This guide is helping in Taming the Mess. Mess overwhelms when there seems to be far too much to do to get to clean and organised. Mess often happens when you are trying to keep more things than you have places to put things, which can happen when you downsize your living space, have collected too many things or struggle to throw things out. Struggling to throw things out can lead to hoarding and squalor. This guide is to help you make some progress on the kind of mess that is pervasive and overwhelming due to how hard it is to create a system, primarily due to too many items in a finite space.

If you are struggling to just clean up a small mess, then this is not the guide you are looking for – what you are experiencing is likely Executive Dysfunction and Task Avoidance.

Understanding the Mess

While most of the Taming the Mess methods are universal, it is very helpful to understand what kind of mess you are dealing with, and what likely biological driver is causing that (in most cases).

Types of Mess

I would like to take a moment to be technical about the difference between Clutter, Collecting, Hoarding and Squalor. Most people use these terms poorly, especially Reality TV shows and the ‘News’.

Clutter

Clutter happens when you can’t put everything away.

Collecting

If there are a few things that you like to keep above and beyond the average person, and these are generally stored in an order with select items on display, then this is a Collection. So long as you do not collect more than you have reasonable space to store them, where that reasonable space is defined by your income means (if you go in to debt to have them, it is no longer reasonable), or intrude into your reasonably expected living space, then have fun – this may not be what others enjoy, but there is no medical or mental health issue here (although it may be worth looking at Autism as collecting is a common thing Autistic people do).

If your Collection has exceed your ability to maintain, store, display and enjoy, then the Collecting has become problematic. Collecting can start to resemble an addiction, where you feel compelled to purchase items even though you can’t afford the financial cost, possible family cost, or the space to store them. When you find yourself sacrificing those other things to continue to collect those items, then it has probably reached addiction style levels, and if you have the insight, you should do something about it.

Calling this an addiction is somewhat controversial.

Technically it isn’t a chemical addiction, but it has become a behavioural addiction – still a contested concept in medical health, but easily identifiable with people who struggle with it. For more, see Understanding Addiction.

If this is something you are struggling with, seek help from a therapist who is versed in behavioural addictions.

Hoarding

If you aren’t collecting a limited set of specific things, and the Collection has spilled over to most things or things that most others deem to be worthless, then you likely have crossed over from specific Colleting to Hoarding.

Unlike collecting, there seems to be little sentiment, special interest or resale purpose to the things that are kept. People who are aware of their growing mess will often justify what they are doing.

Some people are not really aware that they keep bringing things home or fail to throw things out. There is no attempt to justify getting more things, there is just acquire.

Hoarding is often a biological condition. It can be a sign of neural damage (Eg dementia or intellectual disability), it can be undiagnosed / untreated Autism, Anxiety and or ADHD, it may be a form of Schizophrenia or it may be Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / Fibromyalgia. Some of these can be treated with medication.

Hoarding can also be a response to specific trauma around loss and powerlessness, generally poverty, captivity or war. This can be treated with both some calming medications and targeted therapy (CBT). Once managed, often the medication and therapy can stop and the condition won’t return.

Squalor

Squalor what Reality TV and the News tend to call Hoarding. Squalor is where the hoarding has taken over so much that the person has tried to find impossible / unlikely places to store things. There is often an infestation of bugs, rodents and or fungi. There is often spoiled food, or remnants of food that has spoiled.

When there is Squalor, the person has a specific or general lack of insight and competency, generally due to some kind of cognitive condition or untreated neurological condition. It is often comorbid with neural damage such as a degenerative neuron disease, brain damage and or intellectual disability. While these conditions were listed in Hoarding above, not all people who struggle with these conditions have crossed the threshold from Hoarding to Squalor.

A good indicator that this is Squalor beyond the infestation and spoiled food is to examine their sleeping space and hygiene. In Squalor, the bed, shower and bath are being used to store things.

Generally there is no reasoning with someone who has Squalor problems, although it is worth trying to either rule out that they are just very overwhelmed, or confirm that there is a problem with their insight and judgement. If confirmed, need formal care and a firm hand. Take photographs of the person’s house, infestations, bed and bathroom and take these to their doctor for a formal assessment. Sometimes you may need to get the psychiatric team or the aged assessment team from the local hospital.

Having the local council condemn the property is often a solid way to push through a relevant assessment and diagnosis. That may seem cruel, but it isn’t. The house is already likely fit to be condemned – it just hasn’t happened yet. Triggering it will get it done when you are ready for it, rather than when you aren’t – and in this case, it will benefit the person.

Medical Causes

Mental and Physical Health

Sometimes the problem is overwhelming and the decisions feel too hard because there is some underlying health problems. Pain and fatigue are going to need to be managed in time and task chunks with suitable medication and support people. Mental Health may need a better assessment and medication.

The most common mental and neurological conditions that lead to this page are:

1. ADHD
2. Anxiety
3. PTSD
4. Schizophrenia

It is wise to seek therapist help for these if they have not been suitably diagnosed and treated.

Absence or Loss of Skill

Struggles in organisation can be due to not having learned any good strategy to sort goods, but can also be due to skill loss. Fortunately, learning how to sort, store and clean are fairly easy to learn from a mentor or Occupational Therapist.

Skill loss can be a result of:

• Brain damage,
• Dementia,
• Mental breakdown,
• Burnout,
• Adverse reaction to medication,
• ECT/TMS,
• Sometimes Trauma.

A way to tell if you have skill loss is that you used to be able to do this, but after a significant event, you can’t.

From Mess to Clean

Too Much Stuff – Making some room

If we are not dealing with an insight problem, yet the problem is pervasive, then we can feel very overwhelmed in how to manage this. There just seems to be too much to do and no good place to start. The most common reason why a pervasive mess has occurred is too much stuff to put things away, so everything becomes too piled up and you get lost in what to get rid of.

Sometimes the reason for too much stuff is that you are having to downsize and you expect to return to a bigger place soon; or you may have inherited a deceased estate. In that case, boxes are your friend, and the items that you wish to keep can be put into boxes and stored in both a compact and vertical fashion.

See the 3 Piles Method below for how to choose what to keep and what not to.

Divide and Conquer

Our living spaces are generally built up of rooms. We are going to pick a room to start with, then divide that room up, then look at a strategy for how to evaluate the items.

Firstly pick a room. Any room will do, but if you want a guide for which room to start with, I suggest that you pick the room that you use the most, or the room closest to the door near the rubbish bin.

The Gentle Method

If you are not confident about how to Tame the Mess, or you aren’t sure how to help someone else, this is the method to you.

You may need to make the 3 Piles in the hall, room next door, or outside (veranda, garden, car or street). Be careful to do as much as you are confident you can complete. If you feel you can do more, do another section after you finish the first. If the quantity of items in the proposed section seems overwhelming or impractical to temporarily put somewhere else, then increase the sections until you can do it.

The Brutal Method

This method is a lot of work, but can be very fast.

This process can be very confrontational, triggering and may be traumatising – so consider carefully before using it.

The 3 Piles Method

Every item will need to be categorised in 1 of the 3 types, and then placed in the relevant piles.

We cover what each of these means for inclusion and exclusion below and we cover how to section up the areas of your property below in Divide and Conquer.

I have listed a time limit for rehoming items as 2 weeks. Reasons why you might extend this include that you are being rural, not having your own transport, or significant fatigue issues. Other reasons may exist, but be careful not to extend this too long, otherwise you will role the problem over until it ends up creating more mess.

Pile 1 – Ditch (Rubbish)

This pile is for the things you are throwing out.

Pile 2 – Rehome (gifts, donations and sales)

This pile is for when other people may want the item you won’t be keeping.

These are items that you could give to someone, donate to a charity, or sell. If the item isn’t something that you someone else would want, and if it doesn’t pass the rules for you to keep it, then the item should go into Pile 1 – Ditch.

Be careful of not mistaking a item you are actually finding difficult to throw out as something you de facto keep, because “surely somebody wants this”. The test is that you don’t know who to give it to and you don’t think someone is reasonably likely to buy it from you. Your options for this item are either donate it, or ditch it in the trash pile.

If you are confident someone will buy it from you, and if you have the energy / space / resources to sell that item, then allow yourself up to 2 weeks to sell it before donating or ditching it.

Pile 3 – Keep (Mine All Mine)

If the item isn’t rubbish, and you aren’t rehoming it, then perhaps we are keeping it.

We have a few rules to check if it is a viable item for that.

Temporary Pile – 4 (I’m Thinking About It)

Anything that you can’t place in 1 of these 3 piles can be left in an “I’m thinking about it” temporary 4th pile. It is temporary as once you run out of items in your section, this pile now needs to be placed into 1 of the 3 main piles. The default pile, if you can’t decide, is “Ditch it”.

Putting Items Away & Low Friction

Any item you decide to keep has to have a place that you will assign it, that you can put it away. As we covered earlier, one of the biggest problems that people have is items have no where to be put away. Things that you have decided to keep need to have an “away” for them to go to, so that when you tidy up, you can put the item ‘away‘.

Away means:

• It can fit there,
• It is accessible for the use case of the item (frequency, size etc),
• It makes logical categorical sense (near similar items).
• Low Friction.

The point it to reduce the Friction involved in tidying up and accessing the item.

That may mean using existing storage systems, or creating a storage system to define what ‘away’ means for that item. This might mean better storage, vertical boxes (if temporary) or some other achievable method now that you have some more space (since you have removed items). There are plenty of smart methods to store things that are searchable, but be careful not to spend much money on them, or acquire extra goods that don’t actually fit or fix the storage problem (collecting storage devices can become a mess).

Storing Pro Tips

• Category Labels can be handy,
  • But can also be a trap if you get too specific or fussy about them; they are a guide, not a manual.
• Storage devices can be a good way to keep items grouped together,
  • But can also be outgrown, or end up too restrictive,
  • Sometimes restrictive is a useful tool.
• Access locations:
  • Object specifics (size, delicacy and weight) and frequency of use should be a big factor in where you store the item:
  • Frequency:
    • High use items should be in very easy to access locations:
    • Rare use items you may do well enough in a more storage like set up, eg vaccum bags, boxes at the back or on top of cupboards,
  • Object Specifics, (size, delicacy or weight):
    • The size, delicacy or weight of an item may dictate where it should go.
    • For example,
      • Heavy items should be stored low down,
      • Light items can be optionally stored high up,
      • Delicate items shouldn’t be put in high traffic areas, or in things where it is likely they can be damaged.

You don’t need to figure this out immediately when you first start sorting piles, but you will need to make some storage decisions soon after the job begins, or within a few days of having downsized the items, to put them away and not have them turn into a forbidden pile – just more mess.

Fatigue and Scheduling Removal

Factor in Fatigue

We can become emotionally fatigues making these choices. Try not to take on too much in one go.

You may not have the energy / Spoons to be able to put the items away once you have sorted them. A pile or box is okay for now, but soon you’ll need to put them somewhere with purpose. We cover that in Putting Items Away & Low Friction.

Schedule so it is done

Schedule when you are going to take the Donation Items to the donation location, and when you are going to see the people you are gifting items to, or when people are going to come and get the items you are offering them.

While online “come and get a thing” are great ideas, if the complexity of doing this is yet another barrier, then don’t do this. Let it go – Opportunity or Charity shops are fantastic for this, or just throw it out if they don’t want it. Them not wanting items is a good indicator that the item actually has no real value to anyone and has become rubbish.

If you haven’t scheduled when you will sort and store your keep piles, then make a plan and don’t let it get too long before you act, otherwise you’ll just create yet another mess.

Supportive Help & or Body Doubling is Good

It is good to have a Body Double and second opinion. A Body Double is a Support Person (friend, family, employee) that is there to help you do this hard task. They will either help you stay on task, or help you do the thing. Generally, they aren’t doing it for you, or deciding for you.

A Support Person should be a positive influence in your life who will respect your opinion of “throw out” or “keep”, but is willing to challenge you on “keep”, such that their challenge fits the 3 Piles Rules (above).

Challenge doesn’t mean override, it means ask and respect your choice. If you aren’t throwing out or gifting enough items though, perhaps you should listen to them a bit more.

When the 3 Piles Method Fails

If this doesn’t work, look at what I said about other reasons (beyond no skill or lost skill) why this is hard for people, the Mental Health side of things.

Sort that out first by talking to your GP and get a Therapist, or if you have one, talk to your Therapist. Take photos of your problem to show them. Medication may be needed or your diagnosis may need to be adjusted, if they haven’t factored in the things that you are specifically struggling on.

Lastly, this is a generic guide that you’ve found online. Being generic, it likelly won’t fit all of what you are looking for, or may be completely wrong for you.

You can contact us and talk about it, or talk to your GP, therapist or support worker.