Love/Hate Tidy: Are you Orderly or Chaotic? Vote Now!

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around participants' preferences and behaviors regarding tidiness and organization in their personal spaces. It explores the spectrum between orderliness and chaos, with participants sharing their experiences and philosophies on maintaining their environments, whether at home or in shared spaces.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express a strong dislike for tidiness, associating it with chaos and entropy.
  • Others identify as "organized chaos," suggesting that their disorganized appearance has a personal logic that may not be apparent to others.
  • Several participants mention exceptions to their usual habits, such as becoming more organized in shared spaces or during significant projects.
  • Some individuals prefer a tidy environment and express frustration with misplaced items, emphasizing the importance of cleanliness over mere tidiness.
  • A few participants describe their organizational methods, such as color-coding or maintaining specific arrangements, while others argue that their chaotic systems work for them.
  • There are discussions about the relationship between cleanliness and tidiness, with some asserting that clutter can coexist with cleanliness.
  • Some participants acknowledge tendencies towards obsessive organization, while others embrace a more relaxed approach to order.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally express a mix of views on tidiness and chaos, with no clear consensus on the best approach. Many share similar sentiments about the importance of cleanliness, but opinions diverge on the value of tidiness versus organized chaos.

Contextual Notes

Participants' definitions of tidiness and organization vary, and some express uncertainty about the effectiveness of their methods. The discussion reflects personal preferences and subjective experiences rather than established norms.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may interest individuals exploring different organizational styles, those seeking to understand varying attitudes towards tidiness, or anyone curious about the interplay between chaos and order in personal spaces.

I am......

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3trQN
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I just felt the urge to let everyone know how much i hate tidyness.

I am curious what percentage of the PF peeps are Orderly/Chaotic in terms of organising objects around them.

Are you a "Everything in its place, and a place for everything" person or a "The state of maximum entropy is my most probable state" person?

[cheesey voiceover mode]
Vote now!
[/cheesey voiceover mode]Edit: OOps i seem to have Capitalised the B in Beard rather than Boltzmann, how chaotic of me! sorry..
 
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I like ordered, but I'm chaotic.

When I have time, I definitely clean up and so on.
 
I


AM


ENTROPY


(not the PF member "entropy," I simply embody the concept of "piles of paper falling over")
 
I call my preferred style "organized chaos." There actually is organization to everything I do, but it's not necessarily anything that would make sense to anyone but me. It certainly doesn't look tidy. For example, keeping articles I need to read in a file cabinet doesn't work for me. Keeping them in piles surrounding me, organized by topic does.

There are two exceptions when I turn into a compulsive neat freak. One is when working in shared space (i.e., the lab). Then, things quickly get out of control where nobody can find anything if you don't always keep things perfectly organized and tidy all the time. I always tell people that I don't care what their desk looks like, if they prefer to create avalanches of paperwork, or to keep it looking completely clean and sterile, that's their space to do as they want, but shared space must be kept organized.

The second exception is when I have a big project that I'm gearing up to do. Then everything in my life gets organized...office, home, etc. But, that's mostly because I know that once I'm totally consumed with the project, everything else is going to slide, so it helps me avoid complete chaos if things start out very tidy and organized so by the time I'm done, they're still manageable (the difference between having a few loads of laundry accumulate and completely running out of clean clothes).
 
I am somewhat in the middle, though I would say I am more ordered than chaotic.
 
me too----in the middle---
it just depends.

when i feel like being tidy, i m ...if not...gosh ...my desk would be as if a storm came through(espeacially during exams n all)

lolx!

so i m

miss ordered catrosthophe!(pls don mind my spelling errors if any)
 
Keep it clean! Keep it tidy!
I dislike miss-placed items, I hate searching for stuff, a frustrating waste of time.
 
I agree with hypatia but probably go a bit extreme over keep things clean and neat. Everything has its place and I absolutely hate dust and smudgey windows
 
I am tidy, if i have no use for some thing it goes in the bin, some times i chuck stuff i want later on the theory is the less stuff i have the easier it is to find, the only thing i have to work out now is how to reduce my collection of pairs of odd socks.
 
  • #10
I tend not to discard things, and though it looks chaotic, I know where everything is (until my wife "tidies up" and hides everything). I have never had a tidy workshop, though when I work on machinery, I strive for perfection and try not to "cludge" anything, but to fix it properly. My wife is pretty tolerant, and there are many times that I have had old tube amplifiers and motorcycle carburetors torn down on the kitchen table overnight.
 
  • #11
I am an extremely neat, tidy person who has given up to live in clutter because I despair of ever getting everything organized.
 
  • #12
So what you need is someone neat who'll put everything in the right place
 
  • #13
rhuthwaite said:
So what you need is someone neat who'll put everything in the right place
No. No one else has a chance of organizing my stuff correctly. What I want is someone who'll inspire me with a deep, positive enthusiasm for tidying it up myself. That probably won't happen. These kinds of reforms have to be self generated to be lasting and meaningful.
 
  • #14
My approach is pretty much "a place for everything, and everything in something else's place". W is somewhat the same, but much worse. She hates untidiness, and has gone to the extent of putting things away while I was still using them. Unfortunately, she never puts them in the same place twice.
 
  • #15
My things are always in the same place, colour coordinated, lined up in height or size/ kind order you name it I have done it. Makes everything so easy to find
 
  • #16
That's just sick...
 
  • #17
Maybe a bit obsessive I admit but just can't help it
 
  • #18
Danger said:
My approach is pretty much "a place for everything, and everything in something else's place". W is somewhat the same, but much worse. She hates untidiness, and has gone to the extent of putting things away while I was still using them. Unfortunately, she never puts them in the same place twice.
That sounds just like what cleaning services do. :smile: One of my friends hires a cleaning service. I always thought they just did stuff like vacuum the floors, scrub the bathrooms, etc., but he said they also tidy up things, so I dared to ask, "How do they know where to put things?" His answer was that that's the fun of it; when they're done, you can go on a scavenger hunt for your stuff. :rolleyes: I don't see the usefulness to that, but I guess some people don't care where things are put away as long as someone else does it. It would drive me nuts.
 
  • #19
rhuthwaite said:
Maybe a bit obsessive I admit but just can't help it
Yeah, it's got an Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder* perfectionist feel to it. I have something like the opposite obsession: deliberately arranging things to attain a kind of perfect imperfection, or perfect imbalance.

*As opposed to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which is essentially an anxiety-relieving behavior.
 
  • #20
rhuthwaite said:
My things are always in the same place, colour coordinated, lined up in height or size/ kind order you name it I have done it. Makes everything so easy to find

I don't think untidyness makes things harder to find, provided nobody messes up the order things fall in. I find that they are usually ordered by time, those i use most frequently are at the top, the others at the bottom. :wink:

I think id waste energy putting things away, more than i would searching for them. Especially if i use them frequently. Of course i have a place for the important and infrequently used things, like legal documents and bills.

EDIT: Thanks to whoever corrected my Boltzmann blunder :)
 
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  • #21
Untidyness just makes a room look cluttered and so much smaller
 
  • #22
I've known so many people that think "tidy" and "uncluttered" is clean. I am the opposite, I don't mind clutter, but it has to be CLEAN. Most "uncluttered" rooms are filthy when you take a good look.
 
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  • #23
Evo said:
I've known so many people that think "tidy" and "uncluttered" is clean. I am the opposite, I don't mind clutter, but it has to be CLEAN. Most "uncluttered" rooms are filthy when you take a good look.
Ooh, ooh! ExACTLY! That is exactly how I am, and so is my wife. We are constantly "cleaning" but we don't spend any time "tidying." Various piles of papers, books, toys etc are moved around. Laundry seems to being going constantly, but clothes are trown into closets and drawers unfolded. Wrinkled clothes are the norm, but everything is clean.

I was wondering what Freud would call this?. Neither anal "retentive" nor...what's the other? Well it's not that either.
 
  • #24
Too much mess AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

This is getting annoying. I've spent so much time 'out of the office' aka my computer room that crap is everywhere. Time to decrease the entropy!

Normally I get messy, then I can't stand it and organize it all back together.

I mean, everyone keeps every paper they have done in college on file ordered by course, right? :confused:

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/2774/pict0046fl9.jpg


they say Sadam kept lots of records too...
 
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  • #25
cyrusabdollahi said:
I mean, everyone keeps every paper they have done in college on file ordered by course, right? :confused:

Sure they do...really... :eek:

/me steps back slowly from cyrus
 
  • #26
I agree with cyrusabdollahi. I've got most papers right from preschool though. I don't like throwing things out and hate mess so they get ordered just like cyrusabdollahi has done
 
  • #27
rhuthwaite said:
I agree with cyrusabdollahi. I've got most papers right from preschool though. I don't like throwing things out and hate mess so they get ordered just like cyrusabdollahi has done

You're still single, right? :smile: :-p

You can buy me a drink :wink:

The wires at the bottom of the picture, they bother you. I know, they are annoying me too. I was thinking of zip-tieing them so they don't mess all over the place.
 
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  • #28
How did you know they bothered me? They were the first thing I noticed. They are a bit of a hazard and don't look nice at all.
I told you yesterday I would buy you all your drinks - that offer still stands.
 
  • #29
JasonRox said:
I like ordered, but I'm chaotic.

When I have time, I definitely clean up and so on.

With you all the way on that.