Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The REAL Difference Between Tidy and Messy People | Clutterbug Podcast # 140

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

In today's podcast I discuss the 3 TRUTHS and main differences between tidy and messy people.    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

I know what it's like to live in a really messy, chronically chaotic house and what it's like to live in a home that's always tidy, that kind of stays tidy on its own effortlessly. And I want to share with you the real main differences. Hey, clutterbugs. Welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about some hard truths, I guess. We're talking about the real difference between someone who has a home that's perpetually tidy versus someone who's home. just seems to always get messy again. And they're stuck on this constant cycle, this hamster wheel of having to tidy up all the time just for it to get messy and do the same thing, rinse and repeat over and over and again. And there's some real differences between homes and organized people, I guess, and people who struggle with disorganization and clutter. And because I went from somebody who, I think the majority of my life, I lived in a state of chaos in my environment, very, very cluttered, very, very messy. But the truth is, I'm still that person on the inside. I am not a naturally tidy and organized person. And so I had to learn how to, it's like cosplay as one, really. I had to learn how to fake it till I make it to be really tidy and organized person. I tried lots of things and I failed and I kind of found my groove now. So I wanted to share the key differences. And it's easier than you think. These aren't this like intent. You don't have to like change your personality. You don't have to become like some Stepford wife insaneo person that cleans all the time, which is actually the first.

truth I wanted to talk about. I mean, it still feels weird to say it, but I guess I've been a tidy person. Oh my gosh, I'm not a naturally tidy person. So my home has stayed relatively tidy. Let's go there for probably the past 10 years. And because it's been so long, my friends and families sometimes make little comments about my home. So I've been called a clean freak. People will just casually comment that, oh, you clean all the time. You must be cleaning nonstop. Or they'll say, what are you doing today? And I'm like, not much. And I'll have a friend say, except scrubbing your house from top to bottom. It kind of makes me sad all these little comments, especially when I go to somebody else's home and they apologize for the state of their home and they'll say something like,

I'll never get it to your level of clean. It makes me really sad because the honest truth is, first of all, I don't notice other people's mess. And even if I do, I do not care and I do not judge. But I think the thing that makes me even sadder is that people assume, that because my home is tidy, I clean constantly and that I'm some neurotic person that all I do in my spare time is clean. And it makes me sad because I know the real truth, which is I clean and tidy my home a whole lot less than I did when I was messy. People in my life who have a messy home are working so much harder on their house than I am. That is the truth. Tidy people spend less time tidying and cleaning than messy people do. And I know that sounds insane. And I'm not saying the answer

to getting a tidy house is to do less, obviously, that isn't it. It's like, yeah, just never clean again and magically it will get tidy. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when you live in a messy home, you are constantly managing the mess. You are constantly stuff shuffling, moving things around, clearing off surfaces that you can eat at the dinner table, having to pick all your dirty clothes up off the floor or off of surfaces before you can do laundry. You have to tidy before you can even clean, before you can dust, before you can vacuum. You have to spend a really long time putting things away, picking up, tidying, constantly picking up kids' toys. It's insane. And the difference is a tidy home, things are naturally getting put away when people are done with them. So it isn't in a

constant state of chaos, so you don't have to pick up and tidy all the time. You don't actually have to clean very often. And so how do you get there? I mean, I know what you're thinking. Like, what's the difference between picking it all up on a Saturday and picking it up a little bit during the day all throughout the week? It's a huge difference. It's just like what is the difference between doing the dishes right after dinner versus doing the dishes a week later? You got to scrub the dishes now. It's harder. You got to scrub. You got to let them soak. Your pot boils over on the stove, if you wipe that immediately, it's no big deal. If you wait a day, you're scrubbling and you're chisling that crap off. It's the same when it comes to your home. If you do a little bit as

you go, a little bit throughout the house, I'm not a person who tidies as I go. I'm going to be honest. When I'm done with something, I usually don't naturally just put it away, but I have created organizational systems, so it's easy to just plop that thing away. And when I do have alarms throughout my day that do like a five minute tidy up to remind me, I'm constantly doing this like little five minute tidy up. So I might spend five, ten, fifteen minutes a day tidying, but I don't have to spend two hours on the weekend cleaning. So I do spend a lot less time. I'll just listen, a lot less time. And I think that's a big misconception. And that's one of the truths I want to talk about is we think, I thought, maybe you don't think, but I thought in order to be a person who had this really

tidy home or a clean home, I had to work even harder than I currently was and I didn't have the capacity to do that. So I never really tried. I looked at my mom's house, for example, that was always spotless. And I'm like, no, I don't, I can't do that. I can't compete. I'm already working full time. I have little kids. I'm exhausted. It's all I can do to get dinner on the table, maybe a load of laundry done and shower in a day. That's it. I have no more to give. I'm already constantly cleaning and tidying and picking up after people. How could I possibly do more? I can't, so therefore my home will always stay the way it is.

But what I didn't realize is the second hard truth. Here we go. You're ready for it? Tidy people have less stuff. And I talk about decluttering all the time and you're probably rolling your eyes. And before I started this journey, I didn't want to hear about that either. And I thought I had decluttered. I would declutter like in one big.

I'd like take out five garbage bags and think I'm amazing now. Like I did declutter. Look at how much I got rid of it. And it felt like massive amounts of stuff. And my home was still. And I'm like, well, see, I decluttered, but my home is still messy. So that must not have been the answer. Tidy people declutter more than you ever thought they would have to.

I let go of more than half of my belongings when I first did this big purge. And I'm still decluttering today. Decuttering is a never-ending process. Decluttering is part of your routine now, forever and ever and ever until you die. And this is the difference between really tidy homes and messy homes. Tidy homes declutter all the time, like a weekly day. declutter. Taddy homes are constantly letting things go. This is just natural. It's part of their, you know, you do dishes, you make bed, you declutter stuff. Big difference. It's not a one thing.

I'm going to declutter once a year. I'm going to do this big Marie condo. Does this Spark Joy thing once every five years? Yeah, you got rid of a dumpster worth of stuff. Awesome. It only takes six months to fill your home again. It has to be a regular thing. A weekly 21 item toss. Right before Christmas. We do a big declutter of anything that we usually get gifts. So toys, clothing, bathroom products, that type of stuff goes. In the fall, we do a huge declutter before back to school. We do a huge declutter in the spring. We're constantly, constantly, constantly, kind of flipping our inventory, if that makes sense. Going through filling bags, re-evaluating and letting things go. And this isn't time consuming. This isn't taking everything out

and sorting into lots of piles, making a big mess. This is just going in the closet with a bag and saying, does this fit? Nope, this can go, this can go, this can go, this can go. Opening up a cabinet. I'm talking five, ten minutes, a quick sweep of the house. But doing this on a regular basis, weekly or biweekly is a tidy routine of decluttering that it really makes the difference between a tidy and a messy home. Crazy, right? When I was really struggling, I made the same assumption that most people make, which is, I need more storage, I need more organization. If I only got organized, then everything would fit. What I thought organization is, really meant was, you know, folding everything really neat and getting as much as I could in the drawers

or neatly stacking everything in closet so that everything fit. But that is an organization that is kind of tidying, I guess, and anytime you use something, it kind of all comes tumbling down. Or if you're not that person to maintain putting it back like that on a regular basis, it just gets messy. Real organization is creating homes that have breathing room, that have space, and that work with your natural organizing style. So for me, not stacking things, having loosey-goosey clearly defined homes where I can toss things into. But I can't do that if I have excess. I can't maintain organization when I have too much stuff. So I have to declutter. Okay, you ready for the next hard truth? Is that the kitchen needs to be tidied every single day. Like dishes done

every day. Non-negotiable. Before you go to bed, the kitchen has to be tidy. and you probably should do a five-minute tidy-up of the living areas too. So a quick tidy-up. I used to do the dishes like whenever I ran out of plates, and sometimes I would just buy more plates. I used to be the person that had so many dirty dishes all the time. And like the truth is, it really only takes one meal to trash a kitchen. You make a big dinner and your kitchen looks like a bomb went off.

But the kitchen is the catalyst for your entire home. When your kitchen is messy, everything else starts to follow suit and gets messy really quickly too. And when your kitchen is tidy, it has the same effect. You start tidying the rest of your house. You feel it's like the mindset hub of your home. So keeping your kitchen tidy, at least before you go to bed, at least once a day, you just reset the kitchen. You make sure all the dishes are done or at least in the dishwasher.

You wipe down the counters. You put anything that's left on the counters that doesn't belong away where it does belong. You reset the kitchen. your home will stay tidier. Your home will feel tidier. You don't have to be a clean freak. You don't have to clean all the time. You don't have to every time somebody drinks a glass. You don't have to immediately shuffle that into the dishwasher. But once a day, whether it's the morning or the evening, we're getting our kitchen back to clean. So this is what I've discovered. If I clean and tidy of the kitchen and make it a priority in my house, it never gets bad. I never have to scrub. I don't have to spend hours doing dishes, scrubbing off the stove. But something else happens. My home, it feels it like, It sets the tone for the rest of the home and it feels tidy. So I act tidier. And my family acts tidier. When we let the kitchen go, I notice all the other rooms in the house start to go.

When we maintain the kitchen, we subconsciously maintain the rest of the home too. I don't know why. We're not getting into like psychology here. I feel like your bedroom has the same effect. If you make your bed, it has the same effect. It's like those two spaces really do transform the rest of your home. You ready for the last hard truth? Before we get into it, I have to thank KiwiCo for sponsoring today's podcast.

KiwiCo is a monthly subscription box for kids that delivers really fun and engaging, but educational activities right to our door. They make learning, science, technology, engineering, art, and math fun. They have subscription lines for kids of all ages, ranging from infants all the way up to teens, but honestly, I think there's something for everyone. And now that it's back to school, I don't want to say, stop the at-home learning. I want to be engaged with my kids. And right now, we are doing a build-your-your-own-robot projects. So fun. It's teaching them about mechanics and electricity,

and they are absolutely loving it. My husband is an engineer, so this is so important to him. But for me, I also love that Kiwi-Co makes it simple. All the supplies you need are inside, and it's getting kids off the screen and doing something educational. Right now, you can 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 kiwiCo.com promo code clutter. The last big difference between messy homes and tidy homes is that tidy homes have designated spots for literally every single thing they own, even random stuff. Everything that they own has a home.

And I used to be a person who just shoved things all willy-nilly together. So you needed, I don't know, a pen looks somewhere in the junk drawer. And it was all mixed in with a bunch of other things. Or if you needed a battery, it was somewhere in a cabinet over there. So I had homes for things, but they weren't really defined and everything was still jumbled and mixed together. And if you can relate to this, this is not organization. Organized homes have really defined places for every single thing in their house. Even if it's in the junk drawer, there's like drawer dividers in the junk drawer.

So this is where the batteries go. This is where the extra pens go. This is where the blabity bloop goes. This took a really long time to do. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Getting truly organized meant I had to put my things into different categories and create homes for all these categories. where are light bulbs stored? Where is our extra paper stored? Where do all our scissors go? Where do, I don't know, our band-aids go? And are these things separated from other things? Is it a clearly defined home that's easy to find and easy to put away? Before, everything was just shoved and piled wherever it would fit. I would shuffle piles from room to room. If I needed something, there were like a few places it could possibly be. So I was always losing things.

or hunting things. It was like hide and go seek on a daily basis for something. I had a wedding. I knew I had high-heel shoes somewhere. Did I shove them under the bed? Are they in the top shelf of my closet? I hadn't worn them in a couple of years. Where are they? Are they somewhere? Are they in the garage? I don't know. I got to look at multiple places. And it wasn't just for these one-off things that I had to look. Where's that coupon that I have to remember? Where's that, I don't know, receipt to return the things to Costco? I didn't have a designated home for these things. Now I have a place where I put receipts. Now I have a place where I put my dress shoes.

Now I have a place where I put absolutely everything, even random stuff. So I never have to look for anything anymore. But again, you can't do this until you've decluttered, until you've gone through and let go of things. And as you do this part, which is the organization part, which is creating homes, you pick one space. or one category. Today I'm going to do this drawer or this shelf or this half of a closet. You're going to be decluttering again during that process. You're going to be organizing it and decluttering again. And so it took me a full year to get my entire home organized. And it wasn't detailed, microorganized. This is the other thing that I had to really learn. You have to do a general

macro big category good enough organization the first sweep through your house because you are going to find more stuff that belong in other categories. You can't organize your craft supplies and do it in a super meticulous way. It has to be a rough category way because I guarantee if you're just starting out, you're going to find more paint, paint brushes, maybe some clay, maybe glitter in another space in your home that you didn't even remember you had. If you're organizing, cleaning products, you're going to stumble upon other cleaning products. So we can't get really detailed with our organization until we've already macro organized the entire house. So big categories like, this is the drawer for this. This is the cabinet for this. And you might have to shuffle

things around and be in this state of flux, which is why we always start with small projects first. we don't organize an entire room. We organize one drawer by drawer, by drawer, by cabinet, by pile. And what's going to happen, you're going to come across something and you're going to say, I think the perfect spot for this is this drawer here and that drawer is going to be full of other stuff. So we have to declutter. And we have to relocate this stuff from that drawer to somewhere else. But now you're tired.

Where does it go? I have a project box that I always just keep. And then I start from that box and I go and I move and I just shuffle. and shuffle and one whole year it took me. But when you get there, when you get there, when you've taken the time to create homes for all of the stuff in your home, it's an investment that will pay you back every single day for the rest of your life. You are investing your time and I know you're working hard and you're probably exhausted and you might feel like you have nothing more that you could possibly give but I can promise you this. Please listen to this. It is worth it because

when you get there, when you get to that top of the mountain and every space is actually organized, you will save time every single day. You will never look for those shoes again. You will never have to look for a pen networks or a battery or where did you put that receipt. Your home will stay tidy because it's easy to put things away because it's easy for everyone in your home to put things away because it's really obvious where those homes are and things are always being returned to those homes. You still have to do tidy. You still have to do five-minute tides. You'll have to pick things up, but it's so easy to put things away that you're not shoving in random spots anymore, which means you don't have to make a mess to find what you need, which means your home can stay

tidy for good. I feel like organization is literally the best investment you can ever make with your time because it will save you time every single day for the rest of the organization. I feel like, of your life. Getting organized can seem really, really overwhelming. But I have a ton of videos on YouTube that can help you. I have so many resources for free and so to other people too. Head over, look for inspiration, look for motivation, but know that you got this. You got this. Don't look at your big mountain. Don't look at your whole house and say, oh my gosh, I have to organize everything. This is so overwhelming. Don't think what can I buy to make this easier. we say what can we do today with what we have today? How can I just designate a home for this? How can I just

designate a drawer or a cabinet or a shelf for this category of stuff? And the biggest thing you can do is what can leave. What do I not use and love? Because that is the biggest transformation you can do. You only need 15 minutes a day. In 15 minutes a day, you can create a home that stays tidy all the time. You don't have to be a clean freak. In fact, I am lazier now that you're not. I've ever been in my entire life. I am so much lazier now than I was when I was a messy person. If you have a messy home, it is not because you're lazy and it is not because you're not working hard enough. In fact, you are working so much harder than people who have tidy homes. But it's time for you to stop working harder and start working smarter. Start with decluttering

today. Thank you guys so much for listening and I'll see you next time.