STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

shopgirl82 · Chanel

Clutter...Anyone Else Have This Problem?

jj · Kate Spade

OMG - YES!! This is so strange, my DH and I got into a little tiff about all our clutter last night. He works from home, so in addition to our regular mail and life stuff, he has his work mail, sample proofs and other assorted crap.

I like everything to have a place, and he could care less (hence the tiff). Luckily, I can collect all his work clutter, put it on his desk chair and close his office door.

Other than that, I don't have many solutions. I just sort through the mail every day, open the bills and get rid of all the extra paper that's in there. We have two small containers like this in our kitchen:

I put all the bills and other junk in them and then go through them once a week and pay/file/toss things.

We bought all kinds of storage products from the container store and hold everything for his office, but he never uses them. It drives me crazy!!

lynnie · Chanel

me and my bf have the opposite problem (we dont live together yet thankfully so no problems there)- i like to have little piles of my stuff, he's EXTREMELY neat. different strokes, i guess. i'm not full out messy though- i don't like looking at a ton of stuff. my roomies have so much random stuff in their apt that it drives me crazy sometimes.

do you guys have a big enough place that he can get his own little nook with a desk and all his stuff can go there? maybe you can screen it off or something so that you don't have to look at it, and he can think he has a space of his own.

NCshopper · Hermes

I'd suggest just a plain basket. No dividers--nothing. Just give him a place where he can dump the mail, preferably right by the door, so he doesn't have to walk anywhere to put it in the right place, otherwise he won't do it.

You would hate our house. We just tend to put the mail wherever it's convenient and it winds up literally all over the house. The dining room table, the coffee table, the arm chair, kitchen, sofa. It's a mess. We need to get some sort of system going too.

relrel · Marc Jacobs

clutter is the work of the devil, in my very very humble opinion. i hate stacks of mail, i hate shoes sitting out, i hate piles of magazines, i hate dirty clothing not in the laundary room, i hate dishes in the sink, and i even hate all those nasty little dust collectors like vases, globes, statues, picture frames, and anything else. if i had it my way i would live in a house that had nothing sitting on anything anywhere. all my surfaces would be spotless. i don't mind stuff on the walls, or books on shelves, but god help you if you want a china hutch full of crap in my house. everyone within a 50 mile present buying radius knows that i do not want clutter or crap or anything of that sort. whew, sorry, clutter does get to me, now on to your post.

my bf stinks on putting his stuff away. our kitchen table is divided in half, my half which is clean of clutter so that i can sit down at the table and eat like a normal person or use my laptop in a productive manner (i.e. not laying on my bed) and his half which has (im looking at it right now) a stack of 17 cd's, two flashlights, a gazillion reciepts, four text books, the box the adobe installer came in, and piles and piles of bills/mail. unfortanetly, i can't do much about the bf's clutter (so im not gonna be much of a help). ive learned to ignore it. i can pick up the laundary on the floor and either wash it for him or put in in the hamper in the closet (which is less than ten feet away) and i can do the dishes (even though he insists that im neurotic for doing the dishes every night!) and i can make the bed (even though he insists that im neurotic for making the bed every morning when it's just gonna get messed up again, hah! ever try sleeping in a double bed with someone when the sheets are down in the corner and the comforter is on sideways and it's cold out!?!). those piles though? just ignore it. god help you if you try to pick up and put that one tiny piece of important paper away where he doesn't know where it is (yeah, like he can find anything anyway in that pile).

the mail though sweetie...a basket by the door is where the bf's mail gets thrown when i get it (which, luckily, is almost every day since ive been back in school and not working). my mail gets thrown out right away. the only thing i keep are bills. the bank stuff gets filed but nothing else. in the trash! god, i do love throwing stuff away. i, uh, even throw christmas and birthday cards away. don't tell my family/friends, but i open them and throw them away in one fell swoop. and the only reason i even open them is just in case someone someday puts a five dollar bill in there. shh, don't tell, that's my little dirty secret. i told you i hated clutter.

god, im really sorry to ramble on like that in such a hijacking-the-thread kind of way. it's just that even the word clutter sets me off.

Luv2Shop · Kate Spade

I feel your pain. I have laerned that DH is never going to be like me and start putting everything in it's place and tidying up. He just won't. So we split up chores so I do the putting away and dishes and laundry, things that I feel need to be done or at least cleaned up everyday, and he does the big stuff, cleaning the floors, taking out garbage, washing the toilets, vacuming.

So when his stuff is all cluttered about and I want to scream, I just have 2 places I will put it so it won't get lost or thrown away. I keep a mail holder on a table in our front hall, and a shoebox on his dresser in our closet. That way, his mail is one place and his other crap and things he just leaves around our room are in a box in the closet. It has really helped me. If it's more then paper clutter that is a problem, the only thing I can suggest is maybe a shelf unit where all his stuff goes if you feel like it is in the way. I try to take clutter and at least make it into piles so it looks neat even if it is sitting out. I do this with books, cds, remote and game controls I put in a basket on our coffee table. That way, if their has to be clutter, at least it's tidy and not strewn about.

Dizzy · Marc Jacobs

I'm with reirei on the clutter - especially the no-china-hutches-full-of-crap thing. My ex was a total slob though - I gave him a drawer. Anything outside the drawer got tossed. And every time I walked in teh door I'd do a sweep and gather up his clutter from that day (the man left a trail of clothes from the door to the bedroom for chrissakes). It was bearable but I don't know what would have happened if we'd ever had kids. That probably would have been the tipping point toward chaos

Tara · Dooney & Bourke

There are 2 things that my b/f does that I cannot stand: forgetting to take out the trash and leaving unopened mail EVERYWHERE. (I do not understand how difficult it is to open your mail daily....just don't get it!) Anyway, I was totally sick of nagging him about these 2 things, and he was honestly not thinking about them. We came up with a system: I leave for work earlier than him, so if I leave in the morning and the trash is full and the office is cluttered, I will put a post-it on the front door. I don't even write anything on it - it is a simple reminder to "pick your sh*t up". My b/f swears that he just doesn't remember that things are cluttered. Anyway our sytem works really well - and we don't bicker over these things anymore.

Oh, and a cute basket by the door also works. We have a side table next to the front door with 2 baskets on it: one for mail and one for our keys (b/f tends to lose his keys as well).

shopgirl82 · Chanel

lynnie wrote:

do you guys have a big enough place that he can get his own little nook with a desk and all his stuff can go there? maybe you can screen it off or something so that you don't have to look at it, and he can think he has a space of his own.

we definitely do, but we basically store our stuff in three closets and have no dressers or anything on the floor since we don't like a lot of bulky furniture, and like a lot of open space (we like our loft to be pretty open).

i have tried the basket thing and it didn't work well. he maintains certain items in there and doesn't throw them away (for months...in which case i wonder why they can't be maintained in a file cabinet that he has in his closet). it's just annoying because we have really nice furniture and accessories and this clutter is defeating the purpose. i think i will try to do the basket thing again. ONE upstairs and ONE downstairs. that's it!! my ex boyfriend did great with the drawer thing, but we don't have any drawers (except for file cabinets).

i guess i'll try to come up with a plan tonight, "hey babe, you know what one of my new year resolutions is?... to declutter our place..." something like that. although i'll just have to be prepared for the decluttering of my clothes comeback.

good thing we got that case of wine this weekend.

thanks for all of your suggestions...

bex · Chanel

oh I am SO with you on this one. He has PILES of mail (opened and unopened) on our dining room table, hall table and coffee table. He currently also has a pile of bills waiting to be filed sitting in front of his filing cabinet which is conveniently RIGHT in my WAY! i throw away all catalogues when they arrive: Urban, VS, Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrell- until one day he told me that it really upsets me that i throw these away before he gets a chance to look through them! WTF! we go to these stores pratically every week together WHY ON EARTH do you need to look through the magazine too???????????????

he also saves EVERYTHING. movie tickets, magazines and mailings from his professional groups, Playboys, alumni association booklets, etc. he puts them in big totes in our storage unit until they are SO heavy that you couldn't possibly move them around. my mom told me to slowly start throwing away his stuff b/c he couldn't possibly notice... (but i know he would- b/c of the magazine issue!)

i bitch and moan and complain and he says that when he has a house and his own "space" he'll pile it there. so when we get a house, i am giving him a room that i can close the door to and never see. b/c it will be a freaking mess and drive me nuts...

*sigh* thanks for letting me vent! and i am glad I am not the only one with this issue!

shopgirl82 · Chanel

bex wrote:

he also saves EVERYTHING. movie tickets, magazines and mailings from his professional groups, Playboys, alumni association booklets, etc. he puts them in big totes in our storage unit until they are SO heavy that you couldn't possibly move them around.

my bf does have a brother who is 25 (or 26) that i've never met. hmmm i thought he was living out of the country...

my bf has cubs tickets, those free dunkin donut coffee vouchers they give after the game, collar stays, twisties from dry cleaning, various business cards, alumni books, etc.. i know that he has a trash bag full in our storage unit too!!

but a cute story about his saving....the first weekend i met him he asked for my phone number at a company football scrimage...i went back to his place with his roommate and his roommate's gf to pack up before i went home. well, i found a scrap piece of paper, wrote it down, and a couple months later, still on his bedside table was that note (he brought it with him through 2 moves as well). THAT stuff he can keep.

bex · Chanel

shopgirl82 wrote:

my bf does have a brother who is 25 (or 26) that i've never met. hmmm i thought he was living out of the country... my bf has cubs tickets, those free dunkin donut coffee vouchers they give after the game, collar stays, twisties from dry cleaning, various business cards, alumni books, etc.. i know that he has a trash bag full in our storage unit too!! but a cute story about his saving....the first weekend i met him he asked for my phone number at a company football scrimage...i went back to his place with his roommate and his roommate's gf to pack up before i went home. well, i found a scrap piece of paper, wrote it down, and a couple months later, still on his bedside table was that note (he brought it with him through 2 moves as well). THAT stuff he can keep.

sorry! my BF is 30 and I know all of his siblings... so i am sure we would have met by now!

but that story about him keeping your number from the scrap of paper was TOO cute! i agree- they can keep that stuff... but everything else MUST go!