Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Clean a Really Messy House | Clutterbug Podcast # 20

Episode Date: June 6, 2017

Where do you start when the amount of housework you need to do seems overwhelming? Your messy house is affecting your mood and health more than you realise! Let's make a plan to clean it up today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk about the steps that you need to take when your house is a complete mess, when you let it go, or things are overwhelming. Or if you just, I suppose you can use these same techniques if you just need a quick tidy up or to catch back up. But I really wanted to talk about those times where we're feeling really overwhelmed. And most of us, when we do feel overwhelmed, we ostrich. what I call it. We stick our head in the sand. We almost make the problem worse by just being completely unmotivated to get it started, ignoring it, resisting, even attempting to begin because it seems overwhelming. And when we do this, it always just compounds and makes the problem very

worse. So let's talk about what we can do when things are super out of control or we don't know where to start. What I don't recommend doing is what a lot of people do and what I used to do was, you know, you're having company over the house is a disaster. You pack everything into boxes or laundry baskets and you hide them in another room. Now, you may have to do this if you're having a party and you've procrastinated to the last minute, but this isn't a method that will keep us clean and organized long term. This is a quick little band-aid and if anything, it's going to make it harder in the long-term to go back and make it clean because now we have everything mixed up and jumbled together into baskets and boxes. And what usually happens is the remaining room gets messy at home while those other

things are packed up or moved away or we need to buy new things to replace the things that we can't find and we end up with just totes and totes and baskets or bags or whatever filled with clutter everywhere. So let's talk about these steps. And I want to just let you know that I understand stand and I feel you and not just that I used to be a slob which I did I went through years of just living and drowning in my own clutter and being unmotivated to do housework and to clean and that was just how we lived that that's just how you know my life was I didn't even know anything different so it really didn't bother me or at least I thought it didn't bother me and the reason I know that clutter affects your sort of personality so much is every time we do what we're doing now, which is renovations,

um, sort of everything in my household shifts. It becomes stressful. People become short. I have anxiety. And it's not just about, you know, the fact that we're doing renovations. It's about the fact that everything's a disaster and a mess. We've packed up the basement. Right now we're renovating the girl's room. So they're sleeping on the floor in the living room and sort of all their stuff is spread out. What isn't packed? They've been having to rummage through the boxes to get what they need because the renovations are lasting much longer than we thought. And, you know, there's dust and drywall dust coming upstairs and just everything is sort of everywhere. And the packed up stuff has spilled upstairs as well. We've had to pack up the office. So almost every room in my house is

filled, the surfaces are filled with clutter, dust, dirt, and yeah, we're ostriching. We're resorting to that ostrich in sort of as a result of this. And it's affecting everything. It's affecting which renovations do. But the same result that a renovation causes a person is the same result that clutter and a messy house causes a person. And if you're living in this it's almost so subtle or so normal that you don't realize, but it's when you take a step back or when you do take the time to finally get clean and organized, you can see the huge difference. So having a messy house right now, having renovations, having things everywhere is affecting my marriage. It's affecting my kids and their happiness. It's affecting my stress level. I'm having

trouble sleeping at night. I'm more short. I'm feeling really anxious. And these are all the same feelings that I felt before when I lived in a messy cluttered house. So it's not just about your house's appearance. It's not just about having it look tidy. It's about your emotional and it's your overall health. I'm feeling exhausted all the time. I'm feeling drained of energy and I know that that is a direct result of the way that my environment looks. When your house looks messy, when it's disorganized, when it's sort of just, ugh, overwhelming, you feel overwhelmed on the inside. And even little children can pick up on this. Even my four-year-old is feeling overwhelmed. I can tell he's feeling anxious and overwhelmed and upset about the mess. He can't find the toys that he wants that he likes.

to play with. His sisters are upset and stressed and just the whole house is in turmoil and what we need to do is get back on top of things. So I'm going to share the steps that you need to take and that everybody needs to take when they're feeling overwhelmed and how we can do it really easily without, you know, taking one little bite at a time without having to feel like this huge undertaking of a job is going to overwhelm us. So the first thing you want to do is pick one room. You want to start in one area. And there's two places I really like to start. One is the kitchen. And the other is the master bedroom. And the reason that I pick the master bedroom is because this is the first room you see when you wake up and is the last room you see when you go to bed. If the whole other house is like,

oh my gosh, a disaster, but you wake up to a clean, tidy, organized bedroom, you're going to feel better about your day. If the entire house is clean and organized and pristine, but you wake up and your bedroom has piles of laundry that you need to put away or dirty clothes or just clutter piled in the corner, you're going to feel anxious and stressed. That's the first feeling you're going to feel when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you're going to see. So starting in the master bedroom is always a really good spot and making your master bedroom a priority in your life, just like we make our living room or her kitchen a priority because other people see it, we need to remind ourselves that the master bedroom is our oasis, it's our sanctuary. And even though company doesn't see it, it needs to be a

priority in our life in order to, you know, it's a catalyst for the rest of our day and the rest of our life because we wake up and it sort of sets our tone, our feelings and our emotions for that day. So I do like starting in the master bedroom. Whatever you decide to start in, whether it's the master bedroom or it's the kitchen or it's the living room whatever room is really causing a lot of anxiety that's the one I want you to choose and the first thing you want to do isn't just start picking up and tidying and cleaning it's a quick declutter so you can start with a 21 item toss that's what I usually do I grab a bag or a box for donations and I quickly find 21 either pieces of garbage things that can be donated maybe it's recycling envelopes from bills maybe it's you know mail that we've got that we

didn't want some junk mail, some flyers. Find 21 things in that space that you can immediately, immediately remove. It's things you won't have to put away. It's things you don't have to organize. And it just, it gives you a boost of energy and it makes an immediate impact on the room without you having to break a sweat or make any hard decisions. The second thing you want to do is put things back in their home if you know where those things belong. So take a look around, you know, put the dishes back, put the bread, where the bread belongs, if you're in the kitchen, put your clothes away, if you're in the master bedroom, hang up all the clean clothes, put the dirty clothes in laundry baskets. Pick things up. So you want to do a quick declutter, not the entire house,

just a quick declutter in the room that you're focusing on, and then a quick pickup in the room that you're focusing on. Next, you want to clean. So even if you still have things that don't have a home, you're like, where do I put this? That's okay. Set those things. things in a to-be-determined spot, get a basket or a box, keep it in your room, set those things in it, and you're going to have to find a home for those things later. So put those things to decide and then clean. Dust. Always start with dusting, dusting top, working your way down, and then vacuuming or sweeping and then mopping last if you don't have carpeting. So we're going to give the room a really quick clean. And the last step is to organize something.

in that space. Maybe it's creating a home for the things that you weren't able to find a home for. Maybe it's going inside your cupboards and or your drawers inside your master bedroom and refolding your socks or folding your underwear. And while you're in there purging a couple of things that are like super holy and disgusting and you would never be caught dead in. Like literally, you don't want to die and be caught in those underwear. Get rid of them. So take a few minutes to organize one little spot in that room or, um, you know, a, uh, a, few spots in the closet or one rod in the closet. And that's it. That's really the secret. And hopefully this shouldn't take you more than one hour per room to just do these little things.

Organize one little spot. You know, declutter the 21 item toss, do a quick pickup and do a quick clean, a quick speed clean in that space. And then the next day, move on to a different room. And before you know it, even at the end of a week, even at the end of a couple of weekends, if you're working parent and you're busy and you don't have, you know, a couple of hours during the day to dedicate to a space, choose a weekend and do one or two rooms on a Saturday and then choose to do one or two rooms on the Sunday. It's putting your big girl pants on. It's saying, this is a priority in my life. I have to get it done. I know I'm tired. I know I want time to relax. I know I want to watch television or just reward myself. And the last thing I want to do is bust my butt, get in my house clean. I get it. But listen, busting your butt to get your house back on top, back clean is going to give you more time for relaxing. It's going to make sure that you're just feeling less tired, that you're feeling less overwhelmed, that you're happier, your family's happier, and your overall life is going to be better. I promise you it is.

but it isn't something that we can accomplish in, you know, 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there. And I always say 15 minutes a day keeps the clutter away or all you need to do to get organized is 15 minutes a day. And that is true if you are already living in a clean and organized home. If you are already pretty much on top of things, adding in a 15 minute a day ritual where you clean your home every night before you go to bed, or 15 minutes where you organize, you know, a junk door today or a bathroom closet the next day, that is going to ensure that you stay clean and organized for good and you never get overwhelmed and your house never becomes a disaster. But it isn't going to get you there. It isn't going to take you from super slob to super organized and clean, even if you do your 15 minutes every day.

That's maintenance mode, unfortunately. So we do. We have to be grownups. We have to be grownups. have to parent ourselves, we have to force ourselves to, you know, schedule that time, just like we have, you know, your kids have to do chores before they watch television. We should be parenting ourselves the exact same way. We should be saying this needs to be done. It needs to be done because it's what's good for us, just like we have to eat our vegetables and exercise and brush our teeth every day. We also need to make our home, our living environment, a priority. So that's what I want you to do today. I hope you're taking away from this podcast that, you know, it's not, don't just look at it as a negative thing. Look at it as the positive that you're going to get from this.

Change your mindset about housework and about decluttering and see it really for what it is. And what it is is is a gift to you. It's a gift to you and a gift for your family. Because once you're done, once you've accomplished this, you're going to drastically improve your lifestyle and your happiness and you deserve that you deserve to feel amazing in your own space so thanks so much for listening and i'll see you next time