Reply to Organizing and cleaning an insanely disorganized house

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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!!!

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Okay - this is fine! You’ve gotta start somewhere. So, throw out all the random takeout stuff. All of it. That’s step one.

Then step two is to stop and think for a second. How many pan holders and hot mitts do you need? Well, you’ve only got two hands. And maybe you cook together sometimes, that’s 4. And maybe two more as backup. That six total, MAXIMUM.

So go look at the drawer again. Are any of the pan holders and hot mitts ruined? Throw them out. Do you have more than six? If so, go through them and pick your 4-6 favorite. The others need to get out of your house. If any of them are nice ones (no stains, etc), then start a “donate” box. The rest go in the trash.

Check the drawer again. Is it gross? If so, clean it. Any of your newly chosen hot mitts need to be washed? To the wash they go. Put the rest back in. Done.

That sounds like a lot, but outside the cleaning (which this does seem like a more extreme case of, most drawers I wouldn’t bother cleaning until way later in this process if it’s just regular dust/gunk rather than sticky ketchup) I bet it’s only 10 mins of work. Which means you can do six drawers in an hour.

You’ve got this! Just jump in and don’t be afraid to throw crap out.  [/quote]

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