And switches. Outlets get touched a lot in the world of phone chargers and laptops.

It is the new, "Often ignored filth." The way tv remotes and door handles are cesspools of contamination.

...but I'm pretty insane about germs.

Was prego once.

So much this. I was throwing out a bunch of old clothes about 4 weeks ago. My daughter says the same thing. 4 weeks later and 4 trash bags full of clothes are still sitting around.

Make sure you go far out of your way to ensure the good and protective "germs" survive so they can beat up on the bad germs on your behalf.

Generally, that means not doing much about what grubby fingers touch.

Ew. No.

Embrace them, lest the mean germs embrace you.

You can try to reuse and repair things. General move direction minimalistic life helps a lot with keeping your house tidy. Just don't bring-in new junk.

I have no system. I just pick up and look at everything I might need to keep, and just dump the rest in black bags.

I'm so glad this made the front page again after the delay by BTM (he's very intellectual, kudos). I struggle the most with getting rid of documents, anybody else?

Some you should just keep forever, like your University degree or probably even HS diploma. With some it helps digitalization. With some it helps to know how long you should keep it. For example in Germany it makes no sense to keep any proof of payment longer than 3 years.


Most of the docs you can pretty easy get a copy in case you need one. If you have complicated taxes, you should keep a lot more.

I have 5 files. And all my documents never exceed that. One is all my certificates, diplomas, and everything that proves, that I am totally smart. One is all banking stuff. One all medical stuff. One last year taxes with everything around taxes. And one all current things, like current lease, current dealing with city administration. In this last is nothing older than a year.

this.

I started cleaning my filing cabinets out and realized that I still have my phone bills from 1997. Also, the instruction manuals of everything I have ever owned. Why the hell do I keep them? That's what the internet is for. But there they are, sub-sorted by room, and then alphabetized.

I'm jealous of your organizational prowess.

Bolded tho, in Canada it was easy to keep medical records to one small file per person. However, in the USA the paperwork is insane. I'd love to hear how experienced Americans sort through this monstrosity of a system.

My daughter has speech, physical, occupational therapies in the medical model, and then the same therapies at school in the educational model. She has specialty care with a neurologist, a pediatric specialist, even her dentist is a specialist and required prior Auth from my insurance.

And then there are summaries, bills, explanation of benefits, appeals, health savings accounts, copays...etc.

In an average month I can have several hundred pieces of paper just for one member of the family. It is outrageous, and I am drowning in paper.

I've never even contemplated cleaning a lightswitch / door handle / TV remote. I guess we're probably both outliers at opposite ends of someone's bell-shaped curve.

+1

You cough/sneeze/touch something gross/handle money for the pizza guy/etc.

Being a generally clean person you go to the washroom to clean your hands.
Lather up.
Scrub for 30 seconds.
Use a clean towel to dry.
Open the door
Turn off the light you turned on with your dirty hands
Go back to w/e you were doing.

I know that I'm being a bit of a nit here, but in addition to that.. kids are gross, and I have three.

Coughing, sneezing and handling money wouldn't cause me to go wash my hands. After taking a **** I probably only give them 10 seconds-worth unless I had a push through.

Huskies are the greatest of all time expressers of canine feelings.

/commence derail of aidsthread

I would think most people itt would need to do preliminary cleaning to save face before even calling a cleaning service.

P.S. Don't forget to empty the gatorade piss bottles.

Don't be that guy. It's also dudes like you who want to shake hands every time you see them and once you retract your hand, you feel the slime on your hand and you look for some way to get to a bathroom soon to wash the dude's balls off your hand.

Cleaning every square inch is commendable. I'd have Kristy's crew clean our house if my kids weren't earning their college tuition doing it.

Are they going to a reputable 4-yr? If so, I can definitely undercut those bastards. Let me bid!!!

You can tell them that we'd iron your sheets, leave those little points on the toilet paper, and let you choose from a variety of origami-style hand towel and face cloth configurations, for less. Oh, and I have a 4.0 GPA.

Another trick that I use to keep my documents really in my files:

I am lazy. So opening a letter punching holes it and filing it, didn't work for me. So I have put such plastic pockets

in the file, labeled them with water proof marker and do just throw the letters in them.

Anyone any tips how to organize a tool box?

I am a girl without a guy in my household. So I have just a box, where I throw everything inside like screw drivers, hammers, electric drill, meters of various cable tangled together, multimeter, various screws and nails, a bunch of wrenches (HA! learned a new word.). It would be cool not to have some perfect order like may be some of you have, but at least one step upward, from what I have now. I do actually use basically everything in this box from time to time. So throwing out is not an option.

GOAT system for me is
read letters -> put on big pile if important or throw away -> put big pile in the scanner once in a while -> wait 30 minutes -> archive **** in my dropbox -> throw away big pile

My way is pretty anal retentive.

All my power tools are each in their own dollar store bucket on a shelf in my garage with accoutrement: batteries, chargers, guides.

All cords and cables are wound and put in sandwich bags, and those are labeled and stored in a tote bin.

Screwdrivers: I bought this for inside my medicine cabinet, but it also works great for screwdrivers. Attach it to inside of tall tool box, or storage room wall, and never have to dig again.



I also have this in my kitchen:



Wrenches: I have a case set, but I would try self-adhesive velcro on the opposite side of my toolbox if I was lugging around loose ones. I wonder if the 3m stuff would be heavy duty enough?

Screws and nails usually stay in the bulk boxes I buy them in, but one-offs go in a low, flat tupperware, so I don't have to dig.

For funsies...here is a pic of my garage recently. (Someone anonymously dropped off 4 chairs.)



Genius.
Stealing.

Nice. Going to sort my cables and screws and nails out today. That ideas are
totally doable for me.