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.

I think trying to do any kind of tidying or cleaning when you have too much stuff is always going to be a constant battle where you never feel you’re getting anywhere- or that you’re back to square one all the time- whether you’re going for big one off sessions or little and often. I’d make decluttering the priority, once you get the number of things down to a more manageable amount, the tidying and cleaning becomes massively more manageable. I found TOMM didn’t work for me at all until I’d decluttered a huge amount. I find the Minimal Mom really useful for decluttering inspiration, she’s got loads of free videos on YouTube.

As a random example- TOMM has a bedroom day (as part of the Level 2 weekly jobs)- and one of the tasks there is to strip and wash bedding on that day. A year ago doing bedding weekly was almost impossible- not because I didn’t have time, but because the competition for the washing machine was huge- I had soooo many clothes and massive piles of unwashed laundry, and the idea of halting the ‘normal’ wash to do a few loads for bedding every week was just stressful- so I’d leave it and leave it until it was in desperate need of doing- and then I’d bite the bullet but have to play catch up with normal laundry for days after. Same with towels. But now I’ve got the numbers of clothes for me and the kids down- laundry is just easy, so I have no issue setting aside a day to purely do a few bedding or towel loads. Same with so many areas of the house.

I think little and often is good though- both cleaning and decluttering wise. Partly because it gets you into the habit of doing it. But either method will frustrate you if you’ve too much stuff, as you just turn your back and relax for 5 minutes and stuff is everywhere again, it can be so demoralising!

Thank you very much for this advice. Laundry is a huge issue here. My young adults are clothes mad! I am going to initiate a family conference and suggest that we massively reduce the amount of clothes in our home.

And I agree we need to focus on decluttering overall! It’s a good time of year for it!

They work. I use some (not all) Flylady techniques.

For me, the best thing is that even if the house gets back to chaos/hoarder-ish state, I feel calm as I know exactly how to tackle it. There's no overwhelm. I throw away 27 things. I do a 5 minute tidy up of the worst obstacles. I clean the visible bits of the room. Total time invested - about 20 mins. Massive impact on wellbeing. Do the same in each room. I now have 2 really tidy rooms all the time and a kitchen that is never more than 15 minutes away from looking good. And the hallway is always only 5 mins away from looking welcoming and inviting. Other rooms need more work.

I don't get on with TOMM. Not sure why. I just like Flylady's 27-thing fling, 5 minute room rescue and one-hour home blessing. I don't stick religiously to her weekly zones but would if I was houseproud. I'm just not!

@Frayedcarpet888 a lot of this laundry is not actually laundry it's clothes not put away. Not everything needs washing just becauae it was worn for 3 hours after school; too many clothes maybe the problem or chucking it in laundry basket as a storage system instead of setting aside to wear ago tomorrow maybe the problem instead by all means call a family meeting but make it clear no clean or barely worn clothes into laundry. I suspect washing too much too often is the real problem. if you believe everything needs to be washed after one wear then you can do that but acknowledge this is a choice you are making to wash more

20 years ago I read a feng shui book about having a beautiful house. It advocated throwing one thing away every day. That was easy, at the start I found one thing led to another, but just parting with one thing really helped break the mindset of having to keep things. When the kids were little, I could often find loads of things to throw away every day, party bag toys etc,
I think over time throwing one thing a day away really helped

Was it Clear your Clutter with Feng shui? By Karen Kingston?

i loved that book. And ii remember throwing away one Xmas card as my beginning.

So my house wasn't a complete disaster, but it wasn't great, and I kept thinking I'd start TOMM once I'd decluttered everything and done the bootcamp.

In the end, I just started regular TOMM and although it's trickier (ie cleaning the surfaces if they're still cluttered), I could see results with the little and often quite quickly. And then having a cleaner, nicer area made me want to declutter more - highly recommend the Slob Comes Clean no mess method for this. The momentum of starting helped way more than "I'll start once I've done XYZ" ever did.

How old are your children @Frayedcarpet888 ? Could you allocate them each a day and tell them they need to do their own washing on that day? If they miss it, they have to wait a week.

I don't think the 15 mins at a time systems work if your house is totally chaotic and out of control in the first place, because you can't physically do the amount of stuff they suggest takes 15 mins in that amount of time - it takes ages because you're having to move crap out of the way and you can't put things away properly and you don't just have one day's worth of dishes, bathroom grime or whatever so that in itself takes more than 15 minutes.

Also, one of my problems/why my house gets into that state in the first place is because I really struggle with consistency/maintaining stuff every single day. So the basis of a system where you just do a little bit every day, but every day's "bit" is carefully crafted to ensure that over a whole month (or so) everything gets a turn simply don't work on a fundamental level for me. I've tried lots of them, and not only do they take more than 15 mins (because of the previously mentioned issue), I get behind on them or skip days so everything builds up again and then I get demoralised and it's so hard to start again that I just can't face it.

I have also had 2.5 "total resets" - one where I fled an abusive relationship with not that much stuff, one where I moved country and only took about 30% of my stuff, and then I did Konmari (though didn't actually finish it) and got rid of a load of stuff. It didn't help 😨 The moving country one probably did help a bit for a while.

What has worked for me is:

A Slob Comes Clean - I started with the podcast and then I bought her books. She has a different system. It's basically two concurrent things - she has managed to boil down cleaning maintenance tasks into two absolutely minimum steps (dishes and 5 minute tidy, which you start with 5 mins even if your house is so ridiculous that 5 mins means putting away one thing) so I always know where to start - and then a second concept which is similar to Marie Kondo in that it's about reducing the level of overall "stuff" in your house down to a level that you can cope with, but she does this in such a brilliant way that it actually changes your relationship with bringing things into the house as well. I was very much a "hoarder lite" - could never throw things away and wanted to keep everything "just in case" or keep stuff aside that I was trying to sell and this really helped me with that tendency.

You do obviously have to do more than just dishes and tidying - I've had other systems to work out what to do with these. But TBH also, just by doing dishes and tidying I find if I have a good day then that sort of naturally seems to progress to wiping down the kitchen, putting some laundry on etc. Labour saving devices like a tumble dryer, dishwasher, robot hoover, hand-held hoover etc also really really help with this.

The one I use currently is an app - Tody - it sorts jobs by rooms and also allows you to sort by how urgent the task is. There are other apps that allow you to put various jobs with different recurring intervals, but I like this one the best.

I also used to have a list which I'd run through which was sort of a "check list" - so I had to check various areas of the house to see whether or not something needed to be done. Because these jobs didn't need doing daily, I felt like I was "getting away with" 60-70% of the list every day and somehow this made me motivated to do the bits I did need to do. However I feel like this needs to be custom made and I last did it in a different house.

OK I have read rest of thread.

I do feel like the progress has been quite slow/more like treading water, and sometimes I wonder "Did this really make a difference or am I kidding myself this time?" But for example when I look back at old videos of the DC, there is just crap EVERYWHERE - literal rubbish, every kind of item, clothes, toys. It's quite embarrassing and it reminds me of when I was in a group chat with some people who were gossiping about a FB group member and they mentioned that they had noticed "a very chaotic environment" in the background of every photo the person posted to the group and it made me feel a bit sad - the fact that they both noticed it and were judging it (even though they were pretending to be sympathetic - they defo saw it as a sign of her struggling). I just would have thought of that kind of mess as normal "young kids" kind of stuff, but they thought it was something different.

Anyway, I can tell it's different this time because I don't have all that crap in every photo any more, that general top layer of clutter just is not there. I do still think our house is a bit "not really normal" levels of untidy/messy but it is already better than it was.

OP you keep saying about consistency and yes - but this is where my pain point used to come in because I literally cannot be consistent under my own steam - it's my biggest struggle, so I kept getting stuck here as I'd start something, then be inconsistent with it, then it wouldn't work and would be really hard to get started again and then I'd go into a spiral of self-loathing over it.

I think honestly the reason this system worked for me when all others failed is that if it's really really bad, all I need to do is the dishes - and that never takes THAT long. I can do more if I need to but if that's all I can do, then it's all that I do.

Every other system I've found has too much fluff/too many steps in the daily stuff - you don't NEED to shine your sink, wear clothes, make your bed etc - but you do need a counter without dishes piled up on it, a floor you can walk through, and bins that are empty. Without these three things everything collapses because it becomes a multi step process to do anything at all.

I can't be consistent, but every system needs consistency to work, it was where I got stuck again and again. The key was to ditch the guilt about my inconsistency and make the barrier to restarting really really low. Because once I get into it, then I'm fine and I keep going at least for a while (then I'll fall off the wagon again etc) - it's when I can't get started again, and the barrier to learn/dream up/get excited about a new system is too high that it used to get really bad.

I also have ADHD as others have mentioned but it was undiagnosed for the majority of the time I was trying to work all these different things out and not really understanding why none of them worked. And I've only really been on medication properly since maybe July - but I can see the change in photos going back to about 2022 (which coincidentally or not, is when I bought the first Slob book according to my amazon history).

I do think different things work for different people, but it helps if you pick someone who is starting from the same point you are and who you relate to on some level. I know a lot of people my age really really love KC Davis (How to keep house while drowning). I DO like her, but she is very earnestly woke and absolutely of the tiktok era of the internet, whereas Dana (Slob lady) is from the blog era of the internet which is much more my thing. She is a bit older than me but her children are about the age of my eldest. I actually don't know how I didn't find her before - I would have probably followed her blog avidly! She was going through it all just when I was which is probably why I relate so much to her story. (Her latest podcast BTW is called "Getting started when your home is overwhelming" )

@BertieBotts really useful posts Bertie. I resonate with a lot of it.

You mentioned a slob comes clean helped reduce stuff in the house in a brilliant way. What was that?

It's too long to explain, she wrote a whole book about it and it's concepts that come up a lot in the podcast too. Just lots of combined tips that work well together. I will try and list some but I'll definitely miss some out!

Container concept - designating a container for items and having that as a sort of limit for how many to keep.

Flow chart type thing including "Would I even THINK to look for this in my house if I needed it or just buy a new one?" If not - get rid.

Taking stuff where you'd look for it, rather than putting it in some logical-sounding place - ensures you don't end up with multiples everywhere that you can never find.

Strategies for getting decluttered stuff OUT asap rather than holding onto it forever because "I'll ebay that some day" or "I should give that to so-and-so".

If you're going to use it "some day" just use it now or get it out. If you don't want to use it now, you're going to have the same objection every other day until your house is full of crap.

Lots of arguments against all the usual stuff "It's expensive" "I might never find another one" "my grandma loved that" etc.

Having a donate box/bag available at all times so you can declutter constantly as an everyday home maintenance task, rather than it being some big involved thing. Any time you are tidying up if you find something you no longer need, just put it in the box rather than abandoning it in a random place in the house. Have the box in a prominent location so you notice when it's full, donate the box itself without unpacking it.

NOT having a "keep box" or "keep pile" and NOT pulling everything out of a space at once.

Doing the easy stuff first - getting rid of rubbish or obvious things that you don't even like and have been meaning to get rid of for ages. Gaining momentum by doing this before you try to tackle anything harder.

Combining decluttering with getting on top of recurring type cleaning (like dishes and laundry) so you keep the amount you actually need rather than keeping 3-4x the amount of spares because you're always behind on the washing.

@BertieBotts that is so lovely and kind of you to do that 💐

I like all of those tips. Especially the putting things in logical
places. I’ll check out her podcast.

@BertieBotts relating hard to so much of your story. And to the aspects of Slob that work for you, especially consistency and restarting. I also have adhd.

I suspect that her normal
people /brains like ours humour won’t age well but it was my first inkling that I had more going on than I realised.

I quite like the normal person/slob brain thing - because not all ADHD people struggle with housekeeping anyway - I think it's probably more of an overlap, in that people have different levels of mess tolerance and have learnt different habits (or not!) from childhood, and then in adulthood you end up with this sort of cleaning style/personality. So if you are naturally not very bothered by mess, but you don't have ADHD and you can clean up when you need to, you probably don't need the podcast, and if you have ADHD but you live quite simply, don't like accumulating loads of stuff, and find it easy to keep on top of things then you probably don't need the podcast. It's likely people who happen to have several overlapping challenges.

So for me, it's

Childhood norm = fairly cluttered, non routine type home, wasn't really made to do chores, didn't get into those habits.
+
High mess tolerance = don't really care, I'll do my thing around the mess and only get upset when I realise things are broken/lost. Mess doesn't stress me out. I think this might actually be a sensory seeking thing/stim - like I'm looking for a lot of visual stimulus. I really like the "maximalist" style and find minimalism unsettling.
+
Slight hoarder tendencies = hang onto things too long, get caught up in "the best possible way" to reuse/get rid of things. (Sentimental personality!)
+
ADHD that makes it hard to maintain habits and routines and means I get distracted halfway through doing things and time is very, very, wibbly wobbly to me.

I don't get the impression that Dana has the childhood history because she always talks about how her own mother is clean and tidy. But she had a different problem that I don't have where she constantly overbuys everything and wants to have loads of extras "just in case", whereas I can say no thanks, I already have enough of that.

Sorry didn’t spot that this thread was still ongoing!

BertieBotts you really are a star! 💐💐💐.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart because you have absolutely nailed the issue and it was so kind of you to go to all the trouble of explaining it all in such detail. Consistency is absolutely the issue. As is the self loathing when I can’t make a little and often method stick.

I also have quite a lot of unhelpful resentment that it’s all been left to me but that’s a separate thread! I am going to park that for my dcs’ sake and move on.

I am so glad that your ADHD diagnosis has helped you significantly as well. So very interesting and helpful to read about your progression thank you.

You helped me on the Teenagers thread once too when I was posting under a different name and one of my teens was a bit lost (all very much ok now thankfully) so I owe you double thanks!

I will look at the Tody app you find useful and I am definitely going to listen to that podcast!

And thank you so much to all of the other pps on here who suggested A Slob Comes Clean too. I think that with a combo of Flylady techniques will do the trick.

And thank you to everyone who has posted. I have read all of the posts and every single suggestion - and I feel a lot happier about the rather daunting task ahead of me. I have started now whereas before I didn’t know where to start and I know how to proceed going forward.

My dc are students and young adults and I lured them in with a big bowl of spag bol and we had a serious discussion and they have all agreed that things are out of control in the clothing department. They have so many Primark type items that they wear once and never wash. And stuff they bought on Vinted and wear once or twice. I hate the waste. And the clutter.

We have all agreed that we need to change our ways, be more eco-conscious, and acquire less at the outset, and we are all going to half our wardrobes and jettison stuff that we don’t wear often.

I have said they can have the laundry room exclusively Friday, Saturday and Sunday (and I can always use it early in the mornings in those days as I am up much earlier than they are) and I will have it exclusively Monday to Thursday and we’re going to revisit the system after a month to see how it is working for everyone.

I have nailed a row of hooks on to each of their bedroom walls for clothes being worn currently. And I have hung two hotel style laundry bags from each one. I have also bought them a new laundry basket each which are named.

We are on day two of clearing out wardrobes and chests of drawers. Emptying, cleaning and lining with pretty lining paper. And I’ve bought drawer dividers. The idea being that once the laundry is dry and folded it has a place to go instead of floating about the house or ending up on the floor!

Thank you again to everyone who has posted!

Oh, well I'm glad that your teenager is doing better! And that it was helpful what I wrote on here. I can't think what I would have said that could be useful on teenagers because I only have a 15yo who is quite chilled out

I’m pretty sure it was you Bertie! 😁

Bertie that post! I resonate with it so much.
except my childhood was quite ordered and we all
had cleaning tasks on Saturday.
But I also have a high tolerance for mess unless things are lost or damaged. Im
still hoping to come across some keys I lost (Erm 4 years ago)

Also want the best outcome for moving things out. I found it easier with baby stuff as I had friends who were having children after me. But there’s still a lot of kids stuff about.
I’m on the wait list for Adhd. And it’s too long.

Last few days I have been starting different jobs. So it’s a bit chaotic but things are moving out at least. Biggest thing is rearranging my bedroom.

What works for me to get things out is just to have a very small amount of things that I actually bother to try and sell and I have a routine for this. So basically I have a regular meet up with some friends with youngish kids so anything clothing/toy related I tend to post in the chat thread there and if someone wants it, I can bring it to our meet up. If nobody wants it then it goes to the next stage in the process.

Then there is a very small/specific selection of things I'll bother to go to more effort to sell - basically, good quality children's clothing and electronics, or anything bulky that it would be easier if someone would pick up. Everything else isn't really worth the bother. And it's counterproductive to hang onto boxes and boxes of things to sell, unless I know there is a date coming up like a car boot sale, then I use that as a sort of deadline, but after a very shit one last year I don't think I'll bother again.

So all other things I have a sort of formula.

Broken electronics - off to local IKEA recycling station
Poor condition anything else - in the bin/recycling.
Decent condition clothes that are plain/boring/won't sell or adult clothes - into clothing bank on my road.
Books - into book swap box in our village.
Decent condition anything else - into a bag in the downstairs toilet. Once this is full, I note the next free day and I take the bag to the second hand shop that I know accepts absolutely everything. I drop the bag in their drop box, have a mooch around the shop, job done.

The key is getting it all out ASAP and not keeping stuff around for weeks waiting to build up a specific amount to do something with. So for example for clothes or books I just take them the next time I leave the house, even if it's only one item. I know that technically for example I could take old clothes to H&M to get a voucher for a discount, but H&M is a bit of a pain to get to and I don't go that often, so it's a barrier, whereas sticking them straight into the donation bin by the bus stop is easy. Throwing them in the bin is easy. Getting the clothes out of the house ASAP is more valuable than getting a 10% voucher off H&M.

If you have a lot of children's clothing and toys stored then it might be worth looking up a local NCT branch or Mum2Mum (or whatever else exists now) to find out what their process is to sell, or just putting them up in bundles on FB marketplace. Or contact an organisation like Homestart and see if they would take them - just don't procrastinate on finding the "best" way to get them out - just get them out! Charity shops tend to shift this kind of thing well so that's another option. One issue with selling on your own is that January is peak decluttering season and people aren't shopping as they are skint. So if you do want to make money on it then storing it until Easter is the best thing to do, but weigh that aginst do you really want it to hang around another 2 months and will it be in the way?

And if you are going to donate stuff and are deliberating over "Is this trash or should I donate it?" just throw it away. The charities have to spend money throwing things away that people have donated. Only donate stuff you'd happily pass on to a friend.

Excellent advice. I do get stuck on moving things out. Your system is specific and ordered. And more importantly makes sense. Ill check out IKEA electrical recycling. I have broken things on the loft from 20+ years ago!

And I’ll look into Homestart.

Work used to organise a toiletries collection at Christmas for homeless/ shelters. And they could be part used. I donated loads and it was cathartic plus I felt like I was doing good. And not wasting things.

Thank you for your decluttering disposal guide Bertie! Again, that’s really helpful!

Place-marking on a very interesting thread, hope you don't mind OP. Sorry I can't offer any of the help you are looking for - I'm another hopeless housekeeper.

I also found your list of reasons why your house was untidy @BertieBotts fascinating and loads on it resonates with me.

Reasons why my house is super untidy and a bit grubby in the corners:

I detest throwing things into landfill. So, I don't own much and I don't buy much because my mind is always on consumerism and the damage it does to the planet. But I have trouble letting go of things that the four of us don't need any more (no one else in the family ever does any decluttering).

I detest housework and resent every minute I'm doing it.

I also don't really see untidyness and don't mind it - until we have visitors or it gets pretty bad.

My mother was a very neat and tidy person, always had a list on the go and everything in her house had it's place. I consciously do not want to be like my mother, for other reasons, so I think this being the opposite to her in the housekeeping department is part of that.

I have a particular problem with children's clothing. I loved buying clothes for my kids (often second hand) because their clothes always fitted nicely and they looked great in them. They were not overweight (unlike me) and I enjoyed buying clothes for them and dressing them in a way I never have for myself.

I also have a time management problem and get bored within seconds. If I'm folding laundry for example I HAVE to say to myself "you must do at least 10 items" or whatever, otherwise I'll just stop and do something else.

I'm going to watch this thread and refer back to this list - I think it's helped to write it down.

Apologies for de-railing.

Welcome to the thread LindorDoubleChoc 😀
and no apologies necessary! Glad it is helpful. The more the merrier and a problem shared etc!