Wonderful Team Unfuck Your Habitat,
I have come to a conclusion about what plagues my attempts to completely unfuck my habitat. Especially the cupboards and shelves. And I have also seen through many of your posts that I’m not the only one with this issue. And that issue is:
Where the hell should I put this?!
A lot of unfucking is concerned with putting away things. But it becomes very hard when you don’t have a designated place for them. For the longest time my reusable shopping bags would lay on top of chairs in the kitchen/dining room. On top, beside, below. Always in my way but I never knew where else I could put them. If I placed them all somewhere in a corner of the kitchen, I would often forget to take them with me and use them. After thinking long and hard, I finally figured to put all of the reusable bags into one and place it in the wardrobe by the front door. Now, they are out of my way, and also in an easy to see and reach place that I don’t forget to take them and put them back.
But it took a long time and lots of trial and error to designate a proper place for them.
Any time I would “designate” a place for them, they would migrate or cease to be used for intended purposes. That also made keeping my habitat unfucked a LOT harder.
And this is what I want to as of you Team UfYH:
What best designated places you have found for stuff around your house?
Where do you keep your cleaning supplies so they are easy to access when needed and easy to put away and don’t migrate? Did you notice that when designating a place for something it would migrate to another place after a while? I already saw that another member of Team UfYH had a similar issue with migrating oil. Originally they intended to place the cooking oil on the top shelves, but because they used it often it soon migrated to the lowest shelf simply because it was easier to quickly take and put away. This of course made their once unfucked shelves fucked again, until they re-designated where stuff should stay to a more user friendly layout.
I know I’m not the only one that hasn’t figured out such things and they take time and trial and error. And that’s why I’m hoping that we can share our experiences and instead of each individually finding out the bests spots, we could at least give ideas to each other where some of the stuff should go. Because now I have an idea how to unfuck my kitchen cupboard that was once unfucked but got fucked again. Thank you Timeandbananas for the inspiration, thank you UfYH for creating such a wonderful system and community, and thank you Team UfYH for reading this and hopefully for sharing your own experiences.
I’m lucky to live in a way cool 122-year-old Victorian home that’s quirky as hell. But one of the things I appreciate the most about my house are the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases — I love books and have always had trouble having enough storage for my book collection. We’ve lived in this house for seven years and the built-in shelves had become a kind of jumbled conglomeration of books, photo albums, aromatherapy items, baskets of unorganized junk, and pictures of my lovely friends in very ugly frames. I decided to Unfuck my shelves. As I started, this is what my shelves looked like:
I pulled every single item off the shelves, dusted, washed, and cleaned them as necessary. I sorted the books into piles according to — yes — COLOR! This approach isn’t for everyone, but if you’re particularly good at remembering where things are and what they look like, it’s a valid option. I went through all the baskets (not pictured), albums, baby books, notebooks, folders, clipboards, and my “I could do something with this!” pile. Three-quarters of those items went to the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) which schedules a monthly pick-up with me. If you can find a local charity organization who will do a home pick-up it helps infinitely when decluttering, because a huge problem in decluttering is lacking the motivation to take the stuff you want to give away to a charitable organization. Anyhow, here are my shelves after the cleanup, books organized by color, except for series. The shelves are clean and smooth and the books are dust free. I added an orchid to mitigate the austere appearance of so many books.
Orange, red, yellow, and white books, with a small collection of clear glass items to offset so many books. Please excuse the cleaning supplies, which are still in front of the white books.
Black, grey, brown, beige, blue, green, and purple books went on this side of the wall. All the series books — Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, etc. — are down below the bottom of this picture.
Here’s my pretty orchids to soften the effect of so many books — I didn’t want it to look like a library, as this is our front room and the first room guests see when they come into the house. I ended up getting four small orchids and arranging them along the shelves. At least the disorganization and dust didn’t reach the point where I needed a Magic Eraser (OMG, love them, yes). When I decluttered these shelves, I gave away a huge amount of knick knacks and sentimental figurines — they had mostly been given to me as gifts and I felt obligated to keep them … FOREVER. But I finally gathered the inner resolve to be brutal and pare down these kinds of items. Oh my God, I’m so glad I did. I don’t miss a single item. I can’t even remember what all I gave away. Those items had little meaning after all. It’s the people behind those gifts that were always what mattered.
I know what you’re thinking. The shelves weren’t that bad to begin with. Two things: One, yes they were and, two, wait until you see my kitchen B/A pics. Seriously.
