Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Need a home routine that isn’t overwhelming and actually doable? I got you! | Clutterbug Podcast #134

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

In today's podcast, I share my weekly tidying routine that is actually attainable. Your house will stay tidy, clean and organized and it won't take you hours to do it! Really!        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

cleaning the house. I mean, they call it a chore for a reason, right? Sometimes I actually enjoy cleaning the house and I'm like, woo, this is great. It's a gift to myself or I see it as a form of meditation. I'm listening to a great audiobook. And then there are other times that no amount of mental mind lies, no amount of mindfulness can change the fact that it sucks. It just, it's this never-ending, thankless chore, but it has to get done. Because here, here's what I've discovered in my adulthood, in my in my years of wisdom. I hate cleaning the house, but I hate having a messy house more. Hey clutterbugs, welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about sort of my weekly organizing and tidying routine and the steps that I do,

so I have a home that stays relatively tidy all the time. So I no longer have to spend my weekends cleaning because as much as I do not enjoy cleaning my house, house, I hate having a messy house even more. I hate the feeling of shame and guilt and just looking around and the chaos. I hate what it does to me mentally and physically. So I have to do it. But how do I do it and always feel that like feel good feeling? I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet. But we're going to talk today about routines. We're going to talk about how we can kind of put the cleaning and the tidying of the house on autopilot so it never gets to a point where it feels overwhelming because that's when it gets really bad anytime if we come back on vacation we have to

unpack or we just come to a really busy part in our lives and I've sort of neglected things or our families neglected things I always feel really stuck and overwhelmed and it brings me back to the time where my house was very out of control and every day was overwhelming and every day was stressful and I never knew where to start. Unfortunately, even when you get your house organized and decluttered and you have this great tidying routine, it doesn't take long to fall off the wagon back in a pile of stuff and mess and dirty dishes and too much laundry. So we're going to talk today.

We're going to like talk through it and create some motivation to actually want to get back on top. it is never going to stay perfect all the time. People live in your house. It's going to be lived in. But it doesn't have to be chaotic. It doesn't have to feel like shame and guilt. You don't have to walk in your door of your home after a long day and want to turn around and leave or avoid looking at it by like watching the TV or just going to your room and shutting the door and avoiding enjoying your home. because you're home. It should be a place that you're proud of, a place that reflects you and your family. So how do we do that? How do we get there? Well, it starts with your nighttime cleaning routine.

And I hope if you're listening to this podcast and you've been listening to me for a while or if you've watched my YouTube videos, you know the power of a nighttime cleaning routine. When I say cleaning, it's mostly tidying, if I'm being honest, but every night before bed, before I watch a move, or do something that I really want to do to wind down, I have to spend 15 minutes. I set a timer on my stove or I have my Alexa set the timer and just put things back in the kitchen and in the bathroom, the main bathroom. I just put things back. And I've already done the dishes because dishes are non-negotiable. Sometimes there's like extra little dishes that need to be thrown into the dishwasher or if the dishwasher is running, I toss them in the sink. But I put things away that random papers, maybe that have to get put away or my kids have left out little things maybe someone's made a snack

and left out the food the kitchen's like a magnet for random clutter so i spend 15 minutes just putting this away and a few minutes in the bathroom just putting away the toothbrush maybe if it's got left out or the hairbrush or whatever else it is wiping the toothpaste that my kids have spread everywhere where i get my kids to do it we're going to talk more about later about kids responsibility and the fact that i'm sucking at that but that 15 minutes sometimes it doesn't get back to perfect. Sometimes 15 minutes isn't enough, but I stop at 15. And that is the secret. That is what dug me out of the hole. No matter what, I did this 15 minute tidying up every single night really focusing on the kitchen and maybe the living areas, right, if there was things

left out, 15 minutes can move a mountain. And then any time that I added something additional throughout the week, I was that much further ahead. Like I was maintaining this level of good enough tidy. So anytime I would declutter or wash the windows or do something that was like a bigger task, it was just a bonus. Because I no longer had to spend an entire Saturday picking up a week's worth of tidying in the kitchen or the main living areas. Do you know what I'm saying? That 15 minutes really dug me out of my hole. And it did not happen overnight. but it happened. And I feel like if you are listening to this and you're looking around your house and you're like, I feel like I just cleaned it. Why is it so messy again? A 15 minute nighttime routine can save you.

We have this all or nothing mentality sometimes. We've talked about this so many times before in podcast, but we if we're going to clean the house, we're going to do everything. We're going to tidy. We're going to vacuum. We're going to mop. We're going to dust. We're going to clean out the fridge. like we're going to do all or we're going to do nothing. And this is the death of a clean house. This is why people are struggling with a messy space. It's why I struggled with a messy space. I used to only clean on weekends.

And sometimes I'd even skip a week or two, if I'm being honest. And so by the time it was time to actually clean, it was insane. Like I needed literal shovels to pick up the stuff off my floor. kids toys dirty clothes random shoes just stuff everywhere because i wasn't maintaining it and i could i possibly vacuum or dust when you couldn't even see the floor or surfaces and i don't want to go back there and i think i am not a naturally tidy person and the only thing keeping that from happening again is this 15 minute tidy up routine so if you're cleaning right now while you're listening to this i want you to tell you that there is hope. If you're feeling like I'm so, so sick, set a timer in your phone. You're going to do

15 minutes a day. If you're not a night person, if you're exhausted and falling into bed, do it right after dinner. Have that be when you do it, right? So you're not like, oh my God, so tired. But schedule this. Make a date with yourself and force yourself to do it. We can tie this to something really fun. So we can parent ourselves, like I say to my kids, you can't have anybody over until you've cleaned your room. We have to take that same approach to ourselves when it comes to our housework so you don't get your after after dinner snack or you can't watch, I don't know, dancing with the stars. I don't know what you watch. But you're really parenting yourself, putting limits and saying you have to do this before you get that. I want you to really think about

your own routine and the type of person you are because just like organization isn't one size fits all, cleaning your house isn't one size fits all either some people need structure some people are really detailed they thrive in a in a structured environment so they love cleaning routines that are consistent that are the same all the time and that really map it out so you don't have to think about what you need to do every day these are called zone cleaning or task cleaning schedules in a zone cleaning it's broken up by area of your house. So every Monday you would do bedrooms. Tuesday you'd focus on kitchen. Wednesday you would do bathrooms. Task cleaning means every day you would do a different task. So Monday you would vacuum. Tuesday you would dust your house. Wednesday you would deep scrub the

bathrooms. You're sort of getting the idea. For me, I don't know why, but the idea of doing these type of things. Putting myself in a box, having to stick with any type of structured routine seems awful. Like, no thanks. Nope. I'm not going to do it. Which I think is another reason why I just really struggled with the messy house for so long because I rebel against those type of structured routines. So another routine, we don't want to call it a routine, another flexible cleaning idea is to just do 30 minutes a day focusing on whatever you want. wherever you want freedom anywhere that you see dirt you've just scheduled yourself 30 minutes a day and it's and it's speed cleaning whatever you want to focus on but that is on top of your 15 minute

a night cleaning routine maybe you'll do a little decluttering maybe you'll vacuum a bit maybe you'll wipe down surfaces maybe you'll catch up on laundry maybe you'll clean out the fridge maybe you'll wash your windows. I don't know who actually washes windows. There are people out here to do that. But the point is scheduling sort of a loosey-goosey flexy thing, but at least you're doing 30 minutes a day on something is what some people like me need. But let's talk about other stuff that isn't cleaning. Oh man. Let's talk about organizing and how we can fit that into our schedule and how organization can actually make our life easier and save us time. It's a lot. It's It's an investment in our time.

I'd like to thank KiwiCo for sponsoring today's podcast. Every single month, KiwiCo delivers science and art projects that are so fun, so creative. They really get kids to learn while playing at the same time, whether it's creating giant bubbles or experimenting with ice cream. It's a way for kids to explore STEM, science, technology, engineering, art, and math in a seriously fun way. This month, my kids are making their own wind-up flashlights to play within the backyard. And my husband's so excited about it because as an engineer, this is right up his alley. As a parent, it can be really hard to find creative ways to keep your kids busy and challenged, even in the summer. But Kiwi-Co makes it easy.

Make your summer more awesome with Kiwi-Co. Get 30% off your first month, plus free shipping on any crate line with the code clutter at kiwico.com. That's 30% off your first month at k-I-W-I-C-O-com thromo code clutter. So I'd like to say I'm a pretty organized person, but I'm not a naturally organized person. I'm definitely not a person who loves details. I'm not great at planning, but I'm getting better. And I notice that there are a few key things that if I do on a regular basis,

just drastically improve my life. make my day-to-day living in this house easier, which means I have to clean less. I'm way less resentful of my family and I have more time for the things that I actually enjoy doing, like crafting or watching Netflix or just, you know, doing whatever the heck I want. But still having a home that I can be proud of that makes me feel good. So here's some of the things that I do. Dishes in laundry are non-negotiable so they don't count. I know, that kind of sucks. You don't count dishes and laundry as part of your cleaning. No,

you cannot leave dishes and laundry. And also my nighttime tidy up routine, non-negotiable. But let's talk about some things that are a little bit more flexible, but I have them as a routine because they drastically improve my life. And that is Monday meal planning. And I'm not really strict on my meal plan, but because Tuesday morning is garbage night, I always go through my fridge and like toss leftovers and I have my grocery planning list with me. And as I'm going through the fridge and the freezer and the pantry, chucking a bunch of stuff in the trash, I'm like, oh, we're out of strawberries. Oh my gosh, but the celery is about to go bad and we have some carrots. I should make chicken soup. Or we still have that leftover ground beef from taco night.

I should make chili with that. So on Mondays, I'm kind of planning our food based on what we have in the freezer, what we have for leftovers, what vegetables and fruits are about to go bad, so that I'm not being wasteful. And I'm writing down all the things I need to buy. I'm doing a little organization of the fridge. Maybe I'll wipe it out a little bit because it's garbage night anyways. That's like my cue.

So now I stack emptying the trash with going through the pantry. and cleaning out the fridge. So it's not a big deal. It's only an extra maybe 10, 15 minutes and writing down the meals that I want to make with the food that I already have. Planning a grocery list and planning my meals for the following week. I cannot tell you how much this has changed everything about preparing dinner.

It means way, way less wasted food because I'm incorporating the food that's going to go bad that I'm seeing that I'm not forgetting about because I'm cleaning out the fridge. with the next week's meal. Amazing. Listen, it means I no longer have a bunch of frozen meat in the freezer that I've completely forgotten about and I go to the grocery store and I buy more meat because when I buy meat at the grocery store in bulk, it's because it's on sale. But then it goes in the freezer and it used to just go bad or stay there forever and I would completely forget to

take it out and to frost it. But now, because this is part of my Monday routine, I'll pull the frozen meat out and I'll put it in the meat drawer of my fridge knowing that I'm going to incorporate that frozen meat with my next week's meals. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? So it's amazing. And then Tuesday, I grocery shop. So I don't do it on the same day because I'm lazy and that's super overwhelming. But I know what I need in the pantry. I've taken inventory of everything because I've cleaned out the trash, usually a bunch of wrappers in the pantry, kids snacks, all that stuff. I know. I know what I need and I go to the grocery store and I get it and I put it away. Wednesdays, I wash the bedding. It's all about linens. When is the last time you stripped your bed?

Listen, I don't do this enough. But Wednesdays I'm washing somebody's bedding. It's usually Joe and I's maybe one kid or if I forget to do Joe and I's because it's like, listen, I'm just feeling really not motivated. I'm washing everybody's sheets at least once every other week. My kids would never strip their bed and remember to do wash their sheets if it wasn't like a Wednesday thing. We have alarms that go off. It's amazing. It's amazing. We wash all of the bedding on Wednesdays.

We wash all the towels from the bathroom. Just a bucket million tons of laundry on Wednesday of linens. And this is the crazy thing that I've noticed that happened when we wash our bedding more often. there's way less dust in the house because most of the dust in our home is actually skin particles. It's gross. No. But it's true. So we're in our beds for at least eight hours a night like sloth and off dust.

And if we're not changing our sheets, that dust every time we lay in our bed, we flop, we get up. It's going into the air. And it's really adding to an accumulation of dust in our bedrooms, but in our homes too. So washing the sheets, not only does it feel amazing to like crawl into a fresh, clean bed. Your house will smell better, but you will have way less dust. So you won't have to dust as often. So I'm throwing that out there, having one day a week dedicated to linens and bedding is, I know it feels a little structurally, but the benefits are so worth it.

Thursdays. Can we talk about Thursdays? Ugh. Thursday is not fun. But Thursday, I dedicate some time. to just empty out all of my command centers. So I take all the paper out and I deal with it. I pay the bills.

I put anything that I have already paid. I'll put it into my short-term file. If anything's really important document, I'll put it in my long-term file. I just empty out my command center. I deal with all the paperwork. I throw things in the memory bin if I have to, if it's a memory, and I start fresh. I pay all the bills, do all the paper organization. on Thursdays. I hate this day. I really, really hate this day. But if I do not make a date with myself

to do something once a week, that paper will take over my life. It will keep piling and it will keep filling up the baskets and filling up the command center and the action files and I'll never freaking deal with it and I'll never be able to find anything and I'll forget to pay bills because I'm very forgetful. And so it is so important to have one dedicated day. And then that leads me to Friday, which is the day that I'm recording this podcast, which is the whole house reset. Every single person has to get involved. And this is tough. It's tough to get my husband and kids to do things. It really, really is. I mean, you think they'd be used to it at this point, but my kids still complain. They complain about any time they have to clean their room, put away laundry, empty the dishwasher, vacuum the pool.

It's like, why are you surprised? This is a regular thing. but it's such a battle. And it's so annoying and it's annoying with my husband too if I'm being honest because he doesn't like to be told what to do. He doesn't like to be bossed around, but he's also incapable of seeing what needs to be done. I don't know. Can we all nod if we agree? Not all husbands are like this.

Not all spouses. Not all people are like this. But if you're married to someone who does not want you to boss them around, but they are also incapable of seeing what needs to be done and taking initiative to do it themselves without you telling them what to do it's a very frustrating dynamic it's very frustrating so what i do on fridays is we have a checklist that i made that's the whole house reset and i just ask people to put their names beside the things that they want to do that week and then we erase it and we start fresh the next the next friday so people feel almost a little bit empowered yeah they fight over the

easier tasks, but they're deciding what they're doing. I'm not being the boss. I'm not telling them what they need to do, but everybody has to put their name beside something, including my husband. He usually picks the easiest random thing. And yeah, but I don't nag him. It's on the list. And we don't get to do anything fun on the weekend until the whole house reset is done. I'm not going to lie, I do 90% of it. And this involves things like catching up on all the laundry, making sure it's put away, tidying all the surfaces, like mom level tidying the house, tidying up the garage, putting all the shoes back in the baskets, just every surface.

So I have a huge checklist which has a bunch of stuff on it and everybody puts their name besides something. And I don't have to feel so naggy and they don't have to feel like, I'm bossing them around. But to say that it's just everyone's doing it with a smile in their face and nobody is complaining would be a lie. It would be a lie. And I'm complaining too because guess what?

I don't want to do it either. But this means Saturday and Sunday are for family fun. And sometimes we'll have to clean the pool. And sometimes we'll have to weed the garden a little bit. Maybe we'll cut the grass. But basically, we just enjoy our home. we just sit back i don't even do laundry on these days we we eat with paper plates sometimes because guess what it's summer and whatever i don't care it's no work weekends and the only way that we can

make that happen the only way that that can happen is by doing all those other stuff during the week i mean it can get to the point where you're not doing anything on weekends and you're just enjoying yourself but if you haven't done anything during the week either then you're starting Monday, drowning in mess. And you can let that go a week. You can let that go two weeks, but eventually it's going to bite you in the butt and you are going to have a home that you hate. That how could you ever get started? And if you're feeling like that right now, you're feeling like, listen, my home is a mess. It's insane. How could I possibly dig it out? I want you to hear my words. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You do not have to clean it all today. You just,

have to do something. Every day we're going to take one step forward, one step closer. Consistency is the secret. And there are going to be days that you miss. You just get back on that horse. It's not like, oh, well, I didn't do yesterday, so I might as well just give up. It doesn't have to be like that. This is like, this is freedom for you because you don't have to be super structured. You just have to push yourself to do 15 minutes a day at night, your tidy up routine, and then something else during the day, something else. Decluttering something, maybe doing a load of laundry, maybe it's cleaning out your fridge and making note of all the things that you have that you can use for meals the following week

and planning your weekly meals. That's going to save you time and money and just make your life easier. make your fridge a little bit cleaner too. But these are things that we add on, little things. We don't have to scrub our entire house. We don't have to get it completely tidy. We don't have to be this person that does it all at once. That is not the secret.

That is the death of a clean and tidy home because you are going to be so exhausted that you're not going to be able to do anything the next day or the day after that. and here's what happens. It takes no time at all for clutter and mess to creep back in. And so if you're working really hard and catching up, it's going to creep back in to a huge overwhelming mess again before you know it and you're just back on this never-ending cycle. And yeah, it's going to be never-ending, but a little bit every day is the secret so it never feels overwhelming. Now I'm feeling really inspired. I'm going to go finish resetting my house, putting everything back, trying to get it back to a spot where at least, if nothing else,

it's tidy so that this weekend I can just enjoy it. And if you're listening to this podcast, I'm probably going to put it out on Monday. I do want to encourage you maybe to take a look at doing your fridge and a little meal planning the day before your garbage day. If nothing else, you're going to see it's going to make preparing meals, cooking, and it's going to save you money too. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you're doing a little something in your home today,

giving it a hug, giving a little love, and I'll see you guys next time.