Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - My Hidey Hoarder Hell Hole | Clutterbug Podcast # 10

Episode Date: April 21, 2016

I have a dirty secret...no, I mean, it is legit dirty.  My laundry room is the stuff that nightmares is made of.  Yesterday, a stragner came and took picture of it.... cat poop and all. Yep, I'm still dying.  Also, check out the update on my fatty fat clinic stuff! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I wanted to share with you something that happened yesterday because maybe some of you can relate. We are re-not remorgeting, but we're having our like mortgage renewed, I guess it's called. So every five years or so we have to renew our mortgage. And we decided to go with a new mortgage, like a new bank this year. And that bank needed a home appraisal. So they wanted to come in, I guess, basically to see how much our house was actually worth, see if it was worth what we have on the mortgage, which is crazy pants, because our mortgage really isn't that big at all. But we said, sure, no problem.

And then yesterday I got a call, and it was this really nice lady who said, I'm in the neighborhood and I'm coming to do your home inspection. I'll be there in 15 minutes, which is like, oh, just come on, you guys. it was about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. I had accomplished NADA by then, and I was still in my pajamas, you guys. It's just, it's always those days, right? It's always those days when people come over. And I just thought I'd have more time, and I wasn't even literally thinking about this home inspection.

Thankfully, my house was not a total giant disaster, so I got it tidied pretty quick, and I threw on some clothes, and she came over. didn't feel like I was going to die, but I have had instances where people have come over. And it's always like, you know, it's always the time where you just let things go and you're just like, you don't care that the people who have like never been to your house before will just stop by for an unexpected visit. I remember, I will never forget this years ago. I was running a daycare and I had nine kids and I was tired and I was just totally exhausted. It was the end of the day. The last kid had just gone home and all of a sudden I hear a knock at the door I'm literally like picking up the

garbage and I ran to the front door and I was bringing the garbage bag with me and I opened it and it was Joe's mom and she had brought Joe's grandparents they were in from out of town I didn't know they had never been to our house before and I opened the door I was so like oh hi I dropped the garbage bag, a dirty poopy diaper like rolled out and came undone. It was just like, it was like poop on the floor and I was like, oh my God. And inside I had still, you know, the snack dishes everywhere, toys everywhere from the daycare, laundry that I was in the middle of folding that was all over my couch. And here they are coming for the first time to see our home. It was pretty mortifying. It's right up there with like some of the most mortifying days of my life. And it shouldn't be.

I know I shouldn't care because people aren't coming to look at my house. They're coming to visit me and they're not judging me by my house, but I can't help it. I think it's my mother. I'm going to blame my mother because as a kid growing up, she was fanatic about house cleaning and you know, if somebody was coming over, everything had to be spotless and perfect. And if it wasn't and someone stopped by, she would yell, hit the deck. We lived in the country and we could see, we had a long driveway so we could see people pulling in. And she would make us climb on our, like crawl on our hands and knees and go hide until those people had left. Which is so embarrassing because, I mean, we live so far in the country.

Our cars would be in the driveway. Obviously we're home. But she would make us, she'd hit the deck. And wherever we were, we knew we had to drop to our knees and crawl across the floor and hide until the people left. So I grew up with that being normal. And I'm trying to get back. I'm trying not to be like that because that's crazy ridiculous. But I still feel that feeling of like panic and, you know, dread when somebody is coming

over and the house isn't clean. I don't, I know it's a weird thing, but it really upsets me. I like to have, you know, the house clean, especially because I have a blog, right? I mean, I talk about organizing and cleaning for a living. I feel like people expect that I should have a clean and organized house. There's a lot of pressure on me, man. I'm a slob and my house is not clean and organized all the time. It's like it is. It gets there, but it's not always. We live in it. And I'm slobby. So right now, we still breakfast dish is all over

the counter and the cereal box is out and the milk is in the cereal bowls and they're all over the counter and toys and iPads and coloring from this morning. And I haven't picked it up yet. And I will pick it up, but it might not be till for a little bit. And if somebody was to come by right now, I'd probably want to crawl into a little hole and die. But that's not the point. The point of this podcast, I do have a point. Stick with me here. So I was showing this lady the house and she's taking pictures.

And then she says to me, I need to see her furnace. And our furnace is in the laundry room. And if you guys know me at all, you know that the laundry room is my secret Heidi hole where I'm like, if you ever seen friends with Monica where she had that closet at the end of the hall where she just shoves everything and the rest of the house looks really tidy, but she's like a hoarder of one closet. Pretty much my laundry room. It's not only cluttered and full.

It's disgusting. And here's why I have two cats, two elderly cats. They're both 15 and one of them no longer will use the litter box. She has to use pee pads because I think she's just getting old. She has arthritis. Both of them do. So I don't know exactly. I think it's the one, but I can't say for sure.

One is really bad arthritis and needs to be carried all over the place. And the other one is blind. No longer grooms herself. She's so old. I have to bath her all the time. But I love my cats. Like I just, I don't know when is the time to put them down. They're not suffering.

They seem so happy. They're purring. They love to be cuddled. Anyways, the point is, I have these pee pads all over and she pees and poops on the peepad. because she can't make it to the litter box anymore. So my floor of the laundry room is just littered with pee pads, and every morning I scoop them up or every afternoon, if I'm lazy, and I change them.

So I do change them every day, and I scoop the litter every day, but only once a day. So she wanted to see the furnace, and it was like, da, da, da, da. I have like four loads of dirty laundry all in laundry baskets all over the... It's not a big laundry room on the floor. Pea pads with like pee and poop all over. It smells like a, oh, it smells like a litter box in there. And then there's the junk that I throw in store in there.

I also have this grand idea to turn the laundry room, which is super small, into our workout place because I didn't want the treadmill and the recumbent bike and anything like that in my living room anymore. But I'm not going to use it when it's in the stinky laundry room with the cat feces. So anyways, it's basically. just storing all the stuff that's now never getting used. And I had to bring her in there.

And the look on her face was, ah, she was horrified. And I was horrified, and we just shared this horrified moment. And she's like taking pictures of the furnace. And, oh, I wanted to die a little bit. So the point of this podcast is, we should probably make time for our Heidi Horace. order spaces, whether it's your basement or you have a storage room or it's your garage or it's,

you know, that spot in your home that's just like atrocious, that literally you want to die if a stranger was ever to like come and take pictures of it, probably it shouldn't look like that. So I'm scheduling time to really tackle the laundry room. And yeah, I might have to be that person that schedules, you know, every two weeks, an hour to just go in there and pick up other things besides the cat feces. but you know what I'm saying? I need to get in there and clear it out. I need to bring the treadmill out of there.

I need to just get it together, Cass. Get it together. The rest of the house always looks pretty good for the most part, unless it's before noon, really. Let's be honest. But for the most part, it looks pretty good. But that room is a disaster. And I use it all the time.

I do like one to two loads of laundry a day. So I go in there and it's depressing. And I'm stepping on cat litter, not the poo part, but my cat's like fling, the one that does use the litter box, like flings her litter everywhere. You know what I'm saying? It's just, it's a horror show in there. And I just, I would feel a lot better about myself and my home and just doing laundry if it wasn't such a horror show. So I'm going to schedule some time to tackle that little nasty area every now and then and make it a regular thing that I add to my routine. And you guys, if you, whatever area is just like, you know,

your problem area. We all have a problem area. Let's make some time for it. Let's schedule some time to tackle that. And if you're not feeling the motivation, just pretend that someone's coming over to take pictures of it. Because when strangers come over to take pictures of your hellhole zone, you will feel some motivation. I am still mortified. I mean, I still, my cheeks are like red hot right now, just thinking about how absolutely and utterly embarrassed I was. And if I had just spent, you know, an hour that week, this week, picking up some of the stuff out of there, I wouldn't have felt, or like catching up on the laundry,

doing any little thing to tackle it just a few minutes here and there. I wouldn't have felt that same sense of mortification. So not that you're having a home inspector comes here to take pictures, but just you for you. For me. Let's do it for ourselves. Let's tackle those areas that are, you know, super embarrassing for us. So anyways, that is the podcast today. I just thought I'd share with you guys because I love you so much. And make sure you check up my website, clutterbug.me, www.clutterbug.me. And today is the day, you guys, that I go, if you have been watching any of my videos, you know that during a life update, I talked about this new

diet program that I'm joining and today is the day that I go and get my shakes and I start so no food um starting today for three months not one bite I cannot eat it's a medical program that is prescribed I guess for my doctor or whatever and I don't feel that big I'm one of those people who is totally in denial about my size because for me I was like convinced that they're was no way I would get approved for this program. I'm actually gained weight because I thought I needed to you in order to get into the program. Turns out no, I'm now morbidly obese, according to my BMI, but I don't, I'm in denial. I do not feel that big. I just don't. I just do not feel that big. But truth be told, I am 5'5 and 225 pounds. Sounds like a lot. Doesn't feel like a lot.

Probably looks like a lot. But I don't have any other medical issues or whatever. But anyway, The point, long story short, I join this program. And so you go for counseling and see a nutritionist and a doctor and you get blood work every week and measurements every week. And all you do is drink protein shakes. Four protein shakes a day. It's 800 calories a day. So it's pretty extreme. And I'm sure I'm going to feel like a bag of poo.

I'm not exactly, excuse me, looking forward to it, but I will keep you guys posted. because today, today is it, man. Today is the last day for food for me for three months. Yeah. So I'll keep you guys posted. Anyways, thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you tomorrow. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time.

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