Note to well-meaning relatives ...

[icarus_chained]

... Our house has a ... free-form filing system. It may look like utter chaos, it may apparently take up every flat surface in the house, it may even potentially be termed an utter mess, but, but, everyone in the house knows where their stuff is inside it! The phone bills, the documentation for job interviews, the company paperwork, school work, projects, all of it's in there, all of it is essential to running the household, and all of it needs to be left exactly where it is. I know it looks a mess, and I know to the tidy-minded it makes your fingers positively itch, but don't, for the love of all that's holy, try to tidy it up. Things get lost that way. Like jobs, fingers, and sanity. Nobody can find anything, tempers fray, people get hurt.

Seriously. Do. Not. Tidy. The. Mess. No matter how much you feel you need to.