Are you disorganised/messy/untidy?

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I am "retired" and thinning the collection is a big job. When I moved cities in '69, I had one half-full suitcase, including the tools for a craft business. When I left less than 3 years later, I had two big garage sales for the things that I'd acquired for almost nothing, while selling everything I'd paid retail for to my apprentice. I got out of town with 14 pieces of luggage on a train that still allowed 16, intended for pioneers going the other way.
I had a few years of simplicity, including a 2 month bicycle tour, but then began acquiring tools again, and they still force me to house them in more space than I live in, and are a huge organizational challenge. Having to live cheaper than a city-dweller, I also have to maintain a large stock of scrap material to make most things from, without a day of travel and shopping.
I'm getting better at managing it, and am even thinning it a bit, but there's a long way to go. However, I'm also working on a very tiny travel rig that will require strict organization of an elegant little set of objects. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I'm glad I found this thread.

My husband has a diagnosis of ASD, I don't, but I have my suspicions.

Whilst I appreciate that you get a variety of different people on the AS my husband seems to think that because I am not like him I can't be on the spectrum.

He is very tidy and you can set your watch by his habits. Mess upsets him.

I, well I really don't think it is that messy until it is pointed out to me. It's like I have anti-mess goggles on.

I know where everything is and it disturbs me when things are tidied up. As has been said I find the thought of organising the house overwhelming.

I can organise things and have no problem with other multi-step tasks. I have a 4-course meal to prepare for Saturday. I think someone else mentioned the fact they enjoy cooking but hate clearing up - ditto.

The world around me has always been a mess, in the past my husband has asked how I can study in what he describes as chaos. However, it isn't chaos to me and in whatever oasis of mess I'm in I can always organise my thoughts. I'm good at that for someone who has been chucking antiseizure meds down their throat for 40 years or so.

My mother's workshop was a darkroom, so she had to keep it tidy. Dad's shop was usually chaos, but he was more productive. Your husband probably remembers everything associated with "its place." I remember where I saw it last, and if a corner of it is still visible, that helps a lot. If it is put away, I won't know if it is filed by size, material, colour, or function. I'm learning to keep my tools dispersed, with "homes" where they are most used, rather than with all the others. When I moved to the country I shopped for a small flashlight for years before re-discovering the right kind filed with "camping gear." There's less risk of forgetting I have something if I see it from time to time. Keeping the memory refreshed helps with the research, too. Breakthroughs great and small often involve a novel juxtaposition.

One biologist camped out for the summer to study a critter, and had all his stuff on one table. So, his balance was handy to his toiletries, and, out of very idle curiosity, he weighed the whiskers dumped from his mechanical shaver each morning. He discovered that his beard grew twice as fast after his weekly trip to town, when he came into casual contact with women.

No, not disorganised, but my family and I do have a lot of things, mainly because there's lots of space to store things. I guess that's what happens when you live out in the country? We've got two barns, each the size of a two-story house, full of spare parts, tools, nuts, bolts, nails, etc, a large roofed-over area full of lumber, a woodshed full of heating wood, I have a personal sailboat (containing things that can come in handy on a boat, duh!) and not to mention a few things stored scattered around the property (gravel, logs, etc). I hope I never have to move, as to move everything on the property would take at least three semi-trailers or a massive amount of selling, neither of which would be much fun.

I have like three pairs of shoes and I don't know where any of them are.

As a guy living with HF ASD, I am very organised and tidy. Even as a kid I was just the same.
I do believe I have learnt to be organised and tidy because I spend so much time out of the public eye.
I would go darn crazy if I had nothing to do, so I clean, cook and organise.
A clean home is a happy home.

Life might have been different if somebody had explained organization to me. I was over 40 before I heard someone mention that they had a list of their file folders. That might have made mine easy enough to use to start a habit. Instead, I chastised myself for inefficiency whenever I had to retrieve something from storage soon after it was put away.
A really tidy place bothers me - it looks dangerous to do anything there.
I knew a sea captain who was afraid to put a magazine down when "at home" with his wife.
I know a guy whose research was derailed when his wife moved a pile of papers - it upset his whole memory process.

"By the time everyone has a well-planned workspace, you can be pretty sure that an organization has stopped growing."

I am a bit of an oxymoron I suppose. My organization is disguised as a terrible mess but I have literally had a meltdown once when my dad messed up my ‘strategic organization’. All my ‘messes’ are actually organized. So I am messy, by being organized...

Same as Dear_one, I'm pretty messy, but I'm not disorganized. I know where everything is, and if anyone tries to clean up, I am just completely lost. Sometimes I will search the whole house looking for something (we have lots of moving boxes that never got unpacked), and I'll always find at least five other things that I wasn't even looking for.

I think that's where most of my mess comes from. I have so many broken electronics, and computer parts, and random unitask tools laying around, because I never know when they'll come in handy. And they usually do at some point.

I do need to clean up my "sticky notes" mess though. I have so many that I write notes on while I'm at work, and I crumple them up, and sometimes I remember to pull them out of my pocket, uncrumple them, and follow through. Some of them are just shopping lists, or "remember to do this", so I wouldn't care if those got thrown away, but a lot of them are song lyrics. They're all just littering my computer desk.

I'm very organised at work and very disorganised at home.

Same here. I always clean up and put my things away at the end of every day (especially since I don't want other people using my things), and then I have to pick up after first shift when I get there the next day =| You'd think eventually they would get the hint.

A moderately messy workplace is often faster for a single worker, but usually slower for two.

Not usually messy or untidy.
Usually organized, even if it looks like a tornado happened in the room, I know exactly where everything is at.
Kitchen is usually kept very neat. Desk usually starts out very clear and slowly gets crammed with everything that manages to find a place to rest on it for about six months or so until I reorganize it. Workshop is a good mix of insanely organized and maybe an explosion happened here recently.

In metalwork, half the stuff has to be super clean, and the rest makes flying grit. We learn to keep many small zones of order within general chaos.

Horrible mess. Also too lazy to get rid of trash, since often I just get so immersed in special interests that I forget about trash and the pile of dirty dishes in the sink (why is it so much work to take care of myself?). Once I left some dirty dishes on the table for 2 months, and the dry climate of Southern California prevented mold from growing there so they weren't that gross. I'm also reluctant to throw things away; on the one hand, in case they're useful some day, though usually they turn out to be useless, and on the other hand, I keep a lot of stuff as souvenirs of the past. Nevertheless I usually know where things are and don't like others cleaning up my stuff, since I won't be able to find my things any more if someone else cleaned my stuff up. OK, I'm only that messy when I don't have roommates.

Generally rather messy, but stuff like my pen collection is quite orderly and my favourite books.