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My wife keeps on reorganising my toolboxes and it’s driving me nuts. She ends up organising the contents by colour, or by size, so now I find my woodworking chi

My wife keeps on reorganising my toolboxes and it’s driving me nuts. She ends up organising the contents by colour, or by size, so now I find my woodworking chisels in a box with filter spanners and solder (the soldering irons are in the box with glue and mallets). It’s driving me crazy, but she won’t stop, and gets mad at me when I can’t find stuff because “it’s organised”. Different people have different minds. I group by function and efficiency of use - she by colour or shape, as she doesn’t know what half the tools are. My organisation looks chaotic but I know exactly where everything is, and I know that the tools I’ll need for a given task will all be in the same box. Now, I have to haul everything out, rummage, have an argument, get called an idiot. So much better. A crap bowl would be illegal here. Everything must go back in its place, no matter how inconvenient that place is.

xyzelement 6y ago
The key at least for me is to recognize that my wife's desire to clean and organize is a huge net positive for my life, with things like you just described being relatively small side effects. Here's how I manage it. One important thing is to label anything that's messy and needs to remain that way "a work in progress.". It indicates to the wife that (a) you care about neatness and (b) there's an end in sight. The other thing is to claim areas. Sounds like tools are your domain - have you discussed that maybe you should just be in charge of that one small part of your life? :)
BostonEnginerd 6y ago
Sounds like the 5S auditors have invaded your workspace!
cameronh90 6y ago
"it’s driving me nuts" At least you can find the nut drivers. ;)
tlavoie 6y ago
Oh my, do I get this. My wife has worked for years as a professional organizer, so she definitely has an idea for How Things Should Be Done. That way is not mine however. I've been known to have something much like Shitbowl as a system, except I called it my "sedimentary filing system." It has layers, like a parfait, and very much an LRU cache. She likes things to be away, which to me, is not always having them usable. Sometimes, things that are stashed out of sight are less than accessible when I decide I want them. Different strokes I guess. After nigh on thirty years, I'm somewhat tidier, while she has become more tolerant of a bit of disorder.

xyzelement 6y ago

The key at least for me is to recognize that my wife's desire to clean and organize is a huge net positive for my life, with things like you just described being relatively small side effects. Here's how I manage it. One important thing is to label anything that's messy and needs to remain that way "a work in progress.". It indicates to the wife that (a) you care about neatness and (b) there's an end in sight. The other thing is to claim areas. Sounds like tools are your domain - have you discussed that maybe you should just be in charge of that one small part of your life? :)

BostonEnginerd 6y ago

Sounds like the 5S auditors have invaded your workspace!

cameronh90 6y ago

"it’s driving me nuts" At least you can find the nut drivers. ;)

tlavoie 6y ago

Oh my, do I get this. My wife has worked for years as a professional organizer, so she definitely has an idea for How Things Should Be Done. That way is not mine however. I've been known to have something much like Shitbowl as a system, except I called it my "sedimentary filing system." It has layers, like a parfait, and very much an LRU cache. She likes things to be away, which to me, is not always having them usable. Sometimes, things that are stashed out of sight are less than accessible when I decide I want them. Different strokes I guess. After nigh on thirty years, I'm somewhat tidier, while she has become more tolerant of a bit of disorder.