S/O: chores

mm&mm

Reading Rach's response below about her DH's mail got me thinking... that is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves. Our whole house can be clean, but then piled on the kitchen counter are bills, magazines, papers, etc. It looks terrible!

So, what do you do with your "stuff" to keep it out of the way and better organized?

MelZull

I dont know if this is really better organized or not, but with bills they always go on the computer desk in a stack since that is where we sit to pay them. I have a basket in the living room where we keep magazines, new and old. Every few months I will go through them and we will recycle them when we are finished with them.

rach1015

Ugh...it drives me crazy! ?I feel like every day of my life is an Easter egg hunt because of his pile making madness! ?He thinks it's "organizing", but it is far from it. ?He'll grab the mail, go through it, and take out the important stuff like bills and put them in this desk organizer we have for bills before and after they're paid. ?It's his receipts and the junk mail that he leaves on the console table in the entry (worst place for a pile of garbage to go since that's the first thing people see when they walk in). ?He does this weird pile thing when he picks up any clutter too. ?All he does is relocate the mess to another pile in another spot. ?One day a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to get ready for work and couldn't find one of my shoes, I was seriously at my wits end with this because he'd just put our shoes up from out in the garage. ?I looked everywhere and it wasn't quite making sense to me how one shoe made it upstairs to my closet, but the other one didn't. ?My last resort was to check the coat closet by the front door and what do ya know...there it was! ?That night I asked him about it and he said he must have picked each shoe up in a different trip and didn't realize that he'd already picked one up and put it somewhere else! ?Why not put ALL of the shoes in one spot where shoes belong? ?

?I know this isn't what you were looking for, but that is seriously our biggest issue with chores and I refuse to sort through his receipts as well as his pay stubs that he leaves lying around. ?I don't expect him to clean out my purse so I'm not going to clean up after him dumping his pockets out!

?I'm working on just getting over it, but it's hard when we're trying to find something and we know where it was yesterday, but it's no longer there because DH has "relocated" it to another pile somewhere else and he can't remember where!

We may need to start a support group for this! HA!?

pennyandandy

So I know that part of my problem with the chores and this issue is that I am just much more anal about it than DH-but I pay the bills, so I always get the mail when I come home, get out any bills/important stuff, give whatever else to DH, and put everything where I need it. We have a cute box thing that I turned into a mail sorter on the kitchen counter. I put bills in one section, important stuff in another section, magazines in the magazine holder in the living room, and throw out whatever else. Also, DH has a basket on the kitchen counter for his wallet, keys, etc. I also have him take out his receipts (for bill paying purposes) and put those in the mail organizer.

It works most of the time, except when DH forgets to take his receipts out of his wallet (but at least I know where his wallet is to get them).?

I guess this way I have disguised his stuff with cute baskets and whatever else so that makes me feel better. Plus, it keeps him from losing anything.

closapio

Yeah. I have piles o'crap on my kitchen table. It bugs the everloving heck outta me, but I can't break him of that one. (And it's worse because we STILL have a guy friend living in our spare bedroom - it's been over a year now) and his stuff accumulates there as well.

Rubyshoes19

I bought a shredder and got rid of our coffee table. Now, since we have nowhere else really to put it, we sort the mail as soon as it comes in the door.

I wasn't really planning this to help the piles, I was just getting rid of the coffee table, but it has certainly worked out for us.