxes.

My friend has a policy of one in - one out. Which works for her if you bring a t-shirt in, one needs to go

One issue with paying someone to do a Big clean is you need to tidy up first and that's what takes time. You cannot ask a cleaner to clean clutter and mess.

You're not lame. I've been there for years! Still am sometimes!

I think I have undiagnosed ADHD, I don't really know.

But I know what it's like to be in such a swirl that you don't know which way is up, where to start, what to do next, and you just want to do something else and not face it until tomorrow, which never comes.

This is really kind of you thank you BogrollBOGOFF

And to everyone else who has replied. I’m very grateful.

But the floor is partially obscured in both the sitting room, the dining room and hall.

Years ago, we had to actually kick a path through the living room, it was strewn with so much stuff. I hear you!

Sounds like the Living Room is your hotspot, OP?

FLY FAQ | FlyLady.net

Below is from the website:

"A Hot Spot is an area, when left unattended will gradually take over. My favorite analogy is of a hot spot in a forest fire, if left alone it will eventually get out of hand and burn up the whole forest.

This is what happens in our homes. If left unattended, the hot spot will grow and take over the whole room as well as making the house look awful. When you walk into a room, the hot spot is the first thing you see. Your eyes are locked on it. Over the years my hot spot has migrated.

As a child it was a chair in my bedroom. I would pile it to the ceiling. Right now I have two hot spots in my home: the dining room table and the bed in the extra bedroom. The dining room table is a staging area. We put the unopened mail there, as well as any thing that needs to go to the basement. Some times you cannot see the top of the table. This is the first thing I see when I walk into the kitchen. Granted, the pile has only been there since last night, but if I don’t deal with it first thing in the morning, it will collect many more items by evening. CLUTTER ATTRACTS CLUTTER. The Bed in the extra bed room is just the same. I use it as a place to put things that don’t have a home.

Do you have areas like this that continue to grow if left alone? Does the rest of the family see this as a place to put things when they do not want to put them where they belong? It is our job to NIP this in the bud. Get rid of that pile, find the surface underneath, and stop the Hot Spot from becoming a raging Clutter inferno! – FlyLady"

Thanks for this. I really like SEEING the stuff get done. Inspirational!

And thank you wuvoobee that’s very encouraging.

Thwnk you everyone for the helpful suggestions about recycling, kindles and Facebook groups too.

I appreciate every reply - all the tips are very motivating!

I have done tomm but started here yesterday on the flylady support page . I had to have an ENORMOUS declutter to get started ( 67 full black bin bags to be precise ) but with every bag of shite I filled , I felt such a sense of achievement. I couldnt have followed either system had I not radically decluttered first though

To help with clutter, I recommend orjenise 100 January challenge (on Instagram). I did it last year, and doing it again this year. The aim is to use up or get rid of 100 items over the course of the month. Each day she gives you a task - 1st Jan is toiletries - and you pick a few of them to either use up or throw out. It’s really manageable, and really flexible. I had a lot more time on 1st Jan than I usually have, as I wasn’t working, so I actually spent quite a few hours cleaning out my toiletry drawer in my bedroom as well as 2 bathroom cabinets, as well as my make up.

Day to day I loosely follow TOMM. I’ve done it for years and it’s adapted over those years to suit me. I never did do the boot camp, and, to answer your original question, I did find that each room improves slightly week by week just by the process of spending half an hour in it. You get faster at the process, or in some cases ditch some of the jobs (I’m not moving beds/sofas to vacuum under them every week, that’s a bit excessive for my standards). And it does become very clear that clutter makes it harder to clean and makes everything take longer. So over the years I have slowly got rid of a lot of it and not bought more. For example, a table top with nothing on it takes seconds to wipe, but if it’s covered with ornaments and stuff, you’ve got to take all the items off, wipe, dust all the stuff and replace them. So it’s made me very choosy about ornaments over the years.

My house got completely out of control - attic was full, spare bedroom piled high and another downstairs room going the same way. Boot of the car full and the floor was full of crap.

We decided to tackle the lot in a weekend, tv show style and made a certain amount of difference, but we hadn’t tackled the underlying issues and left ourselves with the hardest part to sort out in piles everywhere, and stuff moved around out of the way, and both of us completely exhausted by our efforts.

I started following Dana White around that time - Flylady and TOMM hadn’t worked and I was very jaded. Dana’s blog was very funny and I recognised myself in the way she thought so I gave her methods a go.

I will not lie. progress was slow - and for a long time it felt like treading water but eventually I felt like we were moving forward.

There’s no comparison now between my house then and now even though I haven’t changed as a person. I just have better systems and I don’t waste my efforts on the wrong things. Now I don’t hesitate to invite people in, and have family over, encourage my dc to bring friends home.

Dana is about making tiny bits of progress and maintaining them while keeping all the plates of daily living spinning.

But it’s not exactly about spending minimal time on housework (TOMM promises that and doesn’t deliver because it ignores everything else that needs doing on a daily basis) - Dana suggests a 5 minute pick up, but that’s not suggesting you only spend 5 minutes tidying. It’s about noticing that 5 minutes matters and doing it when the mess feels too much, or getting everyone involved so your house gets 5 x four people worth of minutes, or doing several 5 minutes worth. Or using 5 minutes as a guide stick for your clutter threshold.

Ive put quite a lot of time into my house, but I’ve also been able to sustain dry spells by knowing what basic tasks to pare back to when the going gets tough.

The key is not to waste energy doing the wrong things or doing things in the wrong order. Before, I would have done a major declutter project - pulled everything out, but let other (less exciting) jobs pile up, or focused on reorganising my hot press and bedside locker instead of scrubbing the toilet.

But also I have the principles stuck in my head now so I’m always putting things away, and decluttering something (maybe just holey socks when I’m doing a wash) where before I’d have been leaving those things to do later.

So to answer your op - I’ve found following a method has transformed by home , but it’s not been tiny amounts of time for me.

I think if you can find a method or system that clicks then that’s half the battle.

Dana is about making tiny bits of progress and maintaining them while keeping all the plates of daily living spinning.

This is something I struggle with so much! I need to take a look at Dana White’s method thank you - and to the pps who suggested her method earlier.

Thank you I will look at Instagram.

Well this is day 2 of doing the kitchen properly after dinner. Just got to keep the streak going
Even cleared off the dining table, which is a terrible hotspot on our house.
Got a washing marathon tomorrow, then a putting all the clothes away marathon.
Just keep making small progress. If every week is better than the last then eventually a tipping point of 'good' calm tidy and peaceful is inevitable, right?

Logically speaking, yesKeeeeeepDancing you’ve got to reach a tipping point eventually! Well done on your cleaning streak!

The only issue is other people messing it up in the meantime I guess!

It does work. I do FlyLady. The system helped me organise my whole life. Yes to gradually decluttering too. No to the initial reset, you start wherever you are. Feel free to join the Fledgelings thread if you want.

Thanks again for all of the support on here.

Varied views but I appreciate every single reply, thank you very much. I feel more motivated to start now 😃

If there was a single, correct definitive way, there wouldn't be different methods, and they probably wouldn't exisit anyway because people would just learn how to do it.

What works for DH is resounding faliure for me. He goes for the seemingly logical approach of work from the top down but doesn't run out of steam so tends to finish things on a reasonable timescale. If I use his logic, I would have filthy floors because the same jobs would never get done. He's not wrong, I just find his strategy unworkable for how I tick. Left to my own devices, I'll do what's bugging me most because it's probably most needed and I won't focus well on anything else anyway.

I suppose if you look at all the systems the answer is basically have a routine / time table so all the house gets done.

Once every few weeks have an extra focus on one room

And to be aware of hot spots that just accumulate clutter

Yes very good points thank you Sugarfree23 and BogrollBOGOFF

I’m probably asking the wrong questions 😀

It’s not the method that’s intrinsically important I suppose, as long as it suits you, but more the consistent doing

I agree. Simpler to keep starting. I tried this and it did work whilst I was doing it.

Doesn't matter if it’s not done,just keep starting.

I guess that is similar to fkylady’s just jump in where you are.