How do you keep your house organized

[Anonymous]

I have messy kids, a spouse and 2 dogs. I am constantly picking up and cleaning after them. They mess up and don't clean right away, end up overwhelmed so they don't even know where to start. I help but end up doing the majority of the work, the cycle keeps going. I also provide about 90% of the pet care. Our problem is compounded by the fact that we live in tiny home.I feel like I missed the age/time when I should have involved the kids (and honestly spouse) more in the house upkeepand pet care. My question is two fold: 1. how can I get my family more involved in the in upkeep of the house this late in the game (married 13 years, preteen kids). Both spouse and I work full time. 2. We are moving to bigger house, I am looking for recommendation on how to get more organized. The following are things I struggle with:

Clutter on kitchen counter (dishes, utensils, spices, mail, condiments, cereal)
Dinning table also always clutter
shoes on the entrance
kids clothes, back packs, books, games in the living room, dining
spouses wine bottles/glasses, opened or unopened packages, tennis racket and skates in the loving room.
Dog toys are all over the place


I have tried find homes for all of these things nut the always end cluttered.
P.s. Both kids have ADD and possibly spouse too.

[Anonymous]

I ruthlessly declutter. Every item has a home. And when buying new clothes or shoes we follow the one in-one out rule. It’s still a constant work in progress.

[Anonymous]

Ugh, it 's a process. Looks mostly like this: me picking up and putting away like a crazed wind up toy in the mornings and evenings, and occasionally freaking out and losing my shit at everyone. Our house thanks to my efforts often looks neat, but I do not keep on top of bathrooms, floors, dusting. My husband helps with laundry and dishes. My kids are older/- now the clutter isn't toys but makeup and clothes (two daughters). I try to bribe them by saying they'll earn money by doing chores, but I lack consistency. So my process sucks.

[Anonymous]

As far as organization goes, when you go to tidy up, is there an appropriate and accessible place to put everything?

If there is, you’re already organized. You can play at the margins to make things easier (like a basket for shoes instead of cubbies) but basically, you’re there.

So at that point it’s just about setting up routines for everyone to tidy and clean.

If, when you go to tidy, you find that the spaces where things go are already full (eg you pick up the jar of cinnamon on the counter and open the spice drawer, but you can’t jam it in there) or you have a big pile of things without an appropriate home (eg you pick up a tennis racket and end up putting it on top of a pile of other stuff in the garage), then you have a clutter/organization problem.

[Anonymous]

Set up routines. Like after dinner, no one can leave the kitchen until the dishes are in the dishwasher or washed and put away, spices are put back, table is cleaned, etc. If everyone is there helping you, it will go by fast.

Shoes— only have the shoes you need by the entrance. Get rid of old shoes, and put out if season shoes away. Then make a place where current shoes can easily be stored.

There’s no reason for dirty glasses and opened wine bottles to stay around.

[Anonymous]

Never too late with the kids. Start with the smaller items. Belongings left in my kitchen? Make a pile and tell them they have X number of minutes to move it to their room. If they ignore, tell them you WILL throw it away and do it! You are not hired help. I insist on the kitchen countertops and powder room be pulled together. The kid bedrooms are another story. It’s summertime, start a chore chart.

[Anonymous]

ADD aside, they need to help, ALL of them. My DS and I have ADD and we are both naturally disorganized, but that means we work harder, not just give up.

Declutter
Make systems
Have clear expectations (visual, not verbal)
Hold them to their chores (with consequences if they refuse or until they do it)

You're enabling them to be terrible roommates/spouses if you keep being the person that goes behind them.

That said, don't have ridiculous expectations of a spotless house all the time either. Pick what's important and put those into place. For me it's dishes, laundry, common space clutter. The other stuff is slower to get done. I don't care as much what they do in their rooms.

[Anonymous]

Clutter on kitchen counter - everything goes in a cabinet. Important: you need to have cabinets ONLY 1/3 filled, to make it easier to see stuff. Own less stuff. You may not be able to insist that all things are put back in the right/logical place. Not going to happen.
Dinning table also always clutter - clear it off. Whatever belongs to each person -- goes to them, even if it's just in a basket next to their bedroom door. If you want the dining room table clear, always, you can have it that way.
shoes on the entrance - I wouldn't worry about this. If each person has many pairs, extras get put in that same basket outside their bedroom door.
kids clothes, back packs, books, games in the living room, dining - again, they go to the person who owns them. It's their problem now.
spouses wine bottles/glasses, opened or unopened packages, tennis racket and skates in the loving room - his stuff goes into "his" basket. Garage stuff to the garage.
Dog toys are all over the place - 2 or 3 dog toys. Don't own more. Put them in a common place but it's volume that solves this problem.

[Anonymous]

I am literally working with an organizer so that everything has a place then - the next step is making sure everything is in its place.

It’s frustrating picking up after everyone else in the house! Usually I just end up taking screens until things are cleaned up.

[Anonymous]

Same situation. Everyone has ADHD. Tiny house, lots of clutter, husband has hoarding tendencies and has no ability to sort through his stuff.

Thankfully my two teen children are lovely and kind. It's a struggle for us three, but occasionally we get our act together and declutter all our stuff and deep-clean the house. Usually we do that at the end of the school year, to get rid of that year's accumulation of paperwork, and every time we have guests over - which isn't frequent, because we don't have the wherewithal to clean that often!

So despite my children's struggles with ADHD, they are slowly learning how to clean and how important it is, socially, to tidy up. I have good hope that as adults, they will have the ability to clean and sort, even my son, who has ADHD/ASD and exhibits the same inability to sort as his father. What saves him is that I've taken him in hand earlier than my husband, who apparently wasn't taught to clean anything by his parents.

In practice, despite our best intentions, we let stuff accumulate until all the surfaces have mounds of stuff on them, and we can't take it anymore, and I say, let's have a tidy up. Or when we're having a dinner party, and we need to clean before the guests arrive (we do that over several days, given the amount of work). We still can't tidy daily, because apparently no one except me is able to put things back in their place right after they use them! I'm trying to teach them all this skill! What I'm struggling with is that right now, no one notices the mess until I point it out.

I have a double shoe rack in the entryway and police the amount of shoes everyone puts on it (I'm the worse offender!). Off-season shoes go in the basement in a separate container.

I have a box for dog stuff, and have gotten rid of stuff that didn't fit inside it. Our dog destroys most toys, so he doesn't actually have a lot lying around.

There is a designated area for backpacks, but I need to constantly remind kids not to just leave them for everyone to trip over in the hall.

The kitchen counter tends to clutter, but I do actually have a spice rack and cupboard space to put things in...

The dining table can get very cluttered if I don't remind everyone to get their stuff off. We just had a dinner party and now it's pristine, but I'm sure mail and paperwork is going to creep back in...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am literally working with an organizer so that everything has a place then - the next step is making sure everything is in its place.

It’s frustrating picking up after everyone else in the house! Usually I just end up taking screens until things are cleaned up.

I had a revelation when I started co-oping at my daughter’s pre-k. Every day 10 minutes before snack it looks like a hurricane has blown through, and by snack everything is tidy. It’s because everything has a place, and everything is “just enough” organized. So blocks in their respective bins, but you don’t have to sort plastic fruits from plastic vegetables for example.

It’s really true that if you have not too much stuff and homes for everything, you can “catch up” on tidying relatively quickly even when things have gotten out of hand. When you’re disorganized or have too much stuff and things get messy, it’s much much much harder to dig back out.

[Anonymous]

Shovel and a wheelbarrow .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am literally working with an organizer so that everything has a place then - the next step is making sure everything is in its place.

It’s frustrating picking up after everyone else in the house! Usually I just end up taking screens until things are cleaned up.

I had a revelation when I started co-oping at my daughter’s pre-k. Every day 10 minutes before snack it looks like a hurricane has blown through, and by snack everything is tidy. It’s because everything has a place, and everything is “just enough” organized. So blocks in their respective bins, but you don’t have to sort plastic fruits from plastic vegetables for example.

It’s really true that if you have not too much stuff and homes for everything, you can “catch up” on tidying relatively quickly even when things have gotten out of hand. When you’re disorganized or have too much stuff and things get messy, it’s much much much harder to dig back out.

This is the key. I’m not a professional organizer but have been told by every person who steps foot in my house that I should be. And the key is for everything to have a home. You need to start tackling one room a week. Find an out of sight space for every single item where it can live. Everything in my house is labeled if that would help you but it’s not for everyone. I also have three young kids so the labels help them know where toys go. The ikea trofast storage solutions are genius and easy for this.

Also, you need to be merciless about getting rid of stuff. It’s likely that when you start you won’t be able to find a home for everything because you have too much stuff. Go through every single thing you own when you do a room a week and look at it. I know people make fun of Marie Kondo but she had the right idea. We hold on to 90% too much stuff because we are sentimental creatures. But then the stuff we think brings us joy actually causes more stress. Get rid of 1/3 of the things you own. Dishes. Clothes. Shoes. Toys. I promise you will be happier with less stuff. And then the key like a PP said is one in and one out. Be ruthless about sticking to it.

It sounds like you’re about to move to a bigger house? So do this as you pack. Look at every single thing you own room by room and downsize. Then as you unpack make sure every single thing you own has a space to go.

It also sounds like you have a mail problem. You tend to have mail and papers everywhere. When you get the mail immediately go through it. Bills have a spot (my husband has a home office so they immediately go there). School
Work has a spot (my kids each get a small bin each year for school work that is special and they want to keep and everything else gets recycled. But do it immediately.

Good luck! I promise once you have a system in place you can do this and maintain it.

[Anonymous]

We don't have tons of stuff. Everything we do have, has a place. Everyone knows where everything goes. If kids drop something where it doesn't go, they are called back immediately to put it where it goes. They are not allowed to do anything else until that is done. Everything gets cleaned up before moving on to the next room/activity, etc.

So we're all eating dinner? Dinner finishes, and one kid brings all the dishes to the kitchen sink, and a parent loads the dishwasher. One kid brings all the leftover food to the kitchen counter, and one parent puts leftovers away. One parent wipes down the kitchen table while the other washes stuff that doesn't go in the dishwasher, and one kid sweeps the floor. It's not until the kitchen is all cleaned up that we leave the kitchen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As far as organization goes, when you go to tidy up, is there an appropriate and accessible place to put everything?

If there is, you’re already organized. You can play at the margins to make things easier (like a basket for shoes instead of cubbies) but basically, you’re there.

So at that point it’s just about setting up routines for everyone to tidy and clean.

If, when you go to tidy, you find that the spaces where things go are already full (eg you pick up the jar of cinnamon on the counter and open the spice drawer, but you can’t jam it in there) or you have a big pile of things without an appropriate home (eg you pick up a tennis racket and end up putting it on top of a pile of other stuff in the garage), then you have a clutter/organization problem.

NP here. The issue in our house is, if I am the only person who puts things away, and all the kids and the spouse can't be bothered, it is very hard for one person to keep up with all those messy people who don't notice, care, etc. that things are out of place. It can be exhausting and discouraging, after years of them not putting stuff back where it so obviously belongs.