Untidiness - causes, management strategies anyone?

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Hi

I live like a pig in s**t. There's really no better way of putting it. I am untidy all over my house. I never wanted to live alone, in fact I was pushed into it. My mother (d 2005) thought it would be good for me because it would motivate me to be tidy. Much as I miss her, she was dead wrong on this one.

When I lived with other folks it wasn't so hard. Apart from my own bedroom, we all took turns and did our bit in keeping everything clean and tidy. Also because the common areas weren't specifically my own, it was easier to be motivated to not take my socks off etc in there.

I would like to be tidy. At least tidier. As it is I'm caught in a vicious circle. I think I should invite people round in order to motivate myself to tidy up a bit. But even when I do, the effort seems too much.

The problem is bad enough that when I have hired and paid cleaners, sometimes they have thrown out important documents judging by what I can't find after they've been.

I tell myself to put XYZ where they can't see them (like my desk drawers) and I try but sometimes I forget if I've opened my post in bed for example.

Individual rules of thumb aren't a bad thing but there's just so much to remember and if I was only as good at remembering lots of methods as some of the more fanatically tidy Aspies are (as I'm sure they'll admit) or as good as I am at reeling off lists of trivial information off pat then my life would be a lot easier.

As it is I just feel like I'm trapped inside the set of complexities that is me and here I am in this mess.

I deeply regret not having posted in these forums before. But hey better late than never.

Chris

One of the things that helped me was to throw away everything that I didn't absolutely need. The fewer possessions, the less potential for mess.

Secondly: I do one designated chore on every day of the week. For example, on Mondays I bring in and process the mail; on Tuesdays I put away the laundry. Et cetera.

Daily routines help, too. If you always do your chore as part of the morning routine, you can more easily remember to do it.

The initial cleaning will take a weekend or more, though maintaining it is easier. If you don't know how to clean a room--this is a learned skill, one I didn't learn until my mid-teens--you can try designing a list of steps, like this one:

http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/48979.html

I wrote that down to explain how I learned to clean a room. I don't follow this every time I clean, but if a room is very messy, it is more efficient to follow a protocol like this. I used to have to follow a protocol every time I cleaned a room, but now I can actually pick out the things that need to be changed and change them, if the room is not too messy. With experience you will get better at this.

Good luck!

I have always been a fairly messy person. I still am, but I have learned to do a few things that make keeping my house neat somewhat easier.

A few years ago, i wanted to invite people to my house. I spent a week cleaning up the place. After the party, I decided to try to implement a habit that I had seem friends doing but had never done myself. Specifically they would do house cleaning on a certain day every week.

At first it was an annoying chore that I really wanted to avoid and I would usually do it only about once every two weeks. Eventually I got so I would clean every saturday morning so the house was relatively neat throughout the weekend. Once it became a habit, I started to feel uncomfortable if I did not clean.

The nice thing about habits is that you don't have to think too much about what you need to do to accomplish a job. You just go on automatic pilot. My weekly cleaning routine progresses through the same set of tasks, usually in the same order until I'm done. And the nice thing is that when I'm done, I don't have to think about it until next week.

Ive been living by myself for about a month or two now and I feel you, I takes a lot of effort to get started but I usually just end up doing it all when I get in cleaning mode. It never ends but I'm starting to get use to the routine, try to reward myself when it is over and I just feel better with a clean apartment period.

At my old place of work, it was a standing joke that my own personal area in the staff-room resembled a council rubbish tip. Equally, it tended to amaze people that I could always instantly locate any item amidst the debris, when required!

Likewise, one or two of the rooms in my house periodically end up looking like Hiroshima, August 1945. The fact that this causes me few problems, as with the previous example, is not much of an incentive to do much about it!

I only tend to make any sort of an effort if I'm expecting a visitor, which isn't often.

I like to be neat and organized, even downright obsessive about it, and I am good at it IF I am in the right frame of mind to do it. But the problem is I don't stay in that mindset because it takes a lot of alertness and continual effort to maintain things. I get in a mood where I just want to escape from the world and everything in it and totally space out, and that's when the mess really starts piling up around me.

If other people are around to see it then it kind of forces me to pay attention more and I keep things neater. But since I live alone I think, what's the point? But I don't really want to invite people over and have them see what a horrible housekeeper I am, I feel very ashamed of it.

Thanks everyone, especially Callista. Sometimes I need reminding even of the most simple things but I will try to take this on board.

C

Callista, I just wanted to say how fantastic this is - Great job! I'm sure it'll be really useful to a lot of people. I'm going to print copies for my eldest daughter and myself right now.

Thank you for sharing it.

I heard through the FB "grapevine" I think it was, to set a timer for thirty minutes and do as much as you can. It helps me compartmentalizations the cleaning and having a timer provides a challenge and a limit so I can again, compartmentalizations it. Then I stop or reset the timer and keep going.

I friend told me a few weeks ago that she wrote her chores in index cards and left them out on the cabinet while her kids were growing up. As she went about her day, she would review the cards and select one and do it and or remove a card when the task had been done. Helped her keep on track while at the same time made her feel like she had accomplished something.

One thing I have done with my kids is to put things away by color. For instance, go pick up everything that is blue (or mostly blue). After that, I give them a different color. Makes it a little more interesting and is a chance for very young children to "show off" their color-identifying skills.

I may have a strange case of Asperger's but I'm messy and tidy/organised
simultaneously. How is that possible? I'm not sure.
While I look after my things very well, putting them away for storage, other things
are in a messy pile or in a terrible categorised structure.

My advice would be to try to plan where everything should go.
Drawing it (or at least writing it down if you hate drawing)
can really help, especially from a bird's eye point of view.

Sofa should be there because it is directly opposite the TV,
those books should be categorised by subject or alphabetical order; whatever you prefer.
Put small things in draws and displayable objects on display in places that make
them aesthetically pleasing, e.g. a model of a movie character could go placed on a fireplace mantle.

Think creatively but also sensibly where things should go.
It's not that there are any strict rules per se, (like in maths!)
it's actually more of just being conscious and applying common sense and your own
Aspie preferences. Think like a designer. If it was someone else's room, how would you suggest it be like?

Common sense would dictate I place
my books on a shelf with the spines easy to ready BUT
my personal preference is sometimes to have my books placed out in front of me
like a grid if it's books I regularly need to look at (like school/college books)
so that I can quickly see which book is where. I'm also quite a visual person so
I like seeing things in more interesting and bold ways rather than scanning through book spines.

Though I switch this method up depending on how I feel it should be categorised.
I like making things have a structure and look aesthetically nice and quick/easy to access.

If all else fails and you're just not that good with creatively or logically placing things,
then I would suggest getting friends to give you their opinion of where things should go
and you evaluate if their choices are good, debate it about and come to a conclusion,
maybe even write it down (or take a photo) for future reference in case you forget the general
way of organising things, especially if you're memory isn't that great or you get confused with certain things.

When drawing, it may help to separate things into virtual boxes/squares to
make things less confusing and make it easier to categories, though this method may vary with
different people's way of organising information.

It may help to focus on one thing at a time and for example,
place things you hardly ever need to get out, deeper into a draw, (e.g. a passport)
and things you frequently use (like maybe a favourite CD) or things that are hard to find in darkness,
at the top of a draw. (E.g. a torch. Hey it's an emergency thing in darkness right? )
But I'm not sure if this is good advice because I don't know of a specific example
of trouble you're having.

Since becoming single again a few months ago, I am now living on my own truly independently for the first time in my life (at 36). Up until now I've either lived with someone else, be it in a relationship or in a shared house, and now I know that it is sharing my living space with someone is what has made me unhappy throughout my life.

Now, I have a rented 1 bedroom house all to myself. I don't have to worry about anyone else's considerations and can do as I please. So therefore I am not very tidy. I don't live in a mess, but if I want to come home from work and just plonk myself in front of the tele and not move until bedtime forsaking all housework I can and will.

I tend to go on a mad blitz every now and again and tidy everything all at once. Usually that's when I get annoyed with something and think "that's it, I need to clean up now."

I am getting a cat in a fortnight, which I think will help as I won't be able to leave stuff lying around on the floor so much, and I'll need to clean up after the cat and be responsible for her.

One thing I am beginning to notice about myself is that I am increasingly feeling the need to get rid of everything physical that has a digital version. Now I can do what I want and live how I want without having to think about what other people want/think, I don't see the need to have "things". I've always been of the mind that "if it doesn't have a purpose, I don't want it gathering dust" so I don't like ornaments etc. But that could end up with the house looking rather clinical. But I've decided that's ok. I'm considering getting a NAS media hub and just having everything I own boiled down into one little black box that I can access with my iPad.

One day I may just upload myself to the Internet and be done with it

(Sorry for the ramble, I've had a couple of drinks lol)

I get like that too.My mum used that exact expression to describe me too . I love order anyway. It makes me feel warm and tingly inside when my room is totally ordered. I also cant focus properly when its a mess. These things motivate me to keep it tidy. I have to clean up twice a day basically. This is the long way round. Easiest way to do things is

Make sure everything has a place where it lives. Everything
Put things back or away the moment you put them down or see them out of place
Compare how you feel and function in a tidy versus a messy environment