WOOHOOO. I love being obsessed with the state of our home. This thread makes me happy.

I am a very neat, organized, and pristine person - and our home reflects this. I am constantly on it. We have WHITE furniture and dogs. Enough said.

Lisa, I spend a good amount of time DAILY cleaning up (although we have a regular cleaning service), straightening up, putting away, and tidying up. I am CONSTANTLY doing it when I am at home. It's second nature to me and our home is "visitor ready" 99% of the time. I am a pedantic control freak - rightly or wrongly. It's the nature of this beast.

We live in a small 1600 square foot house in the city. I share a small walk-in with Greg. No drawers. I do not swap out my seasons. To answer your questions:

• Bags - stacked neatly on wardrobe shelving, and on hooks behind the wardrobe door. I have 26 bags.
• Boots - ALL in my wardrobe on the floor on shoe racks. Tall boots on the ground. I'm not a shoe gal, and don't have that many pairs.
• Mitts, hats - in a basket in the wardrobe. A few in the coat closet.
• Scarves - separated by season, and neatly folded in piles on wardrobe shelving.
• Jeans - hung on hangers.
• Knitwear - folded and hung on special hangers.
• Sweats - folded on wardrobe shelving. (EVERYTHING is neatly folded).
• Jewellery and watches - daily pieces in a big Chinese box by our bed. Other pieces hung on hooks in the wardrobe. I don't have a lot though.

Our cleaners wipe the baseboards every fortnight. I use a magic eraser from time to time, and since we don't have small children - the house is not that scuffed up.

I clean the fridge once a week, and re-arrange the pantry so that I can always see what I have. I am always tidying closets......it's a sickness. I know I am extreme. Now you know why I don't sleep....

In no particular order:

Baseboard cleaning : I have a Miele vacuum cleaner and have a long handled attachment with brush to get at the baseboards. Several times a year, I will use a damp cloth and wet wipe them. But the best thing that I did that cut down dust immensely was to put filters in each of my vents. Seems dust is mostly a problem in the colder months so I only use them then and then make sure I use my long vacuum attachment to get into each room vent (s) and clean them once a year. I ditto using a damp used dryer sheet - it will also remove soap scum from your shower door and use a Mr Clean Magic eraser to clean the glass on the inside of my oven.

I also have a steamer which I use to clean the floors, shower, and shower door. Blows that soap scum right off

Regrigerator gets wiped down when it is at its emptiest .

My DH redid my closet, so one side can handle coats, jackets, pants and the other side is 2 tiered for tops. I have shelving above this with bins to accomodate handbags and shoes. I also have a rolling cart in my closet in which I store my winter essentials - gloves and scarves. Also on the 2 tiered side of the closet I put in a shelf between the 2 tiers and specialty baskets in which I store my sweaters.

I use a painters brush to dust the cabinets in my kitchen and am lucky when I redid my kitchen almost 2 years ago that I have bottom pull out cabinets and pull outs in my pantry - I always know what I have .

My DH is in the process of redoing his closet (it has only taken him 22 years) and boy the stuff he had in there - 1/2 of the stuff did not belong. He kept a bag of socks that had holes in them, books from library sales, tons of xrays, a telescope ? (don't ask), film cameras, etc.

We also have a dresser and armoire in our room, and underbed storage drawers - where I store the extra sheets and blankets. I don't have a lot of jewelry so no problem there.

I also do not have a problem with discarding stuff. Just finished reading Marie Kondo's 2 books and then started cleaning out the sentimental stuff.

I found myself with these kind of questions last summer. I toyed with the idea of adding shelving, but that seems counterproductive to the whole minimalism path I'm trying (TRYING) to follow. So I thought about what I wanted, and looked at pictures on Pinterest. Then I started sorting and discarding stuff I wasn't using in my wardrobe.

I have things at my place, and at my boyfriend's. The storage is a little different between the two:

Bags: At my place: they're stuffed with airpacks, and in the main compartment of my armoire on stackable bamboo shelves. At the BF's: they're stuffed with airpacks, and on a wire closet shelf above my clothes. Right now, I think have 20-22 bags, including evening clutches.

Boots: At both places, I keep them on the closet floor, against the back wall. I stuff them with airpacks. Currently I have four pairs of boots at my place, and five at mine. When the weather is warm, all but two pairs of dressy boots live at my place.

Hats: My place: Stored by season in a couple of decorative hat boxes I got on sale at Ross or Marshall's. At the BF's: on the wire closet shelf, next to my bags.

Scarves, Jeans, Knitwear: I hang everything by color, then category. So my blue jeans are hung next to blue tops and blue scarves, green next to green tops + skirts, etc. I also sometimes store my scarves crumpled on the chair, underneath whatever jacket I was wearing it with, and gloves.

Sweats : I have one pair of sweatpants, two pairs of sweater pants, and a sweater that fulfills a sweatshirt function. (It that's in the laundry, I plunder the BF's stash). They all live on a different wire shelf in the closet, with his sweats and sweaters.

Jewelry and watches - my pearl studs and blue statement ring sit in a small vintage pintray on a shelving unit in the BF's condo. The bulk of my jewelry is kept at his place, on the shelf below, in a big compartmentalized jewelry box. I keep a smaller jewelry capsule at my place, in a jewelry box in the armoire. I have two or three watches now, I think? They're in the jewelry boxes. I purged half a dozen watches, because I always check the time on my iPhone. Even when I have a watch on my wrist.

Any jewelry that is costume/not something I would wear in my normal life, I have stored in a couple of boxes in the guest room closet, where I keep theatrical and cosplay costuming and wigs.

I wanted to do a separate reply about baseboards: I use a feather duster, when I'm dusting the house. If the baseboards seem like they need more attention, I get a bucket with hot soapy water (usually dish detergent or liquid hand soap) and an old washcloth and towel, and go around and wash by hand. I wear rubber gloves, because those baseboards get sprayed periodically for critters.

Angie - I am not surprised to read anything you wrote For starters, a 1600 sq ft house is not considered small in Canada, in fact, it's on the larger side of average. I'm interested in the fact that you don't use a dresser in your bedroom. I couldn't manage without one unless I had a armoire of significant size, but our coved ceilings prevent use of tall furniture . Anyways, cleaning and organizing is a function of our personality, I believe, and I usually operate on the edge of chaos at any given time - in my work life and in my personal life. (literally and figuratively I used to pay for a cleaning service when I was a parent of a young child and working outside the home, but we've decided that expense is not a priority. I am still convinced I should be able to deal with it myself, and I have a very helpful and capable partner . What I do notice though is with each passing year, my energy level for cleaning goes down. I have never counted my shoes or bags - I'm sure I would be dismayed at the waste of $- but my bags and shoes have nowhere to live other than the 2-3 I use at a time. I read somewhere that the minute you need to buy things to store more things, you have too many things. And that's where I'm at now. I have a handful of designer and designer-ish bags I am going to try to consign, and my shoes that go unworn are headed for the thrift store . I've done all of this with my clothing, now it's time to attack the other stuff.

In general, I am also surprised by the number of you who have your boots/shoes stored at the front or back door , either on a rack or lined up against the wall. It makes me nuts if there is more than one pair of shoes in our front door area ! We are forced to let our winter boots sit at the back door while they dry - but I only "allow" one pair for each of us to sit there, otherwise it would look like a frat-house entryway. We all have to run up and down the basement stairs getting or putting away boots on a daily basis. Can you tell I've had enough of winter?

Ok, here's some photos.

#1 - I'm not nearly as organized as Angie - I'm doing well to get the scarves hung up, I don't worry about organizing them by color (although I would love it if someone else would organize them for me).

#2 - Necklaces on wooden holder that DH made for me. It's gotten somewhat overcrowded and I need to go through a purge the ones I don't wear anymore.

#3 - Bracelets and rings in various boxes and holders.

Sara - your necklace holder looks as jammed as mine. Makes me crazy.

Re jewelry (costume) I find I go in phases, so have easily accessible the pieces that I am wearing regularly, and in less accessible places the ones that are out of favour - but that I might want to keep. I am slower to pass jewelry on because it is easier to store.

This post has prompted me to be a little more ruthless with my shoes. I have far too many pairs of evening shoes that I asked the forum about last year, and then did nothing. There are two or three pairs that should go to allow my worn pairs to have better storage.

Winter is hard with the mess and the layers and the constant wet gear around.

I was out of town when you posted this. We were visiting my SIL. My MIL had a lot of possessions when she went into a nursing home. My SIL hated for *anything* to leave the family, so she has cluttered up her home with her mother’s things. I wanted to immediately go home and Kon Mari my entire house. Now that I’m home, I can see that our living spaces don’t look bad. (We benefitted from the fact that we couldn’t take anything that couldn’t fit in a suitcase). My closet is a horror, though. I don’t think organization is the problem. Volume of stuff is the problem.

I rarely give our baseboards any thought. I vacuum them if they look dirty. If they still look dirty then I might use a damp sponge and maybe some Bon Ami. That’s as much attention as they get from me!