"We own things, but have hidden them."

https://nathanwpyle.threadless.com/designs/we-own-things/hom...

This is so absolutely hilarious to me because this is 100% something I'd do. I had a friend come over once and then he came over again a week later and all of my kitchen cabinet doors were open and in the exact same position as they had been a week prior. He was like "dude did you not shut your cabinet doors? Wtf"

Its just not even on my radar

Exactly! You don't even see the mess.

It's funny you mention the cabinets. My wife and I can tell whenever my siblings have been over: they're all incorrigible cabinet goblins.

I still leave cabinets open, but it's typically because I'm using it as a reminder to return whatever I had taken from the cabinet. Of course, my Cabinet Sight still has a ways to go, so the thing doesn't get returned until I actually notice the open cabinet the next day.

Open cabinet doors drive me crazy because they look like a concussion waiting to happen.

Can confirm. Have bonked my head on cabinets multiple times. The danger is primarily in bending-over-then-standing motions.

Life hack: if you keep all your bottom cabinets open, you don't have to bend over to see what's inside :^)

At that point, why not just take the doors off?

Open shelving is a thing. No one said your cabinets need to have doors.

There is a spectrum everyone is on, where at one end is emotional distress at cabinets being ajar, and the other end is ignoring a smoke alarm chirping every 43 seconds for six months. Somewhere on that spectrum is, "I don't care for the doors but I don't want to be bothered to remove them."

This is so funny. That same friend of mine came over a few months prior and was like "HOLY SHIT how do you live with that noise its driving me crazy"

I'd been living here for like 5 months at that point and had completely blocked out the noise of a dead fire alarm in my basement.

I think there's a metaphor for putting up with crappy code in there somewhere.

We had some tall cabinet doors that we were particularly prone to hitting our heads on, so we replaced them with curtains. Did the same for some closets with sliding doors when I got annoyed with only being able to access half the closet at once. The curtains hide the clutter, and IMO look nicer than the doors did.

that takes even more planning snd effort than just closing them

Then you have to dust more stuff!

Worse than dust, kitchens are regularly filled with clouds (however thin) of cooking oil. I had an apartment once where the landlord was apparently too cheap for cupboard doors or a proper exhaust fan, and infrequently-used dishes got nasty.

Ughh yeah, you'd end up with a gross semi-polymerized sticky film on stuff.

if you have pets you sure do!

Yah, they do have utility though, they guard the contents from a higher degree of exposure to dust and kitchen exhaust grime and any splatter that should occur in the space that goes in all directions. Easier to wipe a more or less flat planar surface than the intricate surfaces possibly pervious surfaces of the contents.

Oh, I agree. My cabinets have doors, and I keep them closed. But if you’re already leaving all your cabinets open at all times, you might as well just get the doors out of your way.

If opened all my bottom cabinet doors in the kitchen, I still couldn’t see everything. I’m too tall and the room isn’t that big, so the viewing angle is all wrong.

Same way the top shelf of the fridge disappears. Bad angle.

Both require bending over then standing.

Edit: There’s just enough room to back up and see it all in the cabinet. I’m sorry I lied.

This is a minor point of annoyance between me and my husband, I think because of our height difference. He likes to open ALL the cabinets when putting away dishes, and sometimes leaves them open. I, with eye level much closer to the bottom edge of the doors, walk in and see all these corners waiting for me to run into them. When I put away dishes, I open a cabinet, put away everything that belongs there, close it and move along to the next one.

But I also think it's a difference in how we were raised, because he does not push his chair in after leaving a table either..........

I had a roommate who did this every time they went to the kitchen, like a cupboard- and cabinet-opening spectre.

I do this. Unless the organization system is super well-mapped in my brain, I don't trust that I know where things are. Opening all the cupboards makes me feel like I can actually approach the problem of finding the toolkit I need to perform a task. Hyper-organized kitchens have the toolkits pre-assembled in bins placed in cupboards. That's hard to do.

(Perhaps related: a `util` class is basically a junk drawer in a kitchen. Some kitchens are basically just giant junk drawers. Good luck finding anything, but hey putting things away is super easy - just put it wherever it fits!)

I used to take the cabinet doors off all my rentals -- less for me keeping track of what was where and more for guests so they didn't need to ask where anything was.

Yeah, this feels like the best solution if you prefer open cabinets for whatever reason. Leaving the doors on and open is just laying booby traps for the next person that wanders in.

Sharpie + labels.

Don't you ever bash your head into the corner of an open cabinet?

on a similar note. about a decade ago, I was sharing apartment with a good friend. It was 2 bed/1.5 bath apartment. He had a bad habit of leaving the shower-tub knob on 'shower' after he's done. I was a late person so usually ended up showering last. My bad habit was that I didn't pay attention to the knob before starting the shower. For first week every single day I got a blast of freezing water on my face, until one day I confronted him! obviously that didn't work. So one day I woke up early and did the same thing to him. From that day our habits changed. I always check the shower knob before turning it on.

Huh - I never would've thought to turn the knob back to tub. Why were you being blasted in the face by cold water? Do you get in the shower before turning it on?

Perhaps this is a regional thing... living in Michigan I've always let the water warm up first (perhaps drought is a concern where you live?)

Also, most showers I've used automatically switch back to tub mode once the water shuts off. Maybe he's used to that style!

we had a manual switch at that time. I was new to the new england area and I grew up in a tropical country :-) so never had a habit to check before starting the shower.

Ah so this is one of those things where neither of you were really right or wrong. If you'd grown up in New England you'd have known that the "right" behavior was to turn the shower on and warm it up before you got in. Having grown up there myself I have to say it would never occur to me to turn a shower on while standing in it and I'd assume nobody else would either because it's guaranteed to be painful, even in summer and even when it's just water coming out of the tub faucet onto your feet. My family always left ours on shower mode and never had an issue for this exact reason. Always so interesting to learn about the little things people from other places do differently!

I think back then I used to get in the shower, turn on the tub faucet, and when it was warm enough, switch. to be honest I still do that sometimes by mistake :-)

> most showers I've used automatically switch back to tub mode

this is nice indeed, but not universal sadly

> Do you get in the shower before turning it on?

In some large buildings I've lived in, it takes like 1 second for the water to be warm -- it's magnificent. So yeah, if you have a shower-over-tub in that kind of place it is easier to get in, have the 12 ounces of cold water go harmlessly into the tub, then switch to shower.

I know it’s not for everyone.. this is solvable by putting your cabinets on a soft closing track installed at a slight angle to help cabinets easily close on its own. Cabinet doors also have some tweaks that can be done. I get it’s a for a habit but if anyone has a problem with remembering it’s sometimes easier to let the natural motion of the door build some muscle memory.

My better half has very few things that catch my attention in a less than positive way, one is not turning off the lights. It’s like a museum tour to learn what has been visited that day.

They have had the lights turned off for them their whole life despite being super independent otherwise. So I just used it as an excuse to install some Caseta wifi light switches and suddenly the lights were turned off before bed because it was remembered but too much work to do once in bed. But because the Apple Watch had an extension app it was easy enough to do. It doesn’t mean everything should be automated but it was one that kept a small thing into a fun and easy going solve. It made it easier to consider motorized blinds due.

The solution is to not have any doors.

The number of people on this thread who leave cabinets open (and apparently come families of cabinet-door-openers) is astounding to me. Do you all leave toilet seats up too? What about the refrigerator? Car doors? Dresser drawers? Do you not push your chair in when you get up from the table? Do you at least return shopping carts?

I am not an organized person, I see a horizontal surface and I put stuff on it. But leaving doors open? I don’t think I even take my hand off the cabinet door when I open it. One hand for the door, one for the thing I’m getting.

The only door I leave open is the washing machine, so it can dry out. It gets closed the next time I’m in the laundry room though.

Toilet seats don't belong in that list l.

I cringe when watching actors on television make an entrance but don't close the door.

One of those is not like the others. I see no issue leaving a toilet seat up.

It's just as easy for the next person to put it down as it was for me to put it up.

It’s not for the next person. It’s to keep the stuff in the toilet, in the toilet, rather than as an aerosolized spray that gets spread about.[1][2]

I guess it doesn’t really matter if your toilet is in its own room, but at least most houses in the US have the toilet next to the sink (where your toothbrush is).

Put the seat down before you flush, because it’s more sanitary.

[1] https://microbiologysociety.org/news/society-news/does-putti...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4692156/

Do any of these microbes or quantity of such that would be released actually pose a risk to your day-to-day health?

I skimmed that study, and it mentions possible transmission of infectious diseases, but I mean, if you live alone, whats the harm?

You're talking about the lid, not the seat. Also, some of that aerosolised spray stays airborne under the lid and is released when you open it [1].

[1] I think Mary Roach talked about this in this interview by Adam Savage, but don't remember exactly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfZ9RrxQ5NM

And do these people not dust?

The horror!

I definitely do not. If things get grubby I'll eventually scrub every surface with a sponge.

But also, what does dusting have to do with leaving doors open?

I have literally slept overnight with my front door open multiple times this winter.

I am probably in like the 99th percentile of aloof people

Open cabinets are in vogue now. Keep the doors open and you're weird. Remove them altogether and you're stylish.

I hate cabinet doors… only time I think of them one just almost punctured my skull

An illuminating experience for me was a housemate and a fairly sharp one at that who wondered if we would get visited by ghosts at night because cabinet doors were always open in the kitchen in the morning. It didn't occur to her that the extremely more likely scenario was that I would scavenge around after she went to sleep and never shut doors.

You know you’re in a long term relationship when your better half starts throwing away your stuff without asking.

Oh, man.

Our home has a two-stage "recycle bin" policy, though: some of my stuff "gets moved" to a random box in the cellar; if I don't ask for it for a few months, it gets "donated". You know.

Haha. We do that with our kids’ old toys - rarely comes into play, but saves much heartache when it does.

There’s a similar trick for papers covering your desk; without looking, shove them all in a Manila folder, date, and seal. If you haven’t felt compelled to open it in three months, throw it away without opening.

Admittedly the utility depends on how much you/your office likes paper. Or if you go to an office.

> without looking, shove them all in a Manila folder, date, and seal. If you haven’t felt compelled to open it in three months, throw it away without opening.

This needs to be ~1 year, to make sure there's nothing important for taxes in the pile.

This was specific to work-in-the-office desks, which I never bring my personal papers to. But yes, don’t try this with your home office!

> There’s a similar trick for papers covering your desk; without looking, shove them all in a Manila folder, date, and seal. If you haven’t felt compelled to open it in three months, throw it away without opening.

My family moved into our house when I was 3. Around age 9 we were going to finish the basement and a stack of boxes from the move came into discussion. When I proposed the idea, it was not really considered by my parents.

I've proposed it again to my wife after a move or two, and again she didn't take me up on it.

Maybe someday I'll get to give the method a shot.

I thought about that

Just put random crap in a box with a date in it. You can take it out if it is useful but you can't put new stuff in. Once the date is up, toss/sell it.

Basically expiration date for stuff.

but I might need this cable in 10 years!! fast forward 5 years, I needed a VGA cable and it was nowhere to be found

I have all my cables in (categorised) 5L Really Useful Boxes. It's probably too many anyway, but I reasoned if 5L isn't enough to contain them, then either the category is too broad or I don't need the cable I'm trying to fit in.

reconsiders the 7 21L Really useful Boxes of cables.

I find it helps to think of this scenario as paying Amazon/eBay $4 to store it for you for several years.

but then I would be giving Amazon money, when my drawer can do it for free.

It's not really free of you can't find shit anywhere because of the many cables in the drawer, you meet to move it around if wou redecorate or move and you need increased home space to store all the stuff.

I like having tools in my home, don't get me wrong, but storage being free is an illusion. I still think the cost to be worth it.

Ok I get it, but it's not a quantitative cost.

I'd say it's not unquantifiable. The higher rent (or mortgage) you need to pay, the time loss for organisation and retrieval. It's small for one item, but it adds up and it's a recurring not a one time cost.

I can’t throw away a cable and get a lower mortgage.

Its not free though, is it?

You're spending mental power indexing all the things you have. I assume you pay for your dwelling, dollars-per-sqft is a thing to consider.

Doing the Amazon route (which is exactly what I do) means I know I have every cables I could ever need within 24 hours. And I don't have to remember where I last put it, and I don't have to deal with knotted cables, and I don't have to wonder when a thing doesn't work, is it the cable?

> and I don't have to wonder when a thing doesn't work, is it the cable?

I'd say Amazon is not necessarily a guarantee of that.

Instant access to useful items is valuable. Think of it like... caching for tools. I like having items I need within reach. I'd love a bag like Hermione's in Harry Potter.

Waiting 24h is a lot if you're in flow and you want that thing _now_ dammit!

Your comment only ensures me I'm doing the right thing keeping them. I don't want to pay amazon, make their drivers pee in water bottles, and produce more plastic waste from packaging and transport for thing I already own.

Except it's 10$ and shipped in three days - unless you pay 16$ and get it tomorrow, which is unfortunately not when you need that monitor to work.

Even then, it's most likely even more expensive, because if it's just an off-the-shelf HDMI cable, you'd probably have one around. Look for the cheapest SCSI cable, if you don't think so.

I don't want to say 'store everything', but just backordering stuff is much more expensive in my experience.

That's fine for cables that never go out of style, like vga and rj45. Am I going to be able to find usb-A to mini-B in 5 minutes in 20 years? Probably. Am I going to be able to find a camera usb-ish to rca video cable in 20 years? Probably not or not cheap.

Video game output cables are already hard to find for cheap.

I'm also a cable hoarder - lots of electronic related hobbies and you never know what you might need. My solution was buying a big pack of velcro cable ties and clear storage bins. One evening I sat down and cable wrapped every single one, then sorted into bins by the type of cable - power, audio/video, USB, networking, etc. Slap a label onto the front of each bin.

The bins sit neatly on a shelf and I know exactly where to find any type of cable I need. The cable wraps prevent them from turning into giant tangled messes.

This is going to sound really dumb, but how exactly do you wrap your cables using zipties? I tried the intuitive "roll it in a 5-6in circle, then maybe fold, squish, and then secure by a ziptie in the middle", but i am not sure if there is a better way. That one feels somewhat messy.

>velcro cable ties

Not zip ties.

I'm not the person you're asking.

I like the velcro cables ties that stay attached to the cable, like [1]. Wrap the cable in a loop, then secure the loop with the velcro. Larger cables get two ties on opposing sides. Do not squish the cable because it will get all kinked; just keep it in a loop, and stack all your wrapped cables as a cylinder.

The diameter of the circle depends on the cable length and thickness. 2m USB cable should be 10cm, 3m power cord should be 20cm, and 10m Ethernet cable should be 30cm.

[1] https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/8-x-1-2-Black-and-Gray-Cable-Ti...

I used to hoard cables, but then I figured out 90% of them were really bad quality.

I actually tested all my microUSB cables and found out majority of them had trouble delivering over 1A of power through them -> bin.

For the rarer ones I kept one of each (usb-a->usb-b, mini-usb etc), the ones that were the best quality.

The number of times I've needed that one extremely specific cable and years later realize it has been "tidied up" (e.g. gotten rid of) is actually kind of bothersome to me. Like sure, it's just "junk" for years at a time, until it's not. And sometimes I really did wind up needing it (or wanting?) it again! Sigh...

Oof, no please ask. 15 years in and manners still matter.

And it’s also important to keep your stuff in separate places so that there’s no question about whose it is or whether it should be tossed

That's a good way to make me strongly reconsider being in that relationship.

It wouldn't be acceptable to me in any length of relationship. Different strokes for different folks.

What?

Never.

I never would do that and my wife never did this.

One way this was said by one lady in a tv show was to not use your home as storage. By home she meant hallways, on top of furniture and so on. It makes your home look more like a storage unit and less like a house.

It helped me to start putting things away in drawers and so on, but also to think about how often I use them, or if I still need them.

The tv show was about "proffesional organizers".

Living is what you do between kitchen, bed, desk and bath and fron door. The rest is literally the storage unit.

IIRC there were some studies on where people in the US spend their waking hours at home and, at the time, for most people, it was overwhelmingly the bathroom and the kitchen/dining-area. The dining area especially was where everyone did their bills and homework and such, and where mail got left when it came in from the mailbox. I think a bad misreading of those results was why builders wasted kitchen space on built-in desks for a bunch of years, before everyone realized how dumb that was and knocked it off.

(this wasn't factoring in WFH, of course—I think most of the important original work was done in like the 70s)

« Life at Home in the 21st Century » is a good read on the subject

> on top of furniture and so on

Pfff, fancy posh TV lady with her ACTUAL DEDICATED STORAGE SPACE in SPACIOUS HOME.

Shortly after moving in with my gf into a tiny space, I realized that beyond, but including your realization, sometimes they just like to move stuff around occasionally. I think my father's lack of realizing and accepting this is what's led him to ruin any living situation he's ever had, because he just can't give up a little control and share autonomy over a combined space.

I notice this in reverse as well, it's probably best when moving in with someone to get a new place and set expectations early.

I’m a stickler for this as well, but at the same time it is easy to have the status quo and get used to not putting things away.

>The whole point of putting things away is to hide them! No one wants to look at your crap when you're not using it.

Well, there is another reason. When your room has a consistent default state, it's easier to look around the room and notice anything that is unusual. It makes the room into a sort of sensor. When it is always changing states — things here one day, there another — any changes can be missed. Subconsciously, we usually feel calmer when we know what's going on around us, which is facilitated by an orderly living/working environment.

This is so wise. My house is hopelessly cluttered. When I need to find, say, my wallet before I leave, it can be a frustrating episode if I haven't put it in its canonical home.

Yet compare that to if I'm staying in a hotel. I just look around on the 5 surfaces -- nightstand, dresser, desk, bathroom counter, bingo, of course it was in one of those places and it sticks out obviously. 10 seconds max.

Devil's in the details of course, and I haven't yet been able to declutter, but I intuitively know you're right.

I still have this now. She's always hiding my shit from me. Deliberately to piss me off. /s

Every item should have an agreed-upon place where it goes. Then if it is not out/can't find it, it's in its place. So if you both agree on that, then putting things away is NBD, and no one is hiding anything.

The phrase in my household, “put it where you expect it to be”

This works great except when you don’t agree on where you expect it to be.

We have an ongoing battle about where whisks live: with the blender and beaters, or with the cooking spoons and ladle.

Our rule is “whoever empties the dishwasher gets to put things where they think they belong”.

Do whisks look like beaters but work like ladles?

Well, they are used for baking and they are used for cooking.

I have not tried using one as a ladle but I have low expectations.

This presents a chicken-and-egg problem. I expect all my shit to be randomly strewn about because that's where I've always put it.

Think of it as hiding it from household dust.

Yes, anything that's out gets grimy and dusty eventually.

Oof. Flashbacks to living 75ish meters off a gravel road as a kid.

Or in New York City, where the combination of vehicle exhaust particulates, poor airflow in many apartments, and old masonry dust causes every surface to look like a haunted house within a month if you aren't on top of things.

And to think we breathe that. Not fun. We have natural defenses (hair and mucus membranes, but they presumably only tackle a percentage).

And if you're in the tropics, everything in gets grimy and moldy quickly!

I have no idea why some people have this urge to hide all things.

When I hide things I just forget that I have half of them almost immediately. Let alone remembering where I have them.

There is "putting things back where they belong so you they don't clutter and you know where they are next time you need them" and "put things out of the way in a random place so that they are effectively lost".

Then there is me looking for something for half an hour or more then finally finding it exactly where it was supposed to be.

There is also "putting things in easy to reach locations so they're always where you expect to find them", which looks like clutter to other people.

> "put things out of the way in a random place so that they are effectively lost".

Ah, the 'housekeeper strategy.'

The BEST thing about the $600 a month we spend having weekly housekeeping is that it brutally forces us to put shit at least SORT OF "away" in a frenzy every Sunday night. Because if we don't, the housekeepers will stuff it into the a random drawer or cupboard, or throw it away, or otherwise stack it in a random place. So at least if WE do it, we'll have an idea where we would have put it when we're looking for it.

This isn't the wrong choice by the way -- I mean, they couldn't clean if they had to respect the random spot where they find each little item.

YES

I can have things that get "put away" i.e. in a container/cabinet/drawer/room IF that container will be something that I open and access at least every other day. Otherwise, things that get put away out of sight are GONE until I accidentally stumble across them years later.

Limited exception: if there is a tool or device or something that is so uniquely suited for a task that when presented with a task where it would be useful I will immediately think of the tool—and thus remember that I have it—I can safely store it away, as long as the place I'll put it is the first place that I'd look for it.

What are some examples of things which you would forget about?

Articles of clothing---chests of drawers are an issue for that, and sometimes closets, so most of my clothes are out on open shelving that I think was designed as bookshelves

Kitchen bowls/pans/etc (though one of the Exception items is a really cool apple corer-peeler-slicer thing that can be in the back of a cabinet for months but I'll never forget it during apple-baking season)

FOOD IN THE FRIDGE is the worst (food in the pantry not much better)

Flavours of liquor, if I don't have them all out in the open on the bar-buffet

Oh hey let me look in the drawers of my desk RIGHT NOW and list semi-useful stuff I forgot was there:

Whiteboard markers

Business envelopes

A backup hard drive

Most of a ream of printer paper

A pair of thin knit gloves that I've used in the past to type when the room was cold but I haven't seen or thought about in years

A small wad of foreign money from two trips ago that actually would have been useful on my last trip abroad

A supply of staples

...that's not an exhaustive list. And it'd be longer, except three of the eight drawers are empty because I try not to keep stuff in drawers, because I'll forget about them.

Well there are other benefits like dust and cat protection. Having transparent cabinet doors and drawers would make sense though.

You need to have a system; so it's not exactly "remembering" where you put things, but deducing where an items ought to be and going there to find it. It's similar to people who put all files on the desktop vs organizing files into a hierarchy of folders.

A hierarchy of folders is great for hierarchical data like

Accounts>2020>July>july_20.xlsx

For other stuff is a nightmare because it often could be in 2 places. Maybe you have a folder for <bosses_name> and one for HR...now your boss asks you for that hr thing he asked you to do 2 years ago, where is it?

I give my non-hierarchical files filenames with as much meta data as possible, and stick them all in one folder. Search does the rest.

I save my temporary files in my downloads folder. Now and again I delete stuff from a year or so ago.

> For other stuff is a nightmare because it often could be in 2 places

Symlinks are an obvious solution for OSes that support them, without having to resort to tagging and/or search search

Maybe that's just a sign you have a lot of stuff you don't even need in the first place?

My wife and I have a rule, "everything needs to have a home." Because if it doesn't have a home, it becomes clutter, and after enough clutter, it finds a home... usually a sub-optimal one, like a junk drawer.

The kids (4 and 5) have adapted to this wonderfully. It really helps them. It makes cleanup a trivial task because everything is known to belong somewhere specific.

Related to this: the recognition that everything is harder in a messy home. If you have stuff everywhere, you are paying a small tax any time you want to find or do something. Even cluttering your cupboards and drawers means you're tediously sifting through too much stuff or constantly worried about knocking something over while getting something else out. It's been especially good to avoid the dance of removing items to get the items underneath, then putting them back.

Finally: the lesson that when you keep stuff, you are paying a "tax" on keeping it. Throw away stuff you don't think you'll ever need again. It's cheaper to re-buy 1 or 2 things than to keep 100 of them for years and years. That storage space could be better used.

Bonus: If everything has a home, and you run out of homes, you quickly recognize that you have too much stuff and it might be time to make trade-offs. This puts an upper bound on the amount of stuff in our home.

Note that this could all easily sound super hardcore but it's not. It's just a general guide we have. We aren't forcing our kids to throw excess toys away and we're not writing a book about it. A flexible tool to guide behaviour, not enforce it.

> ... you run out of homes, ... you have too much stuff ... puts an upper bound on the amount of stuff in our home.

Conversation from last weekend -

"I want those brown shoes. They're so nice and fit like they're made for me"

"You're shoes are overflowing your side, into mine and now into the corridor. I think you have too many."

"I don't have any that are like boots. I want brown ones for the city.I'll wear to my $event"

"You got yellow ones last month. They look like boots"

"They're for a hike. These are for the city. I don't like being told about my shoes."

And then there were more shoes.

Same night -

"I need to donate my old clothes"

Some women care about shoes far, far more than makes sense to their husbands / boyfriends.

My several attempts to understand this have been fruitless.

This might belong on the short list of things to work around, rather than work through.

I think it's one of these personality traits you accept, even if you don't understand it.

In women's wear, shoes are not foot wear. They're an accessory.

It's nobody's fault shoes are bigger than earrings except the architect/builder who didn't accommodate that in the closet. :-)

Huh. I wish I had encountered this way of thinking sooner.

> "They're for a hike. These are for the city"

I'm a guy, and I do this, too. I have two identical pair of boots. One pair is for "clean" things, such as going to the store, the office, etc. The other pair is for "dirty" things, such as yardwork, hiking, gardening, woodworking, etc.

As my "clean" boots age and wear, I swap them out for a new pair, and the previous "clean" boots become my new "dirty" boots. It's a cycle I've been running for decades now.

The hike vs city distinction makes sense to me, regardless of gender.

We call this the OHIO system. Only Hold It Once. Don’t set things down in random spots, pick it up and it goes where it belongs.

My parents used to say, “don’t put it down, put it away.”

Now here I am a middle-aged man, still reminding myself, “don’t put it down, put it away.”

So you don’t have a junk drawer? We have a junk drawer and it is the home for packing tape, scissors, flashlight, batteries, etc…

Packing tape in the workshop. Scissors in the knife block. Paper scissors in the craft cupboard. Other scissors in the "office" (there's a fun battle between what are craft supplies and what are office supplies). Batteries in the battery/charger cupboard in my office (hugely popular for all the kids toys). Flashlights are in the workshop (big Ryobi ones), kids rooms (small toy flashlights that look like ladybugs), and in the cars.

We DO have a "junk drawer" but it's really just a "assorted kitchen stuff" drawer. You'll find birthday candles, matches, elastics, twist ties, etc. but that's their home.

Super fun semantics talk because we love semantics: maybe your junk drawer isn't a junk drawer? Maybe you know exactly what's there and why. Homes are of all different sizes and maybe that works perfectly because you don't need things like a battery cupboard.

Packing tape goes in the adhesives drawer in the garage/shop.

I hang them on a pegboard. My adhesives are woefully inadequate to deserve a drawer... gosh I wish...

I have three adhesive draws and they certainly don't have room for tape.

You only have a (single) junk drawer??? :-)

What? That is the utilities draw! The junk draw is for the small white elephant statue recieved from a white elephant years ago, the plate from an old car that was totaled, and a stray n64 controller.

The draw?

I can't help but hear that in a northeastern accent like from the folks from This Old House :)

I had several such drawers. My fiancée hipped me to the label maker. Now a drawer that has some loose thematically linked bunch of crap in it instead has exactly this list of things in it where that list is enumerated on the front of the drawer. For instance I had put safety pins, sharpies, a sewing kit, scissors and stain removal pens in a Sterilite drawer together. These were loosely thematically linked along the lines of "have to do with fabric." The drawer was maybe 1/3 full and I don't have a ton of space for more drawers. I put my many spare AA, AAA, CR2032 batteries in there because they'd really be wasting space in a drawer on their own. Suddenly the loose thematic link is severed! It's become a junk drawer!! But if you put a label on the front with everything I've written in this comment, it becomes the drawer that is home to exactly these items. You can put another item not on the list in it, you just need to add a label!

This blew my mind wide open. Absolutely game changing. The space works for us, not the other way around!!

I just bought a used laptop on impulse last week, and it still has no home. It's driving me nuts. It's sitting next to me right now. And because it's pre-usb-c, the charger needs a home too. I have about 30 large bins in the garage for things without homes, and that may be its fate, unfortunately.

I don’t know your use-case, but a laptop’s “home” at home would be your laptop bag - or - a docking-station on your desk - use your desktop PC, on a desk, while at home; while your laptop bag’s hone would be on a coathook in your mudroom or closet - or a designated (and maintained) spot by the door.

Get a cafeteria tray and put the laptop on that. Homing items is mostly about dividing and binding space, and the tray acts to bundle any accessories or project parts, while also dividing it from the room.

> Note that this could all easily sound super hardcore but it's not. It's just a general guide we have. We aren't forcing our kids to throw excess toys away and we're not writing a book about it. A flexible tool to guide behaviour, not enforce it.

I was having a hard time thinking about what I'm doing wrong, but I think this is close enough. I'm so inspired to steal some variant of this disclaimer especially this part: "We aren't forcing x to do y and we're not writing a book about it."

It's also going to vary greatly based on the individual. Some people have homes that look like ocean going ships, with nothing that's not permanently attached or stowed neatly away. Others have shit everywhere. Both scenarios are fine if you're comfortable with living that way.

It's good to be somewhere in the middle because then no one is angry when the process breaks down every so often. Now I know someone is going to say that the process won't break down because I AM IN CHARGE and monitoring the process. And that's exactly why it's good to be in the middle. :)

Heh, reading this I can’t help but think of how different the perception of what your kids are feeling is vs what they’re actually feeling.

“This is great for the kids!” Maybe! Or, equally plausibly it’s annoying, but they don’t tell you.

Yesterday we asked 4yo if he wanted this rack of plastic bins for toys in his room. He was so eager that he wanted to carry it himself. Once up there, he began dismantling his current system and excitedly placing toys into the new bins while singing to himself.

The first thing that comes to mind is how to communicate this without people thinking, "oh those poor kids, they've been brainwashed into being neat freaks." I guess the answer comes in: 5yo is not like this and that's fine. Their rooms are usually a mess because they're kids. And our house is usually a disaster because we have kids and are tired. Just because everything has a home, doesn't mean we're perfect about it... far from it. The kitchen would usually horrify you.

The kids genuinely love it because when they ask to get out the slime or do arts and crafts, and we say, "but first you have to clean up your other toys," that's a task they are 100% capable of doing themselves. It gives them agency.

> The kids genuinely love it because when they ask to get out the slime or do arts and crafts, and we say, "but first you have to clean up your other toys," that's a task they are 100% capable of doing themselves. It gives them agency.

Haha, your world is going to be rocked in two decades, when your kid casually mentions something you thought they “loved” but really thought was stupid. It’s almost like you’ve forgotten your own childhood!

I disagree with this with some caveats. I find that specific memory as a child (parents mistaking something you hate as something you enjoyed) to actually reflect the amount of open communication and mutual listening of parent/child. My parents rarely listened to me, so I went with learned helplessness, and my consent was mistaken as enjoyment. But I know of other families where preferences were listened to and became the bedrock of having a trusting relationship with parental units.

Parents are incapable of knowing what their kids like and dislike? I'm feeling a sorrowful empathy for where this line of reasoning might come from.

It's a well known problem[0][1] with accepting parental assertions around their child's health. That's why kids are often given time alone with their doctor, to express feelings they wouldn't otherwise feel comfortable about. Additionally, it's been shown that a parent is not great at objectively evaluating their child's emotional state or place in the world. [2]

It's even got an entry in TVTropes![3]

But why would you have a "sorrowful empathy" because I have a passing knowledge about childhood and children? You can't seriously think you're going to always know what your children are thinking or that they're even being entirely straightforward with you now, can you? Surely they have their own lives by now even a little bit, some space for their own that you're not involved in and don't know about.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15473508/

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...

[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201407/parents-j...

[3] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoesntKnowTheirO...

A well known problem? An article saying "Some parents have limited knowledge concerning their children's OHRQoL.", a new york times article, a psychology today article and a tvtropes page? This is extremly light evidence. You can defend anything with a vaguely related study and a few press articles.

I don't personally believe in learning about anything from HN, only of things, so at this point if you want to know more I recommend talking to a pediatrician, as I'm not an expert and may (unintentionally) mislead, misdirect, or misinterpret.

Maybe it's not well known! Maybe it's extremely rare! Maybe I've got biases! Who knows, I certainly wouldn't. You have no idea what my qualifications are, what my expertise is, and generally there are no social consequences for me spouting nonsense, so there are not a lot of good reasons to listen to whatever my argument may be, right or wrong.

-If my kids are anything to go by, no worries: If it annoys them, they'll tell you. Repeatedly.

Or worse:

Even if they really liked it and adopted it, then they would not be able to cause chaos and destruction, to embrace disorder, noise, unpredictability of things (both physical and social/abstract). This would be to their disadvantage.

Too much order, not allowing for chaos is _not_ good for kids. Ways of chaos and destruction should be welcome. Order should be welcome. Walking lightly between the two, while maintaining contact _and_ giving kids freedom is not an easy task, I think.

The problem with online discussions is that people project their own perceptions onto what it all looks like. Their rooms are never clean. Having a home for everything helps, but whatever you're picturing... it's likely wrong. This house is a mess because it's lived in.

I am not trying to picture your home in any negative way or suggest anything to you in any way. I read your whole comment, incl. last paragraph. What I was trying to say was more of a general comment on how delicate (and beneficial) is to have access to different kinds of energies, allowing order and disorder, and how going too much to either side can have long lasting, far reaching consequences. That going too far, even playfully, in one direction ("in this home _everything_ has its own place") sets contexts far more reaching than one could imagine.

To add to this, I have a dedicated place for almost anything, as I code things rather spatially than visually, so I think it's great. I just think it is important to leave lots of freedom for kids. It's like difference between "I see you did not put all things away today" vs. "How are you doing in 'everything needs to have a home' department, today?"

All the best!

In my 20s I had a roommate and we kept having arguments with use of space. I would interpret his leaving new purchases just wherever as laziness or not caring. I'd hand it to him, and tell him to put it away, and it'd be left somewhere else randomly.

I eventually realised he bought things without thinking about where to put them, when he got home with it. So it just sort of would get abandoned wherever. There was no assigned "away" for him, and I was assuming there was. Baffling, but at least it wasn't passive-aggressive like I had thought. Some of my habits eventually wore off on him, thankfully.

A related theme is: I don't have anywhere to put this even after thinking about it -- then you probably have too much stuff!

Yeah, I hd never even heard of this idea until probably my 30s.

And it took much longer until I realized it's actually not silly.

Now I try to live this way, with limited but increasing success.

Had the same situation. I'd forever be asking, "what's your plan for this or that item that's just lying around clearly not put away?" because that's how I approach it. There wasn't a plan, it was all spontaneous, willy nilly. We made it work, but I've found it's far less draining to simply find a roommate, now it's a significant other, who operates similarly to me.

> A related theme is: I don't have anywhere to put this even after thinking about it -- then you probably have too much stuff!

I seldom run into the problem of not having anywhere to put something. On the other hand, I often run into the problem of being unsure of how best to categorize something so that I can decide where it should belong.

I too prefer to group related items together when I'm organizing drawers or storage compartments of any kind, and if an item has no similar items to live with, it ends up orphaned on a counter or surface somewhere, ultimately risking itself ending up in a junk drawer.

But if it's an extra pair of glasses or something fragile, you don't want it getting tossed around other things like metal tools or otherwise damaging things.

Other times, I leave things out of place in the open deliberately to remind myself to do something. This could be placing a bill or usually other paper items right at the end of the dinner table to force myself to remember taking care of it. Another example is leaving a cardboard box near the front door to recycle it later. It's intended to ugly up my space to bug me and take care of it.

So, I often use my physical space as a natural to-do list of sorts. Works well!

I've run into this. It's tough because the answer I might arrive at ("I don't have a place to store this, so I shouldn't buy it") is often not well received by people you live with as it comes across as you trying to dictate what they can and cannot buy.

>A related theme is: I don't have anywhere to put this even after thinking about it -- then you probably have too much stuff!

or not enough clear surfaces x)

"I eventually realised he bought things without thinking about where to put them"

Ok, learned something. I never think about where anything will be placed when I buy them. I basically hope that I can move stuff and it will fit. No wonder my place is always messy. I know this is basic but I never even thought about it. Live and learn... Thx!

I agree with this 100% but I struggle with finding homes for everything. I feel like I need more furniture with drawers or cupboards. It's creating the storage space that I struggle with.

My too, but the only thing that helped was making storage spaces for a type of thing, and when the space designated overflows, something has to be tossed.

I want to recommend the boxes system called "Pretty useful box" to you. For years now that stuff solved the problem again and again.

https://reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/usa/

I have a TON of small components and tools, and maybe my system could be helpful:

I keep several shelves full of stacking storage boxes in my garage. I’ve given each of these a unique number, written in permanent marker on the front face and lid of each. I chuck things mostly randomly in whatever box has some space, and then I track those newly added/removed items in a spreadsheet (more specifically, I just use a text file and treat the line numbers as the respective bin number — primitive, but works better for my workflow than something like Google Sheets).

I’ve found that trying to keep an immense inventory “organized” is too daunting (what happens if I overflow one bin — do I dedicate an entire bin to the one or two items that wouldn’t fit, leaving this bin mostly empty? Ugh!), and the only real utility with keeping things categorically collocated is to retrieve/store items efficiently anyway — by introducing a layer of indirection, I get the end result I’m looking for with a fraction of the work.

A hash map for physical storage, that’s fascinating!

Ever bought something from ikea? Located in aisle 32, shelf 5, by chance? :-) it’s a well established concept

yeah, buying organizational furniture is helpful. Those metal shelves from ikea are great, stack plastic containers on them and it’s not even too expensive to fill a closet like this

If I followed this rule I wouldn't own a thing, the perks of living in a small room.

I think a lot of people would be a lot happier in life if they got rid of half their crap. Then in 6 months get rid of half of what is left. It is a hard battle but I keep trying to get rid of more and more stuff and it is so nice to walk into a storage shed that is more and more empty. Everything remaining is needed and there is no hunting or looking for things as everything is easily accessible.

I recently read an account from someone who manages a chemistry(?) lab that's used by multiple teams of people. He'd spent years trying to come up with the perfect storage system, only to realize that the only thing that consistently works is to reduce inventory.

I've been applying that to my own life lately, and I think he's right.

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." --Thomas Edison

I have a lot of stuff, probably too much. Some of it I haven't touched in years but only a relatively small portion of it would I consider getting rid of. I tend to go through cycles of interests where I will work on some category of thing for a few months and produce a few items and then I'll exhaust my creativity in the matter and leave it to lie fallow. Later on I'll pick up the pursuit again and I happily have everything I need to hand. Nothing is worse than being in the midst of making something and realizing you haven't got the part you need, you're left with a few options: to buy it, scavenge it, or make it; all of which take time and effort away from the thing you are working on.

The minimalist life may appeal to some, I can understand the sentiment. I've spent holidays away from home in a serenely empty cabin with nothing but nature and a book. It's pleasant but it grows tiresome after a while and I yearn to be back in the shed, tinkering and building.

I'm much the same, I've been down to having my whole life fit in a backpack and currently am spread all over a three bedroom house. Too much space and, strangely, too much organization make me anxious long term.

I find my ad hoc organizational style is by far the most effective for me. It's like a LIFO data structure. The most frequently used items (phone, laptop, TV remote) are in the easiest to reach places. My beach and fishing stuff are near the door in the summer, the salt and shovel make their way there in the winter.

I think people with the rotational-evolving quality tend to organize things in time rather than space, which doesn't look right to most people who think the other way around.

I have one friend whose house is basically probably a candidate for one of the hoarders shows. Then my dad and brother are both basically of the nothing out of place school.

I tend to be the Goldilocks principle. I do get rid of things that I know I'll never use--especially if they're bulky. But I don't mind keeping things around that I may get back into someday. Or want for the occasional thing. And I can keep some magazines and piles of books lying around, seasonal clothing piles, travel stuff grab boxes, etc. laying around without them taking over. If people were coming over, I might spend an hour tidying up but it's a happy medium for me for the most part.

You're coming at this the wrong way, the solution is build more sheds.

> everything needs to have a home

Does it count if everything goes into one big box?

Or if I just declare the living room as the home for my stuff?

At that point, you've successfully outsmarted yourself.

Which means you've just built the smartest thing you're capable of, and are thus incapable of debugging it.

"everything needs to have a home."

This, absolutely.

My housemates (a couple) have this problem. Since others having moved out, they seem to have expanded to fill any available space in the house.

They take up more cupboard and bench space around the house then the additional 2 people did before.

Makes it challenging in a house to find space when you need it, if it's already filled simply because there was a free space.

If anyone does want to read a book about it, I'm listening to "Decluttering at the speed of life" and it hits this concept pretty well. Really helped me shift my mindset.

This is true, and as a balance ..except when their and what they like to look at (which might be nothing) is still out.

If you’re in the bottom drawers, less closet space, back of the fridge, at the bottom of the pile, the the more awkward storage space, fewer drawers, appliances that like to be seen but not used, or more of your stuff is in storage it might not entirely be you.

At the same time it’s valuable to learn to build shared storage solutions jointly to let both (and little ones) put the items most used, important or at hand is a critical skill to develop together, early on.

Otherwise deferral or indifference can be quite tough when one of you might have a change of heart.

There are many thinna that happen in life where you will literally not remember to do.something (medication, etc) if it’s not sitting out on the counter.

it sounds funny, but I gotta tell you, the opposite is never true.

You can't hide their makeup that they are not using, the 10 bottles of shampoo with different colors and allegedly different properties, the 7 bottles of hair conditioner etc etc

So everyday I wake up to something like this, but worse

https://i0.wp.com/blog.cliomakeup.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

Lucky us we have two bathrooms, so we can keep one tidy, right?

WRONG!

The second bathroom is for the exclusive use of our 2 cats.

Could I have a say about it?

Of course not.

Is it logical?

Absolutely not.

People don't want to see other people's crap, but are more than happy to live surrounded by their own.

If there's a paradise, many people deserve it just for going through all of this, every day.

Our place has a ton of different storage locations... we solved it with a spreadsheet.

This seems like the solution is worse than the problem!

When you need a WMS for your place it may be an indicator that you have too much stuff.

Or just hobby with many required SKUs. I dabble in electronics and that is in hundreds different parts.

Can relate, I also dabble but a few of these[1] sort of organizer sets plus handful of full sized drawers are enough to hold just about everything I've got. With labelled drawers and sets split by semantic type I'm not sure there's anything I could need a spreadsheet for. Unless you've got a truly absurd amount of parts there heh.

[1] https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/a34bd723-d555-429...

Tho, I do not mind seeing partners stuff and like to have mine own in sight. It makes me more active - seeing that stuff make me want to interact with it. When I put books and crafting things somewhere I do not see, that project effectively died.

Absolutely, that's basic human psychology. If you want to practice guitar, put the guitar on a stand near your desk/couch where you can see it. Hiding it away just for the sake of 'tidiness' defeats the point.

ADHD weaker object permanence means that lots of people need to see their stuff to keep it in mind. “Hiding stuff” is problematic (and so is clutter).

This is the issue for me.

The problem is that someone else does it. If I put a thing away and find a spot for it I will remember. But if someone else without my hierarchy for stuff does it it will inevitably land in a place I will not even think to search in the first place.

Exactly. I'm already busy keeping the means and motivations of my completing a task in working memory, adding more cognitive load increases the chance that I get derailed and have to gather myself again.

Hiding the belongings of someone with ADHD is disabling them. Work with them, not against them.

Non-ADHD weaker clutter tolerance means that lots of people need to hide stuff to keep it from bothering them.

Clutter intolerance can have a profound impact on daily life for sufferers. Many will engage in maladaptive coping strategies such as ritualistic tidying and avoiding cluttered rooms or spaces. Whether tolerance can be improved through therapy is an area of active research. Unfortunately, clutter intolerance is thought to be neurobiological.

I had a couple friends barge into my suite and tidy everything up because they were worried about me.

“There, doesn't that feel better?”

“Yes [I will say anything that will make you go away, and then I will cower in the corner of a room that is no longer my bedroom in a suite that is no longer my home]”

This is hilarious -- though I have been shamed throughout my life for clutter as though it were a moral defect.

I have this, though it most often shows up as "to-do impermanence" -- I have to keep tasks very visible or they disappear. Come to think of it, I'm a bit like the guy in Memento, I even need to remind myself of the whole history and motivation for a task every time I come to it.

No, it's the opposite. Things placed randomly and visibly just add to the mental overhead. They easily distract.

Can confirm. My wife still "hides" my stuff all the time, but she's gotten better at leaving it alone, and some stuff in the bathroom I had to very explicitly spell out that it needs to be exactly where it is and it needs to always be visible. We definitely compromise a lot, but I'm glad she tries to work with me on it.

There are common areas and then there are zones where people park stuff. I've tried to get my SO to put stuff I leave in private areas in one of my zones, rather than putting it somewhere I will never find it.

It's also a battle because of the clutter, 10% of it is mine, and I never move their stuff.

The problem comes in when there's something that could reasonably be trash (usually a box that I might need to return something) gets tossed. :(

I totally disagree. If you use something fairly regularly then leave it out in the spot where it is used all the time.. What harm does something merely being visible do? .. Hiding it away does harm as 1. You will waste time putting it away and retrieving it every time you use it 2. there's the extra mental load of remembering where it goes 3. you may forget where it is.

This reminds me of the difference between 'tidy' and 'organised' .. They are independent properties and an area may be very tidy while being very disorganized and vice versa.. Eg. typical thing where if there is a pile of random crap on a table someone will dump it all into a drawer. The area is now more 'tidy' but also more disorganized.

Tidiness is superficial, whereas being organized has practical benefits.

> Hiding it away does harm as 1. You will waste time putting it away and retrieving it every time you use it

Trust me, I suck at tidying and have a cluttered mess, so I'm not being Marie Kondo here.

Your logic works but only so far. If you put nothing "away" all your "working surfaces" will eventually be covered with crap -- except of course it's not crap, it's your things that you intended to keep easily at hand. It'll make it so that it's a chore to find things and also a chore to have a useful space to actually DO anything. Sure, leave out a set of favorite often-used stuff, like say, bread on the counter instead of away in a pantry, your most-worn shoes on the floor by the door, whatever. But curating that set of stuff that is important enough to be "just left out" is important, and it's a REAL challenge for me!!

I don't think it's about not wanting to look at things - my wife once moved something from me from the bathroom above the sink to a shelf, and I got pissed I couldn't find it. She said it was too much stuff there. I then went there and counted 17 things that belonged to her, and 2 that belonged to me, 1 of which was apparently too much.

In my experience women do this a lot. I don't know if it's some kind of an evolutionary thing. On the one hand that it was something women traditionally did and can't let go, on the other that it is/was a way to make themselves more important. You become very important when somebody needs you all the time to tell them where things are.

Maybe your anecdotes don’t define the evolutionary history of women?

Maybe, I really don't know.

I have this experience too. But I think it is more general: people are more critical of others then themselves.

I used to complain to my mom that I left stuff on the floor on purpose because I could find it faster. 30 years later my daughter said the same thing to me and I just nodded and shut her door.

I mean, that's obviously LRU caching.

There is a book I read recently called Goodbye, Things. It's like a more interesting version of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, as it talks more about the feeling of being a minimalist than TLCMTU does, which is more practical.

It talks about needing less space in general and being more free, simply by having fewer things, since things beget things; the more things you have, the more organizational containers you need, in turn creating yet more things and yet more space to store them in. Since then, I've tried to actively limit the amount of things and space they take up, since I hate clutter, but I hate organization as well.

A good book which addresses the perception that "possessions are a projection of my true self" but it lost me when the author describes limiting himself to a single towel to both dry himself out of the shower and to dry dishes...

Also, never shout at your wife.

100% agree. If it makes you feel better, I didn't actually yell or raise my voice.

I chose the word "yelled" because it was the simplest way to imply the frustration/betrayal/hurt I was feeling at the time. In retrospect, I could have said, "cried out," and captured the emotion/action more accurately without sacrificing brevity. But that phrase didn't occur to me at the time.

Words are hard.

I had a similar epiphany. I realized that I would leave things out in random piles as a reminder system. And more piles of things that I knew I SHOULD deal with, but didn't know HOW to deal with.

I realized also that this is a TERRIBLE reminder system. I started putting everything in OneNote and my calendar via the Getting Things Done Methodology, and I'm honestly upset that no one ever taught me such a system a long time ago. I've been told a million times to "use a planner", "write things down", "use a calendar", "use a notebook" etc. etc., but no one ever told me HOW to use those things. Getting Things Done is awesome because it told me almost exactly how to use that stuff, and the effect has been life-changing for me. My spaces have never been cleaner, and I've never been more effective in my life.

Well, it is "looks neat" vs "there is space that is free, why not use it for stuff that you use often?"

Some people have mental disease that makes them annoyed where the flat surfaces are covered with immediately useful and easily accessible stuff and act up. "Oh look at those flat surfaces that don't get used for anything useful 99% of the time, how neat and tidy"

Some other kind of people have different disease of just leavin shit lying around for months and never use it, where it should be put back in storage (or bin) weeks ago already. "Don't touch my stuff, if you move it I won't remember where it is!" (then promptly forgets and wastes time searching thru clutter anyway.

Sane compromise is somewhere in the middle. Don't constantly hide the favourite knife every fucking day, ain't nobody got time for that shit. But probably clean it so the next time you use it you won't waste time on that. Cutting board can stay out, you use it every day, multiple times anyway.

I'm trying to convince my wife that this is the way to go, but she keeps yelling at me for hiding her stuff in the bathroom (I even bought drawer organizers!). I've taken a break from doing it, but it took me personally 40 years to figure it out, and she is a gen younger, so we have time.

I will caveat this with something I learned from “How to Keep House While Drowning” - an incredible book for overwhelmed parents, neurodivergent people, and those going through depression:

Make your home work for you, don’t work for your home.

If that means the best way for you to live your life is to leave things out so you can find them more easily, then do that. Chances are though that having a “home” for everything (mentioned in other comments) is going to work better for you. It’s a process of learning and iteration.

Oh this is me, I very much want anything that I don't need to see right now to be out of the way, which is why I hate the modern world, even UI interfaces and constant notification etc, everything that is not relevent right now, I want to hand for the times when i do want it, but also out of the way when i am doing something else.

yah there's a saying surrounding that I believe, cluttered space, cluttered mind. I think there's something to it, keeping a bunch of stuff in sleep mode in some back corner mental stack of your mind that gets subliminally refreshed each time you visually glance over strewn clutter.

For some, this is a feature. I need to keep my stuff out so everything gets at least a couple brain cycles every day. I work in a generalist shop though with many concurrent (and very different) projects so it's not for everyone. Never liked spreadsheets/ticketing systems for this. I keep separate files for each project but need to physically see the objects for it to work for my mind.

Part of the motivation is the minor discomfort of seeing so many projects open and set aside. For me the solution is to complete projects, not categorize and hide everything.

definitely, there's something about using physical space as long term mental storage in effect. It's best when the zones are not mixed, projects out at the garage table vs the dining room table. When the zones overlap that's when trouble and collisions occur. The pandemic made me realize why having a dedicated home office space is a prized thing.

I literally bought a lockbox for this reason, because she would things to a different place every time.

She freaked out when I told her, but it came with two keys and I gave her one so she doesn't think I'm hiding anything from her.

That's why I steer away from open shelves, everything gets chucked into their respective drawer to keep things tidy. Getting partner be onboard with drawer organization probably deadend if they're not into it, but most things need a convenient place to hide.

Also I firmly believe really nice drawer hardware, like soft close and good runners can encourage this behaviour by making operation enjoyable. Grew up with very satisfyingly click put to open drawers, in retrospect not as functional as direct pulling, but man that click conditioned me to want to tidy.

For me at least the bigger point of putting things away is actually to find them quicker later.

"Out of sight, out of mind."

Ideally I'd have ceiling-to-floor shelves EVERYWHERE.

GTD says your mind is not so much storing to-do's as for processing them. Likewise, the contents of spaces. Memorizing contents is unnecessary mind clutter.

Everything having a home is good, but I like to still be able to "see" things when they are put away. For example, throwing things into a drawer where other things can obscure other things is bad, because I will forget the things that are on the bottom. I make sure all my socks are visible in my sock drawer by using an organizer that allows my rolled up socks to be stored vertically and I can't put other stuff on top of them.

Cabinets without doors, and shelves without doors are critical too. I'm not sure why but if I do not have regular visible sight of things, they may as well not exist and I will quickly forget that they are there, leading to all kinds of chaos.

I disagree. I like to have all my possessions in clear view; that way, when I need them, I don't need to search for them.

It is nice to put away things - keeps down the mental clutter and keeps the area looking nice - but I have to say I viscerally disagree with the practice of moving other people's things without permission and without telling them the new location. It is bad communication and absolutely guaranteed to start a fight. Keeping each other up to date and setting common expectations on where things should "live" is important.

> The whole point of putting things away is to hide them!

I think that it is rather to have them all in one place, and that they do not take the place of other things or are in your way.

The fact that they are hidden is because they are behind a door, probably to avoid that catching dust.

My theory of how cupboard doors were invented is people had shelves but didn't want to see all their crap displayed in the open. Hiding equals neatness.

What was that HN article recently of Las Vegas and windows on buildings more of something causes distress and less is more soothing to a point.