Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The Self Help Secret That Changed My Life | Clutterbug Podcast # 43

Episode Date: March 17, 2018

This one small tip that I learned from the amazing Gretchen Rubin completely changed my life...in under 60 seconds. Listen to my last podcast, Homeless Clutter, and get your free printable here: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterberg podcast. Today we're talking about something that can change everything about your life. From your housework, from your home, from your actual work, your productivity, it can change so many things and it can be done in under 60 seconds. So thanks so much for tuning in. Today we're talking about one of my favorite little tricks that absolutely transformed my home and my entire life. I heard this concept from Gretchen Rubin. I'm a huge Gretchen Rubin fan, and I heard this years ago. I read her book, The Happiness Project, which I loved, and I started listening to her podcast,

and I'm a self-help book junkie, and I read lots of them. And sometimes for me, I read something, and then I immediately feel like super motivated to change my life. right? And it wears off after a few days and I completely forget. But there's always a little something maybe that sinks in subconsciously or helps improve some small thing. But this one tip from Gretchen Rubin actually stayed with me. It actually had an impact and it's something that continues to have an impact on my life every single day. And I'm not alone. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who are tweeting about this and, you know, shouting it from the rooftops, how this actually works. And I'm going to share it with you today. You've probably

already heard it, but I'm going to share how I use this life-changing tip every single day to make my life so much easier and save me so much time and get so much more done than I ever thought I could. And that little tip is the one-minute rule. Now, the one-minute rule basically is if something takes a minute or less to do it immediately. And that's, that's for everything in your life. But for me, I really had to apply that when it came to my house and picking up after myself. That was definitely the big one. I'm that type of person who my whole life, you know, if I was getting undressed, I would just drop my dirty clothes on the floor and leave them there. If I was brushing my teeth, I'd leave my toothbrush and my toothpaste out on the counter or I was making a sandwich. I'd leave

the bread and the peanut butter and the knife on the counter. And I was making a sandwich. I'd leave the bread and the peanut butter. I just, I was messy. I was a habit. I was in the habit of being messy. And I procrastinated. I procrastinated so everything in my life. Let's be honest, life's hard work. And sometimes the idea of the things I had to do were like bigger than the actual task it took. So I was putting things off because I was like, ugh, you know, grown. I don't want to put the bread away. I don't want to have to clean up this mess that I just made. But when I heard Gretchen's Gretchen Rubin rule, the one-minute rule, if it takes a minute or less, do it now, I started implementing it that day. And I started looking at like, okay, ugh, I don't want to put the bread away, but let's be honest, it's going to take less than a minute.

And I forced myself to do it. And at first it was. It was a force. I had to force myself to do these things. But eventually, it became a habit. Picking up after myself became a habit. So I just repeated the one-minute rule. I put sticky notes in my bathroom.

I put sticky notes in the kitchen. I had the one-minute, remember the one-minute rule in my office? I had it everywhere. And as a visual reminder to me, as soon as I heard about it and read her book, I started sort of putting sticky notes everywhere as a visual reminder, and it worked. So I would be done brushing my teeth and I would see on the mirror the one-minute rule and I would put that toothbrush and toothpaste back inside the cabinet where it goes. And it sort of grew from there, these little things.

And I didn't realize how all these little messy habits that I had were adding up to a huge amount of mess and clutter in my house. I didn't realize that just not putting the toothpaste away or not, you know, putting, yeah, I'd get a snack and I'd leave it out on the counter or I'd be done eating dinner. and I'd leave the dishes on the counter instead of loading them into the dishwasher. Immediately, I could wreck a house in a day. Let's be completely honest. And when you're adding my family on top of that, we could absolutely destroy the house

in no time flat because we weren't practicing the one-minute rule. And so that's how basically overnight I transformed this habit that I had that had a huge impact in the way my home looked, but also in the amount of time it took to clean it. Because when it became a habit to put things away immediately, I didn't have to spend my Saturdays anymore running around picking everything up that I had left out all week long, which took hours, let's be honest, hours to put away. And it was overwhelming. But then I took the one minute rule even further and I started saying, okay, let's talk about household chores. How long does it take to make your bed. Honestly, I've timed it. It's about a minute. It takes me about 60 seconds to toss the

sheets in the blankets and throw the throw pillows on my bed. One minute to make my bed. And here I was putting something off or like, oh, you know, I have to make my bed and again groaning about it, something that took me 60 seconds. How about wiping the kitchen counter? 60 seconds. Loading the dishwasher after a meal. No, I'm not talking a full days worth of dishes, but when the kids have cereal and, you know, I'll have toast in the morning or there'll be coffee mugs, 60 seconds or less to take those quickly and put them in the dishwasher. 60 seconds or less to completely just change how I lived in my house. The one-minute rule was just probably the one thing that I changed that had the biggest impact on my home and you could do it too so get a sticky note and and write the one minute rule and

put it everywhere all over your house because when you start practicing that when you start picking up after yourself and putting things away as you go you're going to create a new habit and you're going to create a habit that your family can pick up and do with you and and you're no longer going to have to waste your saturdays tidying and picking up after you like everyone in one huge mess. So it's all about cleaning as you go. And that's the one way that I use the one minute rule to change my life. I also use the one minute rule with work. Like if I'm like, oh, I have to send an email to someone. Oh, I'll do it later. I'm like, okay, it'll take me under 60 seconds to quickly just fire off this email. And if something takes me a minute or less, now I do it immediately.

And it's all these tiny little things that I've putting off that are so short and quick. If I do, them immediately, I'm getting so many more results out of my workday, out of my, just everything in life. So it's impacted, obviously, the biggest impact I saw was my house, but it's also impacting my workday. It's impacting things like, I'll have a thought like, oh my gosh, you know what? I would love to get a Roomba for my mom. And wouldn't that be awesome if I could do a video.

My mom really wants a Roomba. I should send an email to Roomba. It will take me 60 seconds or less. Why not do it right this? second instead of thinking it and overthinking about it and making something that is really not a big deal into this huge deal, I do it immediately. And that's exactly what I do. And then I get an email back and they're like, sure, you could totally have a room for your mom and you're getting the idea. Listen, I didn't write this down first. I'm just sort of blabbing. I'm blabbing. Bear with me.

I hope you're getting the idea but the one minute rule and how it changed so many things. So it's all about doing it right this very minute if it takes 60 seconds or less. Now, in order to really make this successful, there is something. It's like what comes first, the chicken or the egg sort of thing. You do have to have homes for these things to go, proper homes for these things to go. So if you're coming home from work and you've got your purse and your keys and your sunglasses, it would take under 60 seconds when you walk in the door to put those things where they belong. but if you don't have a home for those things, then, I mean, there is no place for them to go, I guess.

It would be on your kitchen counter or wherever it is that you drop them. So yeah, we do need to take the time to set up homes for our biggest clutter problems, which I like to call homeless clutter, that stuff that otherwise doesn't have a place to go, and make sure that putting the things into that place is going to take you 60 seconds or less. So they go together. and my last podcast was all about homeless clutter and I actually have a free printable that you can get and I'm going to put a link to that so you can get a copy of the 20 areas in your home that you need to create homes for like things 20 things in your home that you need to create homes for

and I want to make sure that you're making these homes accessible in 60 seconds or less so as as you walk in your door, you can file your mail into the to be paid folder in 60 seconds or less. If you need to, I don't know, anything, just anything and everything that's used all the time that can accumulate into clutter, you're going to need to be able to put that away in 60 seconds or less. And that's where the one-minute rule is going to change your life. So, I mean, what does come first? Probably finding homes for the homeless clutter. But that doesn't mean that you can't practice the one-minute rule today.

That doesn't mean that right now you can't get a bunch of sticky notes and like plaster them in all the spots where you really struggle. For me, it's the master bathroom. I'll put on makeup and for some reason I'll just leave it out instead of putting it away. But when I remind myself of the one minute rule, I always pick up and put it away. When I'm in the shower, I'm like, oh man, I should probably clean the shower. But you know what? I have a cleaner in there. And while my conditioner is like doing its thing in my dried out frizzy hair, I'll quickly white.

down inside the shower in under 60 seconds. Clean shower, softer hair. It's like a win-win, but it's that little change in my, I guess, yeah, it's my change in my perspective. It's a change in how I look at housework and how I look at all those tasks that need to be done and just breaking the ones that are short and sweet into things that I'll do immediately can make a big impact. The other thing that I feel has had a big impact is these words of wisdom from Peter Walsh. And he talked about completing the cycle. And this is something I really struggled with. I mean, I struggled with everything when it came to housework.

But I would do this thing where I would clean the kitchen and I'd wash the dishes because, let's be honest, the dishwasher would be too full for everything to fit because I hadn't been on a dishwashing schedule. That's a whole other podcast. We're going to talk about your dishwashing schedule. but yeah so I'd wash the dishes and I'd throw them in the sink to drip dry I'm using air quotes again and then I'd start you know wiping the counter and putting the food away and then I'd stop I'd stop and like maybe leave the stove dirty or not put away those dishes after they drip dried I'd take the housework

to 80% or 90% and I wouldn't finish I'd leave these unfinished tasks and projects I'd start an organizing project, but I wouldn't finish it 100%. And he really said this is a problem a ton of people have. And he said it's like doing a load of laundry. You wouldn't stop your wash mid-cycle. You wouldn't, you know, have it stop before it's finished spinning out. And you wouldn't not move it over to the dryer. You'd complete the cycle. And we need to remind ourselves to complete the cycle when we're doing tasks, like cleaning a room or started setting up an organizing system or unpacking a bag. I'd come home from a trip and, you know, I'd unpack my suitcase and I would leave like five or six things in the bag. Why? Why? Why wouldn't I just take those few extra minutes to complete the cycle?

So that's another tip that I've reminded myself of. I had to have sticky notes all over the place and it's a mental shift that made a big impact, especially in the kitchen. Starting from a clean slate in the morning is it just makes you feel great about your day, and it's easier to keep up on things. So every night before I went to bed, I started just cleaning the kitchen, so the next morning I'd wake up to a clean kitchen. But I'd remind myself to complete the cycle, which means putting those drip dried dishes away,

making sure the counters were completely clean. not just taking it to that 80 or 90% and then stopping, but taking it to the 100% completing the cycle totally. When I'm dusting, taking it to the 100%, when I'm, you know, tidying up, taking it to the 100% not leaving one pile left for some reason. Why do we do that? I don't know what it is. But so many of us suffer from this, this little thing. And reminding ourselves to complete the cycle can make a difference. So those are the two little little. self-help rules that I've learned from self-help gurus that had a huge impact on my life. And definitely the one-minute rule had the biggest impact. It really did. I want you to practice

it. I want you to give it a try. You'll be surprised how much crap you can get done in 60 seconds. You can make a bed. You can load a dishwasher. You can clean, like, wipe all the counters down. You could quickly dust a room in 60 seconds. You can get so many things done in a minute of or less so I want you to give it a try today and again check out that podcast for the homeless clutter because that definitely goes with it and if you take the time to create a home for all those little things that don't have an easy home or don't have a home and then you start practicing the one-minute rule I promise you your clutter issues are going to disappear your house is just going to be able to stay perpetually clean and tidy and that is what organizing is all about that is the whole

point nobody wants to spend time having to pick up and and declutter all the time and worry that you know a friend or family member might stop by in your house is a disaster it should be easy your home should be your oasis where you come to relax and in not a place that's more work on your plate. Life is hard enough. We don't need extra work. And the secret to having your home be sort of work free, well, minimal work is definitely those two things. So give it a try today and thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next time.