The Lazy Genius Podcast - #247 - What to Do Now to Make Spring Cleaning Easier Later

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

It’s not spring, y’all, I know. Tomorrow is the first day of February and that is decidedly winter. However, the whole point of the Magic Question - what can I do now to make something easier later? Which is a Lazy Genius principle - is to think ahead just a little bit. We’re going to do that today with spring cleaning.   Helpful Companion Links Preorder The Lazy Genius Kitchen and get surprise preorder bonuses every month until release day! Episode 240: How to Plan a Personal Retreat Episode 195: Creating Your Own Holiday When There’s Nothing to Look Forward To Episode 72: The Lazy Genius Hosts a Book Swap Change Your Life Shawarma  Grab a copy of The Lazy Genius Way Episode 196: How to Lazy Genius Adult Screen Time Episode 208: Essentializing Your Phone Apps Episode 210: How to Lazy Genius Your Kids’ Screen Time Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. Hi there. You are listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 247. What to do now to make spring cleaning easier later? It's not spring, y'all. I know. Tomorrow is the first day of February, and that is decidedly winter.

However, the whole point of the magic question, what can I do now to make something easier later, which is a lazy genus principle, by the way, is to think ahead just a little bit. That's the whole point. We're going to do that today with spring cleaning. Now, first, a word about spring cleaning. We're about to enter a time of the year where we're bored. It is very normal to feel like February and March are kind of humdrum months. Also, the word humdrum, I love that that just came out of my mouth.

It's cold. It's a cold season, at least for most of us where we live. Maybe most is not fair. You know what I'm saying. There aren't any gathering holidays, you know? I mean, Valentine's Day, but that doesn't really count. You're not close enough to the end of school for that to really matter yet. And you're far enough away from the beginning of the year where all of that new year energy

has petered out pretty significantly. It can just be kind of a bummer of the time of a year. Now before we get into spring cleaning talk, I want to offer a suggestion for this season of the year. Now is a great time to do a few things if you want. A, take a personal retreat, which you can learn how to lazy genius in episode 240, how to plan a personal retreat. B, create a fake holiday or celebration for your people, which you can learn about in episode 195, create your own own holiday when there's nothing to look forward to. And then C, you could host a book swap, which you can learn how to do in episode 72. The lazy genius hosts a book swap. The point is, I just want to encourage you, this has nothing to do with spring cleaning. I just want to encourage

you to do something fun these next couple of months, because these next couple of months are generally pretty boring. Okay, back to spring cleaning. Let's define what it is first. Okay. Spring cleaning, to me, this is the definition I'm going to offer you. Spring cleaning is a reset. Think of it simply as a reset. There are no rules you need to follow or standards you need to live up to with us. Spring cleaning is a tangible reset of your space in a more thorough way than you might do week to week. But you get to decide what that means. You decide what clean means. You decide how much of your space you want to clean. You decide how much time you want to spend on it? There is not a standard you have to live up to here. You get to decide what matters.

So release that pressure first and then think of spring cleaning as a reset that you get to define. Now let's talk about the magic question. The magic question is what can I do now to make something easier later? We are talking about what we can do now to make spring cleaning easier later, later being the general time of year, like March or April, when you probably really do have the itch to reset. That's a real thing. As we do, in fact, get closer to school letting out, which for many of you impacts your summer, not all, but a lot of you, as the weather changes, and you feel that energy of like more warmth than sunshine. And then as our needs change because of the weather change, we're putting away heavy winter coats, we're shifting the shoes that we wear,

We're transitioning from soups to chicken shwarma on the grill, which my chicken shwarma recipe is excellent and on the blog if you have not tried it yet. In that normal time of transition, we often notice that we have stuff in our kitchens that we don't use anymore. That soup pot is cracked. Those cookbooks haven't been opened in months. Those shoes don't fit anymore. There are things in our closets that we're like, I haven't touched that in three years. we start to notice during those times of transition.

It's nice to have times of year where we reset. And it is perfectly normal for that time of year to be spring because of how spring energy feels. So I just want to encourage you to not run from it, to not run from the concept of spring cleaning just to like stick it to the man. I mean, you can. Nobody has to spring clean. but ignoring how you're actually feeling during the springtime all for the sake of standing up for

like the normal people who are not going to be taken in by this performative season where you clean every baseboard and oven grate and all kinds of things that might not matter to you so much. You know, like I get that energy, but it might not serve you well. I get that resistance to not wanting to do what other people think you should. and I actually think that's a really worthy energy. I just don't want you to dismiss a spring reset or spring cleaning just because you don't want to do things the way other people say you should. For sure, don't do things just because other people say you should because it's likely

they have different priorities than you do. Different things do matter to each of us. But instead of ignoring a spring reset altogether, name what matters to you about it. and then apply the magic question to make that spring cleaning, however you want to define it, easier for you later. Okay, now let's match a question spring cleaning and make it easier. The best way we can start that process is by naming what is hard about spring cleaning. I think there are four main challenges that people face.

You might resonate with one or all four, but I think this is a really good baseline for most people. The first challenge. You don't have a good enough reason. why you're doing it. Y'all, y'all talk a lot about having no motivation to do like responsible adult things and I get it. Neither do I. That's why I have an episode about how to get things done. We don't feel like it. I want you to also be kind to yourself about the season of life that we're in right now. The pandemic has stripped us of so much emotional resilience we once had. So if you're like,

nope, I'm not going to do it. Like that's okay. That's okay. It's better to not do it for a valid then start it and quit it and realize you never had a good reason in the first place and then you're just like covered in half empty drawers right that's at least my opinion that the thing so if the first challenge is that you don't have a good enough reason to spark the motivation that you need because let's be honest a spring reset of any kind it's going to require extra from you right and you're going to need motivation to do it. A way you can magic question that challenge now is by asking yourself why. Why does this spring reset matter? Why is it important? And if you're like, it's not important, I really don't care if my oven grates are dirty, then that's good to name. Now you know. But if, for example,

your kid with seasonal allergies, and I bring this up as an example, because this has happened to me multiple times. You have a kid with seasonal allergies and that kid has been sneezing more often and you're pretty sure it's because no one has like really dusted the house outside of like a like a quick pass of a sweatshirt sleeve over the TV, you know, that might be a good reason for you to do a reset. You know that taking the time to really dust all the surfaces and really clean them more thoroughly than you usually do, maybe even change out the, you know, the air filters in the house or whatever. whatever, maybe that will do a lot to help your kid not sneeze so much and be a little bit more comfortable. And that is probably worth it to you. So figure out why you're wanting to do it.

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I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. The second challenge, which is very much tied to the first, is that you get in over your head with too much to do when it comes to spring cleaning. I think this one's probably very resonant with many of you listening. you get big plans. Maybe you're like, maybe you're externally motivated and you joined some sort of Instagram challenge, which got you started.

But now you're standing in your kitchen with every item from every cabinet on every counter and you're wiping down the inside of the cabinets and you're annoyed and you're muttering to yourself like, wait, why am I doing this? Spring cleaning in their traditional sense can feel very large, very overwhelming, right? So how can we magically? question any future spring cleaning spring reset tasks and make them easier later. By naming what matters now, like specifically, like rooms and closets and whatever is tangible. Name what parts of your house matter.

If you want to do a spring reset or a spring clean in a couple of months, right now, you can begin to think about and pay attention to. what rooms or spaces really do need that reset. I don't want you to think about the whole house. I think if you're still listening to this episode actually, you likely have never done a full house spring clean in your life because you've run into these challenges. Like if you already do this without help, you don't need me. You don't need this episode. You don't need lazy genius principles to try to make this work for you. So if you're listening, please hear me. I give you complete permission to not spring clean your entire house. It can still count if it's just one part.

Like, please, please, please. This is not an all or nothing task. It does not have to be. There are likely some rooms or closets or drawers or whatever that could genuinely use a reset. When you start small with what matters, when you really name what you actually want to reset, your motivation, your why from that first challenge that we just talked about, it's more clear. Plus, I think you're probably going to be more motivated to reset a particular space when you know you're not going to have to get in over your head with a whole dang dang house. So instead of getting in over your head by giving yourself way too much to do, go ahead and start small now by paying attention to your home, how you live, and what areas could use a research.

set when you have time to do it. Which leads me to number three. The third challenge that keeps us from spring cleaning or from a like makes us want to burn everything down and start over more honestly is that we don't have the time or tools that we need. Doing any kind of spring reset, even if it's one drawer, it requires extra time than your normal schedule. your daily routine, even if you don't even realize that it's a routine at all, it will have to be

added to for this. You have to specifically add time to your life to do any kind of spring reset. So how can you magic question the time aspect? Plan your time now. Look at your calendar and block out a morning, a couple of hours here and there, an entire day or weekend or whatever you want, and know that those times are when you're going to focus on your spring reset. Get any of your people on board. Maybe you can plan something fun for when you're done. You can go ahead and decide once that you will always do fun takeout or a frozen pizza or a freezer meal or something super easy on a spring reset day so that you don't have to cook.

Go ahead and decide your time and any logistical decisions that can affect that. time like dinner, do that now. And then what about tools? If you know you're going to do a spring reset of your closet, because everything is, you know, sort of all over the place, because you're out of hangers, and you don't have any place to put your jewelry, and you have winter stuff stored in the main part of your closet. It's taking up a lot of room. I want you to use the magic question now to think intentionally about what storage tools you might need. Go ahead and get more hangers. Get one of those hanging shoe organizers.

If your shoes are all over the place and you know you need to put your shoes somewhere else, think about what you might want to have to help you tangibly organize your closet. Because what happens is that you start resetting something, but you don't have the tools to finish the job, right? You don't have a mop. You don't have that bendy duster to get on top of the ceiling fan blades. you don't have a step stool to reach the ceiling fan in the first place. You don't have a vacuum that works or enough hangers to hang up all your clothes.

And then what you have to do is leave that little precious nugget of momentum that you have worked so hard to fan its flame. And then you have to leave it behind in your room and go to the store and waste time. Time that you already planned for this task, not to go run errands to do the job, right? and then you get back home from the errands and you're like, yeah, I'll do it later. Like it's such a common cycle. So magic, question it. Have your tools ready for you.

Do it now. Another thing I want to share with you. This one is so true in so many areas of your life when it comes to kind of your organization. Please do not organize what you don't need before you organize. you have to essentialize. You have to get rid of what's in the way of what matters most. One of our biggest home organizational problems is that we're organizing what we don't actually need, which is another way that you can honestly apply the magic question now. Slowly start removing things from that closet, that drawer, or your home in general that you no longer need.

choose now to have an essentializing eye and just remove, slowly remove what's in the way of what matters. You don't organize anything yet. That's for later. That's for your spring reset in March or April. Just get rid of what's in the way now. And then also make sure you have what you do need, like hangers and a working vacuum cleaner. And the fourth challenge that you can magic question is the challenge of going in the wrong order. So cleaning and resetting often have a very right order. For example, I did an entire episode on

cleaning a bathroom in the right order. You need to dust your bathroom before you clean it. You think I'm crazy, but I'm also right. I've been doing it for years. The kitchen is the same way. There's an episode for that too about going in the right order. You don't dust your kitchen first, but there is a right order for the kitchen. There are right orders for certain tasks to make them easier. I mean, the cleaning police are not going to come get you if you go out of order, but it's definitely easier when you do. So if you're curious what a right order might be for whatever you're doing, you can honestly Google. Like you can Google, quote, the right order to deep clean a kitchen or whatever. Now, you might have a cleaning account on Instagram that you love,

that has good orders for things. I have some orders for things. Like I said, I talk about the kitchen and the bathroom on the podcast, that the wrong order is usually that you try and clean a room that has a bunch of stuff in it. If your definition of a spring reset is to like if it involves deep surface cleaning, right, you need to clear out as much stuff from that space as you can. Otherwise, you're basically cleaning around piles and you're moving those piles from one part of the room to the other or you're like lifting one thing up at a time. It's like, no, you will not. You will not feel the progress, you will lose your mind, you're supposed to have like that good feeling of I took everything out, I wiped it all down in one fell swoop and then I put it all back and you put

it all back in a way that matters. So just to make sure that you're going in the right order. Now on a broader scale, this episode is helping you to do that. It's helping you go in the right order. You need to figure out why you want to do a spring clean before you start it. You need to name what that looks like for you and what rooms you'll actually do or else you'll start where someone else tells you to and then you'll get in over your head and hate everything. Remember our steps of going in the right order that are laid out in my book, The Lacey Genius Way, because there are specific right orders for certain things, but then there are three kind of general right order steps for anything. And those are, number one, name what matters. Number two, calm the crazy. And then number three, trust yourself

with what needs to come next. Now, a great way that you can calm the crazy is to not start what you really don't want to finish or to not prioritize a space that doesn't actually matter to you. And that is what you can do now to make spring cleaning easier later. Now, if you would like some specific tools and cleaning ideas because you just don't want to have to solve more problems than necessary, you would like someone to hold your hand in this process. There is a digital e-book, which I did not need to say both of those words. It's the same thing in the lazy genus store called the clean slate. The clean slate is a guide on how to gather the tools you need, helps you think about cleaning in a new way, how to specifically clean certain places,

what order you can go in. It is just a really helpful resource. If you don't know where to start with your cleaning, but you would like to clean like a lazy genius. There will be a a link for that in the show notes if you're interested, as well as links to all the episodes that I mentioned earlier. Okay, let's celebrate our lazy genius of the week. This week, it's a dude. It's Ludwig Vivas. He emailed us and said that he uses the built-in sleep timer on his TV to manage screen time for his toddler. This is what he wrote. Instead of saying that we will watch for a little and then end up watching for an hour, I go ahead and set up the TV on a sleep timer. If we're going to watch for 20 minutes, I set it that time and it automatically shuts off. I don't have to remember to shut it off and we don't go over

our established time. Now, I absolutely love this idea. And I also want to say another way that you can do this kind of thing, but not for screen time, is a dinner bell. Any time that you can use something that is not your voice, that is not like a human telling the children to do something, kids respond to it so much more favorably. Like they respond to timers and bells so much more the voices. It's the funniest. They don't get mad about it or as mad at least. So I love this idea. I will also mention that there are three screen time related episodes if you're interested in that topic. Episode 196 is how to lazy genius adult screen time. It is a shame free zone. It's a super helpful episode. That came out. I guess it would have been almost a year ago. And it was like so

popular. People were so free to buy it. But also found a lot of like really practical help in managing your own screen time. So that's 196. Episode 208 is about essentializing your phone apps to make your phone like potentially work a little better for you based on what matters. And then episode 210 is how to lazy genius your kids screen time. Those links will also be in the show notes. I just love this example from Ludwig on how to decide once with how to measure time when measuring time matters. Just set the sleep timer. Let the TV do all the work. It's so great. All right, y'all, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast. called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.