[Ensam]

I was inspired by a picture posted in the arcade bedroom thread:


I love the minimalist aesthetic. Nice simple rooms with little clutter. The problem is I'm a slob. I've struggled with it all my life. I've tried following tips from my clean friends but to no avail. So rather than take advice from people who are naturally neat I figure I should ask people who were formally messy and got it together.

Has anybody here made the transition from slob to tidy? If so how did you do it?

[Dulceácido]

The only two solutions:

1. Discipline
2. Hire a maid

If you can't hire a housekeeper, you have to just get into a routine. Clean the place top-to-bottom once a week. Eventually that chore becomes so cumbersome that you begin to adjust your habits and pick up after yourself (all the time), wash and put away dishes (every time), never let laundry pile up--don't have one of those huge dirty clothes hampers that will hold 2 weeks of laundry, and never leave laundry lying around the house. When you are constantly "cleaning as you go" and picking up your mess, cleaning is not that bad.

[Goldmund]

Tidy. One d. Pay attention to details.

If there is something out of place, put that shit away asap. A towel on the floor? Don't leave it there...put it in the spot for towels. Have a spot for everything.

When cooking--clean dishes and put shit away as you cook
makes things much much easier.

The only things that should be seen are things that you use every day. Anything else, store away in its proper place.

Put up shelves. Bitches love my shelves and the little things that are on them. Trinkets from around the world on display, nice and neat.

My apartment gets a lot of dust that blows in from the street. It needs to be dusted twice a week at minimum. I like this 10 minutes to take a look around and see what could be more organized.

Take this from a guy whose natural tendency is to be messy. I work at being organized and it works for me.

[Dulceácido]

(06-05-2014 09:59 PM)Goldmund Wrote:  

Tidy. One d. Pay attention to details.

If there is something out of place, put that shit away asap. A towel on the floor? Don't leave it there...put it in the spot for towels. Have a spot for everything.

When cooking--clean dishes and put shit away as you cook
makes things much much easier.

The only things that should be seen are things that you use every day. Anything else, store away in its proper place.

Put up shelves. Bitches love my shelves and the little things that are on them. Trinkets from around the world on display, nice and neat.

My apartment gets a lot of dust that blows in from the street. It needs to be dusted twice a week at minimum. I like this 10 minutes to take a look around and see what could be more organized.

Take this from a guy whose natural tendency is to be messy. I work at being organized and it works for me.

Wow... Almost verbatim simu-post. I think we're on to something...

If you ever need a roommate... LOL!

[Jackjack71]

I've been an organized and tidy person all my life, so while I don't know how exactly to make the transition, I can honestly say that making a change from slobby and unorganized to neat and tidy can make a big improvement in a lot of areas in your life. For example, which do you see a woman appreciating more: coming back to a guy's place that's filthy or clean. Seeing that a guy actually cares about upholding the appearance and quality of where he lives can get some serious brownie points with girls as well as friends/people in general.

[Ensam]

(06-05-2014 09:59 PM)Goldmund Wrote:  

Tidy. One d. Pay attention to details.

If there is something out of place, put that shit away asap. A towel on the floor? Don't leave it there...put it in the spot for towels. Have a spot for everything.

When cooking--clean dishes and put shit away as you cook
makes things much much easier.

The only things that should be seen are things that you use every day. Anything else, store away in its proper place.

Put up shelves. Bitches love my shelves and the little things that are on them. Trinkets from around the world on display, nice and neat.

My apartment gets a lot of dust that blows in from the street. It needs to be dusted twice a week at minimum. I like this 10 minutes to take a look around and see what could be more organized.

Take this from a guy whose natural tendency is to be messy. I work at being organized and it works for me.

My apologizes on the typo - it's fixed.

Thanks for the practical advice - especially on the shelf space. I think that's a good idea. The room with my bookcases is the neatest room in the house precisely because it has the most shelf space. I should put up some shelves in other rooms.

[Teddykgb]

I've actually had many girls say that my apartment is eerily clean. I usually make sure my place is spotless before I know a girl is coming over and have had quite a few girls think that I don't actually live here because "It's too clean for a guy to live here"

[Catch 22]

Easiest route is to find one girl who loves things tidy and get her to do it after a bang. I'll trade spooning for that any day.

[Baga]

(06-05-2014 09:49 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

Has anybody here made the transition from slob to tidy? If so how did you do it?

Was a massive slob, then I got a girlfriend for 6,5 years who was a neat freak. Didn't really help much. But when she moved out, I turned it around. Now I'm a neat freak.

So, become beta, get a gf for 7 years. Problem sorted

[Noir]

If you live in a cheaper side of the world/borderline 3rd world country, get a maid.

[heavy]

Implement the 5S system...sans tape en su casa

[Saweeep]

My attitude to everything I don't like doing has always been:

Earn some more money and get someone else to do it.

Works a treat.

[The_Fmo]

One thing that wasn't mentioned yet and that helped me the most to keep a neat flat : OWN LESS SHIT
It's so much easier to keep a clean place when you don't have piles of stuff lying around. It also makes dusting/vacuuming much easier by not having to move stuff around so much. I used to not even do it anymore because it was a pain in the ass. Now that I have managed to get rid of half of my stuff, it's a 15 minute affair that I don't mind doing once or twice a week. Being tidy is not an issue when you lean on the minimalist side.

[freshcream]

Christian Mcqueen had some good advice on this I liked. It went something like this: "If you don't use it everyday, put it away".

This made me look at all the stuff in my apartment. If I don't use it everyday I put it away in boxes etc. Helped me out a lot.

I'm actually going to get two maids cleaning my apartment from next week on. My brothers wife and her daughter will start cleaning my place. Only payment is my empty beer cans initially. Maybe a few bucks eventually. Great deal for me I think. Her reasoning is that her daughter doesn't need that much money, and the value of work, or something like that.

[Drazen]

Learn to throw things away. Not garbage and those kind of things, that's a given, material stuff. Books, clothes, old electronics, decorations, etc.

I guess you can give it away or sell it, but its just easier to toss it out and forget about it.

[speakeasy]

(06-05-2014 11:03 PM)Teddykgb Wrote:  

I've actually had many girls say that my apartment is eerily clean. I usually make sure my place is spotless before I know a girl is coming over and have had quite a few girls think that I don't actually live here because "It's too clean for a guy to live here"

Same here. My last apartment was so clean and well designed that I think it actually freaked girls out and I got the whole, "this doesn't seem like a guy's apartment" thing. It wasn't a girly apartment with bright, floral colors or anything. It was just very clean, organized and sort of modern/minimal like the OP pic. But so many chics I guess are used to seeing guy's apartments looking sloppy that they can't believe there are guys who aren't that way. It kind of got annoying after awhile. It was mostly American women who were most weirded out. European and Latin women loved it.

To the OP. I used to be a slob too growing up. From age 18 in 1995 until about 2003 or so I was sleeping on a small twin bed with cheap and ugly particle wood furniture. Nothing matched, had posters taped to the wall. Then one day a girl came over and she poked fun at that fact that I'm mid 20s and sleep on a twin bed. I then decided to just redo the entire room and get a nice full size bed and modern looking furniture, no more posters, but nice framed art prints for the wall, and some plants as well. I also made sure everything was nice and balanced out in the room. Since I made so much effort to get nice stuff, I figured I should keep everything clean as well. And after that, I just became a very clean person since I didn't want to mess up what I put all that effort into doing.

[jamaicabound]

I've been meaning to be a bit more organized, cleaned, and disciplined. I love the minimalistic look however I've never understood where people who have this look store things? I have so many little tools, knicknacks, calculators and tape and stuff I need for my biz. I wouldn't have a clue where to store all my junk.

[speakeasy]

(06-06-2014 07:26 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

I've been meaning to be a bit more organized, cleaned, and disciplined. I love the minimalistic look however I've never understood where people who have this look store things? I have so many little tools, knicknacks, calculators and tape and stuff I need for my biz. I wouldn't have a clue where to store all my junk.

You get storage boxes and shelves to put things in. You can pick stuff up like that from IKEA for cheap.

[Kaizen]

OP this is worth learning.

It sounds simplistic, but my mind is calmer all day when I know Ill be returning to a clean apartment. I like my place to look like a hotel room upon entering. That may seem extreme, but it's my goal.

A lot of attention is given to the interaction between house and mind in Asia i.e. feng shui

This article was published a few weeks back in a local paper about the 'clean queen' of Japan:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/rela...e18192133/

Maybe her book is worth getting ..