Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The One Trick to Transform Your Home and Life Instantly! | Clutterbug Podcast # 259

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Ready for big changes in 2025? This year, it's all about stepping up and taking control. In this episode, I share how to shift from feeling stuck to embracing a mindset of action and possibility. We��ll explore simple yet powerful ways to reprogram your brain with positive mantras, helping you believe in yourself and make lasting change. I’ll also share assertive sayings you can repeat daily to stay motivated and focused on your goals. Let’s start now—because the future you want begins today.   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 #mondaymotivation #MindsetShift #2025Goals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I'm bringing a little tough love. And this is more like a tough love letter to myself. Hopefully you get something from it, but I need a kick in the pants and I'm giving it to myself right now. Hey, clutterbugs, welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to get tough and real, not just about cleaning and organizing the house, but about your life and my life in general. And look at the big picture and hopefully make a big change on the things we want to in 2025. Nope, not hopefully. We are going to make a big change in 2025. So while you're listening to this, please, please, please take action on something today. Do those dishes, put away the laundry, vacuum, mop, dust, catch up or keep up so that you can feel

really proud of yourself at the end of this podcast. It's going to be short and sweet and to the point, but I want to make a declaration. Is that the word? A declaration? Sure, to you and to myself because I need to make a change in 2025. So looking back at the end of this year, you know, I remember sitting on New Year's Eve. I had a bunch of friends over. It was a great time. But when that ball dropped in, we were like, woo, 2025. I felt this twinge of regret. Because when I look back on last year, 24, I think this is the first year in a really long time that I'm not proud of the growth that I made last year. I can't think of anything other than, yes, I became a firefighter. That was amazing. But all the other aspects of my life, there was no improvement. If anything,

there were things that I didn't do or have like gone worse, I've kind of slid back. And I was trying to put my finger on the why and what changed because I had so many years of real personal growth and pride. And then I had like two fumbles. And I'm looking like what happened? What was really different in in 2023 and 2024 to make me feel like, oh, that was 365 days that I didn't make the most of? and what I know happened was I changed the way I talked to myself.

So for the past years before 2023 and 2024, I made it a priority to read a lot of self-help books and write in my gratitude journal and really do the work to change the way I talk to myself, to change the narrative in my head. because it's very easy for me to fall into this victim mentality of poor me. Things are out of my control or I just don't have the self-discipline. I'm just not that type of person. I'm not smart enough. I'm not strong enough.

I'm not disciplined enough to do and be all the things that I want to be. And then I had a couple of years of changing the narrative that fake it to you make it, talking to myself differently, repeating mantras that I didn't really necessarily believe in, but saying it over and over. And the results were amazing growth. Accomplishing things that I was, like, shocked I was accomplishing and so proud of myself. In 2023, I kind of got a kick in the nuts. My stepdad was diagnosed with stage four cancer. It was a really rough year. We ended up losing him. It was tough. I had my own medical issues. My daughter was struggling with her mental health. There was a lot of

circumstances outside of my control that kind of had me falling into just getting through the day mode. Right? Just the day to day falling back into, I'm just trying to make it here. I'm just trying to like not have a meltdown. And then 2024, so much opportunity, so much positivity. But I wasn't in the practice of catching those negative victim thoughts and actually changing the way I talk to myself and doing the work. And so I'm going to give you some examples so that you know what I'm talking about. So I'm not just like rambling here. But I want you to think about your own life too and how you talk to yourself because

it is important. In fact, I think it's the most important way that we can change not only our mood, but our actual life. Because our thoughts control everything. We know this. I mean, we know this. But it's really easy to kind of point the fingers and blame luck. Oh, I'm just having some bad luck or other people. They don't help me or they're so mean or they, whatever.

or just overall circumstances in general, instead of really looking at the truth, which is, I have the life that I'm willing to put up with. I have the body I'm willing to put up with. I have the health I'm willing to put up with. I have the relationships I'm willing to put up with. I have the financial situation. I'm willing to put up with. I have the house. I'm willing to put up with. And every time we make. excuses of, well, this is my big thing. I just don't like working out and I'm not really good at it and I don't have the self-discipline and I just really am addicted to junk food and candy and chocolate and even if I do well, it's not going to make that big a difference and it takes forever to lose weight

or to build muscle. I don't really like eating protein. All of these excuses that I tell myself and I justify of why is just reinforcing my thought. pattern of that I'm never going to do this. I am literally talking myself into why it's okay that I am where I am even though I know I deserve better, even though I know that I could be doing better and I want to be doing better. The way I talk to myself is the reason that I'm struggling and that's all there is to it. And am I willing to keep living and talking to myself this way? or am I going to be brave enough to say enough is enough? I am not willing to be this person anymore. And the way we can change the way we talk to herself is something called assertive talking.

And I'm not good at this because I'm like not an assertive person. And I also get kind of the ick about being braggy or super hyper confident. You can probably tell if you've been listening to me for a long time. I do a lot of like self-depreciating humor. I'm always like kind of crapping on myself. I just do, I've always done that. Like, yeah, I don't know how I did this being so stupid. Or I am a hot mess sandwich. I'm a disaster, but I still manage to have a clean house. I always talk down to myself. Anytime I want to even give myself a compliment, I constantly have to like do a little self depreciation along with it. I don't know why I do this, but when it's constant self-depreciation, I can see that I'm living up to the life that I'm telling myself that I am.

How could I not be a hot mess when every day I tell myself I'm a hot mess? You are what you tell yourself, you are. You are what you believe. And that's all there is to it. And there was a long time where I was really actively tricking my stupid baby brain and saying things that I didn't really mean like, I'm going to write a book. I'm an author. I write every day. And I wrote every day and I finished a book. There was a time in my life where I was losing a ton of weight and I would say every day to myself, whether I believed it or not, I eat more protein than anything else. I eat protein with every meal.

I am a strong person. I am a healthy person. And somewhere along the way, I went back to kind of of like, I want to be a healthy person. It's a very different. I want to eat more protein is not the same as I eat more protein. Do you see the difference there? And it matters in your home too. It does. And when I first started my journey from Slob to someone who has their house under control, I had, this is like a huge part of it. I had to practice talking to myself differently and saying things like, deserve a clean house. I will not settle for a messy home. I will not go to bed with a messy kitchen because I will not allow myself to wake up to mess. I deserve better. I will wake up to a clean kitchen every day and stop. I deserve it. There's no negotiation here. It is a hard

boundary for me. I deserve this. I deserve my bedroom to feel like a sanctuary. I deserve it to be beautiful and I deserve it to be tidy and organized, period. And I feel this with like a fierceness inside of me because I've repeated it so many times that I not only truly believe it, but I like embody it. If I see that the kitchen is like 10 o'clock at night and there's like dishes everywhere, I feel like an empowerment inside of me. I feel a motivation and an excitement to fix that because there's no way I'm doing that to tomorrow me.

With, with like, with like warriorness, I fight for my home. And the result of that is I want to do it. I enjoy doing it. And I get to enjoy the benefits. And I'm proud of myself. And it doesn't feel like work to do it. It feels like self-love. And I want that for the other areas of my life.

where I'm struggling and I know the difference is how I talk to myself, but let's get real. It is hard to realize the way you're talking to yourself, to catch yourself in the moment because we are in the habit of talking to ourselves in these negative ways and it's really hard to change it. It is. It's hard. It takes practice. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about how we can catch those thoughts when we're having them, how we can change the narrative and how we can create new habits talking to ourselves differently, specifically about an area of our life that we want to change, how we can use assertive voices to change everything about our lives. Before I give you some examples of assertive things that you can say

to yourself and how we can trick our brain, I do want to talk about your word for the year. I know you've heard this a lot. I mean, we all, I've hear this all the time for years and years. People talk about instead of a New Year's resolution or these big goals. You know, I have a North Star goal, which I love. But I also do like the idea of thinking about a word for the year. And I was talking with Mara, who works here at Clutterbug. And she said that her word for the year is adventure. And I immediately thought, does that mean you're going on more trips? And she said, no. You can find adventure in every day. You can have more adventure in how you do your hair, how you dress, maybe choosing a restaurant that you normally would never go to. We're going to a coffee shop you have never been to. You can find adventure in anything, just pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone a little bit.

And I thought that that was so beautiful. I thought that that was such a great word. And I thought about my own life, what word would I want for myself? And I instantly knew it was joy. Not like, like I want to be happy, joyful, but I do want to add more joy in everything that I do. Because I'm stuck in the kind of like the life rut, you know, kids and they're running to hockey and activities and school and getting groceries and I work full time and now I have a part time job on top of that. and I'm going to trainings and I'm doing this like Monday. And every day is just like wash and repeat.

Not a lot of time for fun. Not a lot of time for really anything in there. And so I felt like the drudgery of life this past entire year, really. I felt the drudgery of life. And it isn't that it's bad. It just didn't feel fun. but I know that I can make anything fun. And so joy is my word this year.

And I want to show you and talk about some ways that I've been practicing this that I'm excited about and I'm excited to share. So if you watch my last video, you know about my bathrobe. I don't talk about this robe a lot because I do find it a little embarrassing. But you know what? We're just laying it out here. I have this ridiculous robe that I got from Amazon. It's called like a widower's robe or a honeymoon robe. It's satin.

It's ridiculously big, impractical. I trip on it constantly. It has feathers everywhere. The sleeves literally drape to the floor. It drags on the floor. It is pink, bubble gum pink. And it gets feathers all over my house. You can't really wash it because you can't put it in the washing machine.

So if I do get something on it, I like just hand wash that little section. It probably stinks. Okay? I spray it with perfume. We're moving on. Some febrize when it's really rank is what's going to fix it. The point of this is I have a bath at night and I put on this ridiculous robe and I feel fabulous. And I go around and I do the dishes and I do the tidy.

I've scooped the cat litter in it. I just walk around tidying. Sometimes I just walk around and twirl. and I feel I'm doing like the mundane drudgery after bed routine that I always do, but I'm wearing the most absurd robe and singing and it makes it fun. It makes it feel joyful. So I've been trying to think of little ways that I can add joy into lots of things like singing while I work or listening to fun upbeat music while I'm doing something or just. or just I bought a bunch of limes. I know this sounds so stupid, but I want to drink more water. So I bought limes and these little umbrellas, toothpicks,

and I put those in with my glasses where I use a glass of water. And now I'm just putting limes in a little umbrella in my water. And it feels like, ooh, it feels a little special. It adds a little joy to those daily mundane things. how can you pick a word and how can you add that word into your everyday life, whether it is adventure, whether it's joy, whether it's like fierceness, whether I don't know what your word is. Confidence. What is your word for 2025?

And what are little things that you can do to incorporate those into your day? So I have made it my mission. I'm usually like rushing every morning. I have made it my mission to have a coffee in the morning before I put on makeup or get dressed or anything else. I'll go down. It's not a real coffee because I don't drink coffee because I'm a toddler. I drink like a chai latte. But it will sit at the back table and I will look at the window and I will just like look at the snow and the birds and whatever. And this morning I was sitting there drinking my tea. I was running a little bit late, but I was still like, no, babes, you are going to take a moment and enjoy this and feel the joy of sitting and relaxing in the morning and looking out the window and a whole herd of deer were in the backyard just like foraging a whole like a whole bunch whole bunch of deer and I just watched them and I felt so joyful and it was maybe you know six minutes of my day but I started it out feeling happy and it's a small tiny thing that I can do. And it like definitely, I got the payback of seeing these beautiful, majestic deer in the snow. Right? With the sun coming up over the trees. It was glorious. It was an

incredible morning. And whether I'm feeding the birds and watching them in the bird feeder, or I'm taking my dog for a walk in the backyard, I'm trying to find these little moments of joy in the everyday drudgery. And what's happening is I am feeling, more joyful. And I've brought back my routine of writing in my gratitude journal at the end of the day, and I've got this, like, hypnotizing app to help me sleep. And it's like hypnotizing to like say these positive affirmations. And I'm feeling good and I'm feeling excited. And I know that 2025 is going to be an incredible year for me. And I know I'm going to have big growth. And that is where assertive talking comes in.

So I want you to think of your word. And I also want you to think of how your life you wanted to change. Which areas of your life do you want to change? Where are you no longer willing to put up with? What are you no longer willing to put up with? Because life isn't going to stop for pauses and procrastination. Life's just, it's going to keep on going. It doesn't matter if you're confused or you don't know where to start or you're overwhelmed or you're just like maybe you're just not 100% sure.

It's continuing right on without you. Life is just, it's going to keep on going, unfortunately. So you are going to change it. You are no longer willing to put up with the stuff that's making you unhappy. So what is it? Is it your health? Is it your home? Is it your relationship?

is it your finances? Enough is enough. We're being assertive in the way that we talk to ourselves. So pick one thing. If you're listening to Clutterbug, maybe it's your home. You are no longer willing to put up with a messy kitchen and stop. Never again. It can be messy while you're doing the dishes. You are not going to bed with a messy kitchen. You deserve to go to bed and to wake up every day to a clean kitchen and I want you to say that. And if we're really talking about changing our mindset and changing our life, we have to go a step further than that and we have to say, I am a person who never has a messy kitchen. I am a person who never, not I am a person who will never have a messy kitchen.

I am a person who is going to clean my kitchen. I am a person who will never have a messy kitchen. I am a person who does my laundry every day. I am a person who does not settle for piles of laundry. And why this is so empowering is because this is a boundary that isn't just that you have to put on yourself. Your children must put their laundry away every day. And your husband must put his laundry in the laundry hamper and do it as well. You hard boundary one at a time.

We can't do the entire everything. We can't, we can't, we can't, we can't move a mountain in a day. But we can pick one thing at a time. And we can fiercely with an assertive voice say enough is enough. And this is the attitude that we have to remind ourselves of on a daily basis because we will forget to remember. We'll forget to remember all throughout the day. And we'll go back to like, oh, well, I'm tired. It's really bad.

And maybe I'll do it tomorrow. and oh gosh maybe I just don't feel like it and you know my back hurts a little bit and blah blah blah what the heck are you doing you are a fierce warrior and you will never wake up to a messy kitchen because you deserve better every day get up come on you deserve this this is you owning this and then we remind ourselves of this every day so how we can do this with this daily reminders because this is the biggest thing. We feel motivated in a second. You might feel motivated right now. You might feel fierce and assertive in this moment. But two hours from now, we might be right back to our habit thoughts of whatever we normally think. The only way we're going to have a long-term

change is if we change our long-term, like our thoughts long-term, which takes practice. But how do we remember to practice? So here's some things we can do. We can grab a a dry erase market, we can write it on our bathroom mirror, whatever our empowering thing is. We can have sticky notes and we can stick those around. We can set reminders in our phone that go off with that mantra. So when the alarm goes off, we pick it up. It's like our mantra and we commit to just saying it out loud. What's really beautiful about this is like all we have to do is say something. All we have to do is like take a few microseconds and say, words. We don't have to commit to doing the actions. The actions will follow. We only have to change

the way we talk to ourselves. And that feels doable and that feels easy. We don't have to look at a huge cluttered home and be like, when am I going to have the time and what? Stop. Negative. Done. I am good at decluttering. I declutter every day. I am putting myself first. I I am more important. I deserve a clutter-free home. That's the only thing we have to focus on changing right now is how we talk to ourselves. And this is definitely easier said than done, but we can practice. So I recently have gained 30 pounds.

And here's where it's coming. Here's the thing I do, right? I've been very stressed. I've been really busy. I know my cortisol is higher. I'm having a little bit of like Hashimoto's flare up. so my autoimmune disease, so my thyroid, excuse, excuse, excuse of why. Reality is, I don't work out every day.

I eat junk food constantly and I don't take my health seriously at all. I don't. I'm not fierce about it. I'm not aggressive about the way I talk to myself. I do not wake up every day and say, I am a person who eats healthy because I love myself and I love my body and I am not putting junk into it. I am not a person who wakes up every day and says I cannot wait to strengthen my body. I am strong and I am powerful and I am fit.

And I can't wait to gift myself that. I don't talk to myself like that. I talk to myself like I hate working out and I don't want to get sweaty and I don't have time and ooh, that feels horrible. We don't have to feel it to say it. We say it and then we feel it. That's the magic. So I am going to write down my new mantra and I already just saying it to you right now,

I feel like I want to go run on that treadmill. I feel it. I feel excited about it. I'm like, yeah, I am a person who is fit and healthy. I lost over 100 pounds. I am amazing. I can do this. I can lose the 30 pounds.

I will lose the 30 pounds. I am. I am losing the 30 pounds. I am a person who works out daily. I am a fit person. And you can do the same thing. We're picking one because we can't have a million, a million mantras to change,

a million thought patterns. We're picking one thing that we really want to change and we're changing the narrative how we talk to ourselves. So friends, You've got some homework, and so do I. And while you're listening to this, I hope you're like getting those dishes and get in that kitchen, putting away and decluttering. Maybe you're filling a trash bag because you're like, I am not putting up with random clutter in my home. I have a home and everything in my home is what I use in love, period.

Maybe you're like, I'm a minimalist. I'm a minimalist. I only keep what's necessary because I deserve an easy life. whatever it is that you want to change, this is how we do it. And we have to remind ourselves daily to keep changing the thought patterns. So a couple of things of homework. Use a dry erase marker or use some sticky notes and put them places to remind you of these mantras, these assertive, aggressive, positive things you're saying about yourself. Remember, it is an I will and I'm going to, it is I am. I am an organized person. I am a clutter-free person. I am a person

who loves cleaning. We're lying here a little bit, but you know it works, friends, okay? With a with a warrior, we're saying these assertive things about ourselves. And we're putting these little reminders all over. We're putting reminders in our phone about these assertive things we're saying to ourselves. And then what we're going to do is put a pad of paper or a notebook by our bed with a reminder, an alarm reminder, to write some things that we are grateful for that happened that day. So I'm going to be like, I'm grateful I worked out today. I'm grateful I did this podcast, which made me feel pumped about working out today. I am grateful I didn't eat junk food today. And tomorrow it's going to be easier.

And we're going to rinse and repeat. And until we're going to just like keep doing this fierce work until we don't have to force ourselves to do it anymore. Until this is just the thoughts that come into our head without us even realizing it, we really believe it. We are. We become this without effort, without having to continually have alarms and post-its and messages. This is the person we now are, the person we created, the person we knew we could be. And all we have to do is change the way we talk to ourselves. You've got nothing to lose, friend, and everything to gain.

Thank you so much. I hope you're feeling pumped. Also, I'm curious what your word of the year is going to be and how you're going to incorporate that into your life as well. big things for 2025. We are amazing and we are going to do amazing, incredible things. Thank you so much and I'll see you guys next time.