Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Use ”Pretty Home Power” to Get More Done! | Clutterbug Podcast # 187

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Have you ever heard of "pretty home power"?! It's a wonderful form of motivation that comes from spending a few minutes making a space feel pretty. Your entire home can be messy and chaotic, but there is real magic in feathering one small part of your nest. It gives hope when things seem too big and daunting. It gives motivation to keep going. It gives you a sense of pride, even when nothing else is done. Pretty Home Power is an amazing way to get more done!    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

We've officially lived in our home now for three days. And let me tell you, it is not going like I thought it would. Hey, Clutterbugs. Welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I want to talk about expectation versus reality. And just, yeah, what to do when you're feeling super overwhelmed or you have a lot of things on your plate and you absolutely do not know where to start. We talk about this a lot of. lot because I feel like this is such a universal struggle, especially for women. I'm not saying all women and I'm not saying men don't do this, but typically the women that I talk to are the multitaskers of the family. So not only are we working, taking care of the family, usually doing like just the household management, like thinking part of the labor, the intellectual labor, the emotional labor on top of all the other things. And so it is overwhelming because we have a big mental load to carry on top of all the duties that we have to do, a lot of balls to juggle in the

air. And sometimes it can feel like we're dropping all of them. And yeah, in this podcast, I love to give advice about like, make life easier. Yeah, reality is hitting me like a of bricks this week. We officially moved into our new home three days ago. It'll be four days tomorrow. And holy doodles, is it more work than I thought. I thought, I mean, I've moved for other people before as a professional organizer. And I thought because I was organized and a lot of things are in bins and baskets. Look, I'm covered in paint. If you're watching this video, ignore me. It's been a ridiculous hot mess sandwich over here. I thought I would just throw stuff in boxes and then unpack it and put it into similar homes and call it a day. That is not what has been

happening here. It is a much bigger job than I thought. Moving was a much bigger job than I anticipated. I procrastinated, as you know, if you listen to this podcast. And I really felt like I crept the bed here, man. Mistakes were made and now I'm kind of like reaping what I sewed, which is I feel like I am starting from a very chaotic cluttered space and I basically am starting from scratch. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of decluttering to do, but I am setting up homes for everything and nothing currently has a home and things are kind of all mixed together. And it is exactly like it is if somebody is living in a very cluttered space.

And I see how overwhelming this is. And I lived through this before, not only a move, but living in a very cluttered home, but you kind of forget. You remember, yeah, that was a lot of work. Yes, that was very overwhelming. but you forget the actual stress and anxiety and just like complete soul-crushing chaos that occurs when nothing really has a home and you don't know where anything is. You feel frazzled.

I'm so frustrated looking for things. I couldn't find a freaking pen today to write down notes for this podcast. I couldn't find my podcast, Mike. I couldn't find a light. I couldn't find my desk. I just moved my office furniture in and was setting up the desk. And I felt like overwhelmed. And so I wanted to sit and talk with you guys because, man, I immediately realized I forgot what it felt like and how so many of you are feeling this way. and maybe you have your house under control and maybe you're just feeling overwhelmed because you have a never-ending to-do list. And this is all subjective, right? This is really relative to what's going on in your life, but maybe you want to get the weeding done and catch up on

laundry and go back to school shopping and just you probably have this huge to do list. And no matter what or how many things or how cluttered your home is, it's very easy to feel like, frustrated about the fact that there's no end in sight. And for everything we check off our box, there's just one more thing that keeps getting added to the pile. So today, let's do something together. Let's clean together. Let's declutter together. Let's declutter together. Let's organized together. I want you to take time to not just listen to this podcast, but take action on your home together. I love when I'm cleaning, listening to podcasts, because it feels like I have a friend with me doing this with me, someone who understands, someone who's there to motivate,

and that's what I want to do for you today. So I'm going to offer some advice, some motivation, some inspiration. I'm also going to talk about the horrors that I've found in this new house. and vent to you a little bit because, let's be honest, you're my friend. So let's hang out, you guys. Okay. Today, I walked down into my basement and over the past three days, the first thing we wanted to set up were the priority spaces in our home. And I want you to think about your own home and your top three priority spaces.

These are spaces that I believe you should put first, but your priority spaces might look different than mine. These are spaces that should be like, I'm going to keep it tidy, or I'm going to start here, or this comes first, over the garage, over the attic, over the photo books you want to do. These are the spaces that come first. And it's the kitchen, the bedroom. the bedroom and the family room for me in my home. And the kitchen obviously is the heart of the home, but it's also the most used space in the home. So even when you're chaotic, you got to eat, friends. We have to be able to find snacks and drinks and glasses and cutlery and all of these things. And when your kitchen is not put together, wow, it can really add hours to your day.

of just stuff shuffling and looking for things and having to move things around just so you could actually prepare a meal or even a snack. That's such a time wasteer. So definitely when we were moving into this house, Joe did not agree because he was like, maybe your priority should be packing the old house cast. Listen, Joe, I just wanted to get my kitchen really, really organized. And yeah, I probably wasted time because I decanted spices and yada, yad, yada and went a little overboard. But it gave me real peace of mind to have one space that was under control and have that be a priority space in my home. The next is your bedrooms. It is the first thing that you see when you wake up in the morning is your bedroom.

And it is the last thing you see when you go to bed. And for some reason, especially us women, us most. moms, we like do not prioritize this space. This is where we shove stuff because we don't want company to see it. It feels like a kick in the pants. It feels like you're just, this is an afterthought because it's more important that the house looks good for guests than it feels good for you. And the master bedroom is about a space that feels good for you. It's just, for you and it's your sanctuary from the world. So it shouldn't be cluttered and it shouldn't have things that you're hiding in there. I would rather that you hide them anywhere else than in your

bedroom because you need this for your soul, for your peace of mind, for your happiness, you deserve this. It should feel like your whole house could be just like a dumpster fire, but you go into your bedroom and you think, you release all that tension. And we need that to have a good night's sleep. And we need to wake up to that to have a really good start for the day. And the last room is the family room, mostly because, listen, because family spends time together,

but also people see this room. This is the room you're going to entertain. And it was important for me because we've had a bunch of people come over to see the new house. and I want to have one space that is clean enough to have a guest over in. And these three spaces, I feel like if you focus on these first, you're going to be way ahead. You're going to, like, at least feel way ahead. You're going to feel like you got it together. You know what I mean, friends.

And so that's what I've been really focusing on, which means the office and the basement is where we've chucked everything that hasn't belonged. As I've been putting the other spaces together and the kids' bedrooms together, if I came across something and I'm like, this doesn't have a home right now, and it doesn't belong in the priority spaces, I literally threw it downstairs, just chucked it. What a terrible thing to do, but that's what I've done. And so today, my assistant came for the first time to the new house to work,

and we have no space to work. We don't have desks. We didn't have an office. We didn't have any place to go. There's no flooring down here. Joe, very late last night, there was no lights in the basement. No lights, you guys.

So Joe last night was down here just putting up lights so we potentially could have a place to work. There was dead mice in the ceiling when he took the ceiling tiles down. There was bugs, there's spiders, there's crap everywhere. There's so much dust. It's so disgusting. Like, there's so much work down here.

And I just wanted today to turn and run. And have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like I need to tackle the garage, the shed, the storage, the storage room, the spare bedroom? I don't know, the attic. Maybe it's even your kitchen. And you open this door or you look at the space and you immediately feel like you're being suffocated, like you're drowning. I felt panic coming down here today. Not only because there was dead mice and mouse poo everywhere, but there's so much to do. So much to do that I didn't know even where to start. So many boxes. with no place to put anything. I didn't have a place to sit. I'm supposed to do podcasts on Monday.

It was impossible. Impossible. And I immediately felt like crying and then wanted to go back upstairs and make, you know, do something easy. I wanted to procrastinate by doing something less crappy. That's a big thing that we do as procrastinators, especially if we have ADHD. Tackling a project that we cannot see the finish line because we have time blindness, that feels extra impossible. So we compensate by doing something that at least feels somewhat productive, maybe, but it's completely useless, like wiping the counter. or I don't know.

Like, we're not getting a big bang for our buck here. Like, what's the project that we're doing that's going to push the needle forward? And I was avoiding this space. And today, all I wanted to do was run what I thought of you. And I thought of all the times I talk about five minutes matters. And all the times I say get mole. just, you know, good enough to move on. Just better.

It doesn't have to be perfect. And so my goal today, this morning, when I came down to this space and I wanted to cry, and Emily was here and we had no place to work, I said to Emily, let's see the power of an hour. Let's see what we can do in 60 minutes. We're going to set a time. We're going to roll up our sleeves and let's see what we're going to get done. Because the truth is we had other work that needed to be done upstairs with filming because I'm showing you some decorating that I've done up there.

But we had no place to even check emails. So what can we do in one hour? And when I tell you that we couldn't even walk in here, I am not exaggerating. When I tell you that there's dead mice on the floor, I am not exactly. exaggerating, mouse poo, layers of dust. There was drywall damage that got patched and sanded. There's still the drywall dust everywhere. Everything's covered in cobwebs and centipedes and dead bugs. And there are boxes everywhere, half opened. All the things that I kicked down the stairs that I didn't want at the time, not even in boxes, just spread everywhere. There's tools. Joe had fluorescent light bulbs that he had taken down that had fallen and it exploded. There is glass all over the basement. What can we do in one hour? How can we just focus on better one space at a time? Ignoring the fact that this basement smells like death and it is disgusting. What can we do in one hour? So what we did first is just grab a

garbage bag and just I started picking up dead bugs. I started picking up the, the, hazards, the glass, the trash, the obvious gross stuff, getting it into a trash bag. And that was like five minutes. And the next thing was, how can we zone? And zoning is so important. And I think this is something that isn't talked about enough and people don't do enough when they're tackling, especially a messy space, but any space in your home that you want to organize, zoning is key. It's like I'm going to create a spot for all the craft supplies here or all the office supplies here. And it doesn't have to be its permanent home. We just have to gather all those like items and put them where we think they should go or close by to where they should go.

We're zoning. So I zoned this basement. I moved furniture into the rooms that it should go into. I dragged boxes into the rooms they should go into. I put them in closets, you know, until I can unpack later. I just zoned. And that was like a half an hour. And it instantly felt like, oh, I can walk in here.

This isn't so bad. It made it feel less overwhelming. And I'm going to talk about the next thing I did within this hour in just one second. I got to take a second to thank today's podcast. sponsor, Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth is where I get all of my bedding for my bed. It's bamboo sheets, which I love because they're so soft. And I like to go with like a crisp white part of their signature collection. But I also have all the cozy earth pillows and their waffle blankets. And every time I wash them, I swear they get softer. I also love that they're temperature

regulating. So they're like cooling sheets, which is really nice. especially now that I'm getting older. I love my bed to feel like cool, crisp linens. It's a treat to myself. And my bedroom is a priority. And it should be a priority for you too. When is the last time you treated yourself to some new bedding? Right now, just for my listeners, you can get up to 35% off sitewide when you go to cozyearth.com

and use the promo code, ClutterPurter. That's cozy earth.com and use the promo code Clutterbug. The next thing I did in this space, once I zoned and once I had like the gross stuff picked up, I probably should have cleaned. I did like a really speed vacuum, but I started to feel my motivation really waning. I started to feel like what's the point? Yes, it's better. But I still had such a mountain to climb that I could just.

feel like my ADHD kicking in. And so when I feel like this and I have a project, personally, like everybody's different, but I like to do something I enjoy, which is make something pretty. So style something. And even when I'm doing somebody else's home, when I start to feel this way, I'm like, okay, can I put pretty pillows on the sofa? Can I line things like, could I do one shelf and make it look good. When I was doing the kitchen, I was like, can I make the spice cover look great? Yes, I can't find a plate. But can I focus on making the spices look really good? So down here, I know it seems ridiculous, but I had the bags of all the throw pillows. I put together the sofa and I put all the pretty throw pillows on the sofa amongst chaos, amongst grime, amongst like not a nice space.

but doing that gave me like a burst. It like reinvigorated me. I didn't stop and leave. I felt like I needed a break, but instead of leaving the room and going and doing something else, which I never would have come back, I did something fun in this space. I energized myself in the room.

And my husband does not agree with me, but this is a technique that I've done for a really, really long time. Whenever I'm working on a space and I feel overwhelmed, I'll stop and make something pretty, even if it's like I make a little flower arrangement with flowers that I find, or I stack books nicely on a shelf and put them in rainbow colors, or the shelf that I did behind me here, my office is complete chaos.

And yet I put plants on the shelf, and I took time to put some candles and, and put some decor out even though I'm not unpacked. And I know that feels like that should be the last thing that we do. And it isn't a priority. But I do this when I'm feeling that motivation slipping through my fingers, when I'm feeling that wind come out of my sails and I want to kind of take a break or leave the room or give up.

I'm like, how can you still make progress in this space? but make it fun. Something you want to do, something you don't have to do. Something that brings joy, right, but still pushing the needle forward. And when I see that little bit of like, oh, this looks good, I'm motivated to continue on to make the rest of the space look good too. And I've seen this work in other people's homes as well. Your house could be chaos and look crazy. Fly Lady says, shine your sink, right? Make your bed. For me, it's like make something pretty. Line up on a shelf, like do a little decor. Don't buy things. Use what you have, but go ahead and straighten something. Go ahead and fluff your pillows and fold your blanket, even though you have

laundry all over the place. Right. Take time to do a little project that feels completely. and makes you feel proud, even when the rest of your space isn't completed and isn't making you feel proud. Because that is the motivation and inspiration to keep going. You have faith in yourself. You're like, but look, look what this looks good. Now I just have to rinse and repeat other things. So I'm not going to say, I'm exhausted. This basement is not done. In the hour, I did get the dead mice up and the bugs and the glass. and I made the shelf pretty behind me. I did some light vacuuming. I put some pillows on the couch. And I was able to set up my computer so I could podcast. It's nowhere near done. There's ceiling tiles hanging. We have lights that still aren't working. There's still boxes everywhere that

need to be unpacked. There's furniture. We have to put flooring. It's a hot mess. If you were to walk in my basement right now, you would go, oh, you just moved in and it doesn't look great. but I'm able to function in here. And I see the light at the end of the tunnel because there's a few spaces that look pretty, not done, but pretty enough to inspire me and motivate me to keep going. I wanted to run to Homest and get some area rugs.

And Joe's like, maybe we should finish the drywall first before you buy accessories since every, we still have to put new flooring down. He's like, maybe you shouldn't be buying the pretty things before we've done the actual contracting work, you know, like the construction. But I totally see where he's coming from and I didn't go by area rugs. but still that being said, there is something, there is something pretty powerful about making a space pretty, even if it isn't perfect yet, even if it isn't done, even if it isn't clean, even if it is an organized or decluttered. Can you do something very small to just feather your nest to make that chaos have a little bit of like, ah, but this, this, this, is a piece of what I want. I see it. I'm going to focus on making this one shelf, this one closet, this one dresser top, just my bed look great because then I know that I can continue on and make the rest of the room look great too, one space at a time. Let's not get distracted.

Let's not feel that motivation, Wayne, and leave the room. Let's stay in here and look around and ask yourself, what can I make, what can I do that's fun? What could I do that looks pretty today? How can I like group some things different? Or maybe I hang a picture. Maybe I fold the pillows or fold the blankets on my sofa on the bed. What can you do? Rearrange some furniture maybe.

Just do something very small. Do a little something with the, I don't know, nitty. knacks on top of your your dresser or your bedside tables or your, I don't know, somewhere in your living room. What can you do? To just make the space feel prettier. To make the space feel a little loved, even amongst the disaster and the chaos. Because sometimes we just need a win. sometimes we just need to see that it can be done. Sometimes we need one small little piece that feels completed to give us that motivation and that inspiration to go complete all the other stuff. And I'm going to go do that now. I'm going to go clean at least a little bit more vacuum and mop,

maybe unpack a couple more boxes. And when I feel myself, feel, and like, ah, this sucks and I just want to go upstairs. Before I do that, what can I make pretty? What small thing can I make pretty? Even if it's just like going to another room and grabbing some flowers and bringing them down or a plant. Grabbing something from another space to make the space I want to work on, give it some hope. Maybe that's the right word. I think it's important.

And I hope listening to this podcast, not a lot of, only did you take action on your home and get things done, but that you're feeling inspired and you think of this the next time you're in your space or feeling overwhelmed, that we just have to do one space at a time. We start with filling bags, do a little bit of rearranging, do a little bit of decluttering. And when you start to feel like this sucks and I want to give up, before you do, before you walk away, what can you make pretty? How can you feather this space? How can you polish it a little bit? No matter what the state of the space, I promise you, this is a very effective way. For some people, maybe this doesn't work

for everybody, but for me, it's imperative to keep me going. So thank you guys so much for spending time with me today. I love hanging out with you and I'll see you guys next time.