Living with other people's mess (and not losing your mind)

Negotiating tidying when you live with other people.

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Something that keeps coming up in our comment threads are questions and often frustrations about cohabiting with people who have differing ideas about how to take care of their things. A common refrain:

These systems sound great but what if it’s seemingly impossible to get my partner to follow any kind of system or pick up their things?

This is such a loaded topic. The struggles people face and the deep wounds they feel are palpable in the comments. It’s tempting to not address it at all because feelings run high, but I do think sharing can help people feel less alone at a minimum. And maybe some ideas will prove helpful.

I don’t have the cure-all (AT ALL), but I can share how I think about this in the context of my own family of 4. And then I’ll open it up to reader advice which is always a goldmine. (We did a thread about this last year with lots of ideas, but I know many of you have subscribed since then.)

Here we go!

1. Separate preference from necessity.

We all believe we have the correct idea about how much clutter is ok. But in fact, each person has their own clutter threshold (the point beyond which clutter bugs us). Much strife happens as a result of differing thresholds, and the thing is, there is not a “correct” threshold. They’re just preferences.

So instead of pitting differing tastes against each other, focus on objective problems.

If you can’t access the kitchen to cook dinner because it is so cluttered, that’s an objective problem. If it’s hard for you to feel peaceful in your heart with a pile of mail on the counter, that might be more of a preference.

Living with others is all about compromising, so just realizing you may need to adjust your expectations on the preference side—while holding firm on objective problems—can help lighten the psychic load.

2. Is this part of a deeper problem?

The struggle over keeping home is a serious issue. Life happens at home, and feeling unable to create a supportive space for yourself is a big deal. Sometimes clutter struggles are part of a deeper issue, and not something ideas off the Internet can fix. It can be a hoarding impulse, an avoidance pattern, trauma response, neurodivergence or something else. These challenges are better suited for a therapist to address.

Additionally, clutter clashes can point to complex relationship struggles between people. If you feel your partner is hostile or deeply unkind about your needs in the home, that can suggest deeper issues which are worth bringing up in therapy.

The dishes aren’t always just dishes, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, recall the viral article She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink. A cautionary tale.

3. Focus on your own mess first.

This is surprisingly hard. Other’s people clutter just seems so much worse than our own. But nearly everyone feels this way. So start with yourself, and whenever your eye starts wandering over to someone else’s pile, see if you can redirect it back to your own.

This has a couple benefits:

• Often, there’s a lot more in your control than you realize. We tend not to notice our own clutter as much, but if you keep your focus there you can make more impact than you think.

• Leading by (silent) example rather than nagging is powerful. With your eyes on your own paper, you might inspire others to follow suit, or at a minimum help demonstrate the desired result when you move on to the next step below.

4. Collaborate on a reasonable plan.

The next step is to talk to your family/partner/whoever you live with. Find a calm time and ask people if they are ready to talk about household management. With cooperation, you can start to work together to figure out a path forward.

Here’s the play-by-play of how I did that with my family to problem solve shoes in our entry way:

How to project manage your family into organizing

The key here is to listen to and respect everyone’s perspective and limitations. This doesn’t mean the status quo prevails, but try to be open minded.

Some strategies that can help devise compromises:

• Set Boundaries. For instance, the clutter can sprawl, so long as it stays on one side of the room (and maybe is behind a curtain). Or a teen’s bedroom can be as messy as they like, but their mess can’t spill into the rest of the house. Or maybe food isn’t allowed in there. And so on.

• Containerize. This is a specific boundary strategy where a container creates a natural limit for the quantity of belongings. For instance, a kid can have all the toys they want, so long as they go into a specific bin at the end of the day/week. The huge book collection is fine, so long as it fits in the designated shelves.

• The less you own, the less clutter there will be. The system to end all systems is to simply own less. The less clutter, the less organizing you need to do. Owning items creates work…it just does. So if you’re at the end of your rope trying to keep things tidy, consider whether you can just get rid of the things.

• Know you will have to revisit these conversations. Things shift and you’ll need to problem solve again. You might even find others will start bringing up organizing challenges because you’ll have established a calm pattern for discussing these things.

Further reading on these ideas:

Where are your boundaries?

The one non-negotiable organizing step

5. Accept that you might have to do extra work.

Because I have a clutter standard above and beyond what’s essential, I take on the extra tidying that only I care about.

Yes, it’d be lovely if everyone in my family wanted clear surfaces and orderly cabinets. But they don’t and technically we don’t require this level of order to operate our daily lives. So I do that work and I don’t (usually) resent that others aren’t exactly like me.

It might help if you think of organizing as the hobby it often is. A lot of marital tension comes from the fact that we don’t recognize organizing as a legit hobby. But once we see it that way, it’s easier to understand why your chosen hobby shouldn’t dictate how other people live. Perform your hobby and enjoy it:

This is a hobby.

Now You

I realize the above advice won’t work for everyone (there’s always a lot of “yeah but!!” when we discuss this issue) so take what’s useful and leave the rest.

Do you feel a wee bit more empowered to tackle your co-living situation? Or at least perhaps to make peace with it? If you have any tips I missed, please share them in the comments.