Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to get an Automated Home | Clutterbug Podcast # 39

Episode Date: February 6, 2018

How do we achieve and automated home? How do we spend less time cleaning and maintaining our home? How do we find more time for the important things?  You don't get bonus points for doing things the hard way. Here are some of my favourite shortcuts to housework. An automated home is a happy home.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about the automated home. So thanks so much for tuning in. Today we're talking about how to automate your home. And I guess I'm not talking about having everything be a smart home run by technology like some awesome George Jetson style house with robots running around doing our stuff. As awesome as that would be and I would love that so much. What I'm talking about is running your home on autopilot. it means having your home just really take care of itself for the most part. Obviously, you're still going to have to do things. But we're going to stop the idea that you have to spend hours every week scrubbing your home or that housework has to be a big part of your life because it doesn't. It really should be something that's running in the background on autopilot. You're not giving a

second thought to and it's not supposed to be something that's going to take a little. out of time or effort. So how do you get there? How do you achieve an automated home? I'm going to tell you how I got there. And I'm going to tell you first why to me it's so important. I think for a big part of my life, especially I guess when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I thought of the housework part. I saw it as a really like negative thing. I thought it was, I don't know, mundane, obviously, is and it just it felt like it was beneath me maybe maybe it was the feminist in me thinking like there's more to life and and i was constantly feeling every time i was doing things like laundry or cleaning that i was taking my time away from the bigger thing the bigger picture the thing that

would bring me more happiness and and i yeah so i put it off i didn't do it i totally totally rebelled against the the idea of that part of adulting and maybe it's because my mom was a total clean freak and honestly she spent years and hours and years of her life doing ridiculous housework that looking back was was way overkill and I didn't want to do that I didn't want to dedicate my life to cleaning so I rebelled and I had a messy disgusting house and I resisted doing dishes and my dishes piled up and stunk and were gross and you know I had to use paper plates and I remember having to throw out pots and pans because they were so disgusting. And I felt like crap about myself.

I mean, I thought I was, I thought I'd feel crap about myself doing the housework. But I felt even crappier about myself having such a messy cluttered home. And so I went the other way. I started really working hard on it because let's be honest, it feels good to have a clean house. It feels, it feels great to have a house that you wake up in the morning to a really clean space. It feels so much better than it does waking up to a messy space. But I was doing what my mom did and I was doing overkill. I was spending way too much time on it.

And I didn't realize, I guess, that there was a happy medium. There was something in the middle. There was a way to still have the same results, still have and enjoy a clean and clutter-free home without having to do housework all the time. And that's running your home on autopilot. it's having an automatic home. And I've talked about this before, but I'm going to talk about it again, and you guys are probably going to groan. But let's start with step one of having an automatic home.

It's having less stuff, like a lot less stuff. And every time I think that I've decluttered to the point where, you know, I'm like almost at minimalist type territory, I can find garbage bags and garbage bags more of things hidden. And so when I first started this purging, process. My home wasn't like hoardersville, but every closet, every drawer, every under the bed, the storage room was really stuffed full of stuff. And the problem with this is I was spending so much time looking for things. I was spending so much time just having to put things away.

I was constantly having to tidy. And I only have so much brain power, brain storage. And having to know, having to think about and know all of my belongings was overwhelming. I mean, it doesn't sound like it is. It's like a, it's running in the back of your mind, you know, caring for and, and remembering all of your stuff, but it's there. And it was exhausting. It was exhausting having a lot of stuff. Let's be completely honest. So I started just taking out garbage bags and garbage bags.

I mean, dozens of garbage bags of my home, garbage, donations, recycling. I remember we had like mount garbage out front of our house. So many bags of garbage and recycling. when we first started decluttering, it was embarrassing. Like our poor neighbors were like, what is going on with them? We were asked multiple times when we were moving because I was packing up all these things and taking them to donation centers and throwing out all this just garbage that I had been holding onto in my home for so many months.

They must have thought we were absolutely crazy. But here's a thing that it happened. I just, I had to spend less time maintaining my home after. Less stuff means less work. period. So that was pretty eye-opening, even though things I didn't even think of, things inside storage rooms and inside kitchen cabinets I never even opened, getting rid of those things. Then I had more space for the things I did use on a regular basis, which just made my life easier to maintain and my home easier to clean. So I cannot tell you how important it is to purge.

If you're not using it, if you don't love it, it doesn't matter if it costs money, it doesn't matter if it was a gift. It does not matter. You are more important than that item. And I promise you getting rid of it is going to make your life better. It is going to give you more time. It is going to make it mean less work for you. And so get rid of it. Don't even feel bad about it either because you are more important. And this is step one to having an automated home. So step two to having an automated home is doing things on autopilot. So I used to spend my weekends. I mean, I was a working mom. I worked full time and I had kids. And so my weekends were spent like cleaning the house, scrubbing, washing floors, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms. And, you know, even when I tried to talk

myself into like, oh, you know, this is, this is relaxing or you're going to love the results, I still wish I was doing other things. Let's be completely. honestly honest. And I thought that was how you cleaned a house. You spent one day and you cleaned your house from top to bottom. It was so very, very wrong. And it wasn't until I started doing a nightly cleaning routine and had a nightly cleaning routine that, oh my gosh, just the, it was like the curtain was pulled back. And I realized, holy, I do not get bonus points for doing things the hard way. And when it comes to housework, the lazy way is still giving you the best results. And finding shortcuts is the way to go.

And why am I doing things the hard way for no reason? Why am I over-complicating and overworking when I do not need to? So I started doing things like, obviously, the dishes every single day, but wiping down the kitchen counters and wiping down the bathrooms every day. I do a spray and walk-away technique in the shower, so I spray it down with my favorite cleaner, and I leave. And then, like, when I run the shower, it washes it down the drain. and then I never have to scrub, ever. I mean, if people talk about scrubbing their bathrooms,

I can promise you, it's been years. I can't even remember the last time. I scrubbed a bathroom, yet my shower is sparkling all the time. Every single day I spot mop. Every single day, I grab my little, you know, you squeeze a button, it's a rubber made reveal mop, it has the solution built in, it has washable pads, there's lots of different brands that you can get. and I just give a quick, like a five-minute mop really quickly.

Now, I couldn't do this if I was only mopping one day a week. I would have to scrub it. I would have to, you know, get a bucket of hot soapy water or get on my hands and knees and scrub the juice and the stick and the spilled food. I would have to because it had hardened and it had, you know, layers and layers on top of each other that it would need to be scrubbed. But when you do it every day, you never have to. And so, yeah, it only takes five minutes and you're doing it every day and you never have to scrub your floors.

My floors are always clean and I never, ever, ever mop them with a real mop. Here's the other thing. I don't even own a broom. True story. Haven't had a broom in years. I have a Roomba. I have a robot vacuum that runs every single day. And that's another secret.

It's about daily maintenance. And I know people who have emailed me and now I've talked to have said, I've tried a Roomba. I've tried a robot vacuum and it's just not doing as good of a job as a vacuum cleaner. I hear you. It will not do as good of a vacuum cleaner job as a vacuum cleaner if you're treating it like a vacuum cleaner. It's not about doing it once a week. It has to be done every day. It's about making it so their dog hair never collects. It's so you never have a lot of dirt or crumbs or dust on your floors. It does a little bit every day. It's the same as your daily routine. It's the same as doing a load of laundry every day, so you never have to spend one day doing six loads of

laundry. Daily maintenance is the key to an automated home. And it means that you don't ever have to put a lot of effort, a lot of work, and there's no sweating going on in this house. And everything's always staying clean and really, yeah, automated. And if you have, if you're like rolling your eyes because you're like, I've tried the nightly cleaning routine and it's not working for me. I would say to you, have you really, have you written down the five things that you're going to do every single night? Have you put it on your fridge? Have you forced yourself to do those things every single night no matter what, no matter how tired you are, you're going to spend 15 or 20 minutes checking off every single thing on that list no matter what before you go to bed,

before you watch TV, before you do anything that's like fun, you're going to parent yourself, you're going to put on your big girl or boy pants, you're going to check off your list, and have you done that for 30 days in a row? If the answer is no, honestly, you haven't given it a try. And that, if you haven't tried it, then you can't enjoy and see the real benefits that come with having a nighttime cleaning routine. And cleaning your kitchen and cleaning your bathroom every single day before bed means that it's always perpetually clean. It's on autopilot. You're not even giving it a second thought and you're going to end up with an automated home. So laundry every day, tidying every day. I really recommend looking into a robot vacuum. The other thing that comes

with having a robot vacuum is, or vacuuming every day. I mean, if you want to be old school and just quickly bring out the vacuum and do a quick vacuum every day, here's the benefits that come that are more than just having a clean floor. Number one, you have to pick up the clutter off your floor every day. When we first got our rumbas, it would get stuck on kids' toys and clothing on the floor and clutter and that defeats the purpose. It's getting stuck on things. It's eating kids' toys. It's like not running because it's stuck on everything. So we had to run around and pick up everything off the floor because the rumba would eat it. And I mean, this is years ago where you couldn't set your Rumba on a timer. You had to like old school go get it, unplug it and push the button. And so it was always

like a frantic, I'm going to start the Rumba, quick, everybody pick up everything off the floors. And then what happened is Rumba made an automated one that would start on a timer. And so I had to be like, okay, the Rumba's going to run tomorrow. We have to pick up everything off the floors or it's going to eat your toys or it's going to eat things. And let me tell you what happened. We just got in a habit. Our entire family, we just don't leave things on the floor. anymore because we know every day that the room was going to run and it's totally going to eat our crap if we leave it on the floor and our kids my five-year-old has known since he was two if he leaves his superhero on the floor that the room was going to eat it and so yeah we've gotten into this habit

of just picking up after ourselves which is amazing and that's what a robot vacuum does it trains you really to pick up after yourself the other thing that i noticed is that i hardly have to dust so most of of the dust that you find on your surfaces, on your tables, on your, on your dressers, on all of those things are coming from the floor. It's getting stirred up as we walk and it's dirt on the floor that is ending up on our surfaces. So when you're vacuuming your home every day, every single day, you'd hardly have to dust. And I rarely dust. And when I do dust, guess what? I use one of those swiffer dust things that collects the dust. And I like run along and just like swoosh it really quick. I don't move stuff. Listen, you don't get bonus points for doing it the hard way.

You really don't. This is about maintaining a clean and clutter-free home on autopilot, spending the least amount of time on a daily basis possible in order to still have it so we can still feel good about ourselves, so we can still enjoy the benefits that come with the clean house, but we have time to do the real stuff, the important stuff, the things that make us happy, the things that are bigger than us. I mean, how many times have you been putting away laundry and thought, oh my gosh, there's got to be more at a life than this? Or you're scrubbing your housework thinking, I hate this. I've just done it yesterday or the day before, six days ago, why am I doing this again? What's the point? What is the point of doing things over and over again

just to have them have to do them again the next day. I feel you. I hear you. Let's not waste hours of our life doing stuff like this. I mean, it has to get done. It's part of being a grown up. It's part of being an adult. It really is important that our home is, you know, our environment is relaxing and clean and an oasis for us to enjoy because we deserve that. But we certainly don't need to spend a lot of our time or effort doing it. And that's what comes into daily maintenance, automating it, doing the bare minimum every single day that you have to do to really be able to enjoy the benefits and enjoy a clean and clutter-free home

without the resentment and without having to take away time from what really matters in life. So automate a home today. Start with purging. That's step one. Having less stuff means less work, period. Get rid of anything. and everything that you're not using all of the time and that you don't love. It's got to go. Doesn't matter if it was expensive. Doesn't matter if it was a gift. Does not matter. You deserve it.

You're worth more than that stuff. Get it out of your home. Make yourself a nighttime cleaning routine. Start doing it every single day. Do the spray and walk away in your bathroom. Stop scrubbing. Stop scrubbing. You don't need to scrub. Do a quick wipe and a swoosh and move on, my friends. but do it every single day so it never builds up and it never has to be scrubbed. And last but not least, consider some automated technology that can help make your life easier. We already have a washing machine. We already have a dishwasher. We already, you know, could you imagine your life without a washing machine? Honestly, like scrubbing your clothes on a rock or something. I don't know what they used to do.

Using a washboard and a bathtub, that seems insane to me. I feel the same way about a vacuum cleaner. I feel the same. same way I could not imagine my life without a robot vacuum cleaner. I couldn't imagine my life without a dishwasher. Having these things that make our life easier so we can spend our time doing things that are more important, to me they're priceless. And so get a jar and put $10 a week in it or look for a second hand on Craigslist or Kijiji if you live in Canada. Make that a priority in your life because your time is worth more. your time is worth more than that so put it on your wish list um and and really consider that just a staple

of a home because to me it really is and once you've tried it and used it properly like i said every day picking up everything off your floor and running it every day you're really going to see the benefits too i promise you well so thank you guys so much for listening and good luck as you strive towards an automated home. It is worth it. I promise you it is. As I'm doing this podcast upstairs, I have a Rumba cleaning. I have the bath. I have a little mop, robot mops called Bravas. They're cleaning my bathroom floors and everything looks really sparkly and clean. And I have spent no time at all this morning. I've made my bed and I've loaded the dishwasher and that's it. That's all it took. And that's all it usually takes. And I want you to enjoy that same freedom that comes with an

automated home. You deserve it. Thanks so much. And I'll see you next time.