Home organizer for ND Moms. AMA

amother

Aquamarine

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 10:03 am

amother Emerald wrote:

We actually had an organizer come organize my house but now it is back to a mess. No one in my house puts stuff away. Me, DH, DD are all ND. How can I get everyone to just put things away so the mess doesn't build up?

Set a timer and have everyone pick up and put away for 5 min. Do that as often as is needed. Also make sure that everything is easy to put away: if something requires me to rearrange my cupboards to put away, it better not be coming out very often, or else it realistically lives on my counter or table whatever.

If anyone wants to listen or read from someone who has worked on this topic, Dana K White's A Slob Comes Clean is brilliant. Very ND friendly. Obviously not as individually tailored as OP's advice.

amother

Ivory

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 10:49 am

amother OP wrote:

Fun fact: I have ADHD and maintaining things is SO hard for me. I so get you!!! It's why doing this work is so fulfilling, I get the dopamine from problem solving and then I don't need to be the one on top of it. I struggle in my own home with maintenance. Joking aside:
What we try to do is to figure out ways to reset easily without overwhelm.
I find the reason why the systems are mostly successful is because we make them based on the habits that ALREADY exist. Ex if you dump your mail on a certain surface, let's keep a tray there for it to be dumped on. If you sometimes aren't sure that you put on deodorant, keep a deodorant in your coat closet.

Anyone relate??
Thought it was only me!

amother

Birch

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 11:05 am

Can you help me organize the freezer drawer? I try to put different types of food items near each other but it becomes a huge mess when bags and boxes are open. Right now I have mini pizza dough circles sitting on the bottom of my freezer that fell out of the original bag since it was opened. Also on the bottom of the freezer are pieces of green beans from an open bag and lots of salt that spilled out of a box of hot pretzels. I hate opening my freezer to look for things.

Also my kitchen countertops… so much stuff/clutter. The only time it looks nice is when I clean for pesach - right before I kasher. And I promise myself each year that I will never let things get so messy again.
I’m not talking about the toaster oven and the urn… I’m talking about the bottle of vitamins, my son’s camera, my daughter’s scrunchie and bottle of mousse, the library book my son has to return to the school library tomorrow, the hand sanitizer someone left out, the Aravos from succos someone left in a Seltzer bottle with water to grow roots, my husband’s blood pressure medication, a stack of plastic cups… and the list goes on and on….
I won’t tell you what’s going on in the bedrooms or in the bathroom cabinets…

Sometimes I just want to move so I can leave all this clutter but I know that eventually that will happen in another house too…

I really need help and I’m ready to do something about this.

Crookshanks

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 11:09 am

amother Birch wrote:

Everything that doesn't already have a place in the kitchen goes into a little basket on the countertops. When the basket is full, everything gets put away where it belongs.
(Cups in pantry, library book in backpack, scrunchy and camera in their respective rooms, etc.)

amother

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 12:59 pm

amother Slateblue wrote:

Any advice for organizing when it’s hard to deal with clutter, throw out/ give away? Become sentimental over things, etc.

Do it with someone else, take pictures, or keep sentimental things in a box for sentimental things. Don't let them clutter your regular spaces. Example one lady had the dress from her lchaim and a sweater from her grandmother and all these other clothes in her closet. We took out her sentimental clothes and put them in a box for sentimental clothes.

amother

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 1:16 pm

When you are feeling like your freezer is a huge mess or your counters are covered or everything is all over the place is because it's hard (especially for ND) to notice the little things. Maybe you aren't even bothered by the one or two things out of place and then all of a sudden your drowning. There's this tiny line between its not so bad I'll get to it, to omg how did it get this way.
Overwhelm is the number one paralyzer.

If you can create external reminders (alarms/routines) for maintenance, that helps. Once a day, once, months, before bed etc. you deal with the freezer or counters etc. You may be able to combat overwhelm.
Many ND people do better with projects than with maintenance. Hack this for yourself. Corrall things into bins or trays and then tackle them. So they look like they are in a place or have a space until you'll actually get to it. Take all the opened packages of things in the freezer and put them in one plastic basket in the top drawer. When it gets full or you decide to or you get annoyed enough you can sort through it. Same for counters. Move everything into a basket/tray/container/box that doesn't belong and deal with it another time. This is also a great job for kids (assuming they know where things go....here Dina take the list and found bucket and put them away. In our house we call it the lost and found bucket).

amother

Emerald

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 1:17 pm

amother Aquamarine wrote:

Thank you for the idea, unfortunately timers don't work for us. I put them on for any length of time and DD wastes time until its up. DH can't even get started in under 5 minutes, but if the timer isn't long enough for him to do a complete task, or if the task seems overwhelming, he just doesn't do it. We have tried so many diferent ways, times, etc. I even once bought a special timer designed for ND kids and my DD left it on the edge of something and it broke the first day we used it. Timers are amazing for some people, but not for us. Thanks though! And I will look at A Slob Comes Clean.

amother

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 1:19 pm

amother Brunette wrote:

Any good solution for parsha sheets and the like?

Also, system for creating albums? Feels sad to not have that just cuz we aren’t orgenized.

I'm not organized enough for albums. What I do is do it on rosh Chodesh. Every rosh Chodesh my husband and I buy a treat and go through the pictures of the month, reminisce and make an album or add to an album as needed.

Parsha sheets are garbage. Pile them and put them next to the challah board, read them and then toss them. Take pictures of the art work or hang it up fo a week and then replace next week.

amother

Aquamarine

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 1:46 pm

amother Emerald wrote:

Do you think they need more direction? A Slob Comes Clean breaks it down into: first, throw away anything that is obviously trash and recycle anything that it obviously recycling. Then, put away anything that you already know where it goes. Then you deal with more complicated parts of the mess, but it's usually less intimidating by then. I never got anywhere until I heard it broken down this way (I told my dad about it, and he looked at me like I was crazy "isn't that obvious?". Nope, not for me it wasn't).

amother

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 3:01 pm

amother Emerald wrote:

Can you repeat your issue/question so I can see if I have any ideas?
Or there seems to be an almost identical AMA from someone who is ND and is a coach. Maybe she has "real" advice?

amother

Linen

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 3:07 pm

For the 5 minute timer, I find that it only works if I get up and do it with them. We do a 5 minute cleanup of the living room every night.

My rule is "pick up the easy stuff first" (borrowed from Dana White) and "if you don't know where it goes, don't pick it up."

Flylady says "you can do anything for 15 minutes" but she's wrong. 15 minutes is WAY too long for me.

amother

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 3:46 pm

Yes clean up with kids only happens if you clean up with your kids. Everyone at the same time.
Sometimes I gamify it sometimes we just do it.
5 minutes is enough time to make a real difference. Not in cleaning or scrubbing but for maintenance.
One idea I once gave someone is to pick a 5 min (or close enough to it) song to play each night at clean up time. Instead of a timer that her kids were stressed about, they cleaned until the song was over.

amother

Emerald

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 4:14 pm

amother OP wrote:

Can you repeat your issue/question so I can see if I have any ideas?
Or there seems to be an almost identical AMA from someone who is ND and is a coach. Maybe she has "real" advice?

Here it is again (thanks!):

We actually had an organizer come organize my house but now it is back to a mess. No one in my house puts stuff away. Me, DH, DD are all ND. How can I get everyone to just put things away so the mess doesn't build up?

Timers don't work. Songs instead of timers don't work. Breakdown doesn't work either, most of the mess isn't necessarily garbage or laundry or dishes, it is just stuff. And this is after we purged the house of stuff we don't need and made places for things. It just gets put everywhere in the first place and then not cleaned up. And if we don't know where stuff goes we don't put it away, and that is most of the problem LOL

How can I get them to put things away right when they are done instead of just putting them down anywhere.

amother

Linen

Wed, Jan 17 2024, 4:59 pm

amother Emerald wrote:

How can I get them to put things away right when they are done instead of just putting them down anywhere.

Songs and timers will work if you all do it together, and you limit it to once a day. You will need to encourage the entire time.

The best way to get anyone to put stuff away is to make it AS EASY AS POSSIBLE to put it away. Coats should have hooks. A large bin for backpacks. A trash can and a laundry basket in every room. No closed boxes! All boxes should be open and very easy to access. Do not try to get kids to put their dishes in the dishwasher. Be happy if they make it into the sink.

If there is still too much stuff, and none of the stuff has a home, you need to take all the "stuff" you find each day and get rid of it. If it doesn't have a home, it doesn't belong in your home.