Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Routines, to-dos and planners...oh my! | Clutterbug Podcast # 13

Episode Date: January 31, 2017

Pre-order a copy of my new book: http://clutterbug.me/book Despite my organized home, I'm a total disaster.  I'm constantly late, always behind on my work and I forget important dates nad event all the time.  I need to PLAN my life better. Tranditional planners just never worked for me.  I'd forget to use them or forget where I put them.  Even when I did use them, I would write my lists and goals for the day...and then cherry pick the good stuff.  My new planning system is so "me".  It fits my crazy, ADHD style and I think you are going to love it too!  Join me as I share with some some quick tips to getting your home and your life under control! Download my free printables at http://clutterbug.me/printables   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by me and my brand new book called real life organizing available for pre-order now for just $11 if you are in the U.S. So that is a steal. Jump on that price before it goes up. And this book is filled with my favorite best tips and tricks to transform your home, whether you're drowning in clutter or your already a neat freak just looking for some more inspiration. So hey you guys, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk about getting organized, like getting your house and your life organized when you are a hot mess. And I am most definitely just a hot mess mom. I, I struggle to get the basic adulting things done. And I'm not just talking about cleaning my house.

I'm talking about, you know, getting my kids to school on time, making sure they don't miss the bus, getting, making sure dinner's made nice and early because we have so many kids' activities going on in the evenings that we have to eat by 4 o'clock. They get off the bus at 4.30 and I struggle to get, you know, myself organized enough to get all that stuff done. I'm just, I know what's coming, but I struggle to get it done. And I've tried basically every planner known to man. They just don't work for me for a couple of reasons is I forget where I put them. Or I just forget. I literally forget to use them.

And I think using a planner and things like that is the same way, is the same techniques, I guess, that you use when getting organized. Some people just tend to be naturally organized people. They don't struggle with that. But if you're like me and you struggle to keep your house organized, to keep it clean and you struggle to plan, I think it all goes hand in hand with practice. I think the secret to life, I guess, is practice makes perfect. And that's how I really started with cleaning my house is every single day I forced myself to do a 15 minute morning and a 15 minute nightly cleaning routine.

Whether I wanted to or not, I put my big girl pants on and I made myself do it. and slowly it became a habit and slowly it just became something that was second nature like brushing my teeth or having a shower or putting on pants in the morning though I sometimes don't still put on pants in the morning but you're getting the idea and I think planning has to be the same way I think using a planner has to be the exact same way so I have this super great new planner system which I'm going to share with you guys in the future and give to as a free download but I wanted to just talk about it quickly and why it's working for me If I read a to-do list, what I do naturally is I don't always eat my frog.

And what eat that frog means is you choose the one task that's like the worst and you do that first. But the problem with me is self-discipline. So when I make my planner list, my to-do list of things I need to accomplish in that day, I'll just randomly go down it and I'll select the one that I want to do first instead of the one that I need to do. So I have this new planner system that has my to-do list on it, but above that it has an action now box where I can write the things that I need to do first, like the most important things

in a completely separate box. And just that little technique of separating those is making the world of difference. So I had to share it with you guys. So I've said in my phone that every morning, I have to do, plan my day. I have to sit for 10 minutes and plan my day. You don't need to buy a fancy planner. You don't even need the printable that I'm using. You just can use a regular piece of paper or do it on your computer. But what I'm going to suggest that you do, instead of making one full to do do list of all the things you need to do, I'm going to really recommend that you separate those into categories. So you put chores in one little box or one little section, and then in another section you put the to-do so the things you want to do you hope to do

but then to make sure that you make an action a must-do little box or little section and those are the things you're going to focus on first and just having it separate having it like in its own spot and it says action or do now or don't freaking procrastinate this lady so you're like circled maybe with high letters I don't know how you're going to do it but but that simple fact of sort of segregating, I guess, your to-do list, for me anyways, has been a huge, huge, huge, just change in the way that I plan my day, in the way that I procrastinate and don't procrastinate, and the way that I'm getting more done. So I wanted to share that with you. I'm actually going to have the thumbnail of this be the way that I'm using my planner. And again,

I'm going to have a free principle for you guys coming in the future. But you can do this with a piece of paper. You can do this with a regular planner that you have. When you're putting your to-do list, don't put, you know, the appointments you have in that day together with the fact that you want to make your bed or the fact that you want to mop the floors, have a section for chores, have a section for the errands that need to be run, have a section for like action now or like do this no matter what, and then have a section for your other to-dos. The thing about the other to-dos are there are probably things that you can put off till tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day or next week even, and it's not going to be the end of the world.

So we shouldn't put those in our to-do list with the things that are like, you must do this or the world's going to end or the sky's going to fall. Those things need to be put in a separate little box. So I'm loving this, really, really loving this, and I think you guys should give it a try. I've got a lot going on right now. And when things are hectic here for me, in the past, what I tended to do was ostrich. I call it ostrich language. You stick your head in the sand, you know, and try to just hope it all figures itself out or goes away. And obviously, that doesn't work. And it always makes the problems

bigger. And it's not so much that I'm having problems. It's just that I have a lot that I need to accomplish. I'm working on a organizing course to offer for you guys. I have to do the final edit of my book before it goes to the printer, which is due in a week. And the photos are not even done yet. We're leaving for Disney in a couple of weeks. I haven't even booked our Disney tickets yet or the hotels for our trip. I just have so much going on. But the fun stuff for me is making the videos and vlogging and doing the editing and working on printables that aren't important right now, but I enjoy that.

So I've been doing those things instead of the things I really should be doing. So having a new planner, which of course is a printable that I worked on. But listen, you guys get the idea. Having it separated like this is really forcing me to get the things I need to do and get those done. So I'd love to hear if you could put in the comments, you know, how you help motivate yourself, I guess, and get more done in a day. That would be great. I also wanted to share with you quickly my morning and nightly cleaning routine because I get asked this question all the time. and having those two routines was basically the catalyst from me going from complete slob to at least

maintaining a pretty clean house to the point where I mean it's not perfect but if someone stopped by today like my mother if my mother stop by without calling first I'd be completely fine with it and most of you are like well yeah she's your mother but no listen my mother is a clean freak my mother like white gloves my house when she comes she takes cleaning very seriously. And so it's intimidating when she comes over. But we're at the point, you know, because I do a little bit of cleaning every night and every single morning, it never gets really gross. Thank goodness for that. So let me share with you what I do every day. And if you are a working family, if you both work full time, you know what? You're busy, you guys. You're

super women and super men. Just don't worry about the morning one. Honestly. If you don't make your bed in the morning because you have to leave for 7 o'clock to go to work, who cares? It does not make a difference. Don't feel guilty about it. You have enough to do in your day. So just do the nightly, but I'm going to share with you my morning and my nightly. Cleaning routine now.

So every single morning, I make my bed. I do this because it inspires me to work for the rest of the day. I don't know if that makes sense. being a stay-at-home mom, not having, I'm not even a stay-at-home mom anymore, my kids are in school, but being a housewife, ugh, that makes me, ugh, staying, working from home, let's just go there, working from home, you have to self-motivate. I can't get up the morning, if I wanted to, I could get up in the morning, and I could watch six hours of Netflix. I could, you know, go for a casual walk outside, and then go out for lunch, go shopping. I could do whatever I wanted to do.

And so that one simple act of forcing myself to make the bed sort of puts me in the mind frame of productivity. It puts me in the mood to get other things done. And every time I walk back into that room and, you know, to get changed or to go to the washroom, whatever, to grab something I need, I'm feeling that I've already accomplished something today. I've taken a second to make that bed and have already accomplished something. And that feels good and it makes me want to keep going. So that is why I spend under five minutes every morning making my bed. The next thing I do is I make sure that I unload the dishwasher from the night before and reload it with all the breakfast dishes

because nothing's worse than having a messy kitchen. And, you know, it only takes one meal with a family of five for your kitchen to look like a bomb on off. So I do that. I take a few minutes to empty the dishwasher and then reload it and wipe down the counters. And then I do a quick, quick, I mean really quick. wipe down up the counters and the bathroom counters and usually just the toilet like a quick wipe because i have little kids and my low is four and his aim is just the worst and they brush their teeth in the morning so they get toothpaste all over the bathroom it's just nice to it literally

takes a minute but it just feels nice to sort of have that ready for the day and then i spend the last sort of five minutes of my morning cleaning routine um planning my day so i take out my planning sheet and I write all the things I want to accomplish, all the things I have to accomplish, and all the things that would be sort of nice to accomplish. And a goal, a main goal for that day, and, of course, the chores or errands I need to run. So that's sort of my morning routine. My nightly routine involves basically the exact same thing on repeat, except without making the bed.

But it is loading the dishwasher, and it is cleaning up the kitchen, of course, wiping down the bathrooms again after the kids have gone to bed because they're like toothpaste monsters in there and just smile with his fire hose can't aim in the toilet. This is a nightmare. That's okay. So I can quickly clean the bathrooms. And instead of doing my bed, I put away one load of laundry. So some time throughout the day I will wash and dry a load of laundry. And then at night, that's the time that I'll put that one load away. So I do a load of laundry every single day. So again, my nightly routine consists of laundry, putting away a load of laundry, cleaning the kitchen, a quick bathroom wipe, and that's generally it. I do spot mop almost every night, but that isn't a necessity

to do. That isn't something that you have to do, but it's something that I do just so I never have to do a big, deep down mop. And that's sort of it, you guys. That's all I do on a general day. that's my half to do. There are some days where I'll do, you know, vacuum the house during the day one time, or I'll dust the entire house one day. But for the most part, you know, the thing that really keeps it perpetually tidy are those two morning and nightly cleaning routines. So I wanted to share with you.

Thank you so much for listening. And stay tuned for lots more fun stuff I have coming up, including a full seven-hour organizing course that I'm offering through teachable.com. I'm loving the way it's coming together so far. It's really, really educational, but I'm trying to make it funny at the same time. And it's definitely geared to people who want to become an organizing expert and even those who want to become a professional organizer. So I offer a ton of tips that helped me organize clients' homes and earn a living as a professional organizer. So that course is coming up. So stay tuned for that. And of course, my book is available for presale. And I'm going to have a pre-sale gift available for you guys, which is this amazing new planner I'm talking about, and lots of different planning free printables that I'm going to email to you if you pre-order the book. So that's coming up too. So stay tuned for that. And thank you guys again so much. And I'll see you next time.