Help me sort out my life!!

amother

Tue, Mar 01 2022, 3:05 am

Literally! I need help sorting through my home! I have an apartment and it is just so cluttered. I feel like I am constantly throwing things out, sorting, giving things away... but it makes no difference.
Kids come home with thousands of projects, prizes, worksheets.... and everything little plastic toy is "special".
Then we get to the
clothes
Toys
Books
Etc
Etc
Etc

I have plastic bins with names/pictures so kids can put away. I try to set us up for success but doesnt always help...

I need some support here! I am drowning in stuff!! Way too much clutter!

I dont have a lot of support in real life for this as kids have ADHD etc and it is so hard to get them to put their regular stuff away let alone this clutter. Plus we are all so rushed in our daily lives with work, school, bedtimes, daily cleaning like laundry. I work full time too so I cant devote a lot of time to this at once but it has to get done!! My goal every day is to toss out or give away a handful of things but honestly I just dont see a real impact in what I do.

Help me! I need support and encouragement. Definitely the encouragement that it will eventually look like I am trying to swim out from under this. At least that I am trying although I really want it to be under control.

zaq

Tue, Mar 01 2022, 9:03 am

First, recognize and acknowledge that it is harder when you have young children, even if they don't have ADD, kal vachomer if they do. You can't expect your home to look like something out of House Beautiful or even like your empty-nester Auntie Jane's. That's the nature of the beast.

Second,understand that organizing and decluttering are two separate functions. You purge first, then organize. Understand also that neither is a one-and-done. Both are perpetual and ongoing processes.

I do suggest BORROWING and then returning--not buying!--a book or two on decluttering and organizing. This is for chizuk and inspiration, not really for instruction, since you sound like a person who already knows what needs to be done.

Try not to let the clutter in the door. (Ha! Easy to say when you don't have kiddies bringing home their precious projects from school!) Attack and dump junk mail as soon as it arrives. Accept no freebies. Display children's projects or school papers for a set time period, whether it's one day or two weeks, and then get rid of them. Don't hang on to anything you don't have a use for right now.

Consider following what my friend calls the "real estate method." This means designating a limited and specific area and volume for each type of possession. Say you decide to allow two feet of shelf space for children's books and four feet for parents' books. When those two or four feet are full, that's it. You don't acquire a new book unless you first get rid of enough old ones to make room for it. If you allow each child one bin for toys, or have two or three children share a bin, then when the bin is full, you don't acquire new toys before first getting rid of some old ones. If you have a bulletin board for projects and papers--which I recommend doing (one for the whole family or one for each child, whatever you can tolerate) -- then projects are displayed there and only there. When it's covered, regardless of how short a time papers have been up there, you get rid of the old ones to make room for the new ones. Yashan mipnei chadash totziu.

It's not all that different from controlling the contents of your fridge. When you come back from grocery shopping and discover that there's no room in the fridge for the perishables you just bought, what do you do? That's right: you start pulling things out of the fridge to serve for lunch. And in the process you probably throw out a container of moldy cottage cheese you didn't even remember was there, the putrefied remnants of the tuna salad you made for seudah shlishit three weeks ago, and a petrified lime that you bought to make margaritas last Cinco de Mayo and never did.

You do the same for the rest of the house. You don't look at things and ask yourself "Will this come in handy some day?" Oh, no. Every scrap, every device, every thread must be scrutinized and weighed thus: Does this item earn its keep? If it's not being worked or worn or loved to death, it's not earning its keep and it's got to go.

Most of us have far more possessions than we need, and when it comes to children's possessions, especially toys, this is truer than true. No child needs Magnatiles AND Legos AND Clics AND blocks any more than you need a stand mixer AND a blender AND a food processor AND a breadmaker. Not that it isn't wonderful to have all of them, but if your kitchen measures five feet by eight, you're going to have to make some tough choices. And if your child is one who has difficulty putting things away, the fewer toys you have with dozens if not hundreds of pieces, the better.

I suggest asking an expert on ADD--possibly someone with ADD herself--for tips on ways to organize things to make it easier for your children to control their own possessions. One tip I read that makes a lot of sense is to make things easier to put away than to retrieve. For example, having one big bin for shoes makes shoes easy to put away, though finding any particular pair will take some doing. For a person with ADD, this will usually be a better system than having a series of pigeonholes, each of which holds one pair of shoes.

You can do this.

amother

Tue, Mar 01 2022, 9:41 am

So yeah, I have read decluttering books. I know the difference between purging, sorting, organizing. And that it isnt one and done but lifelong. And while I try to use the "container concept" (a slob comes clean blog but sounds the same as the real estate idea you mentioned) it is HARD in an apartment. Like I am not going to get rid of a gemara just because husband bought the next one for dad yomi (he is buying as he needs due to cost...). We live in an apartment.

As I said, I dont need a Good Housekeeping home. I need it to just be less stuff. Make it manageable.

Maybe I wasnt clear in the OP. I just want support and chizik. People who understand and can support me when I say "got rid of a bag of garbage last night that included broken toys, a few used craft items, random papers, and 2 pairs of too small and ripped shoes".
And I have pulled out 2 toys that we will give away when we get the other pieces out from under this rubble. If my kids havent truly played with it in the past 2 years when they were home more due to covid.... that's my measuring stick. Time to get rid of it. TMI

amother

Daylily

Tue, Mar 01 2022, 10:48 am

I'm also going thru a long and slow process and so far my apartment looks exactly the same to me. this is because I'm going very slowly, getting rid of just a few things and they're usually small ones like bent paper clips or a pair of worn-out socks. They're all in closets and drawers, so they have no effect on the look of the house, and being so small, they have hardly any effect on the look of the closet or drawer. No bragging about throwing out six black garbage bags full of junk and what a dramatic difference it made! Still, that drawer is now a tiny bit less crammed even if it doesn't look that way, and eventually it'll also look that way.

Slow and steady wins the race. The change isn't impressive to me because the progress is gradual, but if someone comes by who hasn't been here since before corona, I know they're going to see the difference.

amother

Aster

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 9:05 am

Op,
I’m very much like you. Let’s cheer each other on when we get rid of stuff Smile

amother

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 9:44 am

amother [ Daylily ] wrote:

Yes! I am tossing a lot of stuff but it doesnt feel different probably because it's from a bunch of different places. It isnt like I did a whole bag from a specific spot. It is a little here, a little there.
I need to find a way to keep motivating myself. Because not seeing progress makes it hard to want to continue.

mushkamothers

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 9:47 am

I'm in a great fb group thats somehow more helpful than the Marie kondo ones. It's called motherhood simplified

amother

Lightcoral

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 9:50 am

Same here! Small house, house full of kids, most of them add, add husband. I try and do what I can but always wish I had some help and support with my mission.

Editing to add- anything in this house that gets touched doesn’t get put away. I’m constantly undoing the mess. As much as I’ve tried training my kids, a bunch are ADD and I get nowhere. Bh the 2 that aren’t ADD have it much more together. But still…

amother

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 9:51 am

amother [ Aster ] wrote:

Op,
I’m very much like you. Let’s cheer each other on when we get rid of stuff Smile

Great idea!
Here is what I have done: I have made a giveaway box. An old Amazon box before it got recycled (and took my name off it). I am sticking old toys/books inside that are still good but we dont use ever.
Yeah, it sounds simple but in the past I have used bags or spots in the house. And then it keeps getting moved, put back on the shelves... this way I hope it stays in the giveaway box.

amother

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 10:00 am

amother [ Lightcoral ] wrote:

Same here! Small house, house full of kids, most of them add, add husband. I try and do what I can but always wish I had some help and support with my mission.

Yes!! Let's be our own support. I think this is why it has gotten to this point for me. Too much ADD flying around (the other members of the family), me not being naturally organized, and being so exhausted from work etc
So therefore not having support added up to not a lot of motivation.
But it is bad. So need to get rid of stuff, then organize the remaining stuff...

amother

Aster

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 10:08 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

Like the giveaway box idea

amother

Daylily

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 11:19 am

Would it help you if you made a list of things you got rid of?

Today I put in recycling 11 tiny empty bottles that I'd been hoarding for years. I don't buy travel-sized toiletries anymore but save small containers to make my own. The collection is much bigger than it needs to be, and my goal is to pare it down to fit into one shoebox. The total volume of what I recycled today is only about a double handful, but it's a start. I can hardly wait to empty and remove a whole box so there's visible evidence of downsizing, but it's too much of a shock to my system to throw out so much at one time. As Lao Tzu is credited with saying, a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.

zaq

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 11:24 am

How about something like time-lapse photography? Take baseline pics of closets, drawers, shelves and entire rooms, and take another picture every time you get rid of something. Every month or so, compare the latest shot to the baseline one. Or skip the interim pics and just take a picture once a month to compare to baseline.

ETA digital pics, of course, not printed! Now and then delete all but the first and last, as digital clutter is as bad for you as physical clutter.

Last edited by zaq on Wed, Mar 02 2022, 2:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

DallasIma

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 11:50 am

I *am* an empty-nester, was widowed 4 months ago, and am trying to get rid of countless papers and things. My husband was a "saver" and so am I. Going through some of his stuff has been fraught for me (he was married before and it has been painful to go through those papers), and I have yet to tackle my own files of papers that have been obsolete and unnecessary for a long, long time. It's a process. Every bag of shredded paper, every recycle can full of paper that didn't need to be shredded, is a triumph for me. I'm trying to focus not on what there is still left to do - which is overwhelming - but how much I have done. One file box is almost empty!

So my take is, focus on how much you have done, not how much you have left to do. Give yourself a pat on the back for every bag, every box, everything you toss. I like the "journey of 1000 miles begins with one step" concept that someone else mentioned. Every once in a while, treat yourself to something you like because you've gotten rid of x number of bags or boxes or whatever. You've got this!

tichellady

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 1:21 pm

Start my reframing this. You are not sorting out your life. This is not your life. This is your stuff and your families stuff and it’s hard to be the gatekeeper for it all.

amother

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 2:09 pm

amother [ Daylily ] wrote:

Yes! This quote is what I needed to hear. Every step is a positive one.
2 more things went into the giveaway box today before work.
Plus a kids "project" broke today (I had said not to carry it around the apartment but did the kid listen?!?) So that went into the trash. Not that I recommend breaking things on purpose but definitely going to be using those situations to get it out of my home instead of spending an hour gluing it back together and it not working anyways. Natural consequences of not listening.... (obviously if I knew it was actually beloved or precious or expensive I would try to repair. But this was none of those).

amother

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 2:12 pm

DallasIma wrote:

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Paper clutter is sometimes worse than item clutter- time involved, reading, shredding and it doesnt show progress easily. One whole file box is a lot!! Good job!

And yeah, I should reward myself for each bag/box that leaves the home. Non clutter reward though so not going to buy myself something lol. Thanks for the reminder!!

amother

Daylily

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 2:19 pm

Update: By getting rid of just a few more bottles and jars and doing a little rearranging, I managed to empty out one box. The closet is hardly empty, but now one box rests where there were two before, and the shelf even has about three board-inches supporting nothing but air. This hardly qualifies for the Nobel Decluttering Prize, but I'm shepping nachas just the same.

amother

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 2:38 pm

amother [ Daylily ] wrote:

Amazing progress!! Way to go!!

mushkamothers

Wed, Mar 02 2022, 2:55 pm

"Just one thing"
Every day remove one item.
De-own it.