Piles as a way of life? Or just poor organization?

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I know making piles of stuff at home has always been something I find hard to control.
How about the rest of you?

What kind of piles do you have at home?

Could you find something you needed by going straight to the pile it's in instead of digging throught endless piles?

Can you walk across the room without having to step over a pile on the way?

When you finally decide to 'Get Rid of the Piles', do you really just reorganize them into different piles? (I do this one a lot!)

Here's the piles I currently have that I can remember... I'm at work right now.

-Clean laundry on the piano bench.
-Clothes I have worn in the last week that I didn't think were dirty enough to put into the laundry, but haven't put back into my closet.
-magazines and papers that I have been through already when they were in other piles, but are now re-arranged into 'better' piles
-books I have pulled off the shelves to read (each at a different time), set down and either I pick them up again and read a little bit more, don't read them now, or just keep forgetting to put them back.
-parts left over from putting a windscreen on my bicycle the other day
-boxes of stuff I need to go through and either throw out, recycle, or put up until I need it
-stuff I brought home from the storage unit that I thought my daughter would want to have (been on the small couch for probably 3 or 4 weeks now)
-clean dishes to put away
-papers I need to look at (bills, mail)
-more papers I need to remember to drop off at places like my "investment" guy's office and attorney's office
-a crap-load of papers I have no idea what they are or what to do with them (as in... they've been on that same kitchen counter for almost a year and I can't remember exactly what's there)
-tools and stuff for working on the walls that I need to take out to the shed
-sewing and repair stuff piled on a desk that I want to organize
-computer stuff that didn't make it into the plastic bin for computer stuff during my last cleaning blitz
-clothing I want to donate to charity
-clothing I think I can fix and we can wear again
-a band instrument I brought home from my daughter's high school last night so I can make it a special device for carrying it in the marching band (it's in pieces at the moment on my dining table)
-empty boxes that I am considering keeping, but may eventually crush and recycle when I realize the futility of waiting for me to figure out which ones I want to keep

That's all off the top of my head.


So what's in your house?

papers... papers are everywhere. Papers I am unsure whether or not I want to get rid of them, some I am unsure whether or not they are important, some I haven't looked at in over 3 years but I still have them. Books mixed in with the papers-important pamphlets, doctors appointment notes, folders with class work in them, reports I have written... and they sit all over everything. To use my scanner I have to move papers, to write anything down I have to move papers. If someone sits in the passenger seat of my car, they have to move papers.... They are EVERYWHERE. The closest I come to organizing them usually is shoving them into boxes or onto shelves so I don't have to look at them again... then more piles start building up to replace the ones I have moved.

Have you ever thought of some form of birth control for your papers?

I usually have my paper piles stack up in an uneven tower which are somehow timed to slide onto the floor or elsewhere at different times.
If they all go at once I might not be able to get to the computer to let you all know I need help!

My house has massive piles of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE. It takes me too long to figure out how to process physical stuff, and most of my time and energy is wasted on trying to do 'damage control' because of my 4 year old hurricane child. (I caught him today cutting up my living room drapes that have only been hanging for 6 days that were to replace the previous drapes that he destroyed.) I have recently started to use visual picture aids to get me on track with household chores like dishes and laundry, so one of the next steps will be to make a nice picture card to make sure that I spend 15 mintues each day on trying to declutter something.

lol, I always imagined if a tornado came through, it wouldn't be the thing tearing through my house that would kill me-it would be the millions of papercuts I suffered and I would probably bleed to death. It's bad, too, because both of my children tend to "collect" papers as well. If they have drawn one line on something, it winds up in the pile of papers where I scribbled out or crossed out what I was writing... it's terrible, lol. I actually got a filing cabinet, and it's amazing how useless the thing is to me! I keep looking at it and thinking how incredibly nice it is to have, then I look inside and the thing is packed with stuff I will never need most likely.

I try to clean it out regularly, throwing away over half of what is in it, but it gets filled back up again... so I haven't touched it for 2 weeks, and I figure my house could be considered a fire hazard possibly o.O

Gads...my bedroom consists (literally) of piles of piles
Pure chaos.
There is the great pile of blank t-shirts for screenprinting (whenever I get around to it)
I have piles of art supplies, piles and piles of books, piles created from various attempts at organizing stuff....Piles of non-classifiable stuff..etc...and so on...it is evil.

OK, so here's what I'm TRYING to do with papers in case it helps anyone else. I got some 16 Qt. clear plastic containers, so since I'm obviously not going to properly file papers as fast as they come in, at least I can have piles of containers (by date) instead of totally overwhelming piles of lose papers. Containers are less likely to topple over and add to the stress.

When the mail comes each day, I try to sort through it just to weed out what I can easily identify as unnecessary to keep. Everything else goes into a plastic container that has the incoming date of the papers that it contains. For example, "9/1 - 9/15". This can buy me some time until I have time to go through the containers and really deal with each paper properly. And if I need to find a particular paper, I can look through the containers according to the time period that I think it arrived.

Start collecting bandaids



The extra nice thing about a filing cabinet is that it has a flat surface on top and they're usually strong enough for you to stack boxes of stuff on top of.

I have just one kid and over her 14yrs on this earth, we've amassed a pretty good collection of papers as well.

That's the kind of stuff I find emotionally hard to get rid of... especially if I can remember when she made it and why



WOW! You may be on to something! Do I have your permission to copy that idea for myself?

So if I understand... you have a picture card for each chore you want to accomplish around the house?
You give each card a specific amount of time to get as much as done as you can?

Where do you keep these? Where do you post them so you'll see them and remember to do them?

How do you organize them so you know which one to do in what order?

Thanks

Of course you can use the idea! I know it works because my laundry pile is shrinking, and I am caught up on dishes literally for the first time in about a year. I will be making picture cards for other chores and also tasks like bill paying and things related to running my business. I work in 5 minute increments because it takes a miracle to get my son to stay out of trouble for even that long at a time.

I found the most easily visible place in my house which is on the room divider between where my computer is and the rest of the house. I can see the cards from my computer chair and also when walking through the house. Each card has a velcro dot on the back. Each morning I will take the cards for the tasks that need to get done that day and stick them up. That in itself kinda helps to start programming the brain for the day. Each card stays up until that task is completed, then I pull it down.

As for the order, I have a weekly schedule that has never worked because trying to do things in an exact order always results in me getting stuck and very little getting accomplished. My plan for the cards is to only divide them into first half of the day tasks and second half of the day tasks. They are covered in vinyl so that times and notes can be written on them with a dry erase pen as needed. The idea is to have everything clearly visible so that my brain can chose what I'm capable of working on at any given time and hopefully get as much accomplished as possible by the end of the day.

Yikes! You mean I have to remember each morning to do this?
Next thing I know, you'll suggest perhaps I remember to do this before going to bed at night!


That sounds good.




Yeah, in my piles, I probably have all the 'weekly to do' lists I have started but never finished or never followed through on.

OKAY JOSE! I'll buy one. How soon can you send me a kit?

I can only give you the ingredients and basic recipe LOL.

I went to Big Lots and bought a package of 8.5" X 11" white cardstock ($2.00), a roll of clear self-adhesive vinyl (eighty-eight cents), and self-adhesive velcro dots ($0.97). I cut the cardstock sheets into quarters (each picture's background is 4.25" X 5.5". I'm carefully selecting a picture for each task that I find very attractive and will WANT to look at every day. Like for dishes I chose a beautiful picture of dishes that I found in a Pier 1 advertisement. My task before I go to bed tonight will be to find a really fun picture to represent decluttering my son's room (not a fun job, but an appealing picture can make it a little more pleasant).

I make clutter then race around putting it into order. My flat is so overly ordered, I do have OCD, which in many way helps me to have uncompromising order over my enviroment and daily affairs, however I can easly organize myself into a nervous brakedown.

My Dad has autism and when I met him for the 1st time (I was adopted at a very early age) he was a chronic hoarder and I feel I went the other way in order to 'hack it in the world.

That's just awesome! I have been doing something similar, using index cards, but somehow I think something larger would work much better. I just made a list of things I need to get to do this-it seems like a lot of fun just making the things, lol. Thank you!

Piles is a way of life!! !

Hee hee hee. No, thank you! I had read a little about your numbered index cards, and that was part of my thought process in coming up with this idea. I've also been learning about how PECS (pictures) help autistic children to learn things, and I talked with the mother of a 6 year old boy who has Down syndrome and autism. He has been making great progress since his therapist has been working with him with PECS. I didn't know until recently that I am autistic, so I never had the benefit of learning any coping skills as a child, and never realized that pictures might help me to make more sense of things. There really does seem to be something to it though.

Hey! If you want to buy yourself a ticket, fly over here to California, spend a few days in my house (providing you put everything in order and tell me how to find my stuff after that), and then leave, that's okay with me!




At least no one with a medical background has chimed in here... it could all go down hill rather quickly with a comment like that!