Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - 5 Steps for a Clean, Organized and Tidy Home | Clutterbug Podcast # 73

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

The 5 simple steps will transform your home and your life! Let go of mess and clutter...for good. Be more productive and happier with these 5 easy steps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about five steps for a clean and clutter-free home for good. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'm Cass from Clutterbug, and we're going to talk about five steps for a clean and clutter-free home. I actually am making a video about this right now. So if you want to watch the video too, you can check that out on my YouTube channel, Clutterbug. But I really wanted to do a podcast about this. so I could go into a little bit more detail because I love to blab.

I'm super passionate about this, but these are the five things that have had the biggest impact on my home. You guys know, if you've listened before, if you've watched my videos, that I've struggled with clutter for the majority of my life. I still am not a naturally tidy and organized person. I'm a macro organizer, so that means I'm more of a big picture thinker. So it's hard for me when I'm done with something to take time to put it away properly. My first instinct is to leave things out or to toss and hide things away in a drawer. So if I don't have systems set up in place that make cleaning as I go really, really easily,

I can destroy a room. I am the biggest messmaker in my home by far. And that comes with being a macro organizer. So someone who doesn't naturally think in details, who doesn't think in lots of little categories, they just don't stop and take the time to put things away. Definitely ADHD plays into that. But without doing some of these steps that I'm going to talk about today, I know that I would still be drowning in clutter.

So I need to set up systems in my life and do different things to make sure that I never go back to the old me, which was a hectic, crazy hot mess. I'm still a hot mess. I'm still a hot mess, you guys, but I know what everything is. I can find things. I'm not late anymore. I'm not losing things. And I feel more in control of my life because my home is more in control. So let's talk about the first step, and that is having a cleaning routine. I hate structure. I hate routine. I have a real problem with authority. So I resisted having a daily routine or a structured routine for a really long time. I also struggled to follow a routine.

So I was always like, what's the point? I'm not going to stick with it anyways. So I pushed it off at night and I just sort of was like, oh, that doesn't work for me. But the truth is it works for everyone. And it's such an important, it's a critical part of maintaining a clean and organized home. The thing is, though, everybody cleans differently. You could be a weekend warrior, so you could be the type of person who likes to tackle everything on one day, like before your mother's coming or, you know, on a Saturday, just tackle everything then. You could be a taskmaster.

That's somebody who prefers to do all the vacuuming one day or all the dusting another day or, you know, the floors another day. You could be a zone cleaner. And his own cleaner prefer to clean one room at a time. So they like to do the bedrooms one day or do all the bedrooms and then just the kitchen and then just the bathrooms. Or you could be like me and be a daily speed cleaner. So for me, I do a little bit every day. And it's kind of random, but I do have a list that I kind of follow and I put that on my fridge. So I don't care what type of cleaner you are.

having a routine that's written out and that somewhere that's really visual for you is key. It doesn't mean every day you're always going to follow. But having it written down, having it in a place that's visual is going to motivate you, remind you to do it way more often than you would without a list, which means your home is going to be better maintained and cleaner just for having it. So you can check out my website, clutterbug.com, and the printables page, and there's a whole bunch of different cleaning routines that you can try, or you can go to Pinterest, or you can just write it out on a piece of paper. For me, it's really simple. I have a nighttime routine that

just is tidying up the kitchen, making sure the dishes are done and that the bathrooms are clean, and then every day I do some small cleaning tasks. So one day I'll dust or I'll dust and vacuum or I'll run around and like, I don't know, scrub all the bathrooms one day or you're getting the idea. I do daily speed cleaning, but it doesn't matter what I do. It matters what you naturally tend to do. Write it down. Make yourself an easy routine and put it somewhere really visual. Set reminders in your phone. Ask your family to like pitch in and everybody does it before bed. make this part of your just everyday life. It's going to make your life easier and it's important that we make time for our home. It's the foundation for our entire life. It's so important that we care for it and

maintain it. Next I want you to make purging part of your just life too. So many times people like Marie condo their house so they'll go through and do like one big purge and then that's it and then they're done for another year or two and then they have to do it all over again. And so we need to make sure that we're purging monthly because we're constantly having things come into our home, whether it's just random shopping trips or birthday parties, Christmas, just general like you buy shampoo. Are you throwing out those empty shampoo bottles in your bathroom? Probably not. We all do this. We constantly are bringing things into our home, whether we shop a lot or we hardly shop. It doesn't matter, we still have things coming in and we have to have things going out at the same rate.

I also want you to consider purging because you probably haven't perched enough over the past 10 or 15 years. You probably have that accumulation because you haven't been purging every month. So you need to be big. You need to be bold. You need to push yourself in order to make sure that you're not storing things in your home that aren't serving a purpose. We can't have a bunch if you have a fondue set and you have not used it in two years it has to go if you have clothing that don't fit you or that you don't like and you don't wear they're taking away your space so you can't find the clothes you actually do love and want to wear so many times when we have too much we think i have nothing to wear and it isn't until we take things away that we actually feel like

we love our wardrobe. And the same for kids' toys. When you purge your kids' toys down to their favorite, they're way less overwhelmed and they play with their toys more. I know it sounds crazy. There's scientific reasons why this is true. Just you got to trust me here. Having less stuff makes you happier, makes you appreciate what you have more and just improves your life in all aspects. So I really want you to consider doing every month schedule in your phone, a 21 item toss, and go through your closet, go through your kids' toys, get a box for keep and toss and donate, and push yourself. The only thing that's going to happen is you're going to create more time and more space for yourself. Next, I want you to know your organizing style.

And I know it's clutterbug. That's my whole point. But it really is important that you know your organizing style, especially when there's areas of your life that you struggle to maintain. So if you come home and you kick your shoes off and you never put them in the closet, or you take your coat off and you hang it on a doorknob or the banister instead of, or put it on a chair instead of putting it in the closet, or if you have papers piling up on your kitchen counter instead of putting them in the office, you really want you to look at your why. Why? Is it because you're a visual organizer and it's out of sight, out of mind? Is it because you're a macro organizer? So you don't stop and think, oh, I have to put this away in the place where it goes. And so if this is what's

happening, it's so important that you set up those systems that will work with your natural tendencies. So hooks instead of closets and hangers and a basket on your kitchen counter for your bills to go in. Or instead of opening up a drawer to put your keys away, have a tray on top of table and that's where they go because it's visual. When you know your style, you can sort of design the home that works for you and your style. And it's life, it really is, I say life changing a lot, but listen, I say this because it really changed my life. When I stop trying to use filing cabinets or lots of little containers with lids, when I stopped beating myself up for the fact that I couldn't organize. I'm using air quotes. You can't see it. But I couldn't organize the way other people

were organizing. Yeah, I started setting up macro systems and everything started staying tidy. And I was naturally putting things away. So I have a tray for my makeup. I used to have my makeup spread everywhere and then have this like little bag with little compartments for everything that I never ever used. Now I have a tray. I call it a tray. It's a basket from the dollar. store and all of my makeup sort of gets tossed into there and into these acrylic makeup organizers and it's fast and it's easy and now my bathroom's always staying neat and tidy and the only reason I was able to do that is because I knew my organizing style. So of course you can take a free test at clutterbug.com to discover your style and don't forget to check out my Pinterest. There's links on

the website to go to the Pinterest page. It has lots of different pictures pinned. that really go for each different style so you can find some inspiration. Step four is creating homes for that homeless clutter. So often people are saying that their kitchen table or the counters or the top of their dresser constantly just filling up with clutter. But when you take a look at the stuff that's actually piling there, nine times out of ten, it's homeless clutter. That means things that have to be dealt with that don't necessarily have a place to go.

So bills that have to be paid or things that have to be paid or things that have have to be returned to the store. Maybe it's a library of books. You have to take back. Whatever it is, they're the sort of interim thing. You bought something and you have to like fix something with it and it's parts and you know what I'm saying, right? It's things that don't actually have a place to go or the place where it belongs is either too hard to use or too far away. And even I know what you're saying. Upstairs office is that really too far away? Yeah, it is. It really is. If you're naturally putting your mail on the kitchen counter and you think it belongs in the upstairs office, that's too far away. So we have to make sure we're creating homes for that homeless clutter.

And it could be as simple as, you know, a basket on your counter for bills that need to be paid or mail that needs to be sorted or a paper organizer that you hang on your wall in your entranceway or just a basket for homeless clutter. We have one in our home in a few different rooms, actually. it's things that we've bought from Amazon to fix something like when I broke my iPad. We bought a part for it. Well, where does that go in the interim? It goes in the homeless clutter bin. We have papers that need to be signed by my mother-in-law. We have this little things that we're not sure where they go right now because we're not using them yet. So we have a spot called the homeless clutter bin where that goes. And anytime Joe buys something and I have no idea what it's for, it goes in the

homeless clutter bin and vice versa. It's a small thing that you can do to really tackle the clutter in your home, but also make sure that you are not losing those little things. You break something and you have a piece, you know, that one part of it, it goes in the homeless clutter bin. And then once a month we take time to just go through and look in that bin and put things away that do have homes or deal with the things we need to deal with. I definitely recommend that you incorporate this in your home too? Last but not least, step number five, probably one of the most important. It's like an attitude adjustment. Here's the thing. I spent a really long time being resentful, resentful of Joe, my husband, my kids for not helping out. I felt like I was the family

made. I felt like I was the only one doing any of the housework. And so this resentment just, it made me mad. It made me yell. I nag. I cried, I begged, I complained. I was really negative about my home and the housework. And because of that, I wasn't doing a lot of housework. But my family was sort of seeing it as a negative thing, too. It just became this horrible chore that no one wanted to do. And yeah, the longer it went on, the more the resentment built, just the matter and the more miserable I became. When I finally realized that I needed to stop pointing fingers. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself or feeling that it wasn't fair that no one was helping me. And I had to start doing it for me because it made me happy. That's when really

everything changed. I just told myself, and I know it's a fake until you make it moment, but I told myself it didn't matter if anyone else was helping me because I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for me. I enjoy it. It makes me happy and that's all that matters. And I started, I stopped nagging. I stopped begging. I stopped complaining. I just started doing. I started tidying and cleaning my home for me. And it's turned into a positive instead of a negative. And the less I nagged, the more my family did. Believe it or not, they sort of followed suit. It was like I was leading by example. And I still have to remind myself all the time not to, you know, nag and go off on the deep end. you know this isn't fair and I'm not the maid but when I when I do when I really come from my

housework from a place of positivity I'm happier I'm happier my family's happier and everyone's pitching in more is it 50-50 no should it be of course it should but I can't change anyone except myself and so I have to make the best with what I have and realize that life isn't always fair and whining and complaining and having fits about it isn't going to change anything it's just going to make me unhappy maybe that's super anti-feminist of me maybe you completely disagree but this is what i've found really works for me and yeah my family is helping out more than ever but even if they weren't i'm happier for just really realizing that change starts with me and my attitude about housework has such an impact on how I

feel about my home and myself and my family in general. So you need an attitude adjustment. No, I hope you understand what I'm saying. I'm not insulting anyone and, you know, I wish there was a better, I could give you a better answer if you are living in a home where you feel like no one else is helping. I wish I had some magic cure that could make everyone care about housework or the way your home looks as much as you do. But the truth is it doesn't exist. It just isn't going to happen. The only thing that we can do is do it for us and remind ourselves that we're doing this because it brings us joy. And we love having a clean home. And I promise you that if you keep reminding yourself of that and you're doing it from a place of positivity, your family is going to notice.

And they're going to help out more. So anyways, thank you guys so much for listening. It was like some weird old random thing today. But I do hope you enjoyed. And don't forget if you haven't already to go to clutterbug.com. You can check out some free cleaning checklists on there that you can give a try. And of course, take the clutterbug test and find out your organizing style. I'll see you guys next time.