Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - This ONE Habit Will Keep Your Home Clean & Tidy | Clutterbug Podcast # 226

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

This ONE habit will keep your home clean and tidy all the time, AND it will cut down your cleaning time by 75% at least!  We all want an organized and efficient home, but we don't want to spend HOURS cleaning to maintain it. The real secret is one simple mantra: "All surfaces are hot lava".  It takes time to create a home that is organized and decluttered enough to put things away immediately, but once you get there, your home will be easier to maintain for the rest of your life; It's worth the investment.  Listen to this podcast to learn EXACTLY how to set up your home so that you can start using the "All surfaces are hot lava" mantra too.      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 have a new mantra for you. This is something I just realized that is a mantra I use that is the single most important reason why my house is incredibly fast to clean. And I want to share it with you right now. Hey, clutterbugs, welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. I'm, I don't want to use the word lazy, but I'm not a person who is like fired up about cleaning the house. I like having a clean house. I really get upset by a lot of clutter or mess or dirt or grime, but also I'd rather be doing something fun if I'm being honest. So my whole goal is to streamline my home, to create a functional home so I can have the good stuff,

which is a clean house that feels spotless and perfect all the time without me having to work at it all the time. And I also don't want to be that nagging mom and I don't want to nag myself. I just want it to be on autopilot. I want my house to feel like George Jetson, you know, house where it's just, oh, maybe I have a robot that cleans it all the time. And I'm not just talking about the Roomba. I'm talking about the stuff and the dirt and the grime and all the other things that come along with living in your house.

So I feel like I have finally nailed it here in my new home. Our last home we had was three bedrooms plus one in the basement. We had three bathrooms and it was about 1,300 square feet. I was able to completely clean my home, my old house, in about 45 minutes, vacuuming, mopping, quickly dusting and wiping the bathrooms. Now, I'm not saying I wasn't running and sweating because I was. But in under an hour, I was able to clean all the surfaces in my home to a point where it was like good enough to move on. So you couldn't see visible dirt or gross stuff anymore.

And then when I moved into this new house, which has six bedrooms and five bathrooms and is three times the size, I was really struggling to clean it. I mean, it was like four hours to clean the entire house. And I was frustrated. And I knew it was bigger, but I still, there was like something else going on with how long and how, oh, what a chore it was to clean my new home. And what was happening was that it wasn't organized yet, right? It wasn't organized. It wasn't to a point where everything had a home. And because of that, I wasn't following my mantra, my cardinal rule. The most important thing when it comes to having a clean and tidy home, it's one rule. And if you can focus on this and try to problem solve this until you get to the point where it's effortless to do this one rule, then you have a house

that's super easy. In fact, I can clean this entire house now in around an hour 15, maybe an hour 20. And it's not just me. I was really busy last week. I actually hired a cleaner to come in. So one girl, she does this for a living, and she cleaned the entire house. five bathrooms, six bedrooms. It's like 4,500 square feet, mopped all the floors, cleaned all the bathrooms, dusted all the surfaces in like an hour, 25. And she did a better job than me. And she said to me before she left, she was like, this is the easiest house I've ever cleaned. This is nuts. Like it was so crazy fast to clean. And do you want to know why? You already probably know why. Yeah, a lot of it has to do with decluttering, but the decluttering is what makes the real

reason easy, and that is all the surfaces are hot lava. And what I mean by that is, I do not allow things to go get put down on surfaces. I don't allow myself to do it, and I try to constantly remind the kids too. And this is hard at first, because especially we've moved to this new home so we didn't have like really functional homes for things to go. And when you don't have that, if it isn't really easy to put things away quickly, you just set it down. So I had to create new homes from scratch and really evaluate my space. Like why is this always ending up on the counter and where can I create a home nearby? And if you're a visual person, you do want to have some things out and you do want to be able to see them, but again, surfaces are still hot lava. They're off limits,

but you can put them maybe in a shallow tray on a surface. That's totally fine. Or in a basket, or in a jar. Or you can hang maybe floating shelving right above the surface and like put stuff there. We're getting things off of counters. We're getting things off of tables. We're getting things off these flat surfaces and the floor counts as a flat surface. So because I have this like rule in my mind, I take the clothes out of the dryer, right? And I'm putting them in the basket. I mean, I use this rule for everything. Where can I put this basket? The basket doesn't have a home when it's full. If they stack within each other when they're empty and that has a home. But I don't have a place to put the laundry basket when it has clothing in it.

So it has to get put away immediately because I cannot allow myself to just set it on the floor. I can't allow myself to set it on the bed. I can't allow myself to put it in the corner because the surfaces are hot lava. And this mantra, it sounds like, oh, that sounds crazy, Cass. That sounds like a lot of work. Yeah. it's a lot of work to create homes for the things that are on your surfaces now. That is a lot of work.

I'm not going to lie to you because you have to really reevaluate your space. Is this actually worth keeping? And if so, I got to have a home for it. That's not a flat surface. Am I hanging a shelf here? Am I putting hooks here? Am I clearing out a drawer? Am I getting rid of things to make room for it? Like it is. It's a thing. And it took months and months and months for me to to slowly work through my home till I got to a point where because this is in my mind and I'm like, I can't put it down. I can't put things down. I got to put it away. Everything's hot lava. Now I'm just kind of doing it without realizing it. It's second nature. I don't have to nag myself because everything has such an easy home. I really don't have to nag my family either because it's

just as easy for them to put things away as it is to put down. And when I noticed my children or my husband were constantly setting things down in one particular area, I just created a home for those type of items that was nearby and that was really simple for them to use like hooks for their backpacks and a basket for the papers to go that I need to sign when they come into the home. And my husband has like this little area in his office where he's putting things he wants to return to Amazon because those used to be all over the place. So problem solving. That's what organization really is. It's looking at your space and solving the problem of, okay, I'm putting stuff everywhere and I'm leaving stuff out because it doesn't have a really easy, efficient home that also works with

my organizing style. So if you haven't yet taken the clutterbug quiz and identified your organizing style, this is a really effective tool because it could be that you do have organizing systems, but for some reason you're not using them. That reason that you're not consistently using them is probably because it doesn't complement your natural organizing style. So understanding your style, you can take the free quiz at clutterbug.com can help you set up those systems. And this isn't going to happen overnight, but if you constantly are repeating this mantra of the surfaces are hot lava, I can't put things down, I have to put it away, and looking at your home as a problem solver to provide solutions when people or yourself

is putting down because there's no other place to put it or you're just like, you're just like too rushed or it doesn't have a spot or every spot is full, it's okay. How can I fix this problem so that tomorrow or next week, I don't have to put it down on a surface. The obvious first step to this is probably the hardest and the one that you, you've heard me talk about a million times and you don't want to hear me talk about this anymore, but the truth is you have too much stuff. You do. You have too much stuff and I don't care how much you've already decluttered. You still have way, way, way, way too much stuff. That is the root of the problem here. It's not the entire problem, but it's the root of the problem. And think of it as like a weed in your garden,

the clutter. You can like kind of break it off at the top and maybe shove things in drawers or create little homes, but if you haven't got to that route, it's just going to come right back, which is why you feel like you're cleaning and tidying all the time. And yet it just gets messy again seemingly overnight. It's because you haven't pulled out the root. You can't possibly create organizing solutions that are going to maintain your home when you have excess. And I, it's it's actually mind-boggling how much you have to let go of. I was just at my mom's home. Mom's house.

She has put an offer in on a smaller home, and she's looking at downsizing. And she has a three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch house that she's lived in for the past 35 years. It looks exceptionally tidy on the outside. Very tidy. Not a lot of clutter. She's a very, very, very neat person, but she's also a ladybug, which means she is a shover and a hider. But because things look tidy on the outside, she thinks she doesn't have a clutter problem. And you may have the same thing.

You may be like, well, everything looks pretty good. I don't have a clutter problem. But the truth is my mom has to work so hard. to maintain a home that looks tidy all the time. She's cleaning every day to get there. She is constantly picking things up and shuffling things around, and she lives by herself. She doesn't even have other people to pick up after. But if you have other people to pick up after, this is multiplied and magnified. And if you feel like you are constantly picking up stuff, constantly stuff shuffling the mess, you have way too much stuff. So I was with my mom and I said,

Mom, we need a dumpster. And she was really offended. She said, I don't need a dumpster. There's not even that much in here to let go of. And I said, every closet mom is full in every drawer and under your beds. Everything is just, there's too much stuff and you're downsizing. You can't take it with you. you might as well let it go now while your home's on the market. And she was like, it might be two or three trash bags, not a dumpster. That's ridiculous. And so we did one closet, one closet. I think she filled her entire truck from one closet. Because, well, when you're great at shoving and cramming and filling up all your little nooks and crannies, you have no idea how much stuff that actually is. You are great at compacting things. You are great at playing Tetris and making sure that every little

crack is filled. But when you actually start pulling that out and going through it and filling boxes for donations and trash bags for garbage, it's like holy doodily doos. That is a ton of stuff. If you were to empty one of your closets, even a one-door closet, it would probably create a mound in the middle of your room. That's like four feet wide by four feet high or bigger perhaps. And that is the reality of all the things that you have to move around to find what you need, to move around to put things away, and the space that's being taken up by things you hardly ever really use,

which is taking away the space you need for the things you use all the time. Imagine if you had an empty closet in your home or a free shot. shelf or two extra cabinets in your kitchen. Imagine if you had more room in your entrance way. Maybe you have a closet there where kids could easily put backpacks away and they don't have to shove the coats to the side or kick the shoes. Speaking of shoes, imagine if you didn't have to just drop them at the front door and trip over them when you came in because you had easy spots for these things to go. So your family, yourself, your spouse, everybody, is putting things in these spots because it's just as easy as it would be to leave it out.

And that is the reality of what you can expect. And it takes effort to get there. But once you're there, dude, I feel like I hardly ever clean. I don't feel like I have to tidy all the time. I hate putting away laundry. I hate doing the dishes. I do. I hate that. But, But the rest of the house just always stays tidy. And after that cleaner was here, it was like an hour and 20 minutes, maybe an hour and a half. It looked like house and home could kind of come up in here. Every mirror was perfectly streak free. The bathtubs, the showers were all clean.

The floors were sparkling. Everything was dusted with a swiffer. Everything was sparkly clean in under an hour and a half. and this is a big house. It's not a mansion, but it's a big house. You could have that too when you follow the mantra. Your surfaces are hot lava. And it doesn't matter what you're organizing style is,

even if you're visual, you can create visual homes that aren't just sitting on a surface because that is what's taking your time. It's the picking up stuff. That is 90% of the time you're spending cleaning, picking stuff off the floor before you can vacuum, picking stuff off of surfaces before you can wipe, but just putting things away, just putting things away is 90% of cleaning. You have to clean around your stuff. It is incredibly time consuming. Imagine if you didn't have to pick anything up because it was always tidy and you could literally just swoosh and you're done.

And the other amazing thing is when you don't have anything on your surfaces, things get less dirty. Because if you do notice a little spill or a little something, it's really obvious. So you could just like wipe it now so you don't have to scrub it later. Maybe you'll notice like crumbs on the floor and you'll just want to quick vacuum and you're done. You don't have to vacuum the whole house so that when you do clean your house in that one big chunk, it's almost like you're cleaning an already clean house. Like it's not really ever really dirty because it's the stuff laying out that makes your home dirty.

I want to talk to you for just a second about this mindset shift that you probably should work on in order to really fully embrace this the surfaces are hot lava mantra. But first, I have to thank today's. podcast sponsor. Today's podcast is brought to you by ORA frames. Ora frames are probably one of my most cherished possessions in my home. They are beautiful Wi-Fi-connected digital frames that allow you to display unlimited photos. I've actually given them as gifts to almost all of my loved ones. I love that you can easily upload photos using the app. So what I do is I find tons of photos for my family

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There are a couple of roadblocks that might be in your way of really practicing this mantra all the time. And the first one is habit. You're probably in the habit, and your family's probably in the habit, of just putting things down, because it doesn't have an easy place to put away. And the thing is we get stuck in a rut.

We're used to doing something over and over. And the last thing we want is to change, to try new things, uncomfortable things. Doing something and reinventing the wheel is uncomfortable. And so here I am telling you that the problem with your house is that A, you have too much stuff and B, you don't have the right organizing homes. And that can feel very much like you have no idea. what you're talking about. My house is too small. I don't have space. My family doesn't help. I can't possibly create homes. I've already decluttered. Your first instinct is excuses, excuses, excuses. And I know this because I used to have a million excuses, but also because I have worked

with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients who have all the same excuses. They hire me because they think I'm going to come in and wave a magic wand and come up with some incredible solution they haven't thought of. But what really happens is I come in and I say, you have too much stuff. And they say, no, I don't. And I don't want to get rid of anything. And I want you to make it work. But then as soon as I open a drawer with them, as soon as I start like pulling random things out saying, do you want this? Do you actually use this? They quickly realize, oh, I actually do. have things that I don't need and don't want and shouldn't be having in my house. They just haven't taken the time to really look.

So I want you to catch yourself making excuses right now while you're listening to this podcast and I want you to look. Not to look and notice the things you use in love, which is what our brain does. You open a drawer, you're like, well, see, I love these markers and I use them all the time. and Cass doesn't know what she's talking about. We're going to ignore the things you use in love. We're going to be hunting like Easter egg hunting for things that you don't use in love. That's the secret here.

Every dried up marker, every old pen, every old receipt, every piece of junk mail, every little tiny thing that you remove from your home will make your life easier. and you have to be consistently looking all the time. Like it's your part-time job, man, like it's your part-time job. Your home needs to be effortless to maintain and stop. You have more important things to do than spend hours cleaning your house. But you need a house that's clean and tidy all the time. That's the truth.

because we can say, oh, I have better things to do. I don't care about the mess. I'll clean it on the weekend or before somebody comes over. But telling yourself that it doesn't bother you is a lie. And whether you realize it or not, having a messy cluttered home is hurting you. It's hurting your health. It's hurting your self-esteem. It's hurting your family members. It's hurting your relationships. Nobody wants to live in a dirty cluttered home. And it doesn't have to be any more work to have a clean and tidy house all the time. That is a lie you've been telling yourself. You don't have to be a person who is cleaning your house 24-7 in order to have a house that's clean 24-7. That's a lie I used to think for sure. I see my mom. My mom cleans like a mad woman

all the time. And I thought I had to be like that in order to have a house like that. But that's not the truth. The truth is I just have to have way less stuff and I have to have the mantra of I can't just put stuff on surfaces. I'm not allowed. I have to put things in a home and I have to create a home that's really easy so that I'm not lazy and just put it down because I am lazy. So I have to be able to lazily put it away. And this means readapting my house all the time until I find that perfect solution. That's okay. It's not about spending money for different solutions. It's a about trying new things. Maybe an old basket, maybe move it here, or maybe hang a hook or a little shelf right there. That not working? That's okay. Shift things around again. Find what works,

but you can't really know if something works or not if you have excess, because when you have excess, nothing works. That's the truth. When you have too much stuff, it doesn't matter how good your organizing system is. It will never stay tidy. Never. It doesn't matter how much money you've spent, you could hire a professional organ. I could come into your home tomorrow when I could organize it and it would be like, blah, blah, super perfect. Guess what? Two days from now, it's a mess again.

Why? It isn't that the organizing system isn't right. It's that you have way too much stuff. Way too much stuff. So that's step one. Before you set up systems, you need to eliminate the things you're not using and loving. Like you can't get around this step. Everybody wants to get around this step.

Everybody's like, oh, that's hard and that sucks and that's not fair. I'm just going to like buy more totes or maybe invest in a closet system or an armoire or whatever. Like, what? I'm just going to watch some more YouTube videos about people restocking their kitchen. Maybe that'll inspire me. You don't need ideas and inspiration, friend. you need to fill some trash bags. And I'm saying this as someone who also needs to fill trash bags.

We all do. You're never done decluttering ever. Ever. I am continuously filling trash bags. I filled a trash bag today of things that are leaving my home. I went through my kids' drawers. I was like, well, it's her candy wrappers. My kids get new clothes.

They like rip the tags off and throw it in drawers. I can't even get mad. I think I do that too. You know what I mean? We're just in the habit of of doing these little lazy things. Why? Because maybe the garbage can's not close enough. Or we are using shampoo and it's out, you know, and we just kind of put it down and then we open a new one and we leave the old shampoo bottle in there. It's all these like little things because they don't have an easy way of just getting rid of it. So decluttering all the time and reevaluating our home so that we can follow that mantra of our surfaces, our hot lava. You can't put that there. You got to put it somewhere. But if you don't have

somewhere to put it, you got to make one. You got to make one. And if that home that you've made, you're like a couple days from now, you're putting it back, make another home. And I'm not saying this doesn't take practice. It does. It takes practice. And here's where the practice comes in. Every night before bed, do a 10 or 15 minute tidy up. That's putting things back. Or even better, if you're home all day, have a random little five minute tidy up times throughout the day. Because what that does is it trains your brain to put things in the new home that you've created. Because we're in the habit of putting it down. So we will continue to put it down. But every time we pick it up and then put it in the home, that muscle memory of putting it in the home

means that in a very short amount of time, instead of putting it down, we're going to start putting it in the home. True story, friends. So following this mantra, really looking at our home to create solutions, and then doing those tidy pickup times because you may put things down. you will occasionally put things down. But if you don't go a day without picking them up and putting them away, and this isn't all day, we're not, we're not my mom here. I love my mom. I make fun of her for this. You don't have to clean 24-7. This is like a chunk of time that you're like, okay, it's tidy-up time, friends. This will train your brain. And eventually you won't need to even do that. There are lots of nights where I'm like, my alarm goes off for my 10-minute tidy-up, and there's nothing to put away.

I'll look a while and I'm like, oh, okay, co-c-c-c-c-tete-tay. Everything's already picked up. We just naturally were putting things away throughout the day. We've trained ourselves to be tidy people like, what? I have a very lazy family. A very lazy family. I wear the crown of queen laziness. But my kids, not hard workers, okay?

Not hard workers. It isn't that work. out crushing life. That's not why our house is tidy all the time. I can promise you that. It's easier than you think. Stop over-complicating it. Stop over-analyzing it. Grab a trash bag, grab a box, get rid of things, and then start looking at the things that are left on your surfaces as a fun game where you have to come up with a solution. to create homes so that you don't set them down there anymore. That's it, friends. That's the secret.

Okay, guys, thank you so much for hanging it with me in this short podcast. I love spending time with you and I'll see you guys next time.