The only way anyone influenced my (very) organized lifestyle is by repulsion. My mother was, um, NOT organized. (This is a public forum and the poor woman is daed, after all -- I won't belabor the details.) I'm a librarian. Organizing knowlege (and things) is our passion. I craft, and my beads are organized by type and color, labled, and stored in one cabinet.

Once I grew up, I couldn't stand living with my family any more, and my own home has been hugely more organized and serene than theirs ever since.

I think so. My mom used to joke that my dad could walk in the room and see everything that was out of place in a few seconds. I always loved having things in their place but didn't really think about where it came from until I was an adult.

Sherry - I'm much the same way:

I was the one who stacked the canned goods in the cupboards, endlessly re-organized the over-abundance of Tupperware, neatly folded and stacked the paper garbage bags, arranged the spice cabinet by "Sweet" and Savory", alphabetized the boxed frozen vegatables in the freezer, split the large grocer-packs of meats into meal-sized packets for freezing, reorganized the linen closets, stacked the firewood in the back yard, hung the rakes and garden implements in the garage, put the Christmas Decorations away every year and loaded the trunk of the big car with impossible amounts of luggage for our car trips.

Even now, I have separate drawers for different types of socks and underwear - separate shelves for dress and casual shoes (all on cedar shoe-trees) and one entire drawer just for my neckties - all folded and arranged like a display-case in Brooks Brothers.

Organization is just a big puzzle that appears to have more than one solution, but very few that work best.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em!

Growing up, I used to laugh at my mom for being such a neat freak, and I promised myself I would never care as much about the cleanliness of my house as she does. But her ways have left their mark on me. The older I get, the more of a neat freak like her I become. And I gotta say, my tidy space feels like home.

My mother's house is despicable. So much so that I become overly frustrated when I am at her house and can only stay for short time increments. She is a borderline hoarder and has never once passed up a good deal - even if the results of such a transaction would sit in her "bonus room" over the garage for the next decade. My father makes good money and they have a beautiful house, but she has unfortunately trashed it with knick-knacks, magazines from years gone by, potential gifts that she forgets to give, and a plethura of blue-light specials.
After growing up in such a household I have vowed that I will never follow her footsteps. My brother (my only sibling) feels the same way. In fact you could say that I have taken neatness to the extreme. I believe in bare tabletops, counters, desks, and nightstands. I believe one large sculpture says volumes over a collection of miniature knick-knacks. I belive that one of the goals in life should be to not just accumulate items throughout life, but to be selective when choosing those items ..... and also to be able to find those items when you want them.

My mother is far more organized than I am. I didn't take after her in all aspects, but I do organize my spices alphabetically as she did. It wasn't until someone made fun of me for that, that I realized not everyone did it that way. How else would you find something quickly?

I'm just like my mother. We both keep everything that's out in plain sight nice and neat, and then every drawer in the house is a "junk" drawer! Sort of organized chaos. My sister is super neat and organized, we don't know where she got it from.

My mother was extremely fussy. Some time ago, I asked my M.D. if my OCD needed treatment. She asked if I thought it controlled my life. No. so apparently, it's not my problem, just everyone else's.

I am (proudly) the black sheep of the family. My whole family lives in clutter and piles, constantly losing things and wasting money. I started to get really organized as a teen, more as a form of rebellion (OMG I am a dork!) but then I figured it was a very good way to live so I stuck to it. But a little bit of it is thumbing my nose at my disorganized family!

I think a lot of this is genetic.

I grew up in a very organized household with a very Type-A mother. She convinced me that I was a very messy person but looking back I realize that I wasn't especially compared to what I saw when I visited my peers' bedrooms. Now that I'm an adult my parents' house is very unkempt and disorganized and now I'm the organized one! I think I'm now even more Type-A than my own mother.

Yes kind of. My mom and I are basically the same in most organizational tendencies, which is basically just enough of it to put things away.

My mother was and is very organized, but I was the type of kid who shoved everything in the closet and under the bed when told to clean up my room! Then when I was away visiting Dad or at summer camp, she'd come in and clean it all up.

I didn't learn to get organized on my own till I was in my thirties. It's mostly under control now.....but don't look in my nightstand or my hall closet, please!

deniseb, I wonder if it is genetic, too. I think at least part of it may be, particularly the level of chaos/clutter we can feel comfortable in. How we cope with disorganization may be learned, however -- whether we tackle it, or stuff it out of sight. I grew up in a chaotic household, and at a certain point I questioned the sanity of coping with chaos simply by moving junk around, but never doing anything about it.

I am now dealing with huge amounts of stuff left by my father, who was fairly organized, but grew up in a time when you didn't throw any something that was "perfectly good." Initially, I had enough to furnish three homes. Now I'm down to one and a half homes.

I am, apparently SherryBinNH's twin, except that I'm an archivist. Organizing just calms me and I find it comforting. I couldn't live any other way.

I am my father's daughter. my mother needs everything in its place and is very organized (she is the person who unpacks at a hotel even if she is just there one night).

my dad and I are clean but cluttery--books and papers and things in piles, but not overwhelming.

I am a neat freak and a minimalist. My ex-husband is fairly neat also. Our young adult sons are crap collecting slobs...:) Maybe they're rebelling, ha.

oh my, absolutely!! my parents are neat neat neat and clean clean clean and I am thankful for it every single day. It drives my husband nuts sometimes, but I think he secretly loves it.

My mum was organized. I am even more so. I think she cleaned and organized things because she had to, whereas I tend to clean and organize because I find the process soothing. :-D

Am I the only one brave enough to say I'm not organized at all? At least not for any length of time and not for all things at once.
My mother is super organized and throws out things on a MORE than regular basis. My sister keeps her house like a nuclear lab.

I seem to have inherited the chaos gene from my mom's brothers, both of whom were clutterbugs. One of them tipped over the edge into hoarding after my aunt died.

I organize at intervals so far. But neither I nor my home is "despicable"

I am with Sherry and the rest - all the years I lived at home having to dig through every cabinet in order to find whatever I needed drove me insane. I'm not perfect and you'll find areas that need improvement, but at least I know where things are!

I grew up in a household where my Mom was organized and there was a lot of structure. My Dad was a hoarder. I was a neat freak until we moved and I had to share a bedroom with my sister, who loved to try on 20 different outfits in the morning and throw ever piece of clothing on the floor. Sooner or later it became a "I you can't beat them, join them" kind of thing that carried over into adulthood. Until I had my son LOL. I was so paranoid someone would call child services on me, even though it was really cluttered, not dirty. It was a major stressor in my life that caused a lot of crying fits. So I found a few things to help and started purging things we didn't need. Slowly but surely it has moved into a fairly clean and organized space that constantly changes LOL. So I've definitely moved back into my genetic roots my mother has given me and have taken it to a new level... I don't let my husband or son's hoard LOL. They are made to go through their stuff every few months to purge out items they aren't using. And now the structure of making the rest of them help clean the house has moved in too!

I apologize but this is a post not about how OCD-organized my apartment is , but rather a question: where can I find that spice rack and all those containers?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

ps: We just moved into our apartment and I am trying to get it more organized! :-)

My father was a pack rat (read: hoarder). My mother was too busy with 4 kids (2 special needs) to manage keeping the place anything more then safe and semi tidy. Until I was in my late teens I was a packrat who dusted, straightened and kept things fairly organized. Then we moved. Then I changed rooms a few times (moving into progressingly smaller rooms). Then I went to university and changed living spaces every year. Then I moved a few more times. You get the picture.

I do think that my fathers hoarding repulsed me in the long run because I saw how difficult it was to pack/move and fit everything into a small space (his space for his stuff reduced significantly when we first moved). But, I think that the things that influenced me the most were all the times we moved and living in a chaotic household (I was the only child who didn't have special needs or suffer with depression). Keeping things neat and organized was a way for me to control my world just a wee little bit and made life easier when I had to move.

I didn't realize my ex-husband's influence on me until after my divorce. He, along with my teenage daughters, always gave me a hard time about wanting everything organized. They made me feel just like the neat freak husband in "Sleeping with the Enemy". They constantly teased me about it. I worked hard NOT to be too organized.

Now that I'm divorced and my daughters are grown, I relish an organized home. I've discovered that when I'm stressed, I merely clean out a closet or the pantry and somehow I feel better. My life runs smoother and it's a lot cheaper than "retail therapy".

I'm a believer! My mom is very organized as far as paperwork goes and is a very clean person. When she cleans she goes all out. However, my mom tends to live in clutter. My dad on the other hand couldn't tolerate clutter and always had to have everything in its proper place, but didn't necessarily have to have things clean.

As an adult I'm a very strange hybrid of both. No clutter and no fith! I also know where all my paperwork is. My mom mocks me to this day and I blame her :)

Family was chaos so I over compensated by being organized. My mother makes fun of me for my organization and having a "cleaning day".

My mom is a packrat artist gypsy woman. She loves jewelry and fabrics and art supplies, as well as her own and others' art/sculpture. To be fair, she has more supplies than she can ever use, but she does use them and sells a lot of her art.

My dad claims to be the Zen one, yet he'll keep things for odd reasons (a pair of hiking boots that are uncomfortable, that he has had for 10 years already but is still trying to get his "money's worth" out of).

I always liked decorating and rearranging my room as a kid. We were not required to do any housework or dishes or chores that I really remember. My mom and dad did all that. As a result, I didn't really know much about cleaning, and my mom was not much of a cleaner anyway.

Now I am mostly super organized, enough that people make fun of me, but I can easily slip into slovenliness, clothes on the floor, unfinished art projects...

I guess you could say I'm a mix and depending on my state, I could go either way, but the older I get, the more likely I am to tend toward extreme organization and cleanliness.

My mom is super organized (she has lists of everything she has given anyone for any holiday for the last 45 years) and can find anything in a heartbeat. However, she likes to be surrounded by a significant (to me at least) level of clutter--she likes having her "stuff" around. I'm pretty organized and I like things to be tidy and uncluttered. Too much stuff makes me very anxious. Luckily, the hubster and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to organization and tidiness.

I've definitely rebelled against my mother in terms of organizing style.

She's very neat--everything should be put away- but she's actually pretty bad at organizing. Heaven forbid you need to FIND something she's put up.

I tend to be just the opposite--it may be in a pile in the middle of the floor, but I know where everything is.

My sister has a theory - that you store your drinking glasses opposite of how your mother did. A sort of subconscious rebellion. So my mom keeps glasses upside down, mine live in the cupboard right side up.

KhatMpls - LOL and I thought I was the only one who stored glasses this way.

I definitely organise things in the pantry, fridge, and kitchen cupboards the same way my mum does.

Even to the point where the first drawer is cutlery, second is loose cutlery (spatulas, wooden spoods, big stuff), third is take out menus and plastic bags and brown paper, also the foil, plastic wrap, plastic bags, and baking paper are here.

I've even followed the glass up high, plastic low rule she seems to have in her kitchen, and corner cupboards instantly get turned into tupperwear storage areas.

I've also taken to putting the tea-towel over the handle to the oven door.

I do have some things sorted/stored differently, but generally I've started with what I learnt from her and adapted it to suit myself.

I prefer clean/empty bench tops, but she preferred everything handy on the bench is one area where we differ.

Just revisited to see if any other Chaots came out of the woodwork.

Just one other.

The rest of you Messies....come on out here and support us!!

Both of my parents are "savers", I'm more of a minimalist or "thrower"