Almost there!

banana468 · January 2022

My plan for the weekend for her:
-swap dressers: clearly the one in her room is undersized and not doing her favors
-Remove anything from the closet that's old
-Pair up shoes and put them on her shoe rack
-buy some more drawer organizers if we look like we need them.
-vacuum everything

short+sassy · January 2022

STARMOON44 said:

I was a deeply messy child. And I’m not super tidy now. I really wish my parents had broken things down small. Like. Very small. “Today, we are going to go through this one drawer together and organize it.” I remember being so overwhelmed all the time. I also think I just needed more support than normal around this. Def nature not nurture for me, my sister is very tidy.

Me too! I totally blame my parents. They both had a lot of clutter also.

There was one time in my life when I kept all of my things organized and in their place. I was renting an apartment with roommates, but I had the master bedroom. It had an enormous walk-in closet and I also had my own en-suite bathroom. Also when my H and I ran from Katrina and lived in a one-bedroom condo in Miami for 3 months. We only had one suitcase of stuff, so it was easy to keep things organized. Though by the time we left, we probably had the equivalent of two more suitcases of stuff (but in boxes).

It was an epiphany. That maybe it's not so much in my nature to be cluttered, but more I have a hard time getting rid of things so I run out of space. I think if I had a big enough house with enough storage, it would stay pretty organized. Maybe someday (sigh). I go through bouts of purging and I no longer add to the piles. But it still feels like it never ends.

missJeanLouise · January 2022

@banana468 I was Chiquita as a child, especially the finding something else to do other than cleaning despite whatever was taken away. Part of it was it just not being a priority to me (my mom would always say "doesn't it feel good to have a clean room?" and to me it made no difference, in fact almost felt uncomfortable, unlived in.) and part of it was not knowing HOW to organize my things. Same as @STARMOON44, I needed more support.
Then I dated a boy in highschool who lived in a cluttered, messy, gross house. Now I try to keep things tidy mostly out of fear of it becoming out of control, which it seems to do so quickly. I was so messy as a young person but eventual embarrassment has finally guided me into trying to be better, lol.

There is a British show, I can't remember what it is called, where they pair up extremely clean people with extremely dirty people to clean their house. That show always motivates me to clean something. I will never be someone who enjoys tidying but I can be someone who isn't embarrassed to have someone randomly stop by, and that's good enough for me, lol.

kerbohl · January 2022

@MissKittyDanger My mom has scrapbooked for years, and she has dozens of albums. She does beautiful work. She doesn't like the journalling as much, but she arranges pictures/documents/keepsakes all the time. I'm no good at it - I do digital scrapbooking only, just with photos. You can get really into it - buy a Cricuit, the fancy albums, all the decals ...

ILoveBeachMusic · January 2022

@MissKittyDanger I have a ton of scrapbooking supplies that I have for sale on FB. I wish we lived closer so you could get them!

My mother bordered on hoarding later in her life. She also wasn't the best housekeeper when I was growing up. Because of this, I tend to be compulsive about cleaning and keeping things organized/purging. My daughter is like me while my sons are the total opposite. When the boys were younger, I had to have major consequences in place for them to keep their runs straightened. To levioosa's point one was diagnosed with ADD the other with ADHD.

MissKittyDanger · January 2022

@kerbohl @ILoveBeachMusic I've asked a few people saying how involved in can get! I may see if I can get some inexpensive stuff from the dollar store to try it out and see how it goes.
Cricut has been on my list of "wants" for awhile, but we're purging a lot of our old crap so I basically promised myself I'd reward myself with a Cricut when that's done :')

ei34 · January 2022

@MissKittyDanger I scrapbook sometimes, usually surrounding an event (honeymoon, my kids' 1st birthday parties, a special vacation). I usually only buy the book bc what's going in the pages are the physical momentos as well as a couple of photos. Okay and for the honeymoon scrapbook I bought a couple sheets of "Italy" stickers at Michael's too.

@charlotte989875 really glad to hear about your BIL!

I grew up in a house that was clean but not tidy. I go out of my way to keep drawers and closets clutter-free now, but it's definitely my least favorite chore. My kids aren't inherently tidy either, I'll ask them to put toys away and they'll throw them in their toy area instead of sorting the Legos from the characters from the vehicles, it's a real work in progress. I'm trying to teach them young but it definitely doesn't come naturally for any of us.

charlotte989875 · January 2022

I’m the messy one but this thread has given me a lot to think about. My mom pestered me about cleaning my room and I just didn’t care, but also didn’t really ever have anyone to teach me how to be organized.

Alternatively my therapist once said that with anxiety my brain is always in survival mode and so it lets less important things go because I’m focused on the big scary things so maybe it’s a bit of both?

H hates clutter, is super clean & organized. His mom was a SAHM and their house is immaculate. He gets frustrated with me but he also does most of the cleaning.

mrsconn23 · January 2022

I'm a messy person. I can live in clutter. DH is always complaining that "it lays where it stays" regarding DefConn and me.

I will get the itch to clean/organize when it gets too bad, but looking at my desk right now...it's dusty, there's a pile of mail with my wallet on top of it in the corner, my passport is sitting with my phone on it, I have paper scraps everywhere. I clean up my desk about once a quarter.

I will let laundry sit in piles at the foot of our bed or in front of my dressers. My dressers are always cluttered. I'm terrible about putting things down on a surface and walking away.

I was messy kid for sure. I remember my parents would tell my sister and me at like, 6 and 8, to clean our room. To us, that meant putting in 5 min of effort, finding something to play with, and eventually clearing our toybox out to sit in and take a pretend bath. I will tell DefConn to pick up his room if it reaches critical mass of too much shit all over the floor, which means he should put toys back in bins and whatnot, but if I want it clean/decluttered...I have to go in work with him side by side.

DH's mom cleaned his room for him. I know that's who she was, but I will never be that person. LOL I mean I cleaned DefConn's room when he was little-little, but he's in there with me now from start to finish.

I clean best alone. I have to basically set aside a day off and tell myself I'm going to clean. And honestly, that only happens if we're having some sort of 'event' where more than family or friends we see all the time are coming over. Otherwise, we do our standard 'rush' clean a day or two before.

We have gotten better in the last year or so about picking up more often and not cluttering our main house areas (living room/kitchen). I have been on one lately about hanging up coats every day in our closet instead of leaving them on the post of the stairs that lead to our living room (we live in a split level).

missJeanLouise · January 2022

I love this cleanliness discussion.

Working in theater and workshops taught me that organization is EV.ER.Y.THING. I don't mind having a lot of stuff as long as it is organized, the more organized the better, but it takes a lot of work to keep it that way. DH is oblivious to mess until it is toppling so it falls on me to try to keep order. If I was on my own, I would be messier. My preferred way of cleaning is all day and stoned, can't do that here but I would if I could. Getting a robot vacuum has helped a lot, even DH has jumped on board with getting the downstairs "robot ready" before bed in the evenings.

MyNameIsNot · January 2022

ILoveBeachMusic said:

@MissKittyDanger I have a ton of scrapbooking supplies that I have for sale on FB. I wish we lived closer so you could get them!

My mother bordered on hoarding later in her life. She also wasn't the best housekeeper when I was growing up. Because of this, I tend to be compulsive about cleaning and keeping things organized/purging. My daughter is like me while my sons are the total opposite. When the boys were younger, I had to have major consequences in place for them to keep their runs straightened. To levioosa's point one was diagnosed with ADD the other with ADHD.

You are my mother! My maternal grandmother veers toward hoarder (luckily not rotted food or anything gross, but like years of newspapers). My mom did the same as you, and responded by being compulsively organized and tidy.

Growing up and especially as a teenager, mom drove me nuts with it. She would let me keep my closest however as long as the doors closed, but every surface was clear. My dorm was a wreck, but as I've gotten older I've embraced mom's philosophy and am pretty tidy. There is still a lot of shit crammed in the back of closets. If I can't see it, it doesn't bother me. That's probably why I still have clothes from college.

VarunaTT · January 2022

I'm honestly not sure what I am. I think I'm kind of a messy person, but my mother was a hound about it. Then, exH was a hoader and K had the ADHD nests, so I was always trying to organize our lives around that. I definitely have nests of stuff, but I try not to let them linger. I generally have a "everything that is here needs to have a spot", and it does, but the WHEN of it making it to the spot is a tossup.

Casadena · January 2022

charlotte989875 said:

I’m the messy one but this thread has given me a lot to think about. My mom pestered me about cleaning my room and I just didn’t care, but also didn’t really ever have anyone to teach me how to be organized.

Alternatively my therapist once said that with anxiety my brain is always in survival mode and so it lets less important things go because I’m focused on the big scary things so maybe it’s a bit of both?

H hates clutter, is super clean & organized. His mom was a SAHM and their house is immaculate. He gets frustrated with me but he also does most of the cleaning.

i often feel like we are the same person.

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