Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - What is your Clutter Trying to Tell You? | Clutterbug Podcast # 125

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Did you now your messy clutter piles can actually HELP you get organized? It's true! The clutter hotspots in your home are telling you where and how you are lacking organization.  Walk around your home today and let your clutter help you create new and organized homes in your valuable real estate 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's talk about those random piles of clutter in your house and how they can actually be a good thing because they can tell you where you're lacking organization and exactly what type of organization you need to stay organized. Hey clutterbugs and welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to talk about organization and the thing is it isn't what you think it is. And for the longest time, I thought getting organized meant buying containers. getting more storage, stacking your stuff really neatly. That's what the impression of organization is,

but the truth is what I've discovered over the last decade is that real organization is creating a functional space that you're able to keep tidy. Organization is all about putting things back when you're done with it and actually being able to put it back so you don't have to constantly pick up after yourself and so you don't have to be stuck on this tidying cycle. Real organization catches your stuff. And absolutely we have to retrain our brain and we're in the habit of just kind of dropping things as we go. And it does take work to create new habits. But the

most important thing is that we have the right organization. Without that, without the right organization, we'll just be stuck constantly tidying all the time or searching for things or having to take time to put something away. And if something is hard to put away, we just won't. We'll put it down. So what I really like to do, especially when I'm going into a client's home, is take a look at their clutter as a real indication of how they're naturally using the space. And definitely clutter attracts clutter. So when we start to have a clutter pile, it's really easy for us to just continue adding to the pile. It's almost like signaling to our brain, this is where random stuff goes.

Put random things here. But it's also really great at seeing how your natural flow of your house is. where is the spot that's just easiest for you to drop? What are these important things that you're putting down here? And let's look at that and let's really diagnose what your home is lacking and how we can create a system exactly where you're naturally piling things to catch that clutter so it doesn't become a mess. There are really five different components when it comes to organization, five things that you have to do. And the first is declutter. And the second is establish your valuable real estate, right? Where things should go. The third is zoning. Zoning is so important.

And this is basically putting like items together and then dedicating a space for these categories that you've gathered to go. And then of course, it's containerizing. I don't know if that's a word, but putting things in containers. And not always. We don't always have to put things into containers, but it definitely is helpful. And last, it's that maintenance, which is the habit part that we talked about in the beginning. But something that is really happening in honestly, almost everyone's home. Not only are they not decluttering, but they're not using that valuable real estate. They're not zoning, and they've really become clutter blind. So I got an email yesterday from a wonderful person who follows me on YouTube, and I'm going to throw her under the bus for a second. I'm definitely

not going to share her name, but her story is so relatable. Every day I get hundreds of emails from people sending me pictures of their space and asking what they can buy or what kind of organizing system they need to solve the problem. And when I look at these photos, first of all, please don't send me emails. We have a Facebook page where you can ask for this type of advice. It's called organizing advice for clutter bugs. It's on Facebook. I'd really appreciate it if you posted those type of questions there, but I digress. So I get all these photos and looking at them, what I see is this isn't something you can buy your way out of very rarely is it about lack of storage or lack of the right organizing system. What I'm always seeing is lack of decluttering, lack of zoning, and lack of

really identifying the valuable real estate. So I'm going to use this last email that I got as a real example and I want you to visualize it. It's hard without you seeing the picture, but you're walking into her home and as soon as you walk into the entranceway, it's right off of the kitchen. So she's coming in with groceries and mail and kids backpacks. She's walking into the kitchen and she has a little part of her kitchen that has one of those built in desks with upper cabinets. It has the countertop. It has a little desk area. You see this in a lot of kitchens with a place to pay bills, I guess. And because it's immediately when you walk into the kitchen, this is her drop zone. It's the landing zone. It's the command center. It's also the hot spot of the home where everything's

getting piled. And what she wanted to know was what she could do, what she could buy to make this space more functional. And I asked her to open up the cabinets above and the drawers below, because there was storage, and take photos of that for me. And then of course I asked her her organizing style, because this is critical. If you have a lot of storage above and below, or you have clothes cabinetry, or you have a closet, but your visual, that isn't going to work for you for those everyday important things. We can't put things like bills that need to be paid, things that need to be returned to the store, keys, wallets, those type of things. Out of sight, you're just naturally going to leave it out anyways. So we, I mean, I could organize it all in a drawer for you, but next week it's just going to be

on top of the counter again. So right off the bed, I have to know her organizing style. And she's part ladybug and part butterfly. So she wants the papers to be visual, the important things to be visual, but not everything visual. Once I looked at pictures of this space, I noticed something right away. First, of course, she has to declutter like everybody does. But this is the most valuable real estate in her home. And what valuable real estate means is it's the spaces in your home that are easiest to access and that you're naturally just using. So usually this is anything from waist to eye level. So your upper cabinets, the bottom shelf of your upper cabinets, all your surfaces, your countertops, the top of the dresser, any tables. This is valuable real estate.

This is where it's the easiest thing in your home to access. So the things that we put here have to be the stuff we use all the time. But here in her kitchen, this one spot is the most used space in the entire house. Every time they go in, every time they go out, every time they're looking for something important. This is where they go. So the upper, the lower cabinets, the drawers, and the top of the space, the only things that should be kept here should be the most important things in the home. I hope this is making sense. So taking a deeper look inside the cabinets, I noticed something that I noticed in, again, almost everyone's homes. There was a lot of everything here. This was a

catch-all space. There was cookbooks in here, a ton of cookbooks in the upper cabinet. There was so many of the family's manuals for all of the appliances that were stored in this space. There was a lot of like medical things stored into this space. Down below in the drawers, they were stuffed filled with old artwork from the kids, report cards, photos, sort of acting as a memory center, but long-term memory. And we know that we don't store long-term things in valuable real estate. and we certainly don't store things that are never used like cookbooks in manuals how often are you accessing your manuals hardly ever so why are they in the most important space in the home and the reason

that she thought that this wasn't working and that she needed to buy something else for this space is because it was so full that everything was getting piled on the counter everything absolutely everything, cords, cables, electronics, bills that need to be paid, lunch pills, there was extra food products here that didn't fit in the cabinet, you name it. If it didn't have a place to go, it was being piled on the countertop of this space. And what's really relatable about this is that she didn't realize that inside the drawers and up top were really being wasted by things that should not be in your valuable real estate, that should not be in this zone, the same important zone in her kitchen. But like a lot of people, this is where the home is. And we get really

clutter blind, I want to say. We get blind to how our home is functioning because we're like, well, that's where the cookbooks go or that's where the manuals go. And I know I need space for my cords that I use all the time. And I know I need space for the masks that we use for COVID or the COVID tests or the important papers I have to access and coupons and receipts. But I don't have a place for those important things to go. So therefore, I need more storage. Maybe you can relate to this. What I really want to challenge you to do when you're listening to this podcast is take a look at your clutter. Take a look at where you're naturally piling things and then look immediately above and immediately below that space. What is being stored there? What is being stored

directly above, directly beside, directly below where you're naturally piling? Let your clutter indicate where the issue is because where you're naturally piling things, that's basically your body, your brain telling you this is where I should keep a home for this. Where nearby can this important stuff go? And some of the stuff where piling is going to be lazy clutter. It's going to be water bottles that need to get put away or food that we just haven't put in the cabinet yet or something that does have a home but that home maybe we just haven't put it away or it's too far away. but a lot of those things that we're piling when it comes to our like hotspot clutter zones are things that don't actually have a home. So look nearby and look at it with a critical eye.

I want you to pretend you're me for a second and ask yourself, okay, if above and below my clutter hot spot, the places where I pile are valuable real estate, is everything that I'm storing in these spaces valuable? Is it important enough? Do I use it at least a few times a week? And if the answer is no, it should be relocated. It should be rezoned. And so I said to her, is there another place you can put the manuals? And she could put them in the office. She could put them in the filing cabinet. She could put them in a tote in the basement or in the garage labeled manuals because she doesn't use those all the time. What about the cookbooks? She admitted she never even has ever looked in those cookbooks. And she has another spot in her kitchen for the recipes she actually uses. The cookbooks, they need to go.

They just, they need to leave. And when we talked about the kids' memories that were stored in the drawers, I just asked her, do you have a memory bin? Because these are long-term things you want to keep. These are your kids report cards. These are photos. These are drawings that they've done. they should not be in your everyday valuable real estate zone, right? This is your action zone. This is your command center. This is your drop zone. Why are you keeping long-term memories here? And this is a simple fix. It's going to the store. It's going to Walmart. It's picking up a memory bin for each of the children, taking those papers out, putting them in the memory bin, and putting that in the garage or in the basement or in the attic or in a storage room.

Done. And now instantly she has a space, an entire drawer to dedicate two cords and cables and extra electronic devices. She has shelving that's available where she can put baskets for receipts and gift cards and other important papers. And now the counter is free for her to put a paper catcher for bills that need to be paid. It wasn't about fancy organization.

It wasn't about buying something. at all that's going to solve this problem or make it more functional. How you make it more functional is just really letting your clutter tell you what you're lacking and then looking close by to see how this valuable real estate is being wasted. I want to thank Fun Jet Vacations for sponsoring today's podcast. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to start traveling again. And I want a vacation that's fun for the whole family. And for me, the best part of vacations are the ones that's I call those fun-expected moments and I get those from Funjet vacations. Funjet offers vacation packages to your favorite destinations such as Mexico, the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii, and more.

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She thinks that she's lazy, but the truth is she's just a really visual person. So she has a desk in her room and she has a couple of shelves above it, but she has big drawers top drawers, where she could store things that she uses all the time. She likes to sit at her desk and put on makeup in the morning. This is where she does her homework. This is where she paints her nails. This is where she draws. This is where she does everything, really. In her, you know, a teenager, their bedrooms, their whole world. And her desk is always messy. She said to me, I don't want to ask you. The last thing I want to do, mom is ask you for advice. She hates when I unsolicitly give her organization advice. And I don't organize her space without her.

permission. But she said to me, I need help with my desk. No matter how often I tidy it, it's always messy again. And I went in there and I just looked at the stuff on top of her desk and I looked at it from a butterfly's eye. The stuff on top of her desk is the things that she uses every day. So there was makeup remover and some of her makeup and nail polish and her hairbrush and her favorite pens and her paint brushes that she loves to paint with every day. And basically all the things she uses on a daily basis. And as a ladybug, I, I, would put these things in the top drawers. I mean, it's right below. It isn't a big deal to just open a drawer. So when I open the drawer to peek inside, I noticed that this was stuff that she uses less often.

It was also filled with a lot of wrappers and a lot of garbage. As a butterfly, she just can't put the things she uses all the time in the drawers because it is out of sight, out of mind. And this is why it's so important to really know your organizing style. It doesn't mean nothing can go in these drawers. She has gum and mint and extra pencil crayons and she has not notpads and other things that she accesses, but not her daily things. Her daily things cannot go in a drawer because her brain is going to want to leave them out. Even though the home, she can train herself a million times to put it in the drawer, but her instincts, her gut is to leave these things out. And the only place to really put them that's out is on top of the desk, which leaves her zero space. So here's how

you solve this problem. First of all, you identify the clutter on top of the desk, knowing that things that you pile on surfaces are usually the things that you use the most often. And sometimes clutter can attract other clutter and there might be lazy clutter mixed in there. But for the most part, this is really the important stuff and it must get a valuable real estate home. It must have valuable real estate for your style. And as a ladybug, the valuable real estate for me would be the top drawers of her desk. But as a butterfly, the valuable real estate is the wall space directly above the desk. So I went to the dollar store and I got her some floating shelves. They were $4 each from Dollarrama. I picked her up two of the big ones and two of the small $2 ones. So I spent

about at math, $12, right? $12 in tax. Not a lot of money. And I installed these directly above the desk space. And I went up just far enough that she can still reach them without standing up. but high enough up that she could still put her laptop open up underneath. So everything is at eye level when she sits down. She can see it. She can access it. It's just as easy to put it on the shelf as it is to put it down on top of the desk. And I moved her favorite pens up here.

I moved her makeup remover. I gave her a shelf just for the deodorant and for the things that she uses every day to get ready. I put her paint brushes in a cute little jar up here. I put all of the things that were on the desk up on the shelf. And it's totally visual overload for me. It is not my style, but I'll tell you what. Her desk has never had clutter on it since. A small shift, right?

Look at your clutter and say, how can I create a home for this that works with my style directly above or directly below? Where can I create a space that's taking advantage of the valuable real estate? And then once you've determined that, this isn't about fancy systems. this isn't about buying a bunch of stuff. This is just realizing, okay, I'm visual. It should go on the wall or it should go in a basket that's out so I can see. And if I'm hidden, is it the cabinet above or is it the cabinet below? What's the easiest to access? And what can leave from that valuable real estate to make room. So this is what I wanted to do today. Such a fun exercise. Walk around and look at

where you're naturally piling stuff. Really take a look at that clutter. It's so common to be clutter blind. every single day, day in and day out, but I want you to look at it from a news perspective. I want you to pretend that I am coming into your house and I'm looking at this and really determine where a home for this stuff can go that's very close by and peek above, peek below, see what's there, see if you're really taking advantage of that space and then do some zoning. In Izzy's room, I just zoned all the getting ready stuff together, all the nail polish together, all her art supplies together on different shelving, and that was it. fast, inexpensive, and a lot of the times you won't even have to buy anything at all. You already

have the storage in your home. You're just not utilizing it correctly. I hope you're feeling inspired to do a little reorganization of your clutter hotspots this week. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you guys next time.