Bedroom Organising

My attempt to tidy and organise my bedroom! I’m not an expert in anything related, just finding my own way through. -Cookie, they/them

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As an ADHD adult who still lives with their parents, my bedroom is not just a place to sleep. It’s my personal space, my home office, my computer room, my display room…

Whenever I try to look up ways to tidy and organise my room, the tips and systems I find online are limited in their scope. They assume a bedroom holds your clothing, bed, and nighttime paraphernalia - and nothing else. If you try to specify a teen or kids room, you get space for toys and studying (neither of which apply here). Even looking at tips for a uni dorm don’t allow for any personality - it’s still a wardrobe, bed, night paraphernalia, and study space.

Everyone has different requirements, and there’ll never be a “one size fits all” solution. I just want to stop using my floor as a disorganised storage space.

So this blog is where I document sorting out MY room - and all the random things I want to have in my space. Part of it is to have a “before and after” for myself, and part of it is to maybe give others some ideas. I’ll have some decluttering posts, and some showing the systems I use.

-Cookie, they/them

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The box is a “later problem” (and has been for a long time), but the clothing has been dealt with.

Now I have a pile of things on my bed, but it’s mostly blankets and fleeces. They’ll probably end up joining this box, until I figure out where they’re actually going to live when not in use. I’m currently thinking a tub or a shelf in the wardrobe, when that’s set up to have them.

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Another before and after for today. While I haven’t exactly dealt with the bags properly, I do know what’s in them. One of them is LARP gear - my current LARP box isn’t big enough for everything, so that’s a later issue. The other is left over from Christmas - presents I received that haven’t found a home yet (several are books, and I don’t have a bookshelf yet). Those bags have been moved elsewhere for now. What’s left is the trash (which is mostly recycling that’s been building up for a while), which I’m leaving for now because I still have one more pile.

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25 minutes of progress. I have a stack of blankets and fleeces that currently have no permanent home, but otherwise everything has been put in (what is hopefully) it’s “forever home” - the place it lives when not actively in use. The only thing I’ve left untouched is the new pillows. I’ll switch them out when I next change my bedding.

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It’s been a while, I’ve been busy, and the situation… is a problem.

Three of the piles have grown, two of them with clean clothes that I haven’t put away. At the very least, the wardrobe hasn’t changed - partially because I haven’t opened it. So I guess there’s that.

Today’s challenge is to try to, at minimum, organise these piles into something less chaotic. And put away the clean clothes.

Tidying up, and staying tidy, isn’t easy. If you do fall back into old habits and make a mess, don’t beat yourself up about it - just take a breath, take some time, and do what you’ve done before.

I knew this was likely to happen. I still had piles of things (clutter attracts clutter), and didn’t have time to address any of it. When new clutter came into the room, it just joined what was already there. There’s two steps to stopping this (that I can currently see, anyway): 1. Get rid of the seeder piles, and 2. Take the time to deal with the new clutter. Not easy when you don’t have the time to begin with. I’m still figuring that one out.

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Doom pile 2 tackled!

The pile in front of my wardrobe:

And the same location, 10 minutes later:

I grabbed the trash and threw it away. I grabbed the shoebox and put it in the wardrobe. I grabbed two falling-apart pairs of shoes and put them aside for the bin, and put the lonely slipper in the wardrobe (I’ll find its pair at some point… hopefully). I emptied the hot water bottle and have left it to dry out. I put the overnight messenger bag in the wardrobe, and moved the gaming bag because I’m taking it with me later. Then I hoovered.

Yes, some of the tidying here was just moving stuff out of this room pile and into a different room pile in the wardrobe. HOWEVER. I do want to use the wardrobe as the official location for certain things, I just don’t have that set up yet… so temporary (and out of sight) doom pile it is. It’s the best solution I have for my current situation. Eventually there will be shelving, and things can get properly put away.

Don’t try and fix a whole room in one go; you’ll get overwhelmed and stop halfway through, when everything is ten times worse than when you started. Tackle it in small sections, when you have 10/15/30 minutes to spare. I was supposed to leave the house at 12, then the event got delayed a half hour; I spent that time doing this instead of scrolling on my phone. Is it easy? No. I got the motivation from watching a Clutterbug video and realising I hadn’t posted anything here for a couple days.

Find your motivation, and find small snippets of time. It’s slow-going, but look back at your space a month later and compare it to the start.

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Looking at my t-shirt drawer knowing that I still need to continue weeding it out is daunting. I have a LOT of shirts, and they don’t quite fit in the drawer. Unfortunately, I encounter a mental roadblock at the thought of actually sorting through what I do and don’t wear.

Fortunately, that’s something that can be done passively! My shirt drawer is set out in two lines (seen below), so I try to only take from the front row and put clean shirts on the back row:

With the time of year, I know I’m not going to be wearing a crop top, so I’ve put a couple of distinctive ones in place separating the original shirts from the ones that have moved. After a while, if there are still original shirts that haven’t been worn… chances are I’m not gonna wear them. (Bonus: I’m being reminded of shirts I may have forgotten about)

As the front row empties, I refill it from the left side of the back row, which in turn gets refilled from the right. So my movement of clothes ends up being this:

Its similar to the ‘first in, first out’ method used for food: things always go in in the same place, and move forwards as space becomes available to make way for new things to enter in the same spot. With clothing, if somthing has stayed at the front of the queue for months, you’re probably good to get rid of it - you’re certainly not wearing it, are you?

Doing this can certainly take a while, but it also means you’re not intimidated by actively making all the choices at the same time - just choosing what to wear each day.

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Not knowing what I have where, I’ve decided the first problem area to tackle is the wardrobe. It’s a self-contained area (that I can also shut the door on), and will hopefully provide storage for the rest of the problem areas as I get to them.

To recap, here’s the starting point:

A pile of I don’t even know what. There’s definitely shoes and clothes, a massive cloak, plastic bags… you can see some shoeboxes neatly stacked to one side, which do in fact have shoes in them. For now, those are staying.

The first step here is gathering the “worn items” - clothing and shoes. They belong in this space (for now), just not on the floor. When I have access to their homes, I can put them away properly.

After removing “worn items” from the pile… well. There’s still a decent pile, but we can see the back wall now. Now to put the worn items away - hang up what needs hanging, and put the shoes in the shoeboxes. There’s also a few bags here, which might come in handy…

And done! …ish. Believe it or not, I’ve actually added things to this. It’s just all contained within the bags. I do need to actually go through the bags and declutter, but those are now a manageable task to chip away at later. I do also have a couple of items that I’m not keeping in this wardrobe anymore, but haven’t quite found their new home yet - but we have similar items in the loft already, so that’s probably where they’ll end up.

This took me about 10 minutes, and mostly consisted of grabbing handful of stuff and shoving it in a bag. But it now looks ten times better, and I’m not filled with dread at the prospect of sorting it out.

(Also I discovered one of the hinges might be a tad bit broken… hmm)

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One of the things I often find annoying when looking at tidying tips is the lack of variation. The “tidy” room always looks the same - and it’s not something I can maintain (I’ve tried). It’s not how my brain wants to work.

This is why I like the Clutterbug method. She defines four organising styles - Bee, Butterfly, Cricket, and Ladybug - that describe how a person naturally organises.

Clutterbug’s styles have two aspects: categories, and visibility. Butterflies and Ladybugs like fewer broader categories, while Bees and Crickets prefer many smaller categories. Ladybugs and Crickets want to hide their items out of sight, while Bees and Butterflies like to see their things.

The stereotypical “tidy” room that you see in magazines and the like is Cricket style - and Butterflies are really gonna struggle achieving and maintaining that. If you’re not a Cricket, ditch that magazine-perfect idea of tidy. You might be able to achieve it, but it won’t last.

According to the Clutterbug quiz, I’m a Butterfly. I prefer to see my things, not hide them. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a really easy way to forget I own something. I also struggle to put things away in designated spots for specific items, tending more towards just throwing everything into one container.

I know I have some unlearning to do with regards to how I organise my storage - I’ve grown up in a world inundated with the “everything has its place” mindset, and need to change my conscious thinking away from micro categories and into macro categories. Hopefully, grouping micros into macros will solve that particular issue.

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I’m gonna talk about something I said yesterday real quick: “A clean slate to start from tells me where my system fails.”

It’s great to put a system in place to keep things organised. It’s great when it works. But how often does that happen? How many times have you been told “Try this foolproof way of keeping things tidy!” and a week later you’re back where you started?

So what can you do? Mostly, trial and error. Step one is the hardest here: get to a clean slate. Go ahead and aim for that picture-perfect room; it won’t last, but right now that’s kinda the point. You need a “clean slate” now, so you can play spot the difference later.

Give it a couple days to a week, then look around your space. You’re looking for “system failures” - areas where the established method of tidying isn’t working for you. What’s not where it should be? Where is it instead? Maybe you’ve got a key rack near the front door, but you always put your keys on the side in the living room.

Once you identify the system failures, it’s time to remedy them - change the organisation to reflect your habits. With the keys example: you can get rid of the hanging key rack (you’re not using it), and you can replace it with a pretty dish on the side in the living room. You’re already putting your keys there; now it looks like they’re supposed to be there (and can also catch any stray items that come out of your pocket with them).

Mess around with it; don’t expect to be able to fix everything in one fell swoop. Make one or two changes at a time. Changing too much at once is going to overwhelm you, and you won’t be able to keep up with it all. Additionally: if a solution stops working, change it again. It may be that the key dish was working, but then the dish became a catch-all for spare change and random hair clips, and now you’ve stopped putting your keys on it. You might want another dish for the keys, or a larger tray, or a segmented dish/tray with a section for your keys and a section for the rest.

Play around, find a combination that works. You may find that nothing works forever. Don’t worry, if so - you can always re-use failed solutions elsewhere.

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Before…

Before and after photos is (apparently) a good way to keep you motivated to tidy an area, and keep it tidy. With a before photo, you can go back to it while tidying to see how far you’ve come. With after photos, you have a reference for what you want it to look like.

I don’t have my “After” photos yet, but I do have my “Before” ones. I have 5 - my desk, wardrobe, and three budding doom piles:

The desk: it’s not hard to access the computer when I need it - the stuff in front of it is in a self contained pile that is easily moved. The book-like thing covering the keyboard is there for a reason - the cat walks across the desk at night and turns the computer on (she’s also why the chair is occupied by a giant capybara - it means the chair is available when I need it). However, I do want a clear desk… eventually.

The wardrobe: Again, it not hard to access what I need - the clothes are hanging unobstructed, and I don’t wear these ones very often. It’s the floor pile that’s a problem - the other side of the wardrobe (not pictured) is similar but in a pile of boxes. I don’t truly know what’s buried in there, and want to be able to see the floor if nothing else.

Doom pile 1: the largest. The bottom of this is a box of stuff from when we cleaned my carpet and replaced my bed - most of it is from emptying the desk, with some stuff from the bedbox storage compartment. The box then became a dumping ground… including things that should go in the bottom drawer that the pile is blocking.

Doom pile 2: this one is in front of the wardrobe, currently preventing me from opening it. However, I do know what both bags are (one is actively in use, the other is my overnight from the weekend away I just had). I mostly just need to move already-filled containers.

Doom pile 3: another baby doom pile. This one has a bag of miscellaneous Christmas presents that I haven’t found a home for, as well as a pile of clean laundry I haven’t put away yet (placed on top of the laundry basket…). There’s also a bag of purchases from a recent con I went to, and a small pile of things with no home yet.

The wardrobe and pile 1 are going to be my biggest problems - they both are mostly comprised of “no home available” things, and will likely end up having to be corralled into boxes to store neatly and out of the way until I have more shelving space, and have to sort through them again.

But anyway - this is where I’m starting from. In a perfect world, I’d get it looking like a photo from a magazine. This is not a perfect world, and ain’t no way it would stay like that. I just want the floor clear, and the storage working for me. It’s a work in progress, and may always be, but a clean slate to start from tells me where my system fails.

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Ever had a massive pile of things to organise/sort out/put away, and dreaded doing it because there’s so much stuff? Yeah, me too.

Part of it - for me at least - is the number of decisions that pile is asking of me. Every item needs to be categorised and put away somewhere convenient or logical, and those categories need to be defined.

Sure, you can jump in and categorise as you go, but then you need to figure out how specific those categories are. Are you splitting up your printed pages from the handwritten ones, or is all paper going in together? How about books? Or stationary - that’s in the same ballpark, right?

Or you can take a guess before you start at what’s in there, and designate locations for each category. But then, what happens when you come across something you didn’t account for? Now we’re back to the first option.

Or… we can simplify the first pass. Yes, we’ll need to another pass or two later, but that will be with smaller piles.

I use up to four categories, which are as follows: Definitely Keep, Maybe Keep/Not Mine, Donate, and Bin.

1) Definitely Keep - the stuff I’m not getting rid of. This is the pile that needs to find a home, as soon as I am able.

2) Maybe Keep/Not Mine - stuff that’s either not my decision or that I’m not sure of my decision. This pile gets put aside to go through again another day, possibly with someone else.

3) Donate - stuff that I no longer want/need, but could still be used by someone else. This pile needs to find its way out of the house ASAP, whether to a friend that wants it or to a charity shop.

4) Bin - Donate pile rejects, and literal trash. This is the pile that has the easiest clean up - chuck it out. Bin it. Done.

This (hopefully) reduces a doom pile from a looming monster to something manageable. Yes, you’ll need to return to the first two piles later, but you also now have more of an idea of what’s in them - and can find homes for things before tackling the pile again.

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The current situation: shirts, jeans, and hanging items are down to only what I want to wear. Underwear and socks are grouped by colour. My PJs are a mess, and my floor and desk are covered in doom piles.

…I think my next target is gonna have to be the biggest doom pile. It has a couple of clothing items, a massive blanket, and a box of stuff from a previous “clear the decks” tidy. How much can I currently put away? Just the clothing. Nothing else really has a home.

But I can certainly sort it all into “keep” and “don’t keep” - a categorisation that needs to happen throughout the entire room.

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I’ve decided to start with the easy wins. Get some easy wins down, and it makes the rest seem less daunting.

So my first easy win is my clothing. Clothes are a large contributor to my doom piles, and certainly don’t quite fit in their currently-allotted space.

Step one: Declutter. Look at each item and ask myself: Is this something I want to wear? If the answer is yes, I put it away. If the answer is no, then I put it aside for sale, donation, or trash.

I’m doing this in sections based on location: hanging items, shirt drawer, jean drawer, etc. It makes the task look more manageable, and each section takes less than an hour. Smaller sections = easier task = easy win!

I still have a couple more passes to make on the first pass Keeps: what fits, and what’s wearable. Fit is self explanatory - if something doesn’t fitor isn’t comfortable, it leaves the wardrobe. With “what’s wearable”, I’m looking at the condition of the clothes: are there holes, is it wearing thin, how’s the design holding up, etc.

I’d like to do the process on my shoes but… they’re kinda buried under stuff on the floor f the wardrobe for now. I’ll get to them later.

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Clothes organising!

The typical way of storing clothing: hang up shirts and trousers, pair up socks and pjs, and fold all underwear and pjs.

My approach: …ok, I agree with folding the pjs. That’s about it.

Most of my shirts are folded (Marie Kondo file folding method - if it works, it works), as are my trousers. I do fold my pjs, but that’s mostly for space efficiency.

I don’t see the point in folding socks and underwear - the creases stretch out when you wear them, and no one should see them anyway.

As for pairing: I don’t pair my PJs, I just wear a top and bottom that are comfortable for the temperature. Who’s gonna care if I’m wearing a matching set? And similar with socks - I have a couple packs each of identical black socks and white socks, so as long as I grab two of the same colour it doesn’t matter.

In my underwear and sock drawers, I have two containers: one for white, and one for black. When I get the clean laundry, I just chuck them in the appropriate box in the drawers. Quick, easy, low-hassle.

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You may have heard this one before: “Don’t make your storage fit your stuff, make your stuff fit your storage.”

It means you shouldn’t increase your storage space to accommodate more and more items, but get rid of items so they fit into your existing storage. Overall, a good course of action to avoid the avalanche when you open an overstuffed cupboard.

I’m gonna ignore it. BUT! I do have a reason - we moved, and I lost a lot of shelving space in the process. My new room just doesn’t have the usable storage my stuff demands. So I’ll be getting a new desk and shelving unit at some point this year - I’ll still need to reduce my stuff, but I’ll also still have somewhere to store what I keep.