From disorganised to organised ?

[Burntout101]

Has anyone managed to go from disorganised in everything - e.g. clutter, paperwork, keeping on top of finances, meal, planning , laundry etc. to organised.

I'm naturally messy and disorganised but working on it and seeing some improvements in some areas such as starting to feel a slight change in decluttering mindset and not losing my keys as much.

Just wondering if anyone has achieved a level they're happy with and not beating themselves up all the time. Any easy tips or life changing practices?

Yes but you need to invest time and energy

DeCluttering is key do not buy more storage until you have done this

Get and AirTag or or similar for your keys - I lose mine all the time.

Declutter 10 items from each room for 10 days.

Deal with post instantly

Set up a financial spread sheet - finances are different but I have just spent 2 hours filling in a spreadsheet.

Also depends what your house is currently like? Is it messy or do you have to much stuff so can't tidy properly

I would choose three things to do, and attempt to do them properly rather than trying to change everything. For example, meal plan and do some batch cooking/prepping once a week, sort a laundry system (I only do a wash when I know I can get it dry and ironed same or next day) and clear kitchen every night.

If you find any of them don't work or other people don't pull their weight, you can revise. If they fall into place, you can add more.

Everyone says decluttering is the one thing that will make everything easier, and I think that's right.

Easy or life changing no, but I think it comes down to committing to spending more minutes every day cleaning/sorting/organising/doing admin. A lot of "hacks" come down to making it feel as easy as possible to spend the extra time - hiding it as the odd minute here or there to make it feel like less. If you can spare the extra time each day and want to do so then accept it will take longer, maybe even make it a goal to spend longer than you currently do on these things each day, and you will see progress.

If you are severely time-poor and have no spare minutes each day to get on top of stuff, then arguably that is a different problem. Maybe look specifically for hacks that aren't, at their core, ways to trick yourself into spending more time on cleaning/organising.

Personally I like the organised mum method, and I don't find Dana K White that useful because her podcasts take so long to listen to. I need efficiency in my cleaning media content! Flylady in general I find far too overwhelming but look up her home blessing hour, which I do on a Monday (my own version) alongside my TOMM living room tidy.

Laundry I favour blitzing once a week. Two days a week are laundry, which leaves 5 days free for everything else without getting bogged down by laundry. We clear the basket every week. My older teen does their own darks, I just do their whites. Keep your old meal plans - I literally just chuck mine in a drawer - and reuse them. Consider meal planning 2 weeks at a time and repeating so you cover a month, or even 2 months, with one set of planning.

Not yet but am bloody trying!

I am a tidy person, I can't stand mess and clutter and clean constantly! So I have a tidy house but I do spend a lot of time so it is.

I would say that everything should have a home- in a cupboard/drawer/box/shelf/hook/hanger etc. If anything doesn't have a home, make one or get rid. Declutter regularly- donate old clothes and books, deal with post and paperwork straight away - read, then file or throw away- tidy food cupboards etc.

Deal with a small section at a time - a room, a cupboard, a drawer. Then just move to the next small section.

Yes, but I have needed sessions with a professional declutterer to help!

I prefer a tidy house and organised cupboards. The key to this is absolutely having a home for everything so nothing is too difficult to put away.

Then do a daily sweep round of stuff, and plump cushions etc last thing at night. Weekly thorough clean and daily swish round sinks and loos.

Put away laundry as soon as its done and deal with post - shred, file or action.

Yes but it took a few years and I still need to improve.

I’ve always been quite all or nothing (mostly nothing!) so I’d spend hours cleaning but would hide bags of clutter in a cupboard / the loft etc. Then when the clutter got bad I’d spend hours decluttering and the house would get dirty apart from the one small area that I’d focused on like inside a cupboard.

So for the past year or so I have started to focus on the more public areas of my house. I always have a clean kitchen every night, I open and file my post every day (at one point I had a post ‘mountain’, the sitting room is always tidy with cushions plumped, throws neatened, rugs straightened, and the downstairs toilet is always clean. It takes a few minutes a day as these areas are largely declutterred. Then I’ll spend a few minutes (or hours if I have time) decluttering / decorating / organising / spring cleaning my house) but making sure my tidy areas never get bad again. I also set myself weekly and monthly to do lists. This week it’s mainly about putting away the Xmas decorations and decluttering them and doing a thorough hoover, dust of the areas that had decorations. This month my main project is to research and order a blind for my bathroom.

Is think you need to get other members of your household on board for it to work properly. It's not just a case of you knowing where the home for particular items is but them knowing it too and being bothered to then put the item there.

I have a list of everything that needs doing in my house, in order of where they are, so I am constantly gradually working my way through the house, I then have things i do on certain dates or daily. Has worked for me. My house is never perfect but it really helps with mu anxiety as it takes me a couple of weeks to work through so nothing goes more than 2 weeks (including things like cleaning walls and Skirting which were once things that got done rarely!)

This is my target , would be so amazing 😍

Brilliant thank you, you sound a bit like me. I've just shredded old bank statements and documents and it felt so good, have me hope I can do this!

Will try to focus on the public areas like yourself as we often feel too embarrassed to have visitors round.

Ah this is interesting. Did you feel embarrassed when they came round? How many sessions and was it expensive? I wanted to do this but my husband forbade it because he was too embarrassed for someone to see the mess. 🙈

I did! I was an incredibly messy person in my teen years/twenties. I made a lot of changes and decluttered a lot, but the most important thing was a mindset shift. I stopped thinking I was a messy person. I just realised I needed to apply the same energy to my home as I did to my work and relationships, and after the first few hurdles, it's not been too terrible maintaining it. I needed to care more. I think the whole binary of 'messy' and 'tidy' is a bit of a myth. I don't think people are inherently one or the other. Thinking you are messy just gives you a get out jail -card.
Sorry for the tough love but if I could flip ot, anyone can.

But yeah. Absolutely first step is owning less stuff. You can't organise clutter.

A Slob Comes Clean podcasts and books have totally changed my mindset and over the last few years I've become far far better at managing my house and not living in chaos. The books are How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind and Decluttering at the Speed of Life.

It is quite expensive - about £100 for 3 hours but he took away stuff for the charity shop and the tip too which really helped. The first room he helped me with needed an awful lot of moving of furniture too which he helped with
I didn't really feel embarrassed but I guess that depends on your personality. He was not at all judgemental and let me make my own decisions about things but I found the prompting really helpful. I have a chronic health problem that causes fatigue and I just wasn't getting on with anything.

With regards to embarrassment - what is more embarrassing, continuing to have a very messy ( and probably dirty, because you can't clean properly when it is messy) home, or actually doing something about it. Saying you are too embarrassed could be a good way of continuing to procrastinate!

my tips are - read Atomic Habits by James Clear (and/or watch some of his videos on Youtube which outline the methods). Tiny things done daily will build habits like nothing else. For example, 1 minute of a job you hate done daily is easy but 1hr is awful if you can't motivate to do it.

Also use an app called "Tick Tick" which is free and you can add your atomic habits into it and tick them off / have the recurring daily.

Also declutter like there is no tomorrow! Nothing will mess up your plans better than having mess and clutter everywhere. And scale back on purchases while you're at it!!

I was very messy till moved in with v tidy dh. We are now both more in the middle.

Clean kitchen every night so it's a fresh start in the morning. Revelation for me.

Thank You, this gives me hope as I am decluttering a little every day ! Will check out atomic habits 👍🏻

Not too tough at all ! Great advice on the mindset shift thank you

why should you be embarrassed? They won't judge, they will be grateful, you are a client! Literally how they make a living.

Frankly, the more messy your house, the easier the client to deal with. A declutter in a minimalist home is .. pointless. How would they justify their fee?

Imagine a cleaner arriving in an absolutely sprinkling home. Great, they can hoover a floor that doesn't need anything done. Says no one ever.

@Burntout101 Please don't ever feel embarrassed about your way of life. I'm a professional home organiser and rule number 1 is never ever judge our clients. Also, your "mess" is the reason we have a job so it's also about finding what joy means for you, we're on a journey! (Reach out if you need tips to get started - I'd be happy to help)

Try not to get overwhelmed - I can see your username!

I agree with pp that it’s about developing habits. So I have my before bed routine to leave the house tidy and I’m in the habit of putting things away now that I’m more mindful. I listen to lots of podcasts on adhd as I have kids with adhd so encourage them to habit stack (ie if you have one task in a routine combine it with a second task), deal with things in their hand because if they put them down they leave them there (eg dd2 now washes her yogurt pot and puts it in the recycling bin rather than leaves it next to the sink - which she had thought was helpful) and we gamify tasks so set timers etc. This has taken a long time but it’s worth persisting with.

There are decluttering/ organising accountability threads in housekeeping and it might help you to join.

I've developed better strategies with time and resources like Marie Kondo, The Organised Mum and A Slob Comes Clean (Dana K White). It's not instinctive to me and I was raised by a hoarder so entered adulthood with pretty much no tidying skills and tidying/ cleaning up was a monumental mental and physical effort which developed an overwhelming cycle.

I suspect there is ADHD through my family. My DCs are ND.
Interestingly, a lot of SM organisers are ND (Clutterbug and Dana K White come to mind) and they've had to manually develop systems.

Strategies that work for me:

Mirroring (having someone doing something in parallel at the same time) I subscribe to TOM Rocks "guided cleans" with instructions (they range from 5 mins to 2 hour house resets). I also like videos if it's something static like folding laundry.

Keep things near point of use. The easier it is to put away, the easier to maintain. Keys are hooked near the front door- I have to go past it. In the kitchen the spices are next to the hob, the cutlery next to the dishwasher.

What type of organisation suits you. Clutterbug is good for this. I am not a minimalist, and I need the visual prompts of seeing things. My DCs have mesh drawers in the wardrobe so they can see what's in the drawers. I don't want a minimalist house with lots of bare surfaces- I find it unsettling and I wouldn't have those visual prompts.

Break jobs down into small chunks of time. Spend 10 mins dealing with a drawer/ corner and tick it off. It's not so intimidating. You might gain momentum to do the other zones. Don't aim to blitz a whole room in an epic, overwhelming mission. It's easier to clear things out in small installments too. Making things X minutes better is more acheivable than setting a big pass/ fail goal like "tidy the lounge".

Work out where to dispose of unwanted items. Don't complicate it. For clothes, I'll never manage to sell on Vinted. The best bits can go direct to the charity shop. Bulk stuff to charity banks. The best way to manage stuff is to avoid buying excess in in the first place. That's where the financial cost is made and that's where the environmental cost is. Don't get hung up on hypothetical value- it is only worth what someone will pay for it in the immediate future.

Work out what is blocking you. My kitchen normally backs up because the bins need emptying. If I shift that first and get the dishwasher going, everything else can start flowing.

It doesn't have to be perfect all of the time. The house is a mess right now after two weeks of family at home. But I have a strategy. My dishwasher has just finished its second load of the day, so I can crack the kitchen tomorrow. The laundry is being blitzed so the DCs have uniform tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll use a multi-room reset to spruce up the living spaces. It's doable in an hour so I'm not phased about it or driven to a rage clean where I'll burn out getting everything immaculate before letting it look a mess again a week later in a cycle of despair.

I’d say I’m generally quite organised but I have to work at it and before now I had a lot of ‘stuff’ so probably was more disorganised than I thought. it has taken a few years to get to where I am now but mainly due to moving house/jobs etc.

As others have said, having a place for everything is key so you can implement the phrase DON’T PUT IT DOWN, PUT IT AWAY!

I have a wooden organiser in my kitchen where I put post and bills etc to be dealt with once a week. It also contains things like the bin schedule, spare stamps, spare change, it has 2 drawers where I keep all keys and pens. So anything miscellaneous/useful goes here and I never lose keys.

meal planning and prep - get a physical weekly food planner and write out all your meals for the week then shop accordingly. I use online delivery for the convenience.

I decluttered a lot of stuff last year, including getting rid of 32 photos albums just by going through and throwing out any that were duplicates, blurry or of people I didn’t know. The remaining albums are now displayed on a shelf and easily accessible where read before I’d not looked at them for years.

regular vinted/charity shop and throwing out sessions for clothes. You do have to be a bit ruthless but get rid of anything you don’t wear or love to make wardrobe space.

and one of the biggest differences I’ve found was spending (a lot of) time going through all my financial docs, getting rid of any old statements etc. honestly I had piles and piles of paper but consolidated everything into one big lever arch folder with sections for banking, mortgage, pension, insurance, bills etc. all in one place. I have another similar folder for household manuals, guarantees, etc so that’s all in one place too. Go through a couple of times a year getting rid of anything no longer needed.

physical calendar on the wall so I can clearly see birthdays and key dates. A drawer dedicated to wrapping paper, spare cards, gift wrap, sellotape, scissors, labels etc so no scrambling around.