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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Oh, OP, I feel your pain. My husband is JUST LIKE THIS. I bought new pot holders and he hates them, so he kept the old stained, disgusting ones. And he keeps ALL the sauces. Every few months, I go through and throw them all out. We just moved and I feel like I got a fresh start on anything (not that I'm recommending you move). My strategy is a large basket. I literally just throw all his stuff in that basket and when it fills up, I make him go through it with me and he will throw out maybe 1/3 of it, put 1/3 away and say he'll get to the remaining 1/3 later but never does so it sit permanently in the basket. I also have a small bin in which I throw extra screws, bolts, Allen wrenches, and other random bits and parts that come from putting things together. In about a year, I'll probably throw it all out.

I know this doesn't help you now as you declutter, but hoping to provide some helpful strategies for maintaining after you declutter.[/quote]

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