Help me sort my home once and for all!

[endingintiers]

I’ve tried for years to declutter, have a cleaning routine etc etc - but my house still looks like a 💩 tip. This summer I’m going to sort it. Help me out! I get really overwhelmed (on ADHD pathway)

Please suggest the next thing I should sort / clean or share a plan of attack.

I’m currently in my son’s room, which I finally finished organising the other week but already has stuff over the floor. Going to put his clean clothes away and take any too small t-shirts / pjs out for charity / put new pjs in drawer.

Maybe shoes next, then coats?

Each day set a timer for 15 minutes and tackle something. It can be anything at all but just take 15 minutes at a time. Don't pull out more than you can put back in 5 minutes.

It doesn't feel like much but you'll find you don't get burnt out by tackling too much too soon and it's amazing how much you can clear in a short space of time. Be strict with yourself on this. It works but as long as you don't get over excited (or is that just me) and try and do too much in the first few sessions.
With 15 minutes per day you'll really see the difference in a couple of weeks and it's something you can sustain long term.

Good shout! I need to tackle hallway, we don’t have enough hooks and too many shoes are stored there.

Three of us have wardrobes shoes can go in bottom of but DS doesn’t, I will order him a back of door plastic shoe storage now.

can anyone suggest a good hook system for a narrow hallway? Some coats will be moved to wardrobes but I still think we haven’t quite got enough hooks now kids are bigger (I could put work/school bags packed on hook for example to keep floor clear)

Ok DS room tidied. We had a massive clear out, bought storage and organised a few weeks ago (took 2.5 days) and now it’s so much easier! Want whole house to be this easy to get back in shape.

Here’s my to do list for DS room:

Organising (today)

• Sort t shirts (some too small?)

Shopping (today)

• Order folding wall hooks for hanging uniforms
• Order clear hanging storage for back of door (shoes / hats / ties / belts)
• Order label printer for boxes
• Order two drawer boxes (pants / sports kit)
• Order new joggy bs
• Order gym shorts

Cleaning (Tues)

• Clean windows
• Wash bedding
• Wash duvet
• Air mattress
• Clean surfaces

Shopping (tbc)

• Pick up new hook for shelf in book case
• Buy mirror

To do at home

• Find piano charger

Organising - ask for help

• Needideas for organising school books
• Need ideas for organising desk drawers

If anyone can suggest ideas for the last two that would be brilliant!

Unfortunately 15 mins doesn’t touch the sides at the mo - we seem to be shifting stuff around and I just need to get it cleared / organised so then I can have 15 mins a day to keep on top of it.

I am definitely guilty of gong too fast and furious and running out of steam though 🫢

I got a carpenter to make a tongue and groove panel for my hallway with 4 rows of staggered double hooks on it, total 16. Had to leave it behind when we moved, was gutted. It had a shelf above it for bike helmets and gloves. We put coats, bags, PE bags etc, the lot on it.

There isn’t a drawer system that beats reducing the stuff in them as much as you can unfortunately.

The key things are to declutter then tidy as you go. Sounds obvious but it’s life changing! So don’t let things get messy.

Also ADHD and I've been using chat gpt to give me REALLY simple instructions on what to do. So today I asked it for 5 adhd friendly things to tidy the bathroom. Once I done them (10mins tops) the room looked 100% better and I could "see" the other jobs I could do to make it even better. And as I'd already got the dopamine from making it look better I was able to crack on with things. I really struggle when there's lots to do to find the starting point and the prompts help me get started. You could tailor it by typing a description of the room and asking for actions to address it in an adhd friendly approach.

It also suggested the crap bucket technique which is where you put stuff that doesn't belong in a room in a bucket. Then one of your tasks later is to take 5 things from the bucket and put them in the right spot. I found I could keep going back to the bucket when I was stuck in what to start next.

It can also do daily/weekly routines to stay on top of things.

I would recommend looking up Remi Clog on YouTube. She’s got some brilliant videos on different strategies to deal with the housework /decluttering for people who have ADHD, executive dysfunction etc. as it’s something she struggle with herself. If nothing else, she will make you feel very understood.

Your last sentence - I heard this on a decluttering video on youtube,
that if you buy containers of any kind, you are enabling storage.

Thanks all for comments and ideas!

An update to keep myself accountable:

• Have bagged up cookbooks we don’t use to give away, giving to niece I’m seeing tomorrow. She’s just setting up home and is really excited to get them
• Washed DS bedding / duvet / aired mattress
• Ordered boxes for underwear / socks
• Ordered boxes for desk drawer
• Had a massive sort out of dining room, mostly paperwork which was recycled / binned
• Bought cute basket for DD morning / get ready box (hairbrush / toothbrush etc which now looks so much nicer in the hallway and makes mornings easier
• Deep cleaned cat litter tray
• Sorted art trolley - gave away / binned / recycled as much as we could and is now usable!
• Ordered cute pencil pot so can have pencils out and ready to go on dining table to encourage DD to use them
• Watched a couple of episodes of Sort Your Life Out in 7 days for inspiration

Taking a break but noting next steps:

• Order label maker
• Order pencil pots for top of art trolley / give away drawer storage from there as not working for us
• Use desk organisers for DS
• Use clothes drawer organisers for DS
• Watch Remi Clog
• Tackle hallway
• Buy storage for remote controls

Don't buy storage solutions without really thinking them through first, because what they normally mean is that you can fill them full of stuff that won't fit in any place you currently have in your house.

I went through a storage solution phase.
At the end of it I realised I was just buying more clutter that I could fill with other clutter instead of reducing what I had so it fit in the house.

I got a load of small moving boxes, rented a storage unit and put everything I wasn't sure about in the unit.
It wasn't a cheap solution, but I was desperate for space at the time.

I ended up keeping that unit for a year, but by the end of the year I couldn't even remember what half the stuff in it was and had only needed to go there once to get some Christmas decorations that had accidentally ended up in the unit back.

90% of what I stored I ended up getting rid of once I was used to living life without those bits.
When I kept the same stuff in the house, I ended up growing it by buying storage to keep it in, but somehow could never get everything to stay in place.
I had way too much stuff.

I'm waiting for surgery, the house has physically become too much for me. Husband not domestic. So I hired my DILs cleaner. She's bloody amazing, bosses my husband around 😂

She deep cleaned the kitchen last week. Cleaned two windows on the inside, when DH walked in she told him to go clean the outside of the windows and he did 😱. She said that the oven and the air fryer nerded a clean. Bugger me he's done both.

This week she was deep cleaning the bathroom.
The day before he bleach cleaned the ceiling and halfway down the walls. He's putty in her hands 😂. She really bosses him around.

She did the hallway and front porch. He normally leaves muddy shoes everywhere, not this week. He'd put everything away, bashed out the mats outside and hoovered the dry mud up.

Next week it's the sitting room and front bedroom. Wonder if he'll be cleaning down the walls where his dogs rub against them 😂

I wonder if she'll get him to organise his wardrobe. He's got so much stuff that hasn't fit him in twenty years or more.

Come the winter when she's less busy and im recuperating I'm going to ask her to go through my wardrobes with me and do a big clear out. Keep/charity/throw style. I know she'll be honest 🙈

She sounds amazing!! Don’t suppose you’re in London?!

No Wales, sorry. But she's Irish if that's any help.

@endingintiers there's too much ordering and buying going on. I think that's your ADHD (dd does it and struggles with tidyness/organisation).

I think you need to reduce the stuff first and decide what you need. Otherwise you are just bringing in more stuff without having sorted what you have already.

Hey, we have a decluttering thread here on housekeeping which you are welcome to join for inspiration and accountability. I've decluttered for years and now help a few friends too. I'd start with tidying the most used/visual areas first, such as your nightstand and the bathroom you get ready in as thise are the first areas you see when you wake up. This will set your mood for the day.

I'd also recommend ot buying "solutuons" (very adhd thing, both my dh and dc have adhd) until you have properly decluttered. You can't organise clutter. Use old boxes etc in the meanwhile if you need to.

Also with each item, ask yourself, Does this aid or hinder my life right now? Not your past-self or future-self, but you and your family right now.

And please declutter responsibly. Recycle, reuse, regift, donate etc where possible

Have a lot less stuff, everything has a logical place, the DC tidy as they go (with you helping depending on age).

I would reduce the ordering of stuff (even though researching storage it is a great displacement 😂) and focus on the decluttering.

What helps you to declutter? eg would the decluttering thread here help to make it more of a communal activity? Would having the house to yourself for a day help you? Would giving boxes to fill with “declutter” items to DC help?

I’m steadily getting rid of a lot of stuff after a run of years which saw accumulation of stuff from both FiL and DM deaths “to be sorted later” and then DH’s (he was the main sorter out).
What I have found really helpful is seeing the money roll in to the charity shop which takes a lot of my “clutter” and to the DC where larger items are sold. This won’t work for everyone but a lot of my clutter had emotional baggage and it really helped to see someone else benefit.
The joke is I don’t generally agree with GiftAid, I only signed up in the charity shop on a whim and hadn’t realised they send info on what has been raised - I have been astonished and delighted at the amounts going to a cause I support and it really inspired me to keep clearing.

Decluttering my husband finally threw out a huge pile of hobby magazines from the bathroom I had to hump round from the towel chest to somewhere else just to replace towels. The threat of the new cleaner. He binned the lot. All my pleas to whittle them down had fallen on deaf ears.

It's not just one person in a household who needs to change.

Thanks all!

To clarify I have been decluttering with varying success for years (always give to charity, pass on or recycle). It just never goes deep enough / gets completely finished (I sort into piles then they get mixed up/ don’t leave the house) and as things are a bit disordered they never to seem to have a permanent home so the mess builds up again.

Part of this is finishing the decluttering, but also creating systems to organise things. These seem natural to many but as I live with three people with diagnosed neurodivergence (and awaiting my own diagnosis!) I have to make it a lot more overt. That way hopefully everyone can own the tidying. E.g. I bought boxes for DS hobbies a few weeks ago and spent half a day separating everything and now his room takes 20 mins to get straight again compared to the hours before. His drawers I decluttered but now I’m going to divide them up into pens / pads / paintbrushes etc so that they’re less overwhelming for him (and therefore less likely to get dumped in).

we honestly spend 15 mins a day looking for the remote controls (despite me saying they should be out back by the tv 🙄) so working out a way everyone knows where to put them and does it will be such a time and stress saver! Multiply this by every little task most take for granted and you can see why I’m thinking through storage so hard 😂

that cleaner sounds amazing, I need her in my life!

back from hols and back on the sorting!

I’ve done the following in the kitchen:

• Emptied and scrubbed two food cupboards and food wasted all out of date foods
• Cleaned all food containers
• Used the label maker to label food containers
• Decluttered small electrical appliance cupboard, reduced number of Nutribullet cups and lids by 60%, offered one appliance and recycled two others
• Decluttered Tupperware cupboard, all now same make / size / lid - all now stack
• downsized toddler plastic cups and plates by 80% as kids now tweens
• Donated 12 serving bowls bought for a party 5 years ago and no longer needed
• Donated jug (already have 2 others I prefer)
• donated 2x tiffin tins never used
• moved cat food to cupboard and got rid of basket was storing them in
• donated two water bottles not using
• Cleaned freezer, sorted into tyoes and labelled drawers, got rid of all out of date food

Still to do in kitchen:

• scrub small electrical and Tupperware cupboards
• sort utensil drawer
• order better spice storage
• order utensil drawer divider
• sort junk drawer
• sort coffee drawer
• sort kids cutlery drawer
• sort under sink
• sort alcohol cupboard
• sort oils/ flour cupboard
• reduce mugs further
• order boxes for food processor bits
• order new broom
• order broom clip
• buy new cat food and cat litter storage
• sort understairs

i have friends coming to stay next week so going to use the motivation to sort out DD’s room / spare room / living room

I’ve shifted focus to the bedroom/ living room to keep up momentum:

Living Room

• sorted all DVDs into adults and kids, listed all on app so I know what I have
• found 3 duplicates to donate
• placed all kids in alphabetical order in living room
• removed all adults upstairs to spare room
• used drawer space to store controllers and games for DC’s consoles

Bedroom

• sorted through all five random bags and either recycled, donated or placed away items. Floor now clear!

other

• took three bin liners of fabric recycling from landing to depot
• took one boot load of donations to charity
• took all expired medicines to pharmacy for disposal

next steps:

• sort and clean DD room
• Sort and clean spare room for guests
• wash all sofa covers in living room
• scrub living room / dining room / hallway floors with bio liquid
• hoover LR rug
• carpet clean LR rug
• give old Lego under sofa away

This sounds fantastic!

DP and I sorted out 2 cupboards today. We moved in two years ago and these cupboards were still set up the way they were at the move, plus I’d rammed a lot more stuff in. We threw out a rubbish sack full of things like underlay offcuts and rags, and have got half a bag-for-life of stuff for the charity shop, including some really nice bits that I got given and just don’t like. The cupboards are now clean and logical, and you can see and get to everything in them.

You are doing really well.

I know you were probably talking about your DVDs, but I now have a mental image of you lining up your children in alphabetical order in the living room, while shooing the adults upstairs and shutting them into the spare room.

That should help it stay tidy!