I’ve just moved all the files I use most of the time to a file drawer on my desk. I always ended up with a giant ‘to be filed’ pile on the desk because walking into the other room was too much of a barrier. Now I can look at mail and then file it right from my desk. Coincidentally there is no paper on my desk, and it’s wonderful.
So I’m thinking through what other little barriers I may be able to do away with, and coincidentally working on getting rid of the idea that I ‘should’ just do whatever thing has turned into the barrier each time. I’m not gonna, and there’s no shame in arranging my life to enable this sort of thing.
This has been a big one for me. Break rules. All our socks are in the garage. Why not? I put them on when I put on shoes. When I moved them I was like “why did I not do this years ago”. Every time I break a rule I’m so glad. It’s all made up
I have to admit that spouse spent more than half the time on this, while I worked on other stuff in the house (eg kitchen org, my office). But I did put in my time, too.
I was avoiding work this morning and looked at the pile of papers there. Dentist and glasses receipts from 2021 that I submitted before quitting my job. Book my former boss liked and thought I should read. Book from a vendor I thought might be interesting to better understand what another team was working on. Another empty cardboard box…
Nice! I have to physically carry all the papers downstairs to file them, except actually I have an inbox where they go most of the time. And there is really no way around this terrible system. I do not want to sort the mail in the basement (where there is no natural light and in the winter it is 61 degrees) and the filing cabinet cannot go upstairs.
BUT! I had the breakthrough that 90% of my filing is medical bills that I am saving for my HSA records. So, that one individual folder I keep upstairs in my administrative tasks pile and then I can put those in the right place right away.
I am unfuckening our house. Everything of a category must go in the same spot. That is how our brains work, especially with both kids little and not caring for their own shit yet: everything is effectively communal. So. All rugs go in the same closet. All their toys? Either the toy storage in the loungeroom OR in their wardrobe. They each have a set of drawers for their clothes and that is enough, none go in the wardrobe anyway.
I had some toys in our wardrobe and some in theirs BUT their wardrobe was mostly empty and what a huge waste of space that was when we’re drowning in stuff!!! This also lets me see what we have so I can start passing off the excess instead of just total constant overwhelm. We have finally found a point where it suits our family to do a toy rotation.
Currently in a good routine of unfuckening the kitchen and kids craft zone regularly. I would like to add another space that we are able to do regularly by end of January, part of the drop zone area.
Leaning into the post holiday, “what is time even”, just got a bunch of kitchen stuff mood. Unloading the dishwasher is turning into reorganizing some drawers.
What would y’all do with this closet? Would you add more like real permanent shelves, or more modular temporary things like baskets that hang from the shelves or those little cabinet shelf divider things?
The main goal is just to keep the first aid kit and the baby carrier from falling on me all the time.
Part of me agrees but the other part of strongly dislikes not being able to reach stuff in the back of a deep shelf. If I had a cabinet like this, I would also store my vacuum in the front. My house lacks closets, so I unfortunately have the vacuum out on display.
