BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Organization 55 min/day lost to clutter

I was just reading a book that claimed that every person in the US loses about 55 minutes EVERY DAY to looking for things. That struck me as outrageous.

Try tracking it for a day. How much time do you spend hunting for items? I'll give that a shot on Friday - we have family coming over for St. Patrick's Day and the day will be hectic enough

I am guessing even with as messy as my house is that it can't be nearly 55 minutes. For example they say you spend 10 minutes every day looking for your keys. I don't - my keys hang on a hook!

This is why moving makes me insane. Try never knowing where ANYTHING is. Brain melt!

55 minutes is that all!?

I live with two men who are constantly asking me...where is?

I am not actually looking for my stuff for 55 minutes but I guess I spend quite a lot of time looking for things other people can't find.

My keys are the thing I spend the most time looking for as I am constantly in and out of the house with the dogs. I have a place to put them but sometimes if I am distracted I just put them down and forget where! And because 3 of us walk the dogs at some point during the day, trying to find where someone else has put the collars and leads can take ages, even if they are hung where they should be, I can't always see the wood for the trees.

Oh and my glasses, I have 5 pairs yet there are days when I can't find a single pair. That is frustrating. Once I had 2 pairs of glasses on my head and spent ages looking for a pair!

Oh and let's not forget the dog's balls. He likes to carry two in his mouth at the same time. Trying to find two balls that are not chewed or mauled or in pieces can take ages! Just trying to find one ball can be a nightmare at times.

I believe it. I'm still looking for my ring with the MVP store cards on it. I have no idea where it is and now will have to go back to the stores and re-sign up for cards. I often cannot find a piece of paper with a note or item - there are too many of them and they get lost in the pile.

LOL, Jilly - I totally AGREE. We are moving this weekend and I am DREADING trying to find stuff tomorrow

LOL ok maybe their 55 minutes is actually right for some people! But doesn't it suck enormous amounts of time out of your day to lose an entire hour every day just to finding things? I can't imagine losing an hour every day!

Are there ways to not lose all that time?

I still haven't done my test - I will try to do it tomorrow.

Lisa, you have lived in one place for many years. Surely that makes finding things easier for you!

That would be surely be just more than 55 minutes, most of my time is wasted in searching a dress in my wardrobe that I want to wear.

This is fascinating to me that people spend so many precious minutes of their time on hunting activities. I think part of it is that I am so jammed for time all the time - I always have a huge backlog - that the idea of losing time feels like an awful thing to fix.

And yes I suppose I'm not working on my backlog because I'm in these forums, but this is my short sanity break from my 3 chapters of management textbooks I'm reading right now. Trying to read three chapters in a row has super-saturated my brain and I need some gentle, fairly mindless activity before I can keep going with it

So yes I have actively been keeping track of every time I am looking for something now. It's become a normal part of my life. Just today we had to head out somewhere and I was looking for my iTouch which I needed to use for a task. I did spend five minutes looking everywhere for it and finally gave up. Then I found it in my purse Which I swear I had checked first. So that indicates that I need to clean out my purse, it is too cluttered!

But I believe that's the only thing I have looked for so far today.

Kaycee - I'll make a separate post about organizing clothes!

Bob and I have been tracking any time we look for something that we know we have. It's become a game to us, if we start looking for it, we merrily announce that we have been caught by it. Even though we're actively paying attention to those times, it only seems to happen at most once or twice a day. Usually I'm looking for my camera to take a photo of a bird or bug in my back yard and I forget where I last put it. I need to come up with a "camera home location". For example I used to lose track of my schoolbooks in the general house clutter. Now I *always* put them back on top of a specific shelf as soon as I'm done with them, and it's so much easier. I always know where to find them.

I have a hanging spot for my keys so I always know where the keys are. Really those are the prime things I look for.

The last thing we hunted for, which took about 10 minutes, was a second micro-USB cable. I have one on my desk I use for my phone and mouse, but Bob wanted a second one for him, and we knew it was in the house somewhere but not where. So that was something we had to track down.

Lisa, you are a brave soul to track how much time is lost to clutter. That would be a frightening number around here!

Dear Connie -

Ah but it's a great way to make progress on not losing that time in the future!

If you lose your keys every day, then you know to address it - and POOF! That's like an hour a week you have to do what you want with! It's like finding free money

It is like free money. Excellent way to think about it.

Once I stop moving i bet i will finally have a home for everything in my life.

My most dreaded frequent questions always start with, "do you know where the _____ is?" Even Dan is getting sick of not knowing where anything is!

Bob and I still make a point to note and joke about any time we're looking for something we know we have. So we are very aware of when it happens and we actively seek ways to prevent that occurrence from happening again.

Today I was looking for my sheet protectors - the things you slide paper into so you can put the paper into a binder without punching holes in it. I am preparing to make my car and person binders. I couldn't find them! I was frustrated that I was wasting time looking for something I knew I had.

I finally found them under another pile.

Yet another example of how organization saves us stress and time and money, by giving us those precious minutes back!

To me, the worst thing is when I spend money to buy something I already own because I can't find it or I've forgotten I had it in the first place because I am unorganized. I read an article in a magazine once that said people try to save money by keeping things but we actually loose more money having clutter and re-buying things than we would by not keeping a bunch of extra things we aren't sure we will need. I seems accurate to me. Once I started getting organized, I found several double things that I didn't even remember I had.

I hate clutter. There just never seem to be enough hours in the day to get a handle on it. I am slowly, but surely making headway. Unfortunately it is very slowly.

Now, if only I could convince my husband it is important to go through our clutter and get rid of things we don't need... Just an example -- He won't let me give away a bottle of soap for a carpet shampooer in case we ever get one again. We've had this bottle sitting around for about 5 years. I don't see us purchasing a shampooer any time soon. But, no, I can't give the soap to a thrift store. ???

I'd try freecycling the soap. a thrift store will probably chuck it.

Susan -

Try finding another purpose for it. Use it as a a counter cleaner. That way you work through it and "use it" and get rid of it!

My sister just moved out of state and we took anything she didn't want to take with her, so we could recycle / use it. We didn't want her throwing things away. So we got old vinegar, oil, etc. We're not going to eat it, but I'll use it for cleaning!

Excellent, Lisa. That's smart.

BTW i love sheet protectors. I keep them where I can grab them at a moment's notice.

Susan, I feel for you. Getting a partner on board with clutter control can be a challenge. Your husband may not be ready to accept the meaning of clutter and/or he may be comforted by having things around.

Normally I would suggest becoming a role model for clutter reduction, but it sounds like you are already are. Please don't forget to congratulate yourself for all the progress you are making.

The best thing you can do while in clutter clearing mode is to put a moratorium on new acquisitions. That means don't introduce anything to your environment that is isn't totally essential. This will go a long way to helping stay ahead of the clutter curve. Good luck!