Organizing

JCM

I never get around to organizing anything & my house needs it so badly.  My problem is I feel the entire house needs to be tidy before I can tackle a big project such as cleaning and organizing my linen closet.  Am I the only one like this?  Can you truly clean/organize something before the entire house is tidy?

Cherryblossoms07

CnAmom:

I am obsessively anal about things being organized. I wouldn't so much mind if the house isn't perfectly clean, but if it's unorganized I can't rest until I fix it.

I am anal about organization as well. It is so much easier to keep the house clean when everything has it's spot.

What I would do is go through your house as is and purge unwanted and unused things. Then clean and organize.

JCM

Cherryblossoms07:

CnAmom:

I am obsessively anal about things being organized. I wouldn't so much mind if the house isn't perfectly clean, but if it's unorganized I can't rest until I fix it.

I am anal about organization as well. It is so much easier to keep the house clean when everything has it's spot.

See I can logically see that but can't seem to act on it.  It's a vicious cycle.  The house is messy because of the clutter but I have to tidy up the clutter before organizing it when I should just get rid of the clutter and have a place for everything. By the time the house is tidy I'm so not motivated to de-clutter/organize! 

TheGriffs

JCM:

Cherryblossoms07:

CnAmom:

I am obsessively anal about things being organized. I wouldn't so much mind if the house isn't perfectly clean, but if it's unorganized I can't rest until I fix it.

I am anal about organization as well. It is so much easier to keep the house clean when everything has it's spot.

See I can logically see that but can't seem to act on it.  It's vicious circle.  The house is messy because of the clutter but I have to tidy up the clutter before organizing it when I should just get rid of the clutter and have a place for everything. By the time the house is tidy I'm so not motivated to de-clutter/organize! 

I'm totally with you JCM. I so so wish I was an anal organizer or cleaner. And I'm pretty sure DH wishes I was too. 

lexusolsen

When I go through stuff I have piles trash, give away, or another part of the house. I did a major over hall of the house last year and I used this strategy to tackle one room a weekend. It was helpful and kept me from being overwhelmed.

nosoup4u

If you're overwhelmed, start small. Do a closet or a small room first. It should get easier the more you do it. The trash, donate, put away strategy works best for me.

khill86

When I get in the mood to purge, I just do it right then and keep going until I don't feel like it anymore. Otherwise, I put it off and put it off and then I don't have the motivation to do it.

I do donate, giveaway, trash. In the recent past I've hastily just thrown out entire boxes of things. I feel like if I haven't looked at it or touched in like 6 months, I don't need it. Looking through it would just result in more things to find a place for. We had a huge collection of DVDs in boxes and we hadn't had a DVD player hooked up for years. We didn't even open the boxes and just gave them all to BIL. We could have sold them all but I just wanted rid of them. I do the same thing with clothes, if I didn't wear it last season, I sort it and get rid of it. No option to keep. It's kind of liberating to go at it that way instead of having to debate over whether I'll wear it again.

Just this morning DH grabbed a garbage bag and was going through his bedside table. Neither of us were really in a purging mood, so we just went around a couple rooms, filled the bag, and then stopped.

Sometimes I do feel like everything needs to be tidy to start organizing, but if I feel like I need to organize the medicine cabinet or vanity, I just do it instead of wasting time worrying about it. But I lose motivation quickly if I don't act.