Mess
The other week, I read this article about messy homes. And it hit a note with me. You see, our house is constantly a mess. Pretty much every room of our not huge condo has issues.
- The laundry room has piles of dirty laundry on the floor and hampers full of clean laundry (makes sense, right?)
- Our kitchen counter is covered with stuff (think bowls of fruit and daycare paperwork and my purse and a box of cereal and another box of cheddar bunnies) that has started to infringe on the ability to actually use it as work space
- Our bedroom has piles of clean and folded clothes on the dresser and dirty clothes randomly strewn about the room (because that hamper where the dirty laundry normally goes is in the laundry room housing clean laundry until we get a chance to fold it)
- Gavin’s room has toys that he never uses all over the floor, because the basket where they used to be housed has been reassigned to hold clean laundry that has yet to be folded. And, let’s not talk about the three bags of clothes, one of maternity clothes that needs to be returned to a friend and the other two full of too small baby clothes that I need to mail to a friend who is expecting her very own bundle of joy.
- The living room, oiy the living room, with unopened mail ravaging our console table, Gavin’s toys and books all over the floor and piles of paperwork/unopened mail on my desk, on the printer, on the windowsill, need I go on?
One of our problems, probably our biggest problem is we lack space. We don’t have a ton of closet space (and what closet space we have is small). We don’t have a basement. We share a garage. All the normal places where you hide stuff, we don’t have them. So, in addition to our stuff being everywhere, we also store stuff in clear sight. There are piles of baby stuff to be donated in our kitchen and baby things we’re no longer using stacked against a wall in our living room.
Anyway back to the article. One of the quotes resonated with me to the point that I pulled up the article again this week. It said:
There’s a difference between “people-live-in-this-house-so-it-doesn’t-look-perfect” messes and “Argh-I-can-never-find-anything-in-this-pig-sty-why-why-why” messes.
It resonated, because most people who have children, at some point have to come to terms with the fact that their house (or part of it) will always be a mess. We learn not to pick up after our toddlers DURING play, instead waiting until they’re done. Then, we ask them to help us clean up (they’re still suckers for putting things away) and move on to the next meal, nap, bath, car ride, etc. We are not surprised when we come home after a long day of work and there are puzzle pieces and stuffed animals in the middle of the floor. It becomes a part of life.
Even though I’m a neat person at heart, I’ve come to terms with those kinds of messes in our house. We cannot get away from them. But, we are verging on becoming disorganized and that drives a stake through my heart. Last week, I couldn’t find Gavin’s birth certificate before our trip (I’ve brought it when we travel with him because, especially when we’ve bought a seat for him, we’ve been asked to provide identification for him). I looked in all the places I thought I could’ve put it, but it was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, I had a copy and thought that would make due for our trip. But, it grated at me that I couldn’t find the original. The day before we left, the original surfaced.
Another example is Gavin’s pacifiers. I’m ridiculously anal about them. We have three in his crib, two by his changing table, one for his stroller, another one for the car and a final one for his diaper bag. See what I mean – I know exactly how many we have and where they belong. If one of them goes missing, I become a neurotic mess trying to locate it. I’m not sure why I’ve fixated so much on his pacifiers. But, I have. And lately, one has gone missing for one reason or another. And I keep myself up at night wondering where it might have gone. It drives me especially mad to know it’s somewhere in our condo, but I just don’t know where. I mean, c’mon, there are only so many places a pacifier can hide in a 2-bedroom home.
I think what makes me crazy about the birth certificate and the pacifier examples is that it’s no longer just a mess. It’s a mess to the point where I don’t know where things are. I’m having trouble locating them when I need them. A mess is just that and can be easily cleaned up. Being disorganized feels like we’re out of control – and if you don’t know me yet, let’s just say I like to take charge of my life. Juggling the mess and trying to stay organized is an ongoing challenge, for sure. Do you have any tips for staying on top of my home life?
February 23rd, 2012 at 12:56 pm
I don’t have kids, so I don’t know how helpful this can be. But I’ve found that when I feel completely overwhelmed by the piles I tell myself to tackle sorting and filing and whatever for 10 minutes a day. In just 10 minutes a day I can seriously cut back on my stacks of paper and piles of clean laundry (I hate folding/putting away). It’s not fun, but it’s only 10 minutes.
xox
February 23rd, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Don’t beat yourself up too much… we have a garage (2-car) and ample closet space plus some storage in the attic, and it is still very easy for things to pile up. Especially with a little one. And I am very “Type A”, so it drives me NUTS. We brought a bookshself down to our family room from upstairs and I bought some canvas storage containers for Braden’s toys. Those have been wonderful-- they sit neatly on the shelves when not in use (and they look nice), but they hold a TON of little toys, puzzle pieces, etc. I have the toys sorted, to some extent, into categories… and Braden is learning how to help sort the toys when we’re putting them away. I also have a matching x-large canvas bin that houses larger toys (bead maze, drum, larger balls, etc). So when everything is cleaned up, it looks pretty organized.
I also found some faux-leather magazine bins at Target a few years ago, which I think are pretty nice looking. I put one right in the middle of our island in the kitchen, and unopened mail, catalogs, etc go inside that bin. We ended up with two of them b/c my husband’s stuff seems to pile up a lot faster than mine. :) He throws things he can’t get to right away into that bin, and he knows that if I can see stuff starting to pile up near the top of the bin, it’s time to clean it out. I try to follow the same rule. :)
I’m at a loss for laundry. I have yet to find a system. I am doing laundry all the time. We each have our own laundry baskets in our closets, and they have two compartments to sort whites/colors. And we have some of those white plastic laundry baskets in the laundry room, which I use for clean clothes when I pull them out of the dryer. The problem is… the clean clothes pile up in those white laundry baskets and sit in our bonus room. And when I do get to folding the clean clothes, I put them in piles on the sofa in the bonus room (making the sofa kind of hard to sit on… ha). And sometimes they sit there for weeks. It’s bad… it’s pretty common for us to have to go into the bonus room to get a clean outfit for Braden, because it never made it back into his drawers.
So, my solution to things that pile up? Bins and containers… the kind that look decent and work with your decor, but can house TONS of stuff that you don’t want laying around or piling up. Not sure that’s the perfect solution, but it has definitely worked well for us.
Good luck finding that pacifier… isn’t it funny how the littlest things can drive us absolutely up the wall!?!? Gavin probably knows exactly where it is, too. ;)
February 23rd, 2012 at 1:51 pm
If I could I would post a picture of my house. There’s kid stuff everywhere. Toys, books, clothes, diapers, shoes, etc. in the nursery there are bins of clothes waiting to be donated or to save for Izzie. It’s never ending. I try but it’s hard. And don’t even get me started about the laundry! I have piles waiting to be washed on my kitchen floor.
Someday the kids will be grown and I will be organized. For now I have decided that I will just not make myself crazy. Our house is “lived in”!
February 23rd, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Ugh, it’s so hard, isn’t it? Especially since you guys have limited space and a baby! I don’t know if I have much advice other than don’t beat yourself up about it. Maybe start small, by sorting piles, and then set aside some time when Gavin is asleep to work on it with Sweets? Good luck!
February 23rd, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Haha @Julia — Gavin knows where his pacifier is!
It seems that you wouldn’t mind having an organized mess. That’s me. As long as I know where everything is, I’m ok. But it’s ok too if I can’t know where everything is because I wasn’t attached to my son’s side when he was playing with. We still can’t find the phone in our bedroom! It’s a headset from a base that’s in the basement, so the battery’s run out. Not like we could call our phone to find it. But that’s ok!
For me tidying up depends on my mood. Sometimes I tackle it right away. I’ll wash, dry, fold, and put away in the same day. Sometimes I bring up folded laundry to put away later. Sometimes I bring up unfolded laundry and it sits for days. This is when clothes get all wrinkly. I don’t like that. I have a pile that like at home as I write this.
Like the birth certificate, I like to put that kind of stuff away immediately when I’m done because I know it’ll get lost in a pile of to-shreds, to-read, to-recycles.
I’ve also come to prioritize my to-tackle-messes. Which messes am I ok with? Toys in a pile. Ok. As long as I can’t trip over them at night. Which mess am I not ok with? Sink full of dirty dishes. Dirty socks left here and there.
Lastly, I have to let my husband know when I need help. And then I have to be happy with the way he’s done them. If I nag him while he’s helping me, he wouldn’t want to help anymore. It’s ok if the laundry’s not done “right”, or the dishes are left until midnight…because HE’S going to do them. I just have to let him help me in his own way. The world is not going to end if the laundry is not done my way.
Hope my ways to stay on top of messes can help you find your way too!
February 23rd, 2012 at 3:30 pm
This is one of the hardest things about motherhood for me. My mother was for the most part a homemaker, so our house was always extremely clean and organized growing up.
I am thus generally neat and when it was just me, my apartment was always neat, bed made every day, etc.
My husband is not a neat person by nature, but when it was just him and me, I could easily go around behind him and straighten our house up completely each day. J called it “making the house look like a museum” LOL. I also still made the bed every day.
Since becoming a mother, not only do I not have the time/energy to make my bed every day as I am rushing to get Sophie dressed and go to work, but now my husband is messy about his stuff, but also about Sophie’s! I find her hair things, shoes, clothes, all over the house when he is tending to her. He leaves things wherever they lay. He’s good about cleaning the kitchen and doing his own laundry and fixing stuff, but not great about putting his stuff away and keeping Sophie’s in the right place. And I just don’t have the energy to clean everything up all the time. I do have a maid service that does all the scrubbing, mopping, dusting, but even with all that, I never feel like the house is in good shape and it drives me INSANE but I also just can’t keep up with it. And I can’t seem to train J to be more organized with Sophie’s stuff. ARGH. And laundry is the worst. Last night I spent an hour putting away four piles of Sophie’s clean laundry that had been sitting folded on the stairs, ready to go up to her room, since Sunday!
February 23rd, 2012 at 3:59 pm
I used to be Neat And Clean All The Time, and then… yeah, the kids. They totally ruin that ;) I have worked hard to become very zen about the fact that my house will always looked lived in. And that’s okay. It HAS to be, because otherwise I will drive myself batty.
I’ve found that as long as my kitchen is (mostly) cleaned up, and maybe the family room, I feel good. Bedrooms- meh. Toy room- meh. In 20 years I’ll wish my house was messy again when the kids are gone ;)
February 23rd, 2012 at 4:41 pm
We don’t have a ton of space here either, or at least it doesn’t feel like we do. I bought some of the $5 pop-up cloth crates in fun colors at Target and they are now strategically placed around the house (under the microwave, where they hold kid gloves & hats; above the washer/dryer where they hold school papers, school calendars and the Box Tops that we are always collecting; more in the hall closet where we store medicine and etc.) They have really helped us to make the shelves more purposeful and I know what to find in each crate as well. So there’s that idea! I also bought one of those wall hanging slanted file things to keep important documents, bills to pay and etc. in so we know where to find them. (Well, Knight mostly throws random stuff in there, but I try to keep it organized!)The girls toy bins and rooms are often messy resulting in them not being able to find a toy but we are working on it! (I think we need to simplify the amount of toys they have… so many and most don’t get played with.)
February 23rd, 2012 at 6:10 pm
I know I don’t have kids that live with me, but I do know how a once organized and neat house can go to chaos in the blink of an eye when kids are around. It’s mostly time, right? That is what I tell my house when it looks like someone turned over everything and dumped it out and then left (which is sometimes the exact event).
I can also get pretty unorganized myself at times, and that bothers me. I have two things I put off forever, and folding laundry is one of them. Why when it’s so easy? I don’t know. (The other thing is filing paperwork. Ugh.) So, a couple weeks ago I made a rule that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I cannot go to bed without folding laundry and putting it away. I have at least two sets of clothes per day due to working out and then there’s towels, etc. from that and I know my laundry is still minimal compared to a family. BUT. Having made this rule with only the laundry, I felt like I wasn’t going to get sick of it all and say “screw it!” The first couple times I did this I was reminded, of course, that putting away laundry isn’t that bad. And the most surprising thing was when I woke up in the morning and saw that it was done? It put me in such a damn good mood. Who knew? So, I have been adding little things to my list of Must Do Before Bed On X Night. Nothing major, just going through mail, throwing away catalogs, putting dishes in the dishwasher, etc. It is working so far. I am half embarrassed that I, at 32, have to give myself housekeeping rules but if it keeps making me happy to have done it, then I guess that is my motivation.
Wow, I went on a long time about this. I guess I’m kind of excited to not be tripping over my own belongings. :)
February 23rd, 2012 at 6:44 pm
I definitely agree with you that there is a huge difference between a messy home and a disorganized home -- it’s where I draw my boundary, too.
As long as I can stay organized in my own chaos, all is good. When I start to search for things is when I start cleaning up/organizing.
My best tip is to try and organize the areas that you know you usually put important stuff…. everything else is on the bottom of the priority list.
February 23rd, 2012 at 6:49 pm
I am not a model person when it comes to this as my house can get a little bit messy at times (and I don’t even have kids), but for me, I try to contain the mess to one area (which again, is possible because I don’t have kids). So my living room table is a disaster because of my CFA materials and I have given up on tidying it up because it will just be a mess again the next day.
I am good about important documents, though. I have this plastic file folder box where I put important documents. I try to file them away, but if I get overwhelmed and don’t feel like filing stuff, I will just lay it on top of the file box and then at least i know where to find it (even though it requires digging to find things).
February 23rd, 2012 at 7:58 pm
I’m a bit of a neat freak. I like things to have a home or a place for me to shove them out of sight. I’m slightly terrified of having a kid because I know I will have to loosen up on this. :-) It’ll probably do me good! I’m all about ways in which I can tuck things away but know where they are. A bin for this and a box for that and a mail box that I make myself sort through every other week when I get paid. Our issue right now is lack of space so when I think of our forever home I dream of closets and a garage!
February 23rd, 2012 at 10:11 pm
We must be roomies. That sounds exactly like my place.
I try to keep up but one day off and the place looks a mess.
February 23rd, 2012 at 10:16 pm
It’s just incredible how many things a baby uses/needs on a daily basis, and it’s pointless to put it all up. Look forward to gleaning some ideas from these comments.
February 23rd, 2012 at 10:20 pm
I don’t have a toddler, but I have a husband and when I first moved in with him, I was constantly cleaning up after him. I’m pretty darn organized and he’s organized in a tornado kind of way. Like you, I’m coming to terms with the fact that some areas are just going to be messy.
Oprah has an organizing pal named Peter Walsh (heard of him? here’s a link: http://www.oprah.com/blogs/Thursdays-Are-from-Mars-How-Peter-Walsh-Stays-So-Organized) who has some good ideas. I think the key is just getting rid of clutter as much as possible. Which can be so difficult when we all own so much stuff!
February 24th, 2012 at 8:44 am
You have been to my house and have seen that we have no lack of space and yet my house lately (since I started school!) has been crazy messy. I am lucky that my kids are old enough to help me with laundry, but still we have baskets full of laundry all the time. There are random things everywhere. I am totally a neat freak by nature but I have learned to let this go for now and when I have a break from school, I’ll organize again only to have it messed up as soon as school starts again. I guess since I started back to school I realized that I don’t want to spend organizing my house on days off, I just want to hang out with the people who are making the messes in my house (my kids).
February 24th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
My only answer is invite people over as often as possible :) Whenever I do that I am assured of having a clean(ish) house because I enlist the husband and the kid to help sort through stuff and put things away. Also, now that Noah is somewhat taller, I hand him a swiffer cloth and let him go to town on all the surfaces. He’s also a great floor mopper. Child labor at its finest.
However, we do have a basement for storage but that’s a double edged sword. Since we have the space we tend to accumulate and store MORE crap. My goal from March -- May is to purge the entire basement and only keep what we REALLY need. I’ve been talking about doing it but now I need to DO IT.
February 24th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Sweetie, welcome to motherhood. Whatever issues you had before kids magnify when you have them. Since you said you’ve never been neat…that’ll only get worse lol
I can relate. Same situation. Now that I’m not working the laundry situation has improved immensely but we still have piles of paperwork on counters and diapers stacked up on the dining room table ready to use and I too have a running count of pacis and where they are because Livie is going to have hers til she’s 20 apparently…it’s endless. The good news is y’all have a roof over your head and you’re fed and clothed. The rest is just details.
February 25th, 2012 at 10:54 pm
The way I deal with it is there a certain pockets of the home that need to be neat and organized for me to function. You mention the kitchen counter? I get a little crazy when our whole island is filled with stuff cause I have a small space and my island is not only prep area but also where I eat so I try to clear it out regularly (I’m not the ONE who leaves stuff on it btw, it’s the BF). My desk is also a no mess zone since I blog, write and edit photos there daily. When I see the BFs clothes on the bathroom floor or my own stack of various unused decor in the corner of the bedroom, I can chill a bit on those messes because like you said, it may be messy but I know where stuff is.
I’ve gotten a bit gung ho with the labelmaker lately, really helps me remember what’s in the back of my pantry, find stuff on my closet shelves, office supplies and in my jewelry tray.
Btw, putting a floating shelves above doorways are great hidden storage trick in a small space, I’ve got one in my bathroom to store extra paper goods and plan to put another in my walk in for stuff that’s not used to often (I designed my own space so even though small, I had to have a walk in). I got mine from Lowes.