Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Is Your Home Setting You up for Failure or Success? | Clutterbug Podcast # 218

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Our home is the place where we spend most of our time, and it can either set us up for success or failure. Unfortunately, there are often roadblocks in our home that we don't even realize are holding us back from accomplishing everything we want.  In today's podcast, I am sharing examples of friction and roadblocks in my own home that I have problem-solved to make life easier. Let's discover how to live our best lives by removing friction and roadblocks in our homes.      You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast       Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is your home setting you up for failure in life or success? That's what we're talking about in today's podcast. Hey, clutterbugs, welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. We're talking about something today called friction in your home and how these little micro frictions can actually add up to a huge roadblock when it comes to us just living the life we want to. to live, not only accomplishing things, but being the person we want to be. Our home has such an insane impact on our life. And I've talked a lot about this, but it's more than just your happiness because absolutely clutter and mess. And the state of our home affects our mood. It affects our physical health, but it also can get in the way of progress. It can also get a

in the way of us really achieving the things we want. And we're talking specifically today about friction. Friction in your home is basically anything that gets in the way of the things you want to accomplish. Like any tiny thing that adds friction is one second or even a fraction of a second between you and the task you want to get done. So it's sabotaging your success. I'm going to give you an example. You are like, I want to cook a healthy dinner. I want to stop eating so much takeout and I want to make nutritious healthy dinner. But your counters are filled with like dirty dishes and there's stuff in the way. And all of your meat is frozen. So you haven't taken anything out to defrost. This is like friction, friction, right? It's little obstacles. And they

could be tiny obstacles or they could be big obstacles, but they're getting in the way. So what do you do? you order a pizza or you order McDonald's again. Every little annoyance, every little thing, we're calling that friction and it's stopping you from achieving your goals. And the wonderful thing is we can set up a space that reduces friction so you're more likely to accomplish your goals. So if you have something like, I want to start eating healthier, I want to start cooking more nutritious meals, we can meal plan every Sunday and then look at that meal plan and take the meat out of the freezer to make sure it's defrosted for the whole week. We can make sure we have all those ingredients on hand. We can like spend a little time to take those obstacles out of the way. And then we can do like

a, if one of the obstacles is, I can't see my counter, so I have no place to prep food, we can take 10 minutes every night to just tidy the kitchen, which eliminates that little source of friction. And I think this is what I know. This is why decluttering is so powerful. Because I talk a lot about decluttering is going to make life easier. Decluttering is going to change your life. It's going to give you more time. It's going to make everything just simplified. But what we're really talking about when we say these things is reducing the friction in your home. That's what decluttering does. It's powerful to remove things from your home forever because everything that you have is something now that creates that little bump. It's something you have to look for or something you have to

shove, something you have to move or rummage through a drawer. It's roadblocks between you and the life that you want to live. And some things we have complement our life and some of our items like save us time and make life easier. But I would say the large majority of the stuff that we have in our house is just friction. So an example would be like you're trying to put away laundry, but all the drawers are really full. So you have to kind of shove and push or even trying to find something like matching socks and you're digging through a pile of a bunch of stuff that you're not even using. I know I have friction in my closet every day because I have too many shirts being hung. I need to declutter. So I can't like every day this happens. I'm like, oh, I like this shirt and I pull it out

and it's wrinkly. And it's wrinkly because it can't just like hang straight. It's so compacted with other clothes that it's getting really, really wrinkly. And I'm I'm not a big, I'm like, I don't care, but I hang the things that I do care about and I don't want wrinkly. And I'm way too lazy to steam it or iron it. Like, that's not happening. So I end up putting all these clothes back and like wearing sweatshirts and hoodies and shirts I don't actually like because the clothing I do like is too jammed and squish. And it also means putting away laundry is annoying because I'm always running out of hangers. and then I'm like going to look for hangers in other rooms or I'm like really having to push

clothes to get it back on the rod. And that little annoyance, that little bit of friction means I'm procrastinating, putting away my laundry. The solution here is to eliminate 25% of the clothes in my closet that I don't even like or wear anyways. The reason I haven't done this is because it's hard and because I'm just like, I don't want to. But look at what I'm losing. I'm losing out on so many of the clothes that I actually like and would like to wear and I'm annoyed and I'm procrastinating put-away laundry, which is making me even more annoyed. The act of spending 20 minutes to declutter my closet is going to make every day easier because it's reducing the friction that's making my life harder. Does this make it?

sense. And it's, I mean, there is friction. I want you to think about your home in all the ways that you're annoyed, all the little stupid things that just drive you nuts. And if we can look at those things for what they are, which is friction, and look at it more of like a problem solving solution, I think this is a really cool way to see decluttering in a new light and also just make life. easier. So if every morning you are kind of late or you're rushing to get out the door because you have to hunt for your keys and your wallet and your phone, your purse and you can't find too much in shoes or your kids are like, oh, they, their backpack, where is it? Somewhere upstairs. That's all friction, friction, friction, friction. But we can create solutions to fix that with like hooks at the door

and put everybody's name on it and setting up. alarm in our phone to have like a little nighttime routine where we make sure that the front entranceway is prepped for the next morning. Something we did, and I've talked about this, but honestly, this reduced so much friction. We've a bag now in our entrance way where I just keep a bunch of socks. Because always, Milo would be running out the door to get on the bus and he would realize he was forgetting socks and he'd have to run back up to get socks and he'd miss the bus. And then I would have to now drive him to school. This also would also. happened a lot for Abby. It also just happened for me. I'd forget to put socks on. We keep our shoes

at in the entrance way here in Canada so we don't wear shoes in the house. So forgetting socks was we walk around barefoot all the time. It's no big deal. But when we leave the house, that's where the friction comes in. So a simple thing of keeping like 20 pairs of socks at all times. When I'm putting away laundry, I just like fill this bag at the front door has saved me. hours and hours and hours because I no longer have to drive my kids to school as often because they're not missing the bus as often and we're not late for things as much because we have a couple pairs of socks at the front door. So it doesn't have to be this like huge life changing thing, but it is a different way of looking at our home and also realizing the power of decluttering

and removing things and how this can drastically reduce friction. If you're having trouble focusing in the office, whether you work from home or you work in an actual office, because your desk is really cluttered and you're like, oh, just all over the place and you're forgetting things and you're not getting things done. Lear off your desk. Get rid of things. Create a simple, like, three-sort paper system. I got to do this today.

I had got to do this this week. this is stuff I'm going to maybe have to reference in the future. Like simplify it and see the magic of reduced friction. I think I didn't realize what this was at the time, but creating a household management binder for me was a really big friction reducer in my life because I'm a shover as a ladybug, a shover and a hider. and I don't like seeing a lot of papers. So we had a bunch of my kids' school schedules, or we would have passwords to my kids' logins, we would have medical information. We'd have all these

random papers, or like the painter would give me his business card, and I would just shove it in a drawer. I had little random pieces of paper that weren't important, but not like important to put in a filing cabinet kind of thing important. You know, I don't like filing cabinets to be. begin with, but I'm rambling. The point is, anytime I needed one of these things, I would like hunt for it. And just grabbing a binder and putting all those random things that I reference occasionally in one place and keeping it in my kitchen streamlined my life in this really minute way, but also this huge way. Sometimes it's the simplest things that we can do. that will have the biggest impact. So I wanted to talk about, we're going to talk more about

decluttering in a minute, but I want to give you some real life examples of how reducing friction in your home, adapting your environment, problem solving this friction problem, can really have a huge impact. So a quick example, this is again something that I did. Any time I was like, oh, I should clean the house in the past, I would kind of wander around looking for the cleaner I wanted. Like, do I need a rag, go and get it? Oh, I should probably grab the duster. Like, everything was kind of here, there, and everywhere stored in different places. And just the act of gathering the supplies that I needed was enough to slow me down because I'd have like a thought, like, oh, I should clean. And then adding those few seconds of friction in between me and actually starting the clean

was enough to make me not do it. It takes just a second of a roadblock, a tiny fraction of a second roadblock that can really get you off track. Motivation's a crazy pants thing. It's so fleeting sometimes. We have like a spark and then it's out again. And just creating a cleaning caddy for me, like putting all my cleaning supplies that I like in one place with the rag, with the dust or with the stuff I need and having that cleaning caddy. And then literally if I'm like tomorrow, I have to clean the house, I'm going to leave it on the counter.

So as I walk by and I have that spark like, oh, I should probably clean. I just pick it up. There's no friction. There's no resistance. There's no roadblock. There's no reason not to do that. So creating this cleaning caddy, it has trash bags in it. It has all the things that I would have to stop and run and go get that would be that friction to make me stop having progress and make

me fail. Now, I've eliminated all of that just by adapting my environment with one little thing. Another great example is you want to work out. You want to go to the gym or something, right? You get this gym membership. Seriously, just you getting up in the morning, you're like, I should go to the gym. And then you're like, oh, where's my gym clothes? I should probably, I need headphones. I should probably find my running shoes. Oh my gosh, I probably need a towel and a water bottle. That's enough friction. Like, look at that. Little, little, little decisions, little bits of annoyances or tasks that are in your way of just going out the door and going to the gym. hacking your gym bag having it ready to go having it hey man put your phone and your alarm on top of it then in

the morning you get up you're just like i'm going to the gym it's right there you just pick it up and you leave and your shoes are in it your towel and all the stuff you need eliminating all friction which is making you way more likely to do the thing another great example is you want to declutter That's amazing. You want to declutter. But some of the friction that gets in the way of decluttering is you're like, you start and you're like, oh, I've got to go get a trash bag. Oh, this belongs in the other room. Oh, this here, I got to donate it. Where am I going to put the donations? And you start, you know, now having decision fatigue. And also, where do I start first? And what am I declutter? All of this is friction. All of this is little thoughts and tasks that you have to do.

before you can actually do the task you want to do, which stops you from doing the task you want to do. So this is why I, when I'm decluttering a space, I really like to have a does not belong. I always have the trash bags ready. I used to have a kit because when I was really like in it and decluttering, I had a decluttering kit, which had trash bags, clear bags. I had like a thing, a bag that was for donate. And then I had a does not belong. So I would take. this kit with me and there was no excuses. There was no reason I had to leave that room. Everything I had was right there. I didn't have to gather anything. So anytime I had this little spark of like, I probably should declutter something today. Boom. Zero resistance. Zero friction. And I was

actually getting it done. So you can look at your own life. And you can look at your own home and see if there are little pieces of friction getting in the way between you and the life you want to live and the person you want to be and having the home that you want. And I promise you a big, huge source of friction is excess. A little over a month ago, I've reorganized my 17-year-old daughter, Izzy's closet. It was a hot mess. It's always been a hot mess. Let's be honest. But since we moved here, it was even worse because she didn't have any type of closet organizing system. She had like some random bins and it was just, it was chaotic and a little bit hard for her to put things away. I would go in there and I would like help her and I was able to do it,

but it wasn't mine. And it's a lot easier to clean and organize for other people than it is for yourself. But some people are just even more susceptible to friction. than other people. Some people can like persevere and push through the friction. But for a lot of us, when there's little roadblocks, that's enough to just get us, have us veer right off course. So she could never put her clothes away nicely. Half the time she would just shove them on the bottom of the closet. If she was putting them away, they were all like mixed up random. So she would just take the laundry basket, open a drawer and just dump it in. So underwear mixed with pajamas, mixed with pants, mixed with t-shirts. So then every morning when she wanted to get ready for school,

she couldn't find, she had to like dig, friction, friction, dig and hunt for the clothing that she wanted to wear, which was creating friction. So she was late and missed the bus a lot and was late for school and also just felt frustrated that she never had enough clothing. So just creating a closet organizing system and adding labels and giving a separate drawer. for each thing like this is where underwear go, this is where pajamas go, and labeling it. So she, when she's putting away laundry, we're eliminating the friction of having to remember or stop and think where something goes. The labels are that cue to her brain.

Zero friction. And it's crazy because it's been over a month and it is spotless. Better than that, she has not missed the problem. bus one day. Better than that, she has not said to me, I need new clothes. I have nothing to wear. Not once. And it has, it's just, she's more productive. Like it is, I knew all of this great stuff was going to happen. I mean, I do this for a living. I help people for a living. I helped myself go from crazy, messy to organized. I know the impact that it could have. But to see it so drastic, in my daughter, when it's only one closet, has been nuts. To see that just reducing the friction

of putting away laundry and finding clothes has impacted so many other areas of her life has been remarkable. And it just reinforces the thing that I already knew, which is like, this is magical. This is magical. This is. so much bigger than we think clutter and disorganization and mess. We look at it and think just like visually, maybe it's annoying or it's kind of embarrassing or it makes things slightly harder to find or put away. It's so much more than that because it has this trickle-down effect on every other area of our life. Self-confidence, not being able, not feeling good in the clothes that you wear because you can't find the things that look good on you or you can't find them

quickly enough you're late you my kid was missing the bus all the time which was affecting me because I had to get up earlier than I needed to get up and drive her there and back to school which was adding a half an hour and if multiple of my kids missed the bus which happened a lot I was always late then to start my day and I could never schedule meetings in the morning because I didn't know if people were going to miss the bus so that I'm kind of annoyed. And now it's affecting our relationship, like my relationship with my children. And eliminating that friction has eliminated so much of that. They don't miss the bus. I'm not annoyed. I'm not late in my mornings. I don't have to push back things in my day. My work is not affected. They're feeling more confident leaving the house because they're

proud of themselves for making the bus and their morning has gone smoothly and now they have time to eat breakfast so they have more concentration at school they're more confident at school their grades are improving it's insane how decluttering removing removing these friction obstacles organizing making things easier impacts your life is banana pants bedogadogs crazy And you can do this right now in your own life by just removing friction, removing excess stuff. Getting rid of the clothes. I'm going to declutter my closet. I've been saying this, but I really mean it this time. I'm decluttering some of my clothes so that I'm actually wearing the clothes I love because they're not going to be wrinkled because they're hanging freely without being pressed up against other clothing. I'm going to feel better about myself because I'm wearing clothes that make me feel good and I look better. And all of these are like bright colors I love wearing, which boosts my mood.

It's going to be easier to put clothes away. I'm going to get in that closet and I'm going to have the same powerful impact by just decluttering clothes that I've seen in my 17-year-old daughter. and you can have the exact same effect in your life. Declutter your kitchen. Declutter your entrance way. Get rid of things in the drawers that are stuffed. And every time you want to cook, you got to hunt for the spatula, and you can hardly open the drawer,

you can hardly close the drawer. Or maybe you're forgetting to pay bills. Or you're in your office and you're like, oh, it's a dungeon in here and there's crap everywhere, and you just like turn and walk right out. Which means, you know, your late paying bills, you're paying late fees, it's costing you money. It's affecting your finances now and your self-confidence and your just relationships with maybe your spouse or whoever. Like, it's nuts when we go through

and we actively are like, I am going to methodically remove friction and then step back and see the results. Let the results speak for themselves. See how much better your life is when you have less stuff because stuff is friction and stop. And when we think of it this way, huh? When we think of this is like, okay, what is this really? This isn't the $20 or $40 thing I bought at Walmart that I thought I would love and I don't actually love, but I feel getting rid of. Now we're like, This is a roadblock to the life I want to live. This is a pain in my butt and it's going. This is something that it doesn't have to cost us any money.

We just change the way we think about our stuff. And then once we've decluttered a lot of these roadblocks and a lot of this excess, then we can start looking at how to create solutions to make doing the things we want to do easier. creating a decluttering kit or packing our gym bag or meal planning and taking all the food out of the freezer. Everybody has different roadblocks and different like little frictions in their home that are stopping them from achieving their goals. What are yours? If you can't think of anything off the top of your head, that's okay. Grab a piece of paper and just write down things about your day that annoys you. because I would have said my kids missing the bus was one of the biggest issues that I had that

just like every day I just woke up frustrated and it was costing me time and it was just but I didn't realize that there was a path to changing that. I kept saying to them like set your alarm earlier guys and then Joe and I would set our alarm earlier and then we'd get up and we'd wake them up so they had plenty of time. Like we thought that was the solution. I didn't realize that friction in our home may have been the issue. I didn't think of the environment as being the cause. I thought like our, I don't know, motivation or our whatever. Like I thought we were the cause. I didn't think. I didn't think. that the environment was the cause. Does this make sense? So thinking, like changing your mind to say,

like, what in the environment around me could be causing this effect? And how can I change the environment to change the effect? So write down all the list of things that annoy you. Maybe you don't, I don't know, have family movie nights enough. You don't spend enough quality time together as a family. Maybe your dog, oh, here's an example. My dog used to always get into the garbages in the bathroom and take out like Kleenexes, sometimes feminine hygiene products, like constantly get into the garbages and rip stuff up. And it was so annoying. And it was causing so much friction in my day because I have to pick up all this stuff and I had schooled the dog and I was in a bad mood. And I'm like blah, blah, blah. Just changing all the garbage cans to ones with

lids. I didn't spend a lot on them. I just got garbage cans with lids in the bathroom. Eliminated this. Boop. I'm no longer as frustrated with the dog. I'm no longer adding like a half an hour every day having to pick up all this crap up off the floor. Crazy. Change the environment. Here I'm thinking I got to train the dog not to do this. I just have to adapt the environment so she can no longer do that. And that's an extreme example. But I feel like there are a million in ways that you can change and adapt your environment to help you eliminate the friction that is causing the issues that you are having in your life, whether it's financial issues, whether it's relationship issues, whether it's whatever it is, look at your environment,

your home, your surroundings, because it has a way bigger impact on your life. life than you know. I hope, you guys, that you're feeling a little motivated right now. I hope while you were listening to this, you were really not only thinking about and writing down maybe things that are driving you nuts or things you want to change, but taking action too right now. Open a drawer that just like annoys you a little bit and declutter stuff. In your bathroom, when you're getting ready, Are you like rummaging to find your toothbrush? Nope, nope. We're getting stuff that's getting in the way.

We're getting rid of those extra creams or makeup. Whatever is slowing you down. It's leaving your house forever because it's not just going to impact that one thing of you getting ready. That trickle down effect affects everything. your entire life improves when you remove friction from your environment. I'm rambling. So I love you guys. I'm going to let you go.

Happy decluttering friends. And I'll see you guys next time.