Clearly, your problem is Ikea, not your methods.

hehehehehehe You are SO right, Christine!

ikea? that store is a figment of the imaginary internets. There is no ikea for me to get distracted by.

it's true. ikea is not yet providing the perfect product.

http://www.boasas.com/?c=553

Amen sister. It seems the more organizational stuff I get the more disorganized I am. (Now which cute little basket did I put that receipt in?)

The Ikea in Fontana closed, so I am denied its magnetic pull any longer, even though we occasionally get their ads in the mail. Instead I have Pier 1 and Cost Plus World Market to suck me in with their stuff.

You have just perfectly described my life. Though I do have one addition, the "dead ant" manuever. This is where my husband or myself gather up things that are in the wrong spot into a pile and move them to some other wrong spot. Thus cleaning one spot and dirtying another. It is called the dead ant manuever because this is how ants deal with their dead. They stack them all in one place until the space is full, then they find a larger place and move all of their dead to that place, so on and so forth.

Thanks for the laugh... and April is right, we have no Ikea here in Oklahoma to mess our lives up. Instead we have to do the same thing but without seafoam spots.

It is not just you! Right now I have 4 wholesale orders to fill. BIG orders. And what do I do? Worry about how much I have to do, make an excel file over the orders, and then play Neopets instead. While I worry.

Wait, did you write this entry or did I? Nope, clearly you. My thoughts exactly, but you write it so much better!

It's definitely not just you. My solution is to wait until there is an ABSOLUTE deadline for organization. (i.e. our realtor is coming to show the house at 4 today. Note to self. Need to buy more Ikea stuff and cleaning supplies and SCRAMBLE between now and then...)

Hey, what's with all this trying to make me homesick for L.A.?? Yesterday with all your talk about the sunshine .... today about the magic that is Ikea. What's tomorrow?.... the glory of In N'Out Burger??

ARGHHHHHHHH! :)

(p.s. Fine ... I still love ya ... but could you send pictures of the smog? Pretty please?? Quick, before I sell my house here in Portland...)

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that gets sucked into the world of Ikea for my home organization. Magazine holders shouldn't be so cute!

Good Lordy, no it's not you. Time is trickery. Really, it isn't you.

Oh my gosh, this sounds so much like me. My clutter is also trying to kill me, and I kid you not, I went to Ikea last week to buy some shelves to stack things on, and then yesterday I was at Storables for some little plastic boxes to put things and put THOSE on the shelves.

Also scary is the number of organizational products stores there are here in the Bay Area. I've got Storables, The Container Store, and Organized Living (although they might not be here anymore...Container Store opened just across the street, and I think people started going to the new shiny store, and Organized Living isn't there anymore. But I bet there's another location somewhere in the area. Wait...I got sidetracked, huh?). And then not one but TWO Ikeas, East Palo Alto and Emeryville.

So yeah. I'm with you on the whole thing.

the longest time is 8-5 EVERYDAY during the week. UGH!

The infinite is a tricky concept.

:) How many times did I hit the "snooze" this morning? And each time, a deep, deathlike slumber. So sad. Yet, last nite, when attempting to sleep, I stared at the ceiling and listened to the traffic up Fairfax. We are twins separated at birth, no?

Cats are not clutter but they are clutter magnets. If there is something I am meaning to put away or throw away I guarantee one of my cats will curl up on it and go to sleep in the most adorable pose, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. Bed of rusty nails no problem, they will look so sweet and adorable that I won't have the heart to actually disturb them and continue with my plans organize my stuff.

I'm not sure, but I think we just got an Ikea store in the area. Or maybe it's going downtown.

At any rate I will try to resist its pull.

(It's too late for me and Target)

So I'm not the only one the clutter is trying to kill?

As Flylady says, you can't organize clutter! Just toss it!

Having just dropped half my rent payment at Container Store, I know that of which you speak.

BUT. I feel like I have turned a corner. Go read the book "Organizing from the inside out" by Julie Morganstern. She theorizes that we're messy because we try to force ourselves to organize in ways that don't match our habits. She suggests figuring out where you clutter and organizing around it. Ie -- if you always drop your mail by your door, put a basket there to catch it. Don't create a fancy "mail file" in the bedroom, because you just won't use it. You're not wired that way. Good luck!

It is not you.

It is entropy.

And don't you hate it when you get done organizing all your crap, and you turn around and find that just gave you more horizontal surfaces on which to pile more crap?

Yeah. Me, too.

I've found my perfect solution, get ready to sell house, clean like madwoman for a month, put all things in second unit of duplex that is not rented so that it will sell easier. Hate realtor, take house off market, leave things in second unit because it is now SO CLEAN in my home. Sigh. Two problems here - I can't find a DAMN THING and that is one EXPENSIVE storage unit. Good luck at IKEA!

I seem to use Ikea as a Laundry-Monster killer. If I sort my laundry into cute little silver and white bins that it will magically transform the mass into smaller and more managable loads.

Ikea is a dangerous, dangerous world of shattered dreams.

I would love someone to come in and clean my house. Now that I am working, I could probably even afford it. But then bourgeois guilt over takes me and I don't get off my butt and call anyone.

If only I had an Ikea to go to...my clutter would all go quietly away.

Instead, it is thrust into my FACE by my husband, who keeps insisting that we DEAL with it!

Good Grief! Where is the fun in that?

We also re-arrange the furniture from time to time, in order to "force" us to clean, and have found moving to a new house very effective as a means of getting organized. Sad, but true...we're so weird.

It's part of the knitting DNA. You are happily knitting along on a project and something pops in your mind so you put the knitting down and go search for the book/magazine. Next thing you know, you are seduced by a pattern that had nothing to do with what you were even thinking about and next thing you know, you are pulling out the spinning wheel to start spinning yarn for said seductive item.

Then while spinning you realize you need to oil the wheel and you start searching all of the IKEA organizational things (originally purchased for items other than fibery things but ended up being filled with fibery things), and then you spot a long forgot UFO and start fondling that, forgetting all about the oil and said seductive project.

What, you all don't do that?

No, it's me too....

First off, the picture of the cats is just like a poster I have of two cats sitting on a ledge above a bookcase looking out a window! I didn't know the cats had modeling jobs:)

Secondly, check out www.flylady.com You receive daily emails helping you to take babysteps in organizing your home. A teacher I work with (who is the messiest person I've ever seen!) swears by it.

Ann-- I got the audiobook version of "Organizing from the inside out" by Julie Morganstern and it was really helpful, which is what kicked off this whole decluttering process.

She had me pegged in her book -- I was just like the lady who had all the trappings of one life hidden under the stuff collected for your new life, hence all the paring down I'm doing to free myself of the junk I had when I was married.

But for me, resisting the lure of the Ikea storage bins is like resisting heroin.

except of course I have never done heroin, contrary to what my last lame comment made it sound like

I do however have a terribly expensive and greedy Ikea habit....

Clutter is trying to kill me, too! :-(

I work well under pressure, i.e. company coming. So come on out to Indiana :-)

Its me too - and my whole family. We're a mess.

Yeah. Our nearest IKEA is in Pittspuke, so I control those urges. But I can totally relate on the time suckage thing.

For instance....HUGE events next week at work. What am I doing? Lounging in my brown velour running suit and reading Crazy Aunt Purl.

I so have you beat in the procrastination and ADD world, sister. ;-)

I can relate in SO many ways. Good to know I'm not a lone. Also: magazines and pictures are major ADD traps when trying to clean. I find it's best to avoid them. Also the art supply bin.

There IS an Ikea opening in Stoughton, MA, on Nov. 9th... yet another reason to be glad I don't have car. The Staples near my apartment is difficult enough.

I am so glad I am not alone...

You may have clutter (drop by my place sometime and then you'll see clutter!) but you DO have pretty lights on your patio :-)

Laurie, it's not just you. It's me, too. I have the Pile Gene - it causes me to leave everything I own in little piles all over the house. Little pile of newspapers, little pile of magazines, little pile of knitting patterns printed off the internets, little pile of library books, little pile of kids' school papers that dates back to the beginning of the school year. Et cetera. Sometimes I manage to purge the little piles, only to have them build back up within hours.

My son, age 9, has inherited this gene. The jury is still out on my daughter, age 6. Pray for her!

Oh heavens - I feel SO much better knowing that I'm not the only one!! What is it about this time of year that makes us NEED to organize ourselves?? I spent yesterday home from work CLEANING up all the clothes and crap from my floor/dining table/ottoman/desk/etc. and now have a shopping list of all the fun boxes and shelving crap I can buy at The Container Store which I will use for a week and then I will forget all about them.

PS - watch "Mission Organization" on HGTV. I have it Tivo'd, it's SOOOO inspiring. It gives girls like us HOPE. And that's all we can ask.

I want an IKEA! Rumor has it Portland is supposed to get one and it's supposed to be near my house...but so far? Nothing.

Any excuse to buy organizational products. I drool over the closets in The Container Store catalog. Course that could just be me.

I highly recommend cleaning out the clutter in stages. It's easier if you only tackle one portion at a time. And get a friend to help. Possibly two. (One friend should be a bottle of wine.)

I totally understand what you are talking about. I start cleaning and an hour later, I have decided to keep 90% of the paper in pile 1 and move it to the office... I will re-discover the pile again in a week or month, and go through it again saving another 90%. I then put it in a drawer. Time passes, I clean out the drawer and realize that I don't need any of it... well I might, but I haven't in three months so I might as well throw everything away. Why does this clarity not come with the first cleaning? Good luck to you! I am glad to know it's not just me.

It's you. My house is clean and well organized. All the lovely yarn and Java's dog-hair are stacked neatly in easily accessible piles thoughout the house. Who needs plastic shelves from Ikea?

Girl-

Haven't you learned? You can not do this alone. You have to invite a friends over (make sure some who is a)anal A type dictator b)very close to your heart - and whip up a shaker of cocktails. Tell her you need to TOSS SHIT OUT. Trust me, she'll point out that you can probably part with that Vanity Fair from April of last year. And she'll tell what ugly ass t-shirt can be donated to charity. And if you find a really good issue with a "How likable am I?" quiz, you can read it to each other while you curse at your unruly yarn stash.

Laurie honey, we are definitely twins separated at birth, that last entry just seals the deal. I even blogged about it in my first entry today (today was a double....all day meeting...). I have Cleaning ADD! My Cleaning ADD comes in the form of Clean the bathtub, the toilet, have to go pee, so I go to the OTHER toilet because I just cleaned the first one, so I go to the other bathroom and there is a pile of papers in the living room and there is my knitting stash and I'd better organize it and oh God, are the kids home? Time to make dinner...rinse, repeat as necessary.

I miss the Ikea so much! I thought I was over them closing the Fontana store & taking away all the pretty, pretty stuff...but apparently after 2 years I am still going thru Ikea withdrawals!!! CAP please don't tempt me to drive on these crazy freeways to get to the LA/Orange County Ikeas! On the other hand thank you - now I know why my house is messier than ever the last couple of years; it's obviously the severe lack of a nearby Ikea! Now which freeway do I take from the 10 west to get there?

Laurie,

While your entry today is hysterically funny as usual, I feel that it is begging for a serious response. If clutter is really getting you down, I seriously recommend www.flylady.net. A number of other commenters have recommended the website, but they gave you the wrong URL. What's at the heart of the flylady message/approach to life is a different, and very positive way of looking at yourself - and life - and deciding what's important to you. And best of all, if you try what she suggests, and it clicks with you, you'll suddenly find the time, energy and space to do the things you really want to do. One of the things I like best about her site is the fact that she regularly reminds us that we have mental clutter, emotional clutter, body clutter, etc. in additional to the physical clutter surrounding us. What good is it to be surrounded by yarn, cats, dogs, books, fabrics, etc. if we feel so overwhelmed by everything? For me, routines, rather than containers, have made all the difference.

Laurie Doll... magazines are the enemy. they breed the clutter with their spores. All magazines must be removed in a week or face death by fire. I have a relative - I swear it's not me but I'm afraid of becoming her - who has magazines piled up from 1982! She's got the clutter and the hoarding and the OCD all at once. From other photos of chez spinster I've seen you are nowhere near this bad. But I wanted to tell you... watch the magazines. If they start calling their friends or breeding get a jumbo trash bin or a flamethrower before it's beyond your control!

love you lots,
gracie

Here's what I do when it's time to clean and I definitely don't want to clean: listen to the Annie soundtrack. Not only will you sing and dance while you pretend to be an orphan, you will get to imagine Carol Burnett in lingerie. Bonus!

It can't possibly be just you because I was thinking it was just me. And at my house, add to the mix 3 daughters - UGH!!!

It is SO not just you...you're channeling me again! I have a secret weapon, my teenage niece who lives across the road. For $7 an hour (more than she can make at most high-school type jobs) she spends 1 1/2 hours a week cleaning. $10 and my floors are swept, bathroom cleaned, shelves dusted..heck, one week she even folded laundry. She's happy (she does the same for my mom) 'cause she can fit it into her busy schedule and I'm REALLY happy because that's 3 hours that I can knit....(it would take me longer because I'd get distracted...)
I wish I had an Ikea....the nearest one is 4 hours away....

you could try flylady.net

Q: how many ADD people does it take to change a light bulb?

A: let's go ride bikes!!!!!!

Laurie, it is not just you. I broke my upper left arm nearly four weeks ago and though it seems like my arm has been broken FOREVER, it feels like I have been off work only a couple of days. As much as I would love to be a stay at home mom and knitter, I fear the rest of my life would go by in about five minutes.

Oh my God, it is so not just you. I started tearing my room apart on Sunday afternoon, "to clean it out." It's now Tuesday evening and it's still wreckage. The ADD kicks in and one task leads to another, unrelated task. I'm hoping I'll have it back together by Saturday, but....

Laurie, IKEA must LOVE you! I wish we had one here. I would totally shop there... here is my favorite tip because I am just like you, I get distracted very easily. I get out my egg timer and I do the flylady.com thing... When I am trying to beat the clock, I work very efficintly. So for example. I will set the timer for 5 minutes while I cleanup the bathroom DING... move on to the next room 5 minutes.... DING.... move on... you get the picture. It really works like a charm...

I'm very lazy so I pared the flylady emails down with a couple of filters for testimonials and musings. Just the facts ma'am. Even if you just do ONE thing a day, after a while it adds up, like the dripping water thing.
Plus, I feel all righteous after I do whatever ONE thing. If you must you could do ONE thing in each room. Just make it a habit.

Laurie, hon, some of my clutter _is_ those cute stacking boxes from IKEA. I have a Great Plan, and I go shopping for the items required to enact the Great Plan, and then I get distracted into Great Plan Mk II, because I saw some items which, with a major remodelling of the house would make Great Plan (the original one) redundant, and Great Plan Mk II would rock, or so I imagine. Which could go a way to explaining the blue and green spotted box theme that is in the bedroom closets, the turquoise and stripy boxed theme under the beds, the blue boxes in the lounge room, the kiddie colours in the hall closet, and the pale lime in the kitchen. Which last, btw is going to change, becasue I saw a makeover show with the cutest fifties pale pink, and I must have that in my kitchen, and IKEA must provide the storage, dammit! At which point I leave IKEA with some more not-going-to match-in-with-anything-I-have-already storage containers feeling that I have done a good day's work.

I've been reading for a long time, but your entry today has prompted my first comment. Like so many of the other ladies (and gents?), I make piles (mostly magazines and mail, but also articles to read, recipes, etc.), and then write lists about which piles to clear, and then make piles of lists...it never ends. I have been stalking some bookshelves from IKEA as a way to reign in the yarn stash, and I've been able to resist those dangerous peddlers of organizational products, so far. Sadly, I can feel the strength of my will slowly crumbling away...

As a side note, it's possible that I know the most cluttered man on Earth. He is a professor at school, and his office is so full of papers and junk that you can't even walk inside of it any more. I promise that I'm not exaggerating. As a joke his grad students hid a kitchen sink in there two years ago, and he never even noticed it until someone told him. He hasn't yet removed it. He sits and works in the community conference room when it's available. So, take comfort in the fact that you could be worse!!

My gramma used to tell me "do not sit on cold concrete or you will get piles!" -- I didn't know this is what she meant.

That flylady almost drove me out of my mind. All those nagging emails!

Can we look closer at your bookshelves?

How come cat hair is so attractive when it's ON the cats, and not anywhere else?

I "clean" the house the same way. LOL

Regarding Flylady, just remember the old addage about there being nothing worse than a reformed anybody. ::Hmmm...dead flylady manuever?::

"Is it just me?"

Umm....No.

Hah - I have possible solutions. Take the clutter to IKEA when you go, put it in the neat little bins and then leave. Clutter is all organized and it will not come back. The alternative is to box it all up and then mail it to yourself parcel post rate, should give you 2-3 weeks clutter free. When it comes in, refuse it and have them return to sender.

I have serious cleaning ADD. I'll be working on my bedroom then I'll need a drink. That means going to the fridge where I notice that my fridge is dirty. So I start cleaning out the fridge and then the phone rings. I notice a pile of bills that need to be gone through and I start that. This goes on and on! Needless to say my house is still a mess.

What? You mean everyone doesn't clean that way?

Seriously though, if you (or anyone else) would like some help w/this and don't want to do the flylady thing (personally I find all those e-mails just another form of clutter) I have a suggestion.

Go to your local library and check out these two books, "It's Here Somewhere" by Fulton and Hatch and "Get Your Act Together" by Young and Jones.

The first one provides a step-by-step guide to de-cluttering and the second helps you maintain the "new house" you will have once you de-clutter.

Oh, flylady attributes much of her transformation (and her methodology) to Young and Jones, and they are much easier to take (not so, hmmmm, intense IYKWIM?).

Liza {who really should re-read these books herself~she's kinda fallen off the wagon}

Well its a DAM GOOD THING you BLOG instead of clean....so I can waste my time at work....

Just wanted to post a quick hi! I just found your blog yesterday and it is SCARY.

We are so much alike. Cancers, having clutter issues today, OCD, love beer, love wine, dont sleep (see 3 am post time?), I am a graphic artist.. spend my days making logos and banners, I break techmology all the time, etc etc etc... only I am still married but probably on the way to divorce anyday and reading your blog is actually comforting to me ... awwwwwwwwwww to be a hermit in peace with no dirty laundry and dishes other than my own. One big difference... I have a dog that I pretend is a cat... no kittykids because my children are allergic and made me give my precious kittykids away years ago so they could breathe.. the nerve!

OH and we are exactly the same age - 34. now if your birthday is on the 19th I am seriously freaked out.

I will be a faithfull follower of your blog from now on. I just started one this week to be THERAPY for what I am going through here at the moment too.. wish me luck! I cant publish it yet.. as it would surely bring about the big D all the faster if found! UG!

Keep posting my new found Twin!

db

After reading your blog and the replies, I have come to a conclusion. There are lots and lots and lots of women out there just like you and me all over the world. And Ikea is truly a world-wide plague. (Hi from Australia!)

Yes, we need a club. In addition to cleaning just like that (when I can even be motivated to start), I organize by piling things up and I am a magazine addict. My friends have interventions where they come over and pry old issues (never the knitting ones, too sacred) out of my hands, put them in the recycling, and tell me it's for my own good.

But I seriously am planning to go to Ikea later today, if that tells you anything.

If Flylady seems a bit too hardcore, visit www.organizedhome.com or www.squalorsurvivors.com.
I derive inspiration from all three sites. Now I'm even visiting www.organizedchristmas.com! These sites offer tips, tricks, and fun message boards. Join the rest of us in emerging from our clutter closets!

It is not just you. I am sat at my desk doing a cost/benefit analysis. It is 16:23. It has been 16:23 for the past two hours.

It's like the Yarn Harlot says, when you measure your sweater and it's 7 inches. Then you knit another 20 rows, and measure it again. 7 inches.

My husband banned me from Ikea and the container store....yes. Add a couple of children and all their toys to the mix and you have my house.

Thanksgiving is my holiday, and from Halloween until the day before I declutter and clean. I just can't deal the rest of the year.

Here is what I do. I walk around each room with a laundry basket. What doesn't belong goes in the basket. I do that to each room and voila, no clutter!

I then work my way through each basket putting things either in black garbage bags (for donation), white garbage bags (trash), or back in the basket to be put away....the more baskets I end up with, the more that gets donated because I just can't deal with it anymore.

Rent a dumpster, borrow a firm-willed friend, and purge, baby, purge. I had to do that recently (we were cleaning out our basement and garage and I had crap that wasn't mine but was totally cluttering up my house) and found myself positively looking for stuff to throw out. It is tremendously liberating.

I also found that taming clutter was easier if I didn't use lots of little boxes. I used to have about five boxes on my dresser, each of which held a different type of earring (hoops, studs, enamel, etc.) Got a well-designed jewelry box, everything is still separated, but I only have one thing to move.

Yea this is the story of my life.

The anal Type A friend approach really works. I had my friend Tami spend the weekend at my place. She not only reorganized my closet, convinced me to toss out half my clothes, and got my yarn into nice Rubbermaid containers, but she's a whiz at building IKEA furniture (never mastered that Swedish wrench) and I know have a dresser, a night stand, and cute toy boxes for all my old VHS that I can't part with. (She tried, I prevailed)

Recognizing self, big time.

Target used to be my vice, until I learned they allow their pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. Oh, well. Used to spend $200/month there. But now IKEA will be just over half an hour away.

My clutter strategy? Build up stash of copier paper boxes in empty cube at work. Take home, sort stuff into boxes, label and date. Allow to rest in stack in corner of dining room. Cover with tablecloth if guests come over. After a month or two, you'll have a better idea if you'll miss it or not. Go through boxes - stuff is already practically packed to toss or donate!

But, on the packrat side - the new HUGE ziplock bags rock! Our attic entrance is a hole in the ceiling with a built in ladder on the wall going up to it. I CANNOT get boxes up there by myself, which means I have to wait til hubby is in the mood to help me with the pully. But the giant ziplocks have a handle built in, and are much easier to handle. GREAT for yarn.

I bought the Clean Team products, and love them, but actually doing the full routine is tough, because the clutter has crept up again.

Honey, I feel ya. I have the same ADD problems too!! My manifests in my knitting too.... but ADD's little sister, Miss obsessive compulsive.

Here's the hard way to break your hoarding habits--clean your parents house after they pass away. Gawd, after that I came home and swore I wouldn't put my kids thru that hell! It was bad enough that my parents had the nerve to up and die on me (it sucks, really, even if you're as o-l-l-l-l-l-d as I am), but to leave boxes and boxes of mayo jars, crappy saw blades, a gazillion half empty spools of thread (oh, I kept those--my personal obsession), well, it taught me a lesson. I tried the "Sidetracked Sisters" method--that worked sort of. When we built our new house, I didn't put in any dressers cuz they just cause piles (only wire rack baskets in closets that can be closed to cover up the crap).
Best advice I ever got from a friend about cleaning was "Close the drawer without anything sticking out" and from Martha: "Make your bed. EVERYDAY." And I'm aspiring for a new goal: No dirty dishes in the sink at bedtime. That's a toughie. But if you can manage it for 28 days, it becomes a good habit. I can sort of do that.

You go Girls! Oh. And don't marry a slob would be my other advice. Too late for me!

PS I still have over 10,000 photos from my Mom and Dad. Who the hell's gunna want them, but how can I pitch them? I tried the local archives, they politely told me I'm insane. geeeeezzze.