Oddbean new post about login | logout Has anyone successfully transitioned from a messy house person to a clean house person? My house always so messy, my habits are shit, and I can't seem to break them
I go through little spells of it being tidy, but largely, no. There's nothing wrong with a bit of mess, in my book😬😎.
I do like once every 2 months and it lasts for like 2 weeks and it’s a shitty cycle.
Exactly the same for me
Whenever I successfully convert [redacted] I'll let you know. It's been 20 years and no luck thus far.
Adhd? If so, don't out it down, put it away. The only thing I'm allowed to have a mess is my rolling table. 🤣
Yeah. Once you get a kid, they'll force you to become more clean and tidy because the house would become uninhabitable otherwise.
Have you tried gamifying it? @jb55 used habitica for a while and there was a noticeable uptick in the frequency of the recycling being taken down :) haha. But then #nostr came along and the rest is history so I understand your dilemma.
I will try habitica then. Yes stupid nostr isn't making it easy 🥺🤣😭
Getting rid of almost everything is something I do roughly every 10 years. Less stuff is simple to clean. Hugs. 🫂
Again … gamification of the world does what … What #value is found Not everyone deserves a trophy. Sometimes we just have to do things. You know? Hugs 🫂 https://nostrcheck.me/media/2aadfb8ac7d43aca6d164ed99248147910048269601ff60d4463c4d5b3abfdcd/3a0a86557c4ff3ba04f3f5016122dabeee3c1b3f91bf9cd8bbac975c56746f13.webp
Yes. A decade ago, in my mid-30s. I decluttered like crazy, and other than some hobby items - hiking, golf, cooking - have stayed on it. Even wore off on my kids…….well, until my daughter turned 14, but I’m assured they are all hoarders, lol
I grew up in a house of pack rats and paths through the shit. I learned early to do seasonal full cleaning/organizing of my bedroom to make a single neat and organized place in the house I could exist in. Now I fight the mess fight with wife and boys and they are VERY slowly beginning to organize.
💯❤️🫂
Working on it. My most helpful advice is to have a weekend where you litterally have no plans. If you’re remotely as adhd as me you’ll want to clean some shit up because you won’t be able to stand idle in your living space until things are back in order. Also. Seems like declutterint is a common theme. Not just putting things in order but actively reavaluating how much you need something that’s been gathering dust in that random corner because you had no other place to put it.
You sound a lot like me. I have some enforcement now because i live with my wife and i have 2 kids and that forces me in the right direction, however i feel like i still need tons of discipline and i find it really hard to muster that up. It makes me frustrated and then angry, not liking myself. Having this waking realization of this bothering you seems to be the first step in the right direction. I would just start with something simple until it becomes so habitual that you barely notice it anymore. Simple examples: - Put your dishes in the dishwasher after eating and clean the kitchen mess after every meal. - Make your bed when you get out. - Clean your toilet once a week. - Take 5 minutes every week to go around and put away random stuff that you kept lying around. Don't do all these things at once, it will be too much and you'll get sick of it and stop doing any of these things. Only add when you feel like the thing you tried feels normal. It may take 3 months or 6 months but you have to keep improving slowly and steadily. Additionally "12 rules for life" by Jordan Peterson made me appreciate these things more. Life is suffering. You need suffering to feel satisfaction. Also don't beat up yourself too much about the things in life that don't go so well. To me you seem like a great person and you produce awesome software! That's more than most people have going for them!
mum was a massive hoarder. 🥴 Guess I need to throw heaps out 🤷🏽♂️ Marie Kondo has some Netflix show https://youtu.be/mlV7M3zDJuE
I'm writing this as I take a break from trying to capture back a part of my house that had been lost to the mess, so let's say I'm in progress on that front. Try to think of it like refactoring spaghetti code. One function (room or in my current case a single closet) at a time or it will be too much. When you do part, do it right. Make homes for things and only put things in their homes. A tiny area that is nice will give you more positive feedback to keep on than an entire house that is all only 10% better. Also like the spaghetti code, you got into this mess because you were rushed before. Unless you fix that sense of rush and chaos in your everyday life, things will fall apart again. How chaotic my life feels creates mess which makes my life feel chaotic in a negative feedback loop.
Under a threat of a date coming over, mayhem turns into orderly pretty magically
Hire someone
I got married 🤣. My wife fixed me up pretty quickly. Now, things are reasonably clean and organised, even when she’s not home. It really has become an ingrained habit. My unhealthy 16+ hour coding and gaming sessions are also mostly a thing of the past (unless things at work are on 🔥, which still happens more often than I would like to admit).
Only when my relatives aren't here... I used to be the messy one though, karmas a bitch, let that motivate you perhaps
My house was spotless before I got a family, now it’s messy all the time. Cleaning is like shoveling snow in a blizzard.
Reduce stuff.
I’m a minimalist, I’m not owning much.
Then build a straighten up into your morning and nighttime routine. It's what we do. Everything gets put in place before breakfast and before bed. It's easy because we don't have unnecessary belongings. Give it a try for a week or so and report back.
Thank you for your advice, we are already trying to do that 😊 And we try to teach our three kids to keep their rooms clean. We also just hired a person to clean the house every other week. I think it’s going to be better from now 🫧 How many kids do you have?
I've got 1, working on 2. Create the ceremony of cleaning *with* you kids. Associate it with getting ready for the day and going to bed. Show them through leadership, make it a team effort, then delegate the responsibility when they are ready. This will make them feel important.
Kids not cleaning is a symptom of parents not illustrating (via their behavior) that they value cleanliness. You need to make positive incentives and mime the behavior you want to see. If you make it seem like a chore, like you're annoyed, like it's a stressor, then they will be repelled from it as an activity.
Always make a fun/important family routine and involve them until they feel ready enough to be "in charge". This technique will come in handy over and over as you steward them through life. I learned it from the Montessori method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaaQYHbZgZ4
Something I learned from working at McDonalds. Clean as you go. Everything you pass by that is not in the right place, pick it up and take it to its right place.
📠One of the best skills in a kitchen that is useful all around in life.
Some strategies I’ve recently heard of: 1. Everything should have a “place” it goes. Then when you’re done using a thing, you don’t have to figure out where to put it, it’s obvious. 2. You are an efficient human being. If stuff is piling up in certain places, put something there (small trash can, basket, etc) so it’s more organized.
You can change them
A place for everything and everything in its place. I was pretty good about it. But unfortunately for me, I had to move units in my apartment building while I was still on crutches, and I still haven't recovered from letting the movers moving all my stuff into roughly the same areas, saying I'd organize it all later. Only got like 40% organized and the rest is kinda as is. Made me realize that I've accumulated a bunch of stuff I never touch.
i love how everyone is saying that their wife fixed them. My dad was a drill sergent so my room was impeccable under threat of death by pushups or switch beatings... then i met my wife who was a defcon lvl5 horder, and I've had to embrace the chaos ever since. All my kids got her gene and i have to ignore it to avoid non combat ptsd
Good habits take time to form. Try your best but don't beat yourself up if you haven't met your ideal standards. In that being said, I think it's easier to stay tidy when you have less stuff. Here's a nice heuristic to determine whether to keep object X: if X gets stained by dog poop, would I wash it or throw it away? If the answer is to throw it away, you don't need it 🤣
I have transitioned into becoming a clean and organized person, but most of the habits I developed happened by accident. I always intended to be tidier, but I struggled to succeed. For example, I started cleaning dishes and wiping water around the sink after an incident involving a forest fire. One day, I woke up to find tons of ants in the kitchen, drinking water and eating leftover food. They lived with me for weeks and the only way to get rid of them was to always keep the kitchen clean.
I married a really clean wife with high expectations, so I had to level up my game. I do chores every day to keep everything in order. Try doing 15min a day and it is going to maintain itself waaaay better. Listen to podcasts on Fountain while cleaning is lovely, too 💜
Start super small. Just make your bed every morning. Then after a week or two, make sure that you never go to bed with dishes in the sink. Then after another week or two (where you're succeeding at those two), add something else small. It doesn't take long to build up.
swear off the internet/computer/phones entirely on sundays. you'll find yourself cleaning up your environment to kill time.
