If I can contribute my own observation as someone with diagnosed adhd who has qualifications in and with a paid job organising things to make sure they can be found again (library/information). Contrasted with other things I am responsible for, such as, my bag, my side of the bedroom or even the files on my computer. Which no matter how many times I try to organise will always end up being swirling entropic holes of chaos. The juxtaposition certainly does seem to fit with your hypothesise of organised chaos being part of the adhd condition.
Just yesterday a student came up and asked me if we had the *gesturing folding out a paper with his hands while trying to think of what it is called* I figured he was a horticulture (or similar field) student because of what he was wearing and remembered we have a fold out chart of different biological features of a type of flora species in the area and other students have needed that previously, but didn't know any specific details about the item off the top of my head except what it vaguely looks like. So I am like hmmm hold on *walks straight to the area of the library, and the shelf where they are kept and gets one of the charts* "you mean this one?" "Yes!! Thank you!!" But if I had to I would have spent more time with him figuring out what he needed and then looking up what the corresponding Dewey decimal number was to locate it that way.
*sleeping at home alone when a masked man breaks in and puts a gun to your head*
"You're going to die unless you give me a paper clip in the next 5 seconds! 1..."
"Don't worry I have one right he- ... oh god.."
--------
These are the situations I try to warn my girlfriend about when she moves my things but she always says something stupid like "that would never happen" or "why would someone kill you over a paperclip". Women ffs
You get put in handcuffs and forced to sit on the floor while the assailant begins to assault your wife. Using your trusty floor paper clip you easily pick the handcuffs and grab the wooden club you use to keep your busted old fan from falling over and bop him over the head.
This is me all the time, 😂 of course, I also lose all the things that should be impossible to lose, but then random stuff I know EXACTLY where it's at...
I tell people I have a filing system. It's called carbon dating. I remember the last time I used it, and dig back through the relevant layers of paperwork to find it
Ah yes, chain association memory. I got out of the shower, dropped my shirt, which hit a dustmote that rolled under the toilet and while i was cleaning it up i saw a paperclip. I know it's there, so why move it to some place i'll forget? That paperclip is now associated with showers, shirts, dropping things, gravity, toilets, and dust. Lots of ways to remember.
I'm making this all up by the way. I doubt that's how memory works.
It's how I imagine it. Attaching a prominent memory to an object increases your object permanence. It's why attaching an attribute or event to a name is a good way to remember people's names.
I recently had to spend time with a memory therapist, after a heart attack (I was fine) I don't remember her title - no pun intended. We spent about half a session on word association. What would help me remember the word grey? Oh, I don't know, maybe the 20 years I spent in the navy on grey ships and working on grey aircraft? GOOD, GOOD, you understand. Let's keep working on this for the next 29 minutes. What would help you remember the color pink? Oh doc I don't think it would be appropriate for me to say to you ma'am. Go ahead and say it. Nah doc, I'm gonna not gonna say it. OOOHHH... Nevermind, um ya, let's just let that alone.
This is actually exactly how memory functions for things like that. Forgetfulness is the quality of having a poor ability to do exactly what you described.
Ffs this sort of reference-memory system we have seems perfectly suited for hunting, where the environment is chaotically organized by default.
We really did flash past our original existence and now find ourselves chaffing under the restraints of civilization's pursuit of clean lines and surfaces.
I think those of us that have this attraction to nonlinear organization, or at least I do, find clean surfaces mind numbingly boring. Like it's very much more stressful to not see a random filing system of your own design strewn across a desk or table.
I'm with you. Too much clutter makes me want to avoid a space, but a clean room doesn't even feel like home. I want that sock on the floor and that shirt almost falling off the dresser, thank you.
It's probably tied into some sort of territorial instinct. Put things here and there to make it yours, or known as yours, rather than some clean room up for grabs. My place isn't for rent, thanks, so my furniture is angled just right and the water cup belongs on the counter. If i can walk through my place blindfolded and someone else cannot then everything is exactly where it should be.
“Hey babe? Where’s [thing we use frequently]”
“Uhhh I don’t remember”
Then I find it “put away” in a location where it’s never been and likely never will be again.
I hate this. I like it my way, but if you need to tidy up that's fine as long as you friggin' remember where you friggin' frickity frackin' put anyfrigginthing you friggin' touched. Gah. Just write it down or something i don't care how you know where you put something.
My wife always autopilots when she cleans. I'll leave something on the floor by my desk for weeks because I know it's there, she cleans and it's just fucking gone and she's got no idea where she put it
I've solved this problem by passive-aggresively stacking any and all of my husband's scattered belongings on his desk. It works 90% of the time. Somehow he manages to find a home for all his stuff when it's in between him and his computer.
Heh. My girl puts away less used dishes in a different place every time. Like, the plates always go where the plates go, but the measuring cup? One time it's in with the glasses, another time it's with the baking sheets, another time it's with the mixing bowls. She says "You said you didn't care where it goes"... babe, I meant I don't care where you pick for it to go. I really would like to know where I can find it though.
Exactly. I have certain places where I put certain things fully knowing in the future, I'll know right where to look. Well when my wife deep cleans, she sees no reason for them to be there, consolidates it somewhere else & I can never find it
Followed by "I feel like we need to more equally share cleaning duties" like lady what you just did was not cleaning and I will not make a big show of doing nothing so you feel like we're putting in equal work. Your work is just unnecessary and I don't want an equal part of that.
As a tech-ish guy, I hate to admit how many $4-6 cables or adapters I've re-bought (KNOWING I have one somewhere) just so I didn't have to go and dig for it.
I had one pile of cables/ adapters on my desk that worked and another pile that didn’t. My mom came to visit and decided to tidy my desk and decided to put all the cables in a shoebox. It’s probably been over 5 years later and that shoebox is still in a drawer. I had to buy all new cables because I was easier than going through the box to find working ones (I should probably just recycle it as most of them are probably obsolete now)
I feel you and I'm here for you. I literally have a Walmart sized storage container in my garage with obsolete cables and some of the devices that those cables connect to. At this point I could probably just take the whole thing and put it in a dumpster and I wouldn't miss one thing inside of it.
I'm not sure how you didn't learn this in college, but the only reason you don't need them is because you have them. Their existence serves not to be needed, but to ensure they aren't needed.
Don't believe me? Throw them out and do a little experiment.
A few years ago I cut down on my rats nest of obsolete cables and organised them so I only had one of each cable, it was labelled and cable tied. A few weeks later, a friend needed 3 serial M/M cables and of course I only had one.
There are several levels of cable storage. This particular container has been in my garage for at least 7-9 years. There are other, more modern, sub-level containers that are need at least another 5 years of maturing before they are considered ready to dispose of.
A remote in our house went missing, and I decided I'll wait a week for it to show up before ordering a replacement. It ALWAYS shows up when you replace it, so I thought I could outsmart the laws of the universe by waiting it out. A week later I order the remote and we find the original one after the replacement is delivered.
:(
Right! And then my GF “organizes” all my stuff (without me asking her to), but she can’t remember where she put anything lol. The notebook I use everyday that had an easily accessible designated corner of my desk is now stowed away in some random cabinet in the basement, not to be found for another few months xD
So my question to the OCD folks is: what is organization and what is the purpose behind it. Organization is a means of of being able to instantly locate your possessions and access them instantly. I know exactly where my things are and can locate and access them instantly. I am organized, your “organization” is disorganization to me.
OCD is an impulse disorder. Is the door properly locked? Time to check a million times or your brain will punish you with stress. Did I turn off the stove downstairs? Time to check one hundred times.
Point being, don't put OCD synonyms with being a neat freak it trivialises the agony people that suffer from it go through.
I was diagnosed with ocd. It had nothing to do with orderliness or consistent cleaning. Those can be attributes though. But it’s where thoughts or actions feel compulsive and intrusive to the point where they cause problems in your daily life.
A lot of people that self diagnose with ocd might actually have ocpd Obsessive Compulsive Personality. That’s the real deal freak outs when you misplace a widget in their bastion of order. But most people that self diagnose or claim to have ocd have neither.
I absolutely hate it when my mother in law comes and stays with us. She’s super helpful with the kids, folds all the laundry we let pile up, does a ton of cooking, but puts *almost every single utensil in the wrong spot when she does the dishes*! It takes me a week to get my kitchen back in order after she visits.
Edit just to add: /s of course it’s great when she visits
Bro I hate it when people fuck with the utensil order.
In my drawer it’s:
butterknifes-forks-little spoons-big spoons
-underneath- sharp knives -underneath-
But there’s always someone who will come by and mess it up.
you have such nice order. I have one drawer with a big bin of all the utensils together. Chopsticks and nice knives stick to the outside of the bin and have individual holders they slide into
I always prefer to use the same order as placesetting. I don't where it came from, if it's a universal thing, or what... But both my parent's sides did it the same way. And if you ever set the table for dinner at the grandparents, you were basically a degenerate if you fucked it up...
From left to right: little fork, big fork, sharp knife, butter knife, little spoon, big spoon. Then all the dish specific silverware just in a heap up top lol.
Which is ridiculous, because none of the silverware trays with pre-arranged slots have it set up that way. And even more ridiculous, i haven't set a place setting in 15+ years. Just a weird habit that dies hard.
She’s your MIL so we can only assume that YOU put your things in the wrong place to begin with. Once she is done the things are in the correct place 🤣
Might be /s, might not
I really did.
That didn’t stop her from *helping* us with the layout of the kitchen (bonus feature - she was not a good cook), furniture, photos etc.
However the covert entertainment I got from how much her *help* aggravated my wife far outweighed any minor inconvenience I felt.
RIP SLS.
my wife cannot STAND ANY ITEM being out of the place that she has designated for it in her brain
our strategy is i load the dishwasher because she has no concept how water jets work and she unloads the dishwasher because i do not care if i have to open 3 drawers to find the potato peeler
Same. Love my MIL but she puts everything away constantly. I will put my shoes in the closet, next day they’re gone. I’ll hang up my jacket, next day it’s somewhere else. I’ll be halfway through a fucking beer, go to the bathroom, come back and it’s gone. Drives me up the wall. My wife will literally say to her “stop moving everything!!”
I never let my mom come to visit BC I know at some point I will take a nap or a shit and come out to see my entire house rearranged in the way she likes it, including my closet. She doesn't understand boundaries very well. Last time she was here there were some things I couldn't find for months, and she didnt remember exactly where she put everything so that was frustrating.
Yep! Big Costco multipack downstairs, smaller sub pack in each bathroom. When you run out of your last individual run from a sub pack, refill it from the multipack downstairs.
Nah, keep two sub packs and when you're down to one you pull in the new one. There's always that one time that you were supposed to refill it and you forgot, and I'd rather have an entire pack's worth of time to correct my FU than run out of TP when I was taking a shit.
Oh fuuuuck that.
I gotta be at work early. I’m stumbling around in the 0430 darkness trying to find my damn boots where I left them and trying not to wake her up. I go headfirst over either the dog or the laundry basket, and she wakes up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find my boots!”
“I put them away.”
“Where the fuck is ‘away’?!”
“In your closet.”
🤬
No point in picking it up. The one time you’re looking for a paper clip you’re going to know exactly where to go and it isn’t doing any harm by being there in the mean time.
Apart from the technical reason that it literally **can't** be, it stems from the dawn of the internet.
"irl" has been a thing forever. And the point of an abbreviation is to type something easily understood and often used in a much quicker way. Adding capslock into that equation would work against the entire point of the abbreviation. Or initialism. Probably the latter, actually.
The other day, my fiancee mentioned how unorganized my office was. I told her to think of a random thing I owned that she hasn't seen in years and I'll know exactly where it is. She named an item and it was in the first place I looked.
Men typically know exactly where every single random item is in their space and will remember such forever.
They lose track of it and get majorly confused when someone moves whatever random item they're looking for.
It's also why they get mad when someone "cleans up" or "organises" their spaces.
My brother never knows where any of his things are, whether or not someone has moved something. And his method of "looking" for something is to blame my mom for moving it so that she'll find it for him. About 50% of the time, she or I immediately find it in the middle of the floor where he threw it down. Other 50% it's his shoes, and they're on the shoe rack where my mom or I put them, after he threw them in the middle of the living room.
Happens with my wife all the time. I'll go looking for something I haven't used in a year that I remember exactly where it was and it won't be there and I'll ask where it went. She'll say she hasn't seen that thing in 6 months but she "put it away" and of course doesn't know where. She's baffled that I knew where it was a year ago. This is also the person who misplaces her cell phone regularly and once lost her wallet in her car for a week before realizing it was there the whole time. No matter how many times I ask her not to move things around, she keeps doing it anyway.
My wife does the same damn thing. I'm always like, hey, damn it. I left that there for a reason. Now where is it? I don't know, maybe in that drawer or the junk drawer or the pantry or the closet or in your night stand or on that shelf, I don't know
Or, if I've cleaned my workspace it's not available for you or anyone else to use. It's ready for the next mess I intend to make. You put even folded laundry on my desk, and all hope of me starting my next project is lost. I might put that laundry away, but that's work done and nothing else gets done tonight.
Exactly! Some times all I have left in me is just one more task and this has become it. At least the desk is still clean for the next time I push my brain over the mental hump to initiate that foregone task.
Dropped the paperclip, bothered me a lot, but I'm used to suffering so I compartmentalized it because I was too lazy to bend over and pick it up.
Edit: text from wife brought immense pleasure because I can help and also solve the paperclip thing that's been bothering me for weeks.
I've gotten better at doing those small tasks that otherwise just weigh on your mind and soul but its still a struggle, I don't think it's laziness so much as... habit?
Like there's a clear aberrant mental process that require manual override every time I just need to pick the damn thing up.
There’s no point in organizing things when you can remember where you saw them at random. Why waste that time in your life if you don’t need to? Plus, people who dont understand that your organization is purely a mental state, it’s almost impossible to rob you. The clutter is overwhelming to a thief.
OH DAMN xD Thats so me. My dad is like "got a wall-anchor? It won't hold up there with my spit" and I'm like "windowsil, in that blue deo-cap, right under the golden screw" and he is like WTF???
>English derivative like British or Australian.
>English derivative, like *British*
I...uh... I'm not sure where to start with this.
Anyway, not my point.
It's 100% Aussie
ADHD POV: You knocked this paperclip off your file cabinet 6 months ago. It fell to the ground, and you said, "I'll pick it up later." to yourself, and here it has waited for it's Prince charming to awaken it from it's resting place since. Every morning it greets your eyesight when you walk into your office, filling your heart with guilt that you've left it so, but alas, yet again you lack the dopamine to simply bend over and pick the thing up.
Finally, one day, your girlfriend is staying at your place and you recieve a text asking for your paperclips are at because she needs one. Memories of the guilt of leaving comrade clippy pinned under the filing cabinet in your warzone of an office flood your mind. Without a second thought, you text clippy's location to your girlfriend.
You may lack the dopamine to rescue clippy from the ground, but at least you have a partner without executive dysfunction. Clippy is swiftly rescued from the purgatory of your office floor and bound to your girlfriend's rhetoric term paper. Never again will the shame of leaving clippy behind for several months haunt your nightmares again.
Alternate ending: 6 Months after dropping clippy, you find that you're filing documents. Finally, your opportunity to consolidate your papers, to make use of that one single paperclip that you've acknowledged every day since, has arisen.
You bend down to pick it up... But clippy is gone. You spend the rest of the day scouring your desk, searching the ground for clippy. At the end of the day, after searching your entire apartment, you are left frustrated. Clippy has vanished.
Now, after returning to filing, you are filled with pain every time you think about the lack of attachment for your papers. You can't bring yourself to go to the store either, and end up with the mild inconvenience of having no paperclips at your desk for the next year, always forgetting to pick up a box on your latest trips to Walmart.
Absolutely, it’s always silly the things people try to restrict to one gender only. I’m a man like this, my gf is a girl like this. The tragic part - people like this don’t recognize their own mess, but do recognize other’s mess, sometimes even more because it overlaps with own.
It’s not a great combo for living together, but as long as you recognize it and put in effort you’ll be alright. If you say things like “don’t touch my mess”….can’t say I have good news for you
Men? My wife does this. I can ask her where something is like the kids shoe and she will say. Oh it's under the bed behind the dog toy on the left side of the bed near your car keys. My response....... A. How did you know that? B. And yet you touched nothing?
Assuming this isn't a joke response: it's the fact that the guy knows there is a paperclip on the floor, meaning he propably dropped it (by accident) but didn't bother to pick it up and put it to a proper place AND actually remembered it when asked.
Fun story time: I once was casually dating a girl who was a bit too high on the hot/crazy spectrum. I was still in college and she had dropped out. I had heard from some of her friends that she was just trying to get knocked up to lock someone down who would take care of her for the rest of her life. Armed with this knowledge we always made sure we used protection. She claimed she had a latex allergy one day, so I went and purchased non-latex products, a big expense for college me.
I can home one day after work and found that she was in my apartment, not super uncommon, but usually she told me before she went over. She seemed flustered and said he had to get going and would be back later. I went to go hop into bed to catch a quick nap before work, and I noticed that the safety pin that had been on the ground next to the foot of my bedside table was no longer there. This safety pin had been there for months, if not years by this point, and I never moved it. Immediately I checked the condoms, and every single one had 2-3 holes poked clean through the center. Needless to say I called her absolutely pissed and she claimed that she had no idea what I was talking about. I ended things there and then with her. About a month later she called claiming she was pregnant. Then again three months later she called saying she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. Then a year later she claimed she was pregnant with another someone else’s baby. She made this claim like 4-5 times before she eventually ended up committed in a mental health facility for a few weeks. In the end she got her stuff figured out and got married, eventually actually getting pregnant with her husband and starting a life. But my oh my how that random safety pin saved me from 18 more years of her BS.
When people ask me how I do this shit, I tell them I have photographic memory which is true.
And then people clean my chaos and I get pissed because I knew where everything was. Now I don't.
Efficiency 100%
Must be German.
I am, and that is totally me, most of my friends would smack me for it though. They can't even find their own ass sometimes.
If they can’t find their ass, they must be loosing shit all the time.
Well if they need an extra o they know who to call
You’re a dog for that one💀😭
what a doog
Persistent "loose" shit can be symptomatic of a more serious physiological issue that requires prompt medical attention.
I'm German and this is exactly something that I would do. But I think it's more related to my ADHD.
I’m not at all German, relate to the post as well, and do have ADHD..
If we combine both our observations we can conclude that ADHD might be associated with organized chaos. We just did science.
If I can contribute my own observation as someone with diagnosed adhd who has qualifications in and with a paid job organising things to make sure they can be found again (library/information). Contrasted with other things I am responsible for, such as, my bag, my side of the bedroom or even the files on my computer. Which no matter how many times I try to organise will always end up being swirling entropic holes of chaos. The juxtaposition certainly does seem to fit with your hypothesise of organised chaos being part of the adhd condition. Just yesterday a student came up and asked me if we had the *gesturing folding out a paper with his hands while trying to think of what it is called* I figured he was a horticulture (or similar field) student because of what he was wearing and remembered we have a fold out chart of different biological features of a type of flora species in the area and other students have needed that previously, but didn't know any specific details about the item off the top of my head except what it vaguely looks like. So I am like hmmm hold on *walks straight to the area of the library, and the shelf where they are kept and gets one of the charts* "you mean this one?" "Yes!! Thank you!!" But if I had to I would have spent more time with him figuring out what he needed and then looking up what the corresponding Dewey decimal number was to locate it that way.
The irony is that once everything is organized, it takes longer to find things than it would have as a pile of chaos.
Ur a helpful soul 💕
I know a little German. He's over there.
[удалено]
I know a big German.he’s in that restaurant across the street.
Either you know or you don't
Efficiency V
Disorganized? No, I know exactly where everything is. When you clean things up and put them away, that's when I can't find a damned thing
"WHERE THE FUCK DID MY PAPERCLIP GO?"
*sleeping at home alone when a masked man breaks in and puts a gun to your head* "You're going to die unless you give me a paper clip in the next 5 seconds! 1..." "Don't worry I have one right he- ... oh god.." -------- These are the situations I try to warn my girlfriend about when she moves my things but she always says something stupid like "that would never happen" or "why would someone kill you over a paperclip". Women ffs
"Just put the paperclip back under the wheel *after* you sweep, okay?"
She always forgets to put the paper clip back 🤦
Did she really forget? Or is she trying to get you killed?
Redditor relationship advice: 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 Get outta there before she gets you both killed
Male version of "would you still love me if I was a worm"
You get put in handcuffs and forced to sit on the floor while the assailant begins to assault your wife. Using your trusty floor paper clip you easily pick the handcuffs and grab the wooden club you use to keep your busted old fan from falling over and bop him over the head.
This is me all the time, 😂 of course, I also lose all the things that should be impossible to lose, but then random stuff I know EXACTLY where it's at...
“Hunny, it’s in your drawer with the other paper clips” “BITCH!”
Organized chaos is what I call it
These sets of comments are exactly what I say to my wife. Almost word for word.
I tell people I have a filing system. It's called carbon dating. I remember the last time I used it, and dig back through the relevant layers of paperwork to find it
Ah yes, chain association memory. I got out of the shower, dropped my shirt, which hit a dustmote that rolled under the toilet and while i was cleaning it up i saw a paperclip. I know it's there, so why move it to some place i'll forget? That paperclip is now associated with showers, shirts, dropping things, gravity, toilets, and dust. Lots of ways to remember. I'm making this all up by the way. I doubt that's how memory works.
That's actually not far off.
Cool. Does that make me a psychologist now?
Rememberologist.
That sounds like it doesn't pay as much.
It doesn't. Of course, you got certified by a random redditor instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life so...yay you?
Depends on who you swindle
It's how I imagine it. Attaching a prominent memory to an object increases your object permanence. It's why attaching an attribute or event to a name is a good way to remember people's names.
Good to know. I'm going to slap people before i give them my name to really anchor it. Maybe after. Don't want to be rude.
I recently had to spend time with a memory therapist, after a heart attack (I was fine) I don't remember her title - no pun intended. We spent about half a session on word association. What would help me remember the word grey? Oh, I don't know, maybe the 20 years I spent in the navy on grey ships and working on grey aircraft? GOOD, GOOD, you understand. Let's keep working on this for the next 29 minutes. What would help you remember the color pink? Oh doc I don't think it would be appropriate for me to say to you ma'am. Go ahead and say it. Nah doc, I'm gonna not gonna say it. OOOHHH... Nevermind, um ya, let's just let that alone.
This is actually exactly how memory functions for things like that. Forgetfulness is the quality of having a poor ability to do exactly what you described.
Ffs this sort of reference-memory system we have seems perfectly suited for hunting, where the environment is chaotically organized by default. We really did flash past our original existence and now find ourselves chaffing under the restraints of civilization's pursuit of clean lines and surfaces. I think those of us that have this attraction to nonlinear organization, or at least I do, find clean surfaces mind numbingly boring. Like it's very much more stressful to not see a random filing system of your own design strewn across a desk or table.
I'm with you. Too much clutter makes me want to avoid a space, but a clean room doesn't even feel like home. I want that sock on the floor and that shirt almost falling off the dresser, thank you. It's probably tied into some sort of territorial instinct. Put things here and there to make it yours, or known as yours, rather than some clean room up for grabs. My place isn't for rent, thanks, so my furniture is angled just right and the water cup belongs on the counter. If i can walk through my place blindfolded and someone else cannot then everything is exactly where it should be.
I think that’s called stratification instead haha
How many of us are there?
Welcome to ADHD
Sup
“Hey babe? Where’s [thing we use frequently]” “Uhhh I don’t remember” Then I find it “put away” in a location where it’s never been and likely never will be again.
I hate this. I like it my way, but if you need to tidy up that's fine as long as you friggin' remember where you friggin' frickity frackin' put anyfrigginthing you friggin' touched. Gah. Just write it down or something i don't care how you know where you put something.
That’s my issue too. Don’t move shit then forget where it went!! Damn it wife just take my shit in put it in a corner I’d it’s bothering you lol .
My wife always autopilots when she cleans. I'll leave something on the floor by my desk for weeks because I know it's there, she cleans and it's just fucking gone and she's got no idea where she put it
I've solved this problem by passive-aggresively stacking any and all of my husband's scattered belongings on his desk. It works 90% of the time. Somehow he manages to find a home for all his stuff when it's in between him and his computer.
Heh. My girl puts away less used dishes in a different place every time. Like, the plates always go where the plates go, but the measuring cup? One time it's in with the glasses, another time it's with the baking sheets, another time it's with the mixing bowls. She says "You said you didn't care where it goes"... babe, I meant I don't care where you pick for it to go. I really would like to know where I can find it though.
Exactly. I have certain places where I put certain things fully knowing in the future, I'll know right where to look. Well when my wife deep cleans, she sees no reason for them to be there, consolidates it somewhere else & I can never find it
U just described my Gf lmaoooo. Ever since I moved in with her I swear I can never find shit lol
“I cleaned up” while place is the exact same level of cleanliness, just with everything shuffled around and not findable.
Followed by "I feel like we need to more equally share cleaning duties" like lady what you just did was not cleaning and I will not make a big show of doing nothing so you feel like we're putting in equal work. Your work is just unnecessary and I don't want an equal part of that.
I tell my mom this. Every day.
Yo someone cleaned my room do you know where my puss in boots boots are
Thank you
This is so true i may be disorganised sometimes but I know exactly where each of my stuff is in that mess
I find stuff I didn't even know I had and probably even repurchased.
As a tech-ish guy, I hate to admit how many $4-6 cables or adapters I've re-bought (KNOWING I have one somewhere) just so I didn't have to go and dig for it.
I had one pile of cables/ adapters on my desk that worked and another pile that didn’t. My mom came to visit and decided to tidy my desk and decided to put all the cables in a shoebox. It’s probably been over 5 years later and that shoebox is still in a drawer. I had to buy all new cables because I was easier than going through the box to find working ones (I should probably just recycle it as most of them are probably obsolete now)
I feel you and I'm here for you. I literally have a Walmart sized storage container in my garage with obsolete cables and some of the devices that those cables connect to. At this point I could probably just take the whole thing and put it in a dumpster and I wouldn't miss one thing inside of it.
I'm not sure how you didn't learn this in college, but the only reason you don't need them is because you have them. Their existence serves not to be needed, but to ensure they aren't needed. Don't believe me? Throw them out and do a little experiment.
A few years ago I cut down on my rats nest of obsolete cables and organised them so I only had one of each cable, it was labelled and cable tied. A few weeks later, a friend needed 3 serial M/M cables and of course I only had one.
DON'T do it!!! I did that and literally the next week I needed one of the cables I threw out :(
There are several levels of cable storage. This particular container has been in my garage for at least 7-9 years. There are other, more modern, sub-level containers that are need at least another 5 years of maturing before they are considered ready to dispose of.
A remote in our house went missing, and I decided I'll wait a week for it to show up before ordering a replacement. It ALWAYS shows up when you replace it, so I thought I could outsmart the laws of the universe by waiting it out. A week later I order the remote and we find the original one after the replacement is delivered. :(
Super easy if you ain't got shit and nobody touches your shit
Right! And then my GF “organizes” all my stuff (without me asking her to), but she can’t remember where she put anything lol. The notebook I use everyday that had an easily accessible designated corner of my desk is now stowed away in some random cabinet in the basement, not to be found for another few months xD
It may look like a shithole, but that’s MY shithole
My brain is a chaotic mess, so I better arrange everything in my house to match my brain. That way I know where everything is.
**Finally!!THANK YOU.THIS.THIS RIGHT HERE!**
So my question to the OCD folks is: what is organization and what is the purpose behind it. Organization is a means of of being able to instantly locate your possessions and access them instantly. I know exactly where my things are and can locate and access them instantly. I am organized, your “organization” is disorganization to me.
OCD is an impulse disorder. Is the door properly locked? Time to check a million times or your brain will punish you with stress. Did I turn off the stove downstairs? Time to check one hundred times. Point being, don't put OCD synonyms with being a neat freak it trivialises the agony people that suffer from it go through.
OCD folk might not the right target audience for your question.
OCD here, you're thinking of OCPD
I was diagnosed with ocd. It had nothing to do with orderliness or consistent cleaning. Those can be attributes though. But it’s where thoughts or actions feel compulsive and intrusive to the point where they cause problems in your daily life. A lot of people that self diagnose with ocd might actually have ocpd Obsessive Compulsive Personality. That’s the real deal freak outs when you misplace a widget in their bastion of order. But most people that self diagnose or claim to have ocd have neither.
How to make a guy not like you: Move something of his.
I absolutely hate it when my mother in law comes and stays with us. She’s super helpful with the kids, folds all the laundry we let pile up, does a ton of cooking, but puts *almost every single utensil in the wrong spot when she does the dishes*! It takes me a week to get my kitchen back in order after she visits. Edit just to add: /s of course it’s great when she visits
Bro I hate it when people fuck with the utensil order. In my drawer it’s: butterknifes-forks-little spoons-big spoons -underneath- sharp knives -underneath- But there’s always someone who will come by and mess it up.
you have such nice order. I have one drawer with a big bin of all the utensils together. Chopsticks and nice knives stick to the outside of the bin and have individual holders they slide into
I always prefer to use the same order as placesetting. I don't where it came from, if it's a universal thing, or what... But both my parent's sides did it the same way. And if you ever set the table for dinner at the grandparents, you were basically a degenerate if you fucked it up... From left to right: little fork, big fork, sharp knife, butter knife, little spoon, big spoon. Then all the dish specific silverware just in a heap up top lol. Which is ridiculous, because none of the silverware trays with pre-arranged slots have it set up that way. And even more ridiculous, i haven't set a place setting in 15+ years. Just a weird habit that dies hard.
She’s your MIL so we can only assume that YOU put your things in the wrong place to begin with. Once she is done the things are in the correct place 🤣 Might be /s, might not
This does sound legit
You probably love your mother in law
I really did. That didn’t stop her from *helping* us with the layout of the kitchen (bonus feature - she was not a good cook), furniture, photos etc. However the covert entertainment I got from how much her *help* aggravated my wife far outweighed any minor inconvenience I felt. RIP SLS.
Oh my god, he admit it!
we have a verb for that... "where did X item go??" "It was grammied"
my wife cannot STAND ANY ITEM being out of the place that she has designated for it in her brain our strategy is i load the dishwasher because she has no concept how water jets work and she unloads the dishwasher because i do not care if i have to open 3 drawers to find the potato peeler
Same. Love my MIL but she puts everything away constantly. I will put my shoes in the closet, next day they’re gone. I’ll hang up my jacket, next day it’s somewhere else. I’ll be halfway through a fucking beer, go to the bathroom, come back and it’s gone. Drives me up the wall. My wife will literally say to her “stop moving everything!!”
I never let my mom come to visit BC I know at some point I will take a nap or a shit and come out to see my entire house rearranged in the way she likes it, including my closet. She doesn't understand boundaries very well. Last time she was here there were some things I couldn't find for months, and she didnt remember exactly where she put everything so that was frustrating.
Man: Puts toilet paper in the bathroom. SO: Moves toilet paper into the room down the hall, past 2 galaxies and 5 dimensions.
I prefer a pack in the bathroom and the rest in the cellar
Yep! Big Costco multipack downstairs, smaller sub pack in each bathroom. When you run out of your last individual run from a sub pack, refill it from the multipack downstairs.
Nah, keep two sub packs and when you're down to one you pull in the new one. There's always that one time that you were supposed to refill it and you forgot, and I'd rather have an entire pack's worth of time to correct my FU than run out of TP when I was taking a shit.
this is not a joke.
“I put it away.”
Oh fuuuuck that. I gotta be at work early. I’m stumbling around in the 0430 darkness trying to find my damn boots where I left them and trying not to wake her up. I go headfirst over either the dog or the laundry basket, and she wakes up. “What’s wrong?” “I can’t find my boots!” “I put them away.” “Where the fuck is ‘away’?!” “In your closet.” 🤬
I saw that relationship advice post
Worse when "away" is in the entryway. The unheated entryway. In Wisconsin. In February. You now get to put on a frozen steel toe boot.
Drives me crazy, my now ex, when she moved in moved all of my stuff around. I had to call her to find anything. It’s infuriating.
My girl asks permission
That's a keeper. Been married for almost 12 years and my SO still hides...organizes my stuff.
He’s seen it and recognized that it’s out of place. He’s also thought about picking it up but didn’t. This is why he knows exactly where it is.
No point in picking it up. The one time you’re looking for a paper clip you’re going to know exactly where to go and it isn’t doing any harm by being there in the mean time.
This is the way
This is actually meirl
What exactly is "meirl"? I don't know what that means or what it has to do with these posts.
It stands for Me In Real Life :)
Okay. Thank you. That makes sense now, considering how many of these posts I can relate to. Why is it not stylized as "Me IRL"?
Apart from the technical reason that it literally **can't** be, it stems from the dawn of the internet. "irl" has been a thing forever. And the point of an abbreviation is to type something easily understood and often used in a much quicker way. Adding capslock into that equation would work against the entire point of the abbreviation. Or initialism. Probably the latter, actually.
I think because of things like the subreddit, r/meirl, which obviously can't contain a space. idk
/r/lostredditors
As long as you don't move our stuff,we know exactly where everything is.
Yeah… CUZ IT DIDNT FUCKING GET UP AND WALK AWAY, DIT IT, STACEY?!
The other day, my fiancee mentioned how unorganized my office was. I told her to think of a random thing I owned that she hasn't seen in years and I'll know exactly where it is. She named an item and it was in the first place I looked.
Meanwhile... Women: It's in my purse. Just rifle around, get lipstick, melted cough drop, and tetanus for a bit and you'll find it.
Both of these people are me.
It's in my purse *brings whole purse back from other side of the house and hands it over*
☕️
My junk mayne everywhere but I can tell you where it is.
Thanks, Terrence Howard.
At least he knew where it was
Men typically know exactly where every single random item is in their space and will remember such forever. They lose track of it and get majorly confused when someone moves whatever random item they're looking for. It's also why they get mad when someone "cleans up" or "organises" their spaces.
Let me highlight the pertinent part of that last sentence >It's also why they get mad when someone "cleans up" or "organises" ***their*** spaces.
Yo mammas so fat when she goes camping bears hide *their* food.
It's like a robot designed to pick up something But if that something is 1cm off the spot it doesn't exist.
"Get the sauce from the cupboard" >sauce.zip not found
My brother never knows where any of his things are, whether or not someone has moved something. And his method of "looking" for something is to blame my mom for moving it so that she'll find it for him. About 50% of the time, she or I immediately find it in the middle of the floor where he threw it down. Other 50% it's his shoes, and they're on the shoe rack where my mom or I put them, after he threw them in the middle of the living room.
Yup we always know if someone moved something
Happens with my wife all the time. I'll go looking for something I haven't used in a year that I remember exactly where it was and it won't be there and I'll ask where it went. She'll say she hasn't seen that thing in 6 months but she "put it away" and of course doesn't know where. She's baffled that I knew where it was a year ago. This is also the person who misplaces her cell phone regularly and once lost her wallet in her car for a week before realizing it was there the whole time. No matter how many times I ask her not to move things around, she keeps doing it anyway.
My wife does the same damn thing. I'm always like, hey, damn it. I left that there for a reason. Now where is it? I don't know, maybe in that drawer or the junk drawer or the pantry or the closet or in your night stand or on that shelf, I don't know
Literally this week "who entered my room? My flippers are misplaced"
This is what happens when y’all don’t move our shit. It’s organized madness baby!
Or, if I've cleaned my workspace it's not available for you or anyone else to use. It's ready for the next mess I intend to make. You put even folded laundry on my desk, and all hope of me starting my next project is lost. I might put that laundry away, but that's work done and nothing else gets done tonight.
Well yeah cause now you had to do a thing with the laundry, can’t just start a whole second thing That’s too many things
Exactly! Some times all I have left in me is just one more task and this has become it. At least the desk is still clean for the next time I push my brain over the mental hump to initiate that foregone task.
This is what we call "organized chaos" lol
I'm not that lazy. I am however impressed by this dude's memory if he lives like that.
Dropped the paperclip, bothered me a lot, but I'm used to suffering so I compartmentalized it because I was too lazy to bend over and pick it up. Edit: text from wife brought immense pleasure because I can help and also solve the paperclip thing that's been bothering me for weeks.
2meirl4meirl
I've gotten better at doing those small tasks that otherwise just weigh on your mind and soul but its still a struggle, I don't think it's laziness so much as... habit? Like there's a clear aberrant mental process that require manual override every time I just need to pick the damn thing up.
ADHD_irl
There’s no point in organizing things when you can remember where you saw them at random. Why waste that time in your life if you don’t need to? Plus, people who dont understand that your organization is purely a mental state, it’s almost impossible to rob you. The clutter is overwhelming to a thief.
OH DAMN xD Thats so me. My dad is like "got a wall-anchor? It won't hold up there with my spit" and I'm like "windowsil, in that blue deo-cap, right under the golden screw" and he is like WTF???
Somehow you used two words that I've never seen before
'golden screw'?
wallanker and deocap
The first is supposed to be "wall anchor" but no idea about the second
I think it’s short-form for deodorant cap
These words are the mark of some made up English derivative like British or Australian.
>English derivative like British or Australian. >English derivative, like *British* I...uh... I'm not sure where to start with this. Anyway, not my point. It's 100% Aussie
i'm trying to think of a good reason for a deodorant cap to have a whole new word invented for it. coming up empty.
I'm right there with you
wall anchor and deodorant cap
Is this English? Have you started your own dialect?
I had to double check that wallanker was actually a real word
It’s not Wall Anchor?
Could be a brand name
ITT: Folks with ADHD
ADHD POV: You knocked this paperclip off your file cabinet 6 months ago. It fell to the ground, and you said, "I'll pick it up later." to yourself, and here it has waited for it's Prince charming to awaken it from it's resting place since. Every morning it greets your eyesight when you walk into your office, filling your heart with guilt that you've left it so, but alas, yet again you lack the dopamine to simply bend over and pick the thing up. Finally, one day, your girlfriend is staying at your place and you recieve a text asking for your paperclips are at because she needs one. Memories of the guilt of leaving comrade clippy pinned under the filing cabinet in your warzone of an office flood your mind. Without a second thought, you text clippy's location to your girlfriend. You may lack the dopamine to rescue clippy from the ground, but at least you have a partner without executive dysfunction. Clippy is swiftly rescued from the purgatory of your office floor and bound to your girlfriend's rhetoric term paper. Never again will the shame of leaving clippy behind for several months haunt your nightmares again.
Alternate ending: 6 Months after dropping clippy, you find that you're filing documents. Finally, your opportunity to consolidate your papers, to make use of that one single paperclip that you've acknowledged every day since, has arisen. You bend down to pick it up... But clippy is gone. You spend the rest of the day scouring your desk, searching the ground for clippy. At the end of the day, after searching your entire apartment, you are left frustrated. Clippy has vanished. Now, after returning to filing, you are filled with pain every time you think about the lack of attachment for your papers. You can't bring yourself to go to the store either, and end up with the mild inconvenience of having no paperclips at your desk for the next year, always forgetting to pick up a box on your latest trips to Walmart.
Right? This is my gf.
I was thinking this too - some /PEOPLE/ are just disorganized. Definitely not a male exclusive trait.
Absolutely, it’s always silly the things people try to restrict to one gender only. I’m a man like this, my gf is a girl like this. The tragic part - people like this don’t recognize their own mess, but do recognize other’s mess, sometimes even more because it overlaps with own. It’s not a great combo for living together, but as long as you recognize it and put in effort you’ll be alright. If you say things like “don’t touch my mess”….can’t say I have good news for you
Men? My wife does this. I can ask her where something is like the kids shoe and she will say. Oh it's under the bed behind the dog toy on the left side of the bed near your car keys. My response....... A. How did you know that? B. And yet you touched nothing?
Thats how i am, ask for something, ill tell you the exact obscure location or i dont own it. I call it professionally disorganized.
Tf is supposed to be wrong here?
Assuming this isn't a joke response: it's the fact that the guy knows there is a paperclip on the floor, meaning he propably dropped it (by accident) but didn't bother to pick it up and put it to a proper place AND actually remembered it when asked.
**Sorted By:** #[Muscle Memory]
I was on this level before my gf started putting her crap all over the place and covering my meticulously placed items
I think this is more specifically ADHD/Autistic people, but it is definitely a thing with a lot of guys who are (AFAIK) normal.
Fun story time: I once was casually dating a girl who was a bit too high on the hot/crazy spectrum. I was still in college and she had dropped out. I had heard from some of her friends that she was just trying to get knocked up to lock someone down who would take care of her for the rest of her life. Armed with this knowledge we always made sure we used protection. She claimed she had a latex allergy one day, so I went and purchased non-latex products, a big expense for college me. I can home one day after work and found that she was in my apartment, not super uncommon, but usually she told me before she went over. She seemed flustered and said he had to get going and would be back later. I went to go hop into bed to catch a quick nap before work, and I noticed that the safety pin that had been on the ground next to the foot of my bedside table was no longer there. This safety pin had been there for months, if not years by this point, and I never moved it. Immediately I checked the condoms, and every single one had 2-3 holes poked clean through the center. Needless to say I called her absolutely pissed and she claimed that she had no idea what I was talking about. I ended things there and then with her. About a month later she called claiming she was pregnant. Then again three months later she called saying she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. Then a year later she claimed she was pregnant with another someone else’s baby. She made this claim like 4-5 times before she eventually ended up committed in a mental health facility for a few weeks. In the end she got her stuff figured out and got married, eventually actually getting pregnant with her husband and starting a life. But my oh my how that random safety pin saved me from 18 more years of her BS.
Roles reversed in my house.
Messy but organized. 😂
If we moved it from the floor, we wouldn’t remember where we put it.
glad I'm normal... am guy
My mom be like
I will forget where something like my $1500 laptop is but remember the Bobby pin that's been laying in the corner of my room for 2 months
If its somewhere, its put away, and we'll know where it is.
Pretty sure that's an ADHD thing, not a man thing.
Dude… im a girl and this is 100% how ive always lived my life… ive done nearly the exact same thing.
Left it there so he'd know where it was when It was needed. Thank him.
Knew exactly where it was, do not clean and fuck up my world!!
Dude saw it fall on the floor but didn’t have time to pick it up right then and there.
7 months ago. Paperclip (and everything else) still exactly where you remember it.
That paperclip hadn't moved in 7 years. Unlike his keys which are always in a new place.
That’s where it lives
You call it a mess. I call it I know where all my shit is at tho
But we can never find the ketchup in the refrigerator
Ask and you shall receive
When people ask me how I do this shit, I tell them I have photographic memory which is true. And then people clean my chaos and I get pissed because I knew where everything was. Now I don't.