What you've said here, Tigerle, really resonates. I feel I could literally spend the majority of my hours just trying to create the structure needed to organize my son. And I can't, because first and foremost, we have to eat and have a place to live, clean clothes, etc. It seems like most of the time we are firmly entrenched on the bottom tier of Maslow's hierarchy.
Most families with children have at least some chaos. Don't make the mistake of assuming you're the only one who struggles with this while all the ideal children pick up their socks.
As a family we are not committed to the "perfect structure." Sometimes there are consequences to not knowing where stuff is. (Can't find scout book? no merit badge for you.) Over time people are learning to get it together because *they* want the right consequences. For school we are supporting and allowing only non-critical failures; but for other stuff it's on the kids.
I will say that I was a disorganized scatterbrain until college, and function very well in terms of EF now. So: brains develop.
