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Orderliness: What if everything DOESN'T have a place?
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I really appreciate the thread on cultivating the habit of orderliness, but didn’t want to post this there because it doesn’t sound like the OP has a problem with this and I ddin’t want to hijack her topic.
Please note: I feel ridiculous and embarassed posting this, so please be kind.
What do you do with the things that don’t have a place? I love the old adage, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” I get it. Of course, it’s the perfect solution! One simply need to put the thing in it’s home. Everything has a home.
But here it doesn’t.
Is it just a very simple, matter of fact: it has a home or it gets tossed? This is a little extra challenge right now having just moved a month ago and still figuring out where some things need to go. But if I’m honest, this is a problem all the time. This is why I have clutter.
My home is clean, my floors are vacuumed several times a week, there isn’t food strewn anywhere. I should mop the floor more than the rare times I do, but we spot clean them as needed and really I’m quite satisfied with the general cleanliness of the house, the floors, etc. We do regular tidies and the kids keep their books and toys and such cleaned up, or get them cleaned up within a few minutes if we’re doing a quick tidy. That part all woks reasonably well.
BUT when I have clean flat surfaces, it’s often because there is a box or bin with the random things I couldn’t figure out where to put, containing them in a corner or closet or whatever. But that’s not really a home for those things. There are just always…things…on those flat surfaces – counter, dresser, etc. Or sometimes even a pile of things in the corner of my bedroom. And I just never know where to put those things, those papers, etc.
It is so frustrating. So depressing.
I am really hesitant to post this but this is an obstacle I just haven’t been able to overcome this to my satisfaction. Does anyone else struggle with this? Or have you struggled with this, but now you don’t?
I do!
I think it is b/c we either have too much stuff and/or we don’t have storage places, ie bookcases, shelving, drawers…
However, I do finally have some and it is also because I have let the paper get away from me as well as the odds and ends! If everyone put back everything every time there would be less accumulation on my flat surfaces. Unfortunately, in a household of 6, I seem to be the only one concerned w this! My husband has recently started the 21 rules of the house which addresses some of those habits. But, paper is really my nemesis. Especially school papers. It can be an article I printed off and didn’t know where to put, extra graph paper I laid down, some colored pictures the children wish to keep, a piece of some curriculum I was sure I would use later, etc. And it is also after moving 11 times in 12 years…that I haven’t really been completely unpacked in how long? And so everything doesn’t really have a place, b/c I haven’t yet decided it all before life takes over, and I kind of leave the rest and live.
So just moved mama…give some grace to self! But decide. Don’t quit before it is actually accomplished!
I applied the following article to just one room. The boys room. Took me all day. Was all I had strength for so far. Packed away 3/4 of their stuff, toys etc. Going to rotate even cars every three months. As soon as I can going to tackle rest of house. You wouldn’t believe difference. Even the littlest can put everything away. My goal is for the whole house to be like that. The Lord will need to be my strength. It is a big job!
http://www.sonlight.com/uploads/Conquer-Your-Clutter-in-8-Easy-Steps.pdf
I’m with you. Determined to end my crazy mountains of clutter! It feels so nice to have a cleared spot. I just can’t keep them for any length of time, yet!
Joanna
I have this problem big time! I was thinking of scanning all of those little papers and such and just keeping a file on my external hardrive with those random notes/bills/work etc etc and then recycling/shredding the hard copy. I also have a day of the week for each area in my home where it gets a more thorough cleaning than the daily stuff, and some of those areas have little dumping bins/places that accumulate a lot of stuff, so once a week I have to actually clean though it. It doesn’t take too long now that I’m getting in the habit since it’s only one week worth of stuff.
Honestly though, it just sounds like you have a clean, yet lived in home, nothing wrong with that! Sometimes when I go to my friends’ houses that are TOO clean I get uncomfortable because I’m stressed my little ones are going to spill something, or I’m going to accidently do something or I get nervous thinking of having them at my place because they might see that I don’t organize under my bathroom sink?!?!?
Rachel
I understand! I am on top of regular housekeeping needs and have taught my children to put things away when they are finished. My problem comes with those semi-temporary items that I’m just not sure what to do with. I am leading a crafting group at church and have collected various items to use. I don’t really have a place for these items. Some are in a large basket in my living room, and others are in a large box in my bedroom. My husband is pretty relaxed about it and takes everything in stride, but it drives me crazy! I also have some various school materials that I don’t know what to do with. I weeded out things I do not need at the end of the school year, but they have been sitting in boxes/crates all summer. Ugh. No advice, but just to let you know you are not alone…
Thank you, ladies, for helping me feel like I’m not alone. I’ve struggled with this for so long, I wonder if it’s possible to change.
Joanna, I pulled up that link and my 8yod saw it and said, “ohh! this looks like something I would enjoy!” So we read it over together. We get to the end, and she says, “We should totally do this! But I don’t think we have enough boxes.” And then she laughed. lol Seriously, kid? Well, I am glad she keeps a sense of humor about these things, because she made me laugh too. haha
Phobo – do you have one of those neat scanner things just for receipts and the like?
Currently, we use OneNote (microsoft) – I scan papers in to the OneNote notebook where they fit. I have one notebook set up with bunches of tabs (Farming, Household, Homeschool, Church, etc.) and then I just scan in the papers where they fit. This has been WONDERFUL for my messy husband! We keep his farming phone numbers just on a big page – I scan in business cards and all right on that page. It means he has to scroll down, but he seems to like it.
So, using that, I can scan a paper in and toss it. Less clutter. I’m looking to go more digital with more things. I still have little fears about it – paper is still SO importnat, even though everything is going digital.
If LindseyD would chime in, I think she’s the gal on this forum who does everything digitally.
My problem comes from starting and not finishing projects….or things “in-progress”. You know, painting our one room. It’s literally taking YEARS to rennovate that room. Some of it is our fault (money), some of it is the fault of the people we’ve hired (I’ll be there next week…..and next week never comes). So we have paint supplies permanently (or so it seems) stored in our one room.
Or sewing projects that I have cut out and ready to sew – but I have to finish the dress for myself before changing the thread on the serger to do the dark-colored clothing that’s up next…..and my dress needs to be ripped apart, alterations made, and sewn again.
Aside from those kinds of problems, my tactic is to TAKE TIME NOW and put things away. I used to not do that. But now I do. I go upstairs again right now and put it away. Or tell the child to put it away (And then check on her! they don’t always, you know!). I file papers right now. Otherwise they get lost.
The downfall to my tactic is that then I get side-tracked and I start working on something that isn’t urgent. OR isn’t important right now.
Chiming in here. I have HUGE problems with finding “homes” for everything, as well. I have been recently doing better. Here are some things that I’ve done around the house:
I have 3 baskets for books in my living room – 2 have large picture books on different subjects (Norman Rockwell paintings, Weather, Counting, Gardening, etc.) that are just fun to look at. The 3rd has Bible story books in it. We normally pick a book to read from out of this basket for our nightly devotional time.
Upstairs, where we do school, I have a filing cabinet. In it, I only keep the papers for the current year. All old materials stay in the closet (to be gone through later & samples placed in my kids’ binder portfolios, which is required for me). In the filing drawer, I have extra writing paper, a “completed pages” folder for each grade, a “graded pages” folder for each child, and a subject folder for any extra papers I need for that particular subject, like test papers & reinforcement pages. I have also made a grade folder for each child, to make it easier for me to keep grades recorded.
I also keep a shallow plastic dishpan out on the rug for any completed pages from the day’s work. That way, I can just take the tub with me if I want to grade pages while the kids are watching a cartoon or spending time downstairs. I keep a pen in it to mark papers with so I don’t have to go looking for one.
My kids each have their own toybox. (This is the main issue.) They have been told to make everything fit into the toybox. If anything does not fit, it needs to go. Since many of their toys have come from grandparents, it’s hard for them to let them go. I’m trying to help them to see the merit in letting go, but as a child, you think you’ll always want those things. I felt the same. So, needless to say, we have stuff everywhere! They have toys in the upstairs, under their beds, in the closet, and practically everywhere else. We tell grandma to stop buying for them, but it’s what she loves to do & you know, as DIL, there’s not much I can really say or do without hurting her feelings.
I do give them a time by which they must have their belongings picked up. They tend to carry an item from one room into another and then just leave it there. After their time is up, I go throught & pick up any item(s) they left behind. They are allowed to buy back the item(s) from me (usually 5 cents apiece) if they desire. If they don’t buy back the item, it goes into the donations closet. (This is where bags of donated items are stored until they leave the house.)
Recently, I have cleaned out many of my clothes, shoes, and baby items I had saved, trying to clear my clutter & set an example at the same time. I have recently had the girls go through their puzzles & games, too, because they don’t play with them anymore. I feel that we’re making progress, it’s just slow.
Our kitchen & papers that I have saved are my worst stumbling blocks! If I could ever get a handle on these things, I feel my stress level would drop considerably. Also, I did hear a really neat tip about kids’ artwork. Alejandra Costello, an organizing whiz, mentioned scanning or taking photos of your kids’ artwork & having them printed into a book. Then you can toss the original papers or send them to relatives & have a neat book by your own personal artist. Of course, this appealed to me, because my kids are always drawing me pictures. So it’s a work in progress for me, but a definite plan!
I’m really enjoying reading all of your posts. Food for thought. And it’s great to know I’m not the only one who struggles in this area.
Hi!
You’re right, Karen; we do everything digitally. I loathe papers and files. All of our bills are paid online. My husband receives e-mails from the electric company, water company, credit card companies, etc. Since we live in an apartment right now, we even pay our rent online! Through secure websites and PayPal, it’s pretty much possible to pay everything online. We don’t even print out receipts. The companies e-mail us receipts, and my husband saves them in a folder in his e-mail. This means that as long as the Internet is up and running around the world, we can access our bills and pay them from anywhere.
When we get W2s or other tax documents, we scan them into our computer, and again, my husband saves them to his e-mail in a tax folder. We also have a back-up hard drive. We e-mail our tax docs to our accountant, who files online for us, and again, e-mails us our confirmations and whatever we owe the IRS or will be getting back.
All of our insurance (home, auto, renter’s, and life) are set up on auto-draft. Our life insurance policies were purchased five years ago, and we haven’t even thought about them because they come out of our account every month. We even have it set up with our agent to e-mail us when our policies renew or change and we sign and send back electronically. We actually just did this this week!
If we need contact info from a business card or something, we will immediately add the info to the contacts on our smart phones and toss the card or paper. We don’t keep a phone book or a paper calendar in our house. My husband and I have our phone calendars synced so that when either of us adds an event or appointment, it automatically adds it to the other person’s calendar. Smart phones get a lot of bad press amongst homeschoolers, IMO, and really they shouldn’t. They are wonderful tools in our home to keep us all on the same page and simplify our lives.
The only actual hard copy documents I keep in our house are our social security cards and my children’s immunization exemption affidavits.
I have scanned in our printed photos from years ago so that we don’t have to have boxes and albums full of photos. I threw away the photos as soon as they were saved on our back-up hard drive. Having them saved into the computer also means I am able to make photobooks with our old photos on Shutterfly or Snapfish. So we can actually enjoy our pictures rather than them just taking up gigs of hard drive space. Although I have a very nice Nikon digital camera, I rarely use it, except when I am doing a guest blog post and need some good food photos. 😉 I take 99% of our photos on my phone now and then e-mail them to myself and save to the computer or add them to a photobook project. Instagram is also a great tool to not only share photos, but also to have them chronologically ordered. Again…it’s not a useless social networking thing, it’s an actual tool. This is an example of how we can be the master of technology so that it serves us rather than us being slaves to it.
As for the OP’s comments on everything not having a place, GRACE! Give yourself some grace, girl, especially if you just moved. We were there 2 months ago, and it took a few days to get everything in order again. We did get rid of A LOT before we moved and even threw away, gave away, and sold more once we got here. (Remember, we are living in 1,000 sq. ft, so having a bunch of extra stuff “just in case” isn’t an option.)
For kids’ art, we have a small cable with clips going down our hallway to display. There are a certain number of clips. The rule is that, when you make a new masterpiece that you want to display, you have to choose an old one to take down and throw away. It’s a constant rotation of new art, and the kids don’t get upset because it’s pretty logical to them this way. I’m not a sentimental person, so I have zero tubs or boxes of their artwork saved. I enjoy it when it’s there and let it go when they make something else. And I’m ok with not having a box of junk to pull out and show off when my son brings his future wife home to meet us. 😉 Some of you might not be alright with that, and that’s OK!
If you can add shelves to closets or empty corners, that might help you.
And I’m just going to say this…if you have to clean off a surface and put everything into a box, maybe it’s time to evaluate that stuff and decide if you really need it or not. Ask yourself: is it useful? is it beautiful? do I use it regularly? what is my attachment to this? what if I let it go?
We have had to put our foot down with family and tell them NO MORE STUFF. Just last night my mom was asking my kids what they were wanting for Christmas. I immediately said, “We might have room for each of you to get one new toy, but that’s it. We live in 1,000 sq. ft. and I don’t want our closets and shelves bursting with stuff.” Then I looked at my mom and said politely, “Please, if you must buy something, buy an experience, not a thing. We want to make memories, not clean out closets.” So we tossed around the idea of a family trip to Great Wolf Lodge or somewhere else instead of wrapped gifts.
I do consider myself really good at organization and minimalism. You don’t have to be a minimalist to get your home to a place that’s comfortable for YOU. We have a lot less stuff than most people we know, and we don’t expect everyone to get to our level of simplicity. It’s taken us YEARS to get where we are today, and we aren’t done yet! We actually hope to downsize our home even more and get to about 850 sq. ft. We want to custom build our own small house that is full of pieces with multiple uses. (We’re those weird tiny house people! HAHA!) So our current apartment is a step toward that final goal. It’s ok if that’s not where you want to be!
I absolutely LOVE talking about this subject, so if you have specific questions, I’d love to answer them or give you a peek into our home.
Love,
Lindsey
Mysterious Lady, I have things on surfaces also and I hate it. We totally organize a room (we’re rearranging who is in what room right now!) and there are always some things that now don’t have a home and they get put on a surface somewhere and then start growing roots. Then I’ll take care of that one area but again, there are a few things left that have no home and they attract some buddies to become a pile but then it is in a different room. I’m on a quest to finally rid my home of these random things. I have another idea to share but no time right now. Hopefully this weekend I’ll get back to this.
But Lindsey, can you tell me how you document homeschooling with your minimalist ethic. And you scanned all your photos by hand or did you hire a service? I’m working on that now but boy does it take a long time by hand! Thanks!
I use the SCM Organizer for all homeschool documenting. I live in Texas, so I don’t have to keep portfolios or anything like that. I’ve been using the Organizer since 2008, and all our records are there.
I scanned the photos myself. It took several days. I wasn’t aware you could hire a service to do it for you! LOL
Also, we got iPhones when they were first released in 2008 and have been using them for taking most pictures ever since. I have hired a photographer a few times to take professional family pics, but they used digital cameras and e-mailed the digital proofs to me. So, we had pics from 2001 to 2007 to scan in. There were a lot, but I bet you anything I have more digital photos from the iPhones than I had in paper photos.
You don’t keep ANY (hardcopy) evidence of work accomplished/projects, etc?? Not even a 1″ binder per year or anything like that? Nothing to hold in the hand and look through later on? (OK, I don’t either but I INTEND to.
)I keep the first, middle, and last test from their Mathusee books. I keep their final map study, labeled and colored. I keep a couple of pages of copywork. They are still using their nature notebooks from the last 2 years. I kept my son’s first written narration. I put these few pieces of paper in a double pocket folder. One side is labeled Ryan: Year __ and the other side Addie: Year __. So I have five folders like this from our past homeschooling years. That’s really it.
I don’t want to have something to look through later on. I keep a small sampling mostly for their sentiment, not for my own. I tell ya, I’m the most non-sentimental person you’ve ever met!
In a perfect world I could get us totally clutter free, but I am okay with the fact that I don’t live in perfect! Anyway, one thing that helps us is having a big basket in hall at top of stairs and one at bottom. Things that are homeless go there. AT least once a week we empty it. We find it a home even if it is a giveaway box or the trash. Nothing stays in the basket when we empty it that week. During the week if someone can’t find somethiing then that is the place to look. The baskets can be easily moved out of the way if guests come etc… Not perfection, but it works for us mostly. We have a back stair case and once upon a time we had a stair labeled for each person in the family and things piled up there for them to take up or down. Baskets work better for us now.
I go through the children’s rooms once a season and we sort clothes into keep (which goes in the attic for the next child) or give away (which goes in a basket in the car to get dropped off).
We also go through desks and toys seasonally and unload quite a bit into trash or giveaway or yard sale. The key, I think, is to do it on a routine basis and then it never becomes too overwhelming. We are by no means clutter free, but we have a handle on it most of the time. If only I could get my husband to do this with all of his assorted stuff!!!
I’m a sentimental minimalist. 🙂 One of my family’s favorite things to do when we’re all together is to pull out our boxes of old pictures and reminisce and laugh and even cry (especially since my mom’s death two years ago). There are some things in this life that are special and worth holding on to – even as a reminder of God’s faithfulness throughout our family.
So, I will always keep hard copies of photos, but I enjoy having them organized by year and stored in a cabinet (away from sunlight). I intend to (one day) get better about printing off my favorites from my digital photography and iPhone. I do use Blurb to create a family photo album directly from my blog each year.
As for the kids work, we keep a binder for each year to serve as a potfolio. Throughout the year we add any writing projects they especially enjoyed, math tests, maps…etc. I’ll keep all of their nature notebooks. They really enjoy looking through old notebooks (and it reminds me of how far we’ve come when I can be tempted to believe that we’re not moving at all!). I also keep a plastic box that holds hanging file folders for each child. The files are labeled by year and the best from that year is stored there. Things like certificates, letters (my dad writes my kids often and those are special to save)…etc, all get filed in those boxes. It might sound like a lot, but I don’t feel at all as though we’re drowning in paper. I feel like we’ve been intentional about keeping the things that are important to us as a family.
I love the toy rotation idea, but I’ve never actually done it. My kids play with their toys all together (like, they make a lego castle for their playmobil guys or a Kapla block race course for their cars) and i can’t bring myself to squelch that creativity. 🙂 But we’re big purgers and I never hesitate to get rid of a toy that doesn’t “fit”.
My advice would be to go through any boxes of “stuff” and really look at each item. Sort them into like things. Really determine what their purposes are and whether ot not they are necessary. Invest in organizing systems that will help you know what you have and how to access it for whatever makes it through all the cuts.
I will never be 100% digital and I’m very ok with that. It’s just not how my brain works. I’m old school and need pen and paper! 🙂 I love the idea of extreme minimalism, but I also love a warm, inviting space for the many people that come and go from our home.
Give yourself the time that it takes to really consider what your family wants and needs, but don’t be afraid to be ruthless!
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Thanks Lindsey. 
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