Strategies for Living in a Messy House

 1) Be sure to have a sacred place for the things you really can't lose.

1.1) Things you need often, like car keys, wallet, should be in a visible bag that zips shut and stays always in one place when you're at home.

1.2) Things like birth certificates, passports, should have a designated drawer that you know is there for the important stuff.

1.3) The top surface of anything is not a safe place for something not encased in a larger, preferably sealed, container. Things get knocked off surfaces to land behind things, under things, or just get lost in piles of junk.

2) Tape a long colorful ribbon to the TV and other remotes.

3) Attach USB drives to a lanyard or colorful ribbon or cord.

4) Have a bulletin board for the stuff you mustn't lose, like bills.

5) Try to have all your bills sent via email.

6) Set up Autopay for utilities and other bills whose amounts don't vary by much.

7) Lay out all of your clothes, including socks and underwear, the night before, along with deodorant and anything else you don't want to be hunting around for in the morning.

8) You need a calendar that everyone in the house can see, that everyone in the house updates with meetings, appointments, parties, or anything that takes up time, and that everyone in the house looks at a lot. This should be close enough to the phone and have a pen attached so you can write down the appointments when they're made over the phone, and for when the automated reminder phone calls come in.

If your family is all able to use a shared Google Calendar for this purpose, congratulations.

frugal cleaning of messy houses

1) When you need to wipe gunk from the kitchen sink drain, look around for a discarded paper napkin on the floor. Then it can have a second use in picking up disgusting crud before you throw it away.

2) If your vacuum cleaners all got clogged with hair and broke, you can get the carpet somewhat clean by running your sneakered foot along it. This will roll up clumps of hair with dust trapped inside. You can pick up a clump, throw it away, then decide if you want to do more. You can get different parts of carpet clean at different spare moments. It's a nice exercise.

3) Entire house a mess? Clean the bathroom first. You know why.

4) Why do socks need to match? If the texture is the same, then it doesn't matter if the colors don't match. You've got a pair. They'll feel fine. Different colored socks is a fashion statement. You can go for it with no guilt.

5) Hang clothes, placemats, or whatever needs rinsing on the clothesline before it rains.

6) If you ever try to organize things in bins, make sure to label the bin with what category of things should go in there.

Some years back, I organized the contents of bathroom cabinet into different plastic shoeboxes but made the fatal mistake of not labelling the categories.

Overs the years, the contents entropically shuffled.

Whenever I'm rooting through the boxes trying to find something, I think I really ought to get around to organizing them again, this time with labels. It hasn't happened yet.

7) Try cleaning the kitchen floor. It's non-controversial; usually doesn't involve much personal junk to argue over; and you can clean around anything you can't move.

I did my kitchen floor in stages. Swept and mopped the part that wasn't covered in junk. Then another week or so later, cleaned up some of the junk, reclaimed part of the floor. Finally, I could look down the entire kitchen floor to the back wall. It was clean. It was wonderful.

8) Once you get a part of your place clean, such as the kitchen floor, practice more frequent maintenance cleaning. Maintenance cleaning is much quicker than long-delayed cleaning. You can sweep the kitchen floor in 30 seconds if you already swept it yesterday (or after the last disaster ten minutes ago). 

9) Every part of your dwelling that looks normal is a boost of sanity to all of its inhabitants. Look with tunnel vision, if need be, at these small victories when you want to feel normal. Keep these places, if no place else, clean. Hold them tight against the evils of chaos. You will survive. You will even expand the territory of saneness.

10) Total victory is a mirage. Slightly more livable is your goal.