Organizing and cleaning an insanely disorganized house

[Anonymous]

I try to switch my mind set to “if I saw this at someone else’s house, would I think it needs to be trashed/donated”?
Much easier to get rid of things without an often silly emotional attachment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Loving the suggestions! When it comes to donating old clothes, I have to admit this paralyzes some of my efforts because I don’t have a go-to place, so it just gets shoved somewhere for “later” which then becomes never. I’m in Arlington if anyone has some suggestions.

I have just been using Green drop - they come to your house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you can create a budget for furniture or storage items to help organize. One problem we had was that there was no where for some items to go. When we invested in a few strategic furniture items we suddenly felt like things were so much more organized.

That has to be part of the keep/don't keep calculus. Keeping something includes the cost of some way to store it. You really need to get yourself away from thinking that it's free to keep stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you can create a budget for furniture or storage items to help organize. One problem we had was that there was no where for some items to go. When we invested in a few strategic furniture items we suddenly felt like things were so much more organized.

That has to be part of the keep/don't keep calculus. Keeping something includes the cost of some way to store it. You really need to get yourself away from thinking that it's free to keep stuff.

Op here. We bought some big bookshelves a few months ago and that helped a little. We have so much stuff I know my husband will never willingly part with, complicating the process. A lot of it defies easy categorization, and I’m at a loss of how/where to store a lot of his random and ever-accumulating stuff. Are there any specific furniture / storage solutions you would specifically recommend as helpful? And to give a sense for the overwhelmingness of the decluttering and cleaning task at hand, a few minutes ago I decided to tackle a simple kitchen drawer that we use to store pan-holders and hot-mitts. As I started removing the top layer of mitts, I found like 200 ketchup and sauce packets (and something had definitely exploded along the way!), and just the biggest blob of random free crap presumably from take out orders (think straws, napkins, plastic forks). I really thought that drawer was mostly empty, but the truth was someone’s been shoving stuff in there for years! If the whole house is basically a large-scale version of the nightmare secret ketchup drawer, maybe I should just move and start over!!!

[Anonymous]

It sounds like your husband may be a hoarder. Have you looked into medical diagnosis and medical treatment? You might be fighting a losing battle...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like your husband may be a hoarder. Have you looked into medical diagnosis and medical treatment? You might be fighting a losing battle...

Nah - and I can only imagine the marital repercussions if I tried to get him diagnosed as a hoarder. Seriously, though, he’s a slob with too much stuff but it’s more of a lazy path-of-least-resistance thing than an unhealthy attachment to things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you can create a budget for furniture or storage items to help organize. One problem we had was that there was no where for some items to go. When we invested in a few strategic furniture items we suddenly felt like things were so much more organized.

That has to be part of the keep/don't keep calculus. Keeping something includes the cost of some way to store it. You really need to get yourself away from thinking that it's free to keep stuff.

Op here. We bought some big bookshelves a few months ago and that helped a little. We have so much stuff I know my husband will never willingly part with, complicating the process. A lot of it defies easy categorization, and I’m at a loss of how/where to store a lot of his random and ever-accumulating stuff. Are there any specific furniture / storage solutions you would specifically recommend as helpful? And to give a sense for the overwhelmingness of the decluttering and cleaning task at hand, a few minutes ago I decided to tackle a simple kitchen drawer that we use to store pan-holders and hot-mitts. As I started removing the top layer of mitts, I found like 200 ketchup and sauce packets (and something had definitely exploded along the way!), and just the biggest blob of random free crap presumably from take out orders (think straws, napkins, plastic forks). I really thought that drawer was mostly empty, but the truth was someone’s been shoving stuff in there for years! If the whole house is basically a large-scale version of the nightmare secret ketchup drawer, maybe I should just move and start over!!!

Pretend it's temporary. "Hey, is it OK if I put all the stuff in this drawer in the closet for a bit?" Then straight to the trash. He'll never miss it. If he does, say it must be in the house somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The original Flylady book is actually good for a project like this.

Second this!

[Anonymous]

Act like you're moving and do you want to carry all this crap with you? If not donate it all.

[Anonymous]

You all are great with advice and I do not want to derail, but I'm so curious about OPs circumstances. Is the mess all hers? Does she live alone? Does she have a clutterbug she's battling. So many quetions!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Marie Kondo book is good. It will guide you through the whole house.

I have to say I found the Marie Kondo book disappointing. It was very short on specifics, just a lot of generalities and pep talks about how much better you'll feel when your life is free of clutter.

I also didn't like that she seemed to have only one solution for everything, the landfill.

Well, I guess the landfill worked for me.

Mainly what I took away is the process of picking a category, piling everything, sorting into keep/donate/trash, then creating homes for everything that’s a keep.

[Anonymous]

Throw money at it and hire someone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Throw money at it and hire someone.

Honestly, I’m not sure it lends itself to hiring someone, at least not at this stage. The cleaning eventually, yes, but the bigger challenge involves going through everything and tossing/organizing. Sadly, I don’t think I can outsource that one.

[Anonymous]

Look at the website called Unf—k Your Habitat. She propose short sprints to get it all done and is quite amusing too.

You can get cleaning lists from her website.

[Anonymous]

OP, other than your husband, how many other people are in the house? What is their role in the problem and in the cleanup?