Organise More Efficiently By Staying Put

I don't have the willpower to stay put.

If I know exactly where it's supposed to go in another room, then it would drive me crazy to put it in a box instead of putting it properly in the first place.

I usually put stuff that I DON'T know where it's supposed to go in a box, and put that box on the bed of the person who knows where it's supposed to go. I used to put the stuff directly onto the owner's bed, but it's annoying when the person sleeps with the mess.

@Robotic Bilbo Bagins has no use for fleshy ones: +1

engstewart

Stirk's tip to make this happen. Pile the items to be moved to another room in the path to the door. No one likes stepping over things.

Call me lazy, but this usually works to keep me put and on the task!

this shouldn't be too hard to implement for people who live in studios or lofts :)

Great article to read on the day I have resolved to clean up the office. :)

I suffer from hoarding, this makes it 1000% harder for me to actually manage my home. I found if I tackle a specific function a day and always make a list...

Justin MacIver

I do this with a slight difference when I have a really huge re-org to do, because the room in need is almost always stacked to the rafters.

I move absolutely everything that isn't in place to another room that has some empty space. Thus, if I have something where the storage needs to be re-arranged, I don't have 30 other things that have to be moved out of the way first. And I can put things in piles before putting them up to see how best to organize things.

Note, this only really happens to my craft room, which has just barely enough floor space to pass between the assorted shelves, drawers, and tables.

I do this already. Being lazy, I don't like to make multiple trips.

Robotic Bilbo Bagins has no use for fleshy ones

How about taking some ritalin before organizing? Would that help?

I can definitely see how this would help as I constantly do get distracted by walking out of the room.

@Bert Bronaugh:
trust me it works very well

I've had to tackle this problem before. This seems like a great solution. I'll try it the next time I clean my room out.

Bert Bronaugh

@TheTriStatesBestSide_GitEmSteveDave: Whoa, that's intense. Do you have a webcam mounted to your ceiling?

I like this idea, and suggest a couple more:

+ If you're cleaning a bedroom full of clutter, stick everything on the bed. This means you have to do something before you go to bed; also, it means that you can have a clean floor first and organize from there.

+ Section the room and attack the areas that can be done the quickest first. That way you can see the achievement and feel like the task can be done, instead of being undoable. For example, unless you're a super-organizer, don't do your desk first, because you can find sub-projects in your desk.

+ If your cleaning project needs outside items, make a task list for that and do it as soon as you can.

Then again, I'm the organized one in my group of friends who people would have come over to say, "no, no, unhoard that, let's start here" so these may be better if you're already hardcore about this, but fwiw.

I actually do something similar. If I am cleaning the kitchen table for instance, I'll make piles... one for trash, one for stuff to go in the bedroom, etc., and one for stuff to stay on the table. Then, after my piles are organized, I'll put everything where it goes and that's that!

dmclark5

I have found that organizing stuff a little bit at a time has really helped me keep ahead of having a cluttered apartment. If there is something that needs to be put away or something, like a dish on my nightstand, I do it as soon as I am finished using it. To be sure, it took me a few weeks to finally get organized, but when I did it hasn't been that hard to get ahead of it.

cmuwriter

best idea i have heard in a while, no wonder i never finish c;eaning/ organizing

jslizzle

@Stirk: Hah, that's what I do. I'm less inclined to leave if there's a big pile of stuff I don't want to deal with blocking the path.

One of the best tips I ever read was on here which said "Clean left to right, top to bottom" when cleaning ANYTHING. Except for the fact I usually clean my downstairs first, as most of what is down there came from upstairs, it helps a lot.

@iamnotafish: YES! Yes it does. That's what helped my office from this:

To this:

Well, that and I was unemployed, so I could spend almost literally the whole day cleaning my house, rather than trying to when I got home.

@iamnotafish: Why yes, it would.

baest

Probably many people who like clutter suffer from OCD of some degree, which probably makes concentrating on something for long difficult. So, this is a good tip. But you have to wonder if you're that driven to distraction perhaps taking up meditation might be an interesting way to develop some concentration and the ability to stick with something without losing track of what you're doing. Or there's always meds.

Depending. If the room is really cluttered, it may be better to free up some space which will give you more room to sort in. For example I might move some old computer equipment or some boxes out of a room to give me more space to finish sorting in.

I also agree with AlexJAnder. Start in one area, eg: "Just the desk", and then move on once you're done.

More than staying in one room, I stay in one area. I focus on "just the desk" or "just the closet" or whatever. If I move away from one focal point, it all gets to be to much.

@TheTriStatesBestSide_GitEmSteveDave: I've seen that photo a couple of times in a couple of gawker sites, but I'm still mystified about that panel with a handle on it. Closet door? Giant drawer? Airlock? Batcave?

I do this when helping the kids clean their rooms. I just grab a few laundry baskets instead of boxes.

DirtyBits

This has always been my strategy, although never intentional. If there isn't a good place for it in my room while I'm reorganizing, it usually goes on my bed until everything else has been taken care of.

Although, this strategy usually means washing sheets afterwards because of the ridiculous amount of dust that most of these "who knows where it goes" items have on them.

@TheTriStatesBestSide_GitEmSteveDave: Great job! Love the kitty under the desk. :)

Now, about those cams - how do you manage not paying attention to them? I'd be looking at them all the time, lol.

These pictures are incredible. What kind of animals are you people??

:op

Andy Cairns

@[JerseyCam.org] . There are 4 cams in my house now, and a 5th possibly on the way. I know, I'm a camwhore ;)

@wickedcupofjoe: Want him? He's an idiot. But about the cams. I have one up for almost 6 years, but only in the past two did I add the extra cams. You get used to them after a short while. The only one that reminds me it's around is the "ComputerCam", b/c it's a Pan-Tilt-Zoom, and it follows you around the room. And lately, since I installed a new program to upload the picts, I have stopped having to check the cams to see if they are still "online".

@ClintonOddfellow: My house is turn of the century, so under every set of stairs, there is a "storage" area. This one is under the stairs to my attic. I keep all my computer boxes(for old equipment, some w/stuff still in it, routers, etc...) in there. It's actually starting to get pretty packed, so I might have to clean it out soon.

I usually tackle one area at a time and try hard never to let clutter build up. Because I live in a 300 square foot apartment with my husband, any clutter really is a problem. However, sometimes a new acquisition or a change in how things need to be stored forces me to completely rearrange everything in a major way. At that point, I just put everything in the middle of the floor and then I have to deal with it.

I think people really need to address why they clutter in the first place. Most people simply don't have a place for things or don't put them in the place they belong in because it's too much trouble to do so. If you habitually put things where they don't belong, it's time to rethink your storage situation. Make it easy to put things away and clutter won't occur.

Staying put really does help. I do it with a twist, like the other commenters. I stay put RIGHT IN FRONT of the place in the room where I want to start. I move everything that has to be moved to a pile behind me. Then I step back and clean out the next section of the room, again moving the stuff that needs to be cleared out in a pile behind me. With my back to the door, I eventually leave behind a clean room with all the garbage and other stuff to be moved out already behind the door.

@philosopher_dog: I think you mean ADD, not OCD. OCD requires large amounts of concentration, inherently.

Richard Foshee

@Robotic Bilbo Bagins has no use for fleshy ones:

Laziness is just poorly marketed efficiency :P

THJ

@iamnotafish:

Sometimes. You might end up with an organized room, or you might end up with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of q-tips, and the cleanest keyboard in the world in the messiest room in the world.

THJ

This is a wonderful idea. I would apply it in my 11'x11' dorm room.

UrsulaWeasel

I have a very different philosophy that I use sometimes - Focus on one room, but put one thing away at a time. Put it all the way away, not just in a stack closer to where it goes. Don't try to be efficient by doing several things at once. Just pick up one and only one thing, and put it away. More than one thing will make you think too much. The key here is to just do what you already know how to do, not to overthink what you should do with something. And If that means going to another part of the house, then do it. You can even run to get exercise while you're doing and to keep your energy up. Then, as soon as you put that one thing away, pick up the nearest thing you see and put it all the way away. But you don't want to get too distracted, so you set a timer for 4 or 5 minutes. When the timer goes off, you go back to the room you are focusing on and pick up the next thing. If you don't have a place to put something, do what you need to to make a place. But if that involves a big project, then you have to evaluate if you can do that today or if that becomes a new project for another day. The great thing with this strategy, is that if you get halfway done, you've actually cleaned up half your stuff. The stuff that doesn't belong in that room is out of your way. And You don't have all your stuff still scattered but in new piles. Next time you get a chance there's actually less to do. The two keys are the timer that brings you back to the room you're focusing on, and focus on one and only one thing at a time. It really intensifies your focus and gets things done.

ShyamaliValdorf

@TheTriStatesBestSide_GitEmSteveDave: nice cat.

and you gotta love the woot-off sirens

I never stay in one room... after a bit, I get irritated with the same mess, and have to move to a different room, almost to re-energize my mind.

@Justin MacIver: I've heard of some people transferring their hoarding to online games, most notably Second Life. Wading through the 20k item inventory gives the same feeling and you can pull anything and everything out if you want to.

Just a thought.

@THJ: Most inventions are the result of laziness (or cheapness).

Apeiron242

Great ideas! I would need and certainly use this for future dorms

Amberlin

Good tip, organizing after moving is defiantly one of the most tedious parts of moving.

est005

I wish people would start organizing their sentences better so as not to split their infinitives.

JiAvW

@Richard Foshee: No I think that's what I meant. OCD is concentration on the wrong thing, that is, distraction. One effect of OCD is collecting junk compulsively.

@jeninmotion: i second the idea about chucking stuff on the bed. messy as it may seem, it works wonders. you'll HAVE to finish it if you want to sleep.

@TheTriStatesBestSide_GitEmSteveDave: okay is it just me or do you now have twice as many cords as you started with? twist and tie, buddy. it saves lives. and cats.

(that's the main reason why i started using them. everytime my cats see loose wire, gadgets go flying. not fun when you're charging your ipod.)

@Ash.Menon: Well, I also added a 2nd computer and two more external drives. Add to that the 2nd webcam, and you get more cables. It's why I moved my network stuff onto the wall. As for cords, I only have one who likes cables, and she likes to chew the end connectors, not the cord itself. Besides, the cats like the space under the drawers and next to the Dell, b/c there's a nice amount of heat there and I never think to look for them there, so they can hide when I find what they did while at work.

The best motivation for me to clean and organize is to plan a party or have those friends over for dinner that I know will talk about how messy I am. If they knew the truth...

CatherineHizballa

ohh! i like the boxes for other rooms tip. i always made piles of stuff that then rarely made it to where they were supposed to go.
i've already found not leaving the room to work well for me. the problem is, i rarely have time to do this! when am i home anymore!?!

nicesocks