← Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast
Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast
Is Spring Cleaning a Scam? | Clutterbug Podcast #325
00:57:21
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- [00:00]
Cass
On top of your house instead of actually living in it. No, I don't mean on your roof. This is like a crazy question, and you're probably thinking, not really, Cas, but I will challenge you. Because every single client's home, even when I go to friends and family's homes, I am seeing people doing this, living on top instead of in. And here's what it looks like. You have in your house, and then you have children, and now suddenly there's kids toys everywhere, like on top of the floor, on top of the sofa, on top of all the flat surfaces. It's on top of your actual home. Maybe you love crafting or your kids love to do crafts and you have homework, but it's all over your kitchen table because you have no place for it to go. It's on top of your life, not in your life. Does this make sense? And it's really hard for you to see your home and its potential because when you look at it, you're seeing the stuff, the individual things. You're seeing those totes that are filled with memories you have to go through. You're seeing all those extra craft supplies you have to organize someday. You're seeing the storage room buried under year's worth of I'm going to one day get to it. Or you have a spare bedroom that is literally layered under who knows what. And it can be really hard to see the forest through the trees. But that's what we're doing today. I am going to help you. I'm going to help you look at your house differently, and I'm going to inspire and motivate you to take action so you can start living in your house instead of on it. So that you can make radical, decluttering decisions so that you can drastically change the layout of your home. We're going to be moving furniture probably up in here. But here's what I can promise you. Your life will be better and it will be worth it. So we're bringing a little tough love today, and I'm going to ask you some questions. I'm going to share some stories with you. But I also want you to be taking action. Not necessarily on the things we're talking about today, but something. I want your hands to be doing boring, mundane crap so that your brain can really register what we're talking about. So do not just sit and passively watch this podcast. Get up, do the dishes, vacuum, dust, straighten something. Or better yet, grab a trash bag and say, enough is enough. I'm sick of a home That I always have to clean and tidy. I am sick of tripping over things. I am sick of every day feeling like a failure because I can't manage the place I live in. You can do this, but you have to be brave enough to say, I'm more important than the stuff. And you have to be honest about what you use and what you love and what you're just keeping out of guilt and shame and pressure and expectations. You have to say, I'm the freaking boss. And then you have to act like it. So right now, do something amazing. Clean, straighten, tidy, and we are going to get in to how to actually radically change your home so it starts working for you and not against you so you can start living in your home instead of on it. Are you ready? Let's go. Hey, I'm Cass from Clutterbug. Welcome back. I love to talk about how to take back control of your home. I want to empower you to be the CEO of your own life. And I believe the easiest way to get every single, single aspect of your life under control for you to be mastering your finances and your health and your relationships, it starts with your home. It starts with this as the foundation. And then we build those pillars on top of that. It's also the easiest thing to do, get your home under control. Because, listen, you don't got to run on a treadmill or save a bunch of money. All you got to do is put things in a trash bag and look at your stuff a little bit differently. I'm going to start with a quick story about a client that I'm working with right now, Nicole. She lives in my community and I volunteer every few months to do a local makeover. She applied. She was reluctant, but she needed help with one space in her house that was just filled with. I'm going to get to it someday. There were totes. She has three children. The youngest is one and a three year old and a six year old. And she gets a lot of hand me downs. And there's old toys and there's things people have given her, but there's also things her kids have outgrown that she wants to sort and go through. And then there's things that they use now. There's board games and there's books and there's just everything and it's all thrown in one room. So when I walked into her house and it was this sweet old farmhouse, it actually belonged to her grandmother. Her grandmother passed away and her parents allowed her and her husband and her family to rent It. So let's go there. She doesn't 100% feel like it's hers. And she moved in her things on top of grandma's old house. So we're starting there. So we walk through her home, and she's got this great kitchen, this beautiful dining room. We walk through. It's huge with these antique furniture. And then we walk through these double doors, and I'm confronted with just piles of stuff. And what stuck out to me was, like, how we went from these beautiful spaces to like, what the heck is this and what is it is for? And when I asked her, okay, so what is this room's purpose? She said, oh, it's the piano room, and there's not a piano in sight. It's just stuff she's gonna get to someday. And A, I know she's a perfectionist, and B, I'm like, girl, this is your home. I can see that she's struggling not just with embarrassment and shame, but also this is the path she needs to go through to get upstairs, to get dressed, to go to bed, to deal with her family. And they're tripping over stuff. And then I look around the corner, and I see a foyer with a front door that is buried under shoes and coat. And I'm confused because I walk through an entranceway to get here, and this is when I just had this, like, epiphany. She isn't seeing her house as the, like, the flow and the structure and the layout. She's just seeing the stuff. And she asked me to come and help her with the stuff. But what I really do for every single client is I help them map their home. I help them. Them live in their home and not on it. So I'm. I'm telling you this because in two days. Days, we gave Nicole an office, which was originally a foyer. We gave her an entrance way which was originally nothing. It was like a storage room filled with kids toys. We gave her an adult sitting space, which was a dining room, which she hardly ever used. But that's okay because we still gave her a dining room, and we gave her kids a playroom. We gave her a home in two days because I was able to come in and ask real questions, which I'm going to ask you in a second, so you can have the same transformation. But also I was able to give her real solutions that she had never thought of before, because she wasn't looking at her house as its potential. She was looking at her stuff inside. Have you ever walked into someone's home and Immediately got a sense of who they are. You walk into a home and it feels beautiful and cozy and put together. But more than that, it doesn't feel. Feel like. Like a staged show home. It feels like that family, because they've set it up for themselves and how it works, it is a reflection of them. But most of the homes that we go into, including perhaps yours, feels a little different. It feels like there's a home underneath, but then there's, like, life piled on top. So. So there's coats and shoes, and everything's just kind of everywhere. The kitchen table, the. The. The kitchen counter. Everything just has things piled on it. And this is what was going on in Nicole's home as well. It was like. It was like there was a structure under there. There was. There was a house, but it wasn't hers. It was as if it was someone else's house that her things were put on top of. And I promise you, you have spaces in your home that feel this exact same way. And we're gonna. I'm gonna ask you some. Some questions to kind of lead you down. It's like a thought experiment, okay? So bear with me that are. That are going to lead you down a path that will allow you to look at your space differently. So here's what I asked Nicole, and here's what I'm going to ask you. The first question is, what do you wish this home had? What do you wish your home had, like, in it? Let's go real big. Let's be super magical. When I asked Nicole this, she kind of stopped. Is like, if you could, what. What do you wish you had in this house? And she's like, well, someday we are going to put on a new porch. We're going to renovate, and we're going to have a proper mudroom. I wish I had a place for all my family. She has three kids. She wants to have a fourth. Her. Her and her husband, that is five people living in this house. She's like, I wish I had a spot for the muddy boots. They live on a farm. And the coats and the winter stuff in the summer stuff. And I wish I had a mudroom. And they had this little, like, porch. And it was not. It was a three season, not a four, but it was just filled with, like, kids. There was umbrellas, but there was also, like, a couple shoes. But mostly it was kids toys. Their hockey stuff and their. Their, like, soccer stuff, their baseball stuff, outdoor pails. There was sprinklers. There was things because they didn't Have a shed or a garage, Right? So they're treating this kind of as a garage. And instead, this is what they're doing. They're walking in their home. They're taking their shoes and their coat off. They're going through the kitchen. They're going through the dining room. They're going through the storage room, which is the piano room, which, you know, doesn't have a piano. And then they're going to a foyer with a front door that doesn't even open, and they're dumping these things on the floor there. They're walking through their entire house because there's this perception that there's no place for a mudroom until they build it one day. What do you wish you had in your house? And I hear this. I'll hear, I wish I had a walk in closet. What I'm really hearing is, I wish I had more storage for my clothing. I wish I had a mudroom is I wish I had a spot for my shoes and coats and. And shoes. I wish I had more storage. More storage for what? Don't just say that. More storage for what? For my memories, for my craft supplies, for my. I wish I had a craft room is something I hear all the time, which is, I wish I had a place for all my hobby stuff to go. And here is the solution. Okay, here's. Here's what I said to Nicole. You don't need to renovate. You need to find that in the home you have today. And it's. There. It is there. It's just right now being used for something else. Which leads me to the second question. Where do you have wasted space in your home? And wasted space is things that you're not really using and loving. That is there. Like, do you have a closet that's just like. I call it the junk closet? Do you have a spare bedroom for the guest that comes one week out of 52 weeks in the year? If that. Do you have bedrooms that used to be your children, but they've grown and moved out, and now it's still. Where is your wasted space? Do you have shelving in the basement that is filled with old paint cans? Okay, we don't have. It doesn't have to be big and dramatic here. Where is the wasted space in your home? And when I asked this question to Nicole, she was like, I don't know. We use all of it. And you might be thinking this too. So let's take a freaking tour of your house. Let's go to where you enter, and let's Open cabinets and closet doors. Are you using everything in these high value places? Is this valuable real estate? We walked into Nicole's little three season entrance way, and there was these two closets behind piles of crap. Okay? So I moved the crap out. I'm like, what's in here? She said, I have no idea. My grandmother's used that for, like, her seeds, I think. We have not opened it in seven years. Now, I know this is an extreme example, but you have a space like this in your house. I know you do. It's a closet, it's an attic, it's a basement, It's a spare bedroom. You have a space in your home that you're not 100% sure what's even in there. And you know, you don't use it very often. It's a just in case. So I pulled the stuff out, I opened it. Guess what was in there. It was full to the brim with pickle jars. They were black. You couldn't even really see what was inside. It was filled with empty jars. It was filled with packages of seeds. And obviously, like everything, this grandmother, she ate a cucumber, she picked out the seeds, and she put it in a little plastic solo cup, and she set it in this closet thing, and it sat there to die indefinitely. And this, these two closets were so big, you guys. Okay, so this is the thing I said, you have not opened this in seven years. We are going to make a deal right now that every single thing in here is going in the trash. We're not recycling. We're not worried about perfection. We're not cleaning. We're not finding something. It could be perfectly good and saying, oh, I could sell this or I could use this. Everything is going in the trash because this is wasted space. You don't even know what's in here. You have to have rules and boundaries, and you have to be ruthless. And Nicole agreed. And we opened it up and I started throwing pickle jars in a garbage bag. And her head looked like it was going to explode. We can recycle those. Shouldn't we dump out the pickles and wash the jars? What did we say? There is no room for perfection when you're drowning and you're taking back control of your home. There will be casualties. You will screw up. You will make mistakes. You will take shortcuts. You will cheat. And that is okay because you're going to get to a place where you can do everything better. But the path to an awesomeness looks like, gosh, I'm screwing Up and making a bunch of mistakes. That's the reality. Trying to do everything perfectly is why your home is out of control. Stop it and try sucking. So I'm like, dramatically. We're throwing things in trash bags. She looks like a deer in headlights, but she's getting into it. We don't have gloves on. We're just throwing things. And then she comes across, like, this antique apple core peeler thing. And I look at her and she looks at me, and it's like, put it in the trash bag. This is the thing. We can find something good for all of this. That is the someday mentality. I will. I'm gonna get to it. I'm gonna do it perfect. That is why she is literally walking through her entire freaking home with her family of five to drop their shit shoes on the floor in a roof across. What are you doing, Nicole? What are you doing? Stop it. So we threw it out. There was a big bowl. She's like, maybe I could use this in the outdoor kids kitchen. It's a really perfectly good bowl. Everything is perfect. You didn't know it was in there. And therefore it goes in the freaking trash. Guess how long this took. When I asked her, how long do you think this is going to take to empty this all out? She looked at me like. And I knew she's thinking weeks. And I was like, 15 minutes. We set a timer. Exactly 15 minutes to the dot. We hustled. We took out 17 trash bags. Okay, 17 trash bags. Then we got the shop vac. We vacuumed it out. I wiped it out and disinfected it. We put all of her kids outdoor toys. There's a shelf for baseball. There's a shelf for hockey. There's a shelf just for sidewalk chalk. There's a spot for her kids baseball helmets and bike helmets. And. And then we even had spots for all the shoes that are offseason shoes. And suddenly all of that stuff that was on the floor in this entrance is gone. And we moved in the shoe shelves, and the. The shoes that were on the floor were putting up hooks for coats. She has a freaking mudroom. And yes, it's probably going to be too cold in the winter for everything but three seasons, she has a mudroom. This is the life changing, insane thing that happens when you look at your house differently and you identify what you wish you had more of. And then you say, I'm gonna make it good enough. I'm not gonna buy things. I'm not gonna wait until things are perfect and I can renovate how can I make. Make this for myself now? By reclaiming wasted space. So I hope right now you're thinking, like, what do you wish your house had? It could be. I wish I. This is. This is what I do. I wish I had more space in my bathroom. I wish I had more storage in my bathroom. For what, Cass? While I get ready in there and I have all my hair products and I have all my makeup and I have all the things and it just feels really jammed all the time. And I'm like, oh, my God, I don't have room for all my stuff. Okay, what if we. Where's wasted space? And I was like, in the bathroom, there's none. But in the bedroom, I had a dresser that was basically empty, which is filled with random crap. I didn't even know it was in there. What if I move my makeup out of the bathroom and I create a makeup table in that wasted space? Now my bathroom doesn't. It has more storage because I took out the. You know what I mean? I took out the crap. And now I also have this beautiful freaking makeup desk. Because I looked at my house differently and I problem solved. Radically, dramatically. I got rid of things. We donated a dresser. My husband looked like he was, oh, that dresser is a perfectly good dresser. Maybe we could use it. You know what? We're not using it. And what we do need is a space for me to get ready. I use that stuff every day. Why are we wasting precious space in our home with things that are used once in a blue freaking moon? Why are you wasting your home if you're like, I wish. Oh, man, I'd kill for a walk in closet.
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Emily
You.
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Cass
What you're really saying is, I need more space for my clothing. Get in that closet and radically declutter all the stuff that doesn't fit you. Guess what? You got the closet of your dreams. And it might still be small and it's not a walk in closet, but what you need, what you want more of you, is space for your clothing. You want getting ready and finding your clothing to be easier and less, like, hectic. You can do that right now by going in your closet. We're not taking everything out and sorting and making piles. You are just like one item. Do I wear this?
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Emily
No.
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Cass
If it's not a hard yes. I love this. It's a going. It's going. You are trading the stuff you don't love and use for what you actually feel freaking want. If you have a spare bedroom and you're like, you know, I would love to have a craft room. What are you doing? Take a picture of that bed right now. Put it on Facebook Marketplace for free. Get that old dresser out of there. I don't care. You have an empty space. Make that your craft room. Now, if you're like, oh, I have this, and I have all my Christmas decorations in this freaking room, but I would put it in the basement. What's in the basement? Do you got empty. Do you have broken vacuums and empty boxes? Do you have kids toys? When your kids are grown and left, what do you do? Do you have an old crib down there? I know you have a playpen. I know you do. It's leaving. Then we take the stuff from in there, we put it down there, and magically you have more space. And I don't care how small your home is. I don't care how crammed you think it is. You have wasted space. And you have the ability to. To gift yourself the thing you wish you had. So those are the first two questions. What do you wish your home had? And where is wasted space? The next question I want you to ask is, what do you want more of? When I asked this question to Nicole, she said, I want more time with my girlfriends. Like, I want to be able to invite people over and have a place to sit and have tea with them while our kids play. I want more community in my home. I want a place where I. I can have, like, yeah, people come in and. And she loves reading the Bible and having Bible study. She's like, I want this somewhere in my house. Someday when we move or if I build and build on, I'm going to have a sitting room. And I'm like, girl, you just told me that you had a dining room you hardly ever use. She's like, yeah, but we. Sometimes we need. We need a dining room. Okay, you have a piano room that's nothing but storage, and it's smaller. What if we put the dining room in the empty piano room? Right? And then what if we created an adult sitting room that is right beside the family room where the kids play, like, the playroom. And so you can still watch the kids and be right beside them, but you have a place for this thing you wish you had more of, which is community, girlfriends. A spot to reflect and do Bible study. We can make that in the house you have today. And then she's like, well, I could move the. The dining room, but then where would the desk go? It's going in the foyer because now we have a spot for your shoes. And so we move the desk. I'm like, this is. You know what this is now, Nicole? This is a craft room. You have your very own office craft room, which is going to lead me to the next thing you have to do in a second. And then we move the dining room table. We did this all in one day. Can I just say this? Okay. Because we moved the. The 17 bags of crap out. Now we have a spot for shoes and coats. So now that we have, we can move out the coats and shoes, we can move that desk and. And stuff into this room and make a freaking office slash craft room. And now, because this room is empty now, we can move in the dining room table. I mean, she had to declutter. I took four trips to Goodwill for all the old clothes and the totes and the stuff, but guess what? She traded this for a proper dining room, which gave an entire empty room for a beautiful sitting room. It. It looks like we. We. We. I moved a love seat out of the. Out of the family room. I grabbed some old chairs that she had, and we said, it looks like something out of Bridgerton. Okay. It looks like, you know, where you crook your finger and you drink tea. We did this in one day. It's not perfect. I'm going to try to make it a little bit more perfect. I'm going to get her some throw pillows and some curtains and make it a little pretty. But even this. You should have seen the look on her face. Okay. You should have seen she was just crying. It was crazy. Because something she thought of was a wish and a someday and a maybe became a reality in an instant. Because she traded totes of old clothes that were donated. Because she traded old things she wasn't using toys her kids had outgrown. Because she traded 17 bags of trash. Because she traded things she wasn't using every day for the room to live in her home. You will see her face when I post this YouTube video next month. But it was so inspiring to me. And this is the same transformation anytime I go into anyone's home. I went to Chloe's home in New York and was able to give her actual space for living in her home instead of on it. By trading the things she wasn't using and loving. That's it. That's all you do. You trade the stuff you're not using. Loving Jessica McCabe. We traded all the excess to give her a health and wellness space where she can do yoga and work out. I still talk to her. She texts me all the time. And she's just in the space on the floor doing yoga like. Thank you. I can't believe I have this in my home. I can't believe I have the space to do this. And it was there all along. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grown ups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help your racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie sleep solutions for the whole family@ollie.com that's o l l y dot com. You can have a library, you can have a workout room, you can have a playroom, you can have a craft room, you can have a makeup table. You can have all of these things in the home you have right now, even if it's just a corner of a space. But you have to be willing to look at your space differently, analyze the wasted space and trade the stuff in order to get it. So again the questions. Okay, what do you wish your home had? Where do you have wasted space? What do you want more of? And then the last thing you have to ask yourself is what is the label of this room? What is the label of this closet? What is the label of this corner? And this goes back to zoning. But this is so important because the minute something is a storage room, a doom room, an extra room, a spare room, it doesn't have a clear purpose. And this is why it gets out of control. Because it doesn't have a boundary, because it doesn't have a vision. When this is a piano room, but there's no piano in it. When this is a foyer, but we're not even using it as an entrance. That's the problem. That's the problem. So we can look around your home. Right now. I want you to walk into your living room. I want you to walk into your kitchen, whatever it is, and identify it, label it, and let's go a little bit further. So if we were to walk into my kitchen, what's the label? It's the kitchen. We. What's the label of that cupboard right there or that sec. Well, that's our beverage station. This is our. Where we use our everyday dishes. This is my baking zone. Everything has a label. And you need to do this in your home too. Here in my office. I'm right now in my office. I have my office, my craft room. And then I had this closet, okay, that is, I called lovingly my Monica closet. That's a terrible label, because what that means is everything can just get shoved in there at any time. And last Saturday we did an all day declutter, and I opened it up and I said, the issue here is it doesn't have a clear defined purpose. It doesn't have a label. What do I want this to be? I want this to be a memory closet and wear it like a gift closet where I put the kids gifts and gifts, but also the wrapping. So then with that clear label, I can look like, why is this extra vase in here? Why is there Easter decor in here? Why the freak are there pumpkins in here? Does that fit the purpose? No. So you take it out and then you're like, well, where can this go? And it's a little bit of like, if you give a mouse a cookie, yeah, you're gonna do a little bit of stuff shuffling. But at the end of the day, I just decluttered a bunch of totes from my. From my stink room, which also needs a better room. It's called stink room because it has a septic tank in there and a look at me, I'm fit. I'm calling it a stink room. But the per. The point is, now it's like, this is my home decor storage, slash stink room. So I decluttered stuff to make room for that, and now this closet is under control. And I feel like, yes. I'm so excited to actually have a place for these things to go without it being chaos. And that's the power that comes with giving purpose and a label to every cabinet, every closet, every drawer, and every room as a whole. And just saying storage is not good enough. Storage for what? This is the storage for seasonal decor. This is the storage for my hobby supplies. This is the storage for my exercise equipment. I don't know, bro. I don't know what you have in your house, but the point is definitely finding it and not allowing other things that are not part of that label in. There is a boundary, and this is what you need to really have success. Because when you get to a point where you're like, I have old paint cans, and old paint cans don't serve up, where do they go? They go in the trash. Okay. Because do you want an old paint can room? Obviously not. Do you want a box room? I once bought something for somebody on Facebook Marketplace, and he took me into his box room, and he had an entire room in his basement for empty boxes. He saved every empty box of everything he ever bought in case he sold it. One Day, that person was a nutter, okay? Because no, you are a sane human being. And instead of a box room, you're going to have a library or a workout room or a grandkid room with bunk beds for when your grandkids come and they want to stay over and their toys are in there. And, like, what you imagine, like, get excited, man. This is it. Your home should be. You should be excited right now. As you're listening to this, I hope you're feeling, like, a little bit, like, the potential of what you could have. And I understand that this is really hard. So this is the final thing I'm going to say. It is time to phone a friend. You remember that show? It was like, Want to be a Millionaire or something. I forget what it was called where you answer all these stupid questions and then if you don't know the answer, you phone a friend. We're phoning a friend right now because it is most likely you cannot see the forest for the trees in your home. You cannot see your home's potential because all you're seeing is the stuff. Because you've been living on your house for so long, you're not seeing how you could live in it. Sometimes phoning a friend, you know, like, hey, can you give me a hand with this? Do you have any ideas inviting someone over? And just like, getting an outside perspective can change everything. And if you're like, I am not doing that. I'm not having somebody in. My best friend is Chat. Okay, Chat. GPT is my bestest friend in the whole world, and I phone that friend sometimes. And it's okay to take pictures of your space knowing that it's going to totally not be great and it's going to not get the sizes right. But saying like, I wish I had a craft room. Take a picture of a storage room and say, can you help me see how I could turn this? Or if there a corner or if there's a section. How can I get a craft space in here? How can I take a picture of your living room? How can I also give a zone for my kid? My kid give my kids a playroom, but how can I give them a play space in this living room? Phone a friend. Look at your home differently, because as soon as you do this, maybe your friend is like, girl, why you got a piano in the corner when nobody plays the piano? Girl, why do you have, like, the giantest TV entertainment thing I've ever seen and it's filled with DVDs that you don't watch and old like VA. You. Do you. Do you even have a VCR? Why you got VHS tapes? What if that was small? We mount the TV, and underneath, we do toy storage. What if. What if. What if that? Or what if we just clear out all the other things and we don't even buy anything at all, and we just store the toys in the giant TV unit? Let's look differently at your space, and that might mean phoning a friend. I cannot not talk about the elephant in the room. Which is your biggest roadblock is your own perception of how you're supposed to do these things. That that's what's really stopping you from doing all these things quickly and impactfully is your perfectionism saying, but I need a plan, and I want to buy new things, and I'm gonna do it right. And what I'm telling you to do is, the path to progress is so bad, you have to be crappy on purpose to make real progress. And that I. I live and die by that. So Nicole, example, again, she's like, why would I do anything in here until I renovate this? Why would I put all our stuff in here when I'm gonna have to take it out in the winter anyways? And I'm like, girl, why would you walk through your entire house, which looks like a bomb went off 365 days of the year? This is nuts.
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Silen
So.
- [34:29]
Cass
But. So stop it. When we can embrace good enough. And she's like, afterwards, she was like, oh, my gosh. I. I would have taken so long to do that. I wish I washed out every jar. I would have ran out of steam. I wouldn't have seen the progress. You can always go back and make it perfect later. To really radically change your life, you have to fail on purpose. You have to do things badly on purpose just to your bare minimum. It's called your minimum effort threshold. Okay? And then we build upon that. Your minimum effort threshold is the absolute bare minimum to get a job done. Good enough. How fast can you do it? How. How badly can you do it? Just to say it's done. And here's the thing. We can go back. You can go back. This is the. This is the real important part. You can go back and make it perfect later. This is about having momentum. So if we would have taken all day to wash out all the jars, we wouldn't have been able to quickly take all her sporting equipment. We chucked it in there, you guys. We chucked it in those new empty cabinets. Her brain was like, I think I should paint these first and have a fresh coat of paint, girl. No, you can go back and paint them later. Yeah, you're gonna have to pull the things out for right now. It's like shoving the stuff we need to have a home for in the new home, which we radically and crappily decluttered with. Just throwing everything in a trash bag. Now we're gonna gather up all those shoes. She's like, well, maybe I should measure and get custom shoe shelves and I should order them on Amazon. And I'm like, stop it. You got what you got? Here's a Rubbermaid tote. I threw it in the corner. Throw the shoes in there. Use the shoe rack you have right now. At least you have a place for your shoes to go. We did it so, so badly. Okay? We didn't. I didn't even vacuum behind, all right? There was no. There was no cleaning. There was just radically creating space and creating a new label for this space and. And changing things. And guess what? She was like, holy crap, this is going to change my life. And I left that day. The first day we did this, her husband came home. He was like, oh, I have a place for my sh.
- [36:46]
Silen
He.
- [36:47]
Cass
She told me he just could not believe it, and he couldn't believe that this was done in just a few hours. And then I came back. You know, I've been. I've been talking to her, and we're going back and we're doing this whole makeover, and I can't wait for you to see it. But the most insane thing is not what I came there for in the first place, which was to declutter the piano room. It's the fact that they now have a place for shoes and coats that didn't cost us anything except for the stuff that she wasn't using and loving and didn't even know she had. But we had to get there crappy. We had to make mistakes. We had to. We had to do it so shitty. Okay? We had to do it so shitty she can always go back and make it perfect later. The other thing that everybody waits for is the perfect time. Nicole was guilty of this. She's like, when my kids are older and when I can take a whole week and when I can. And when we can renovate and what? There is no such thing. Thing as a perfect time. Do you know what the perfect time to radically take control of your home is? It's right freaking now. And we've been sold this BS about spring cleaning. Can I just say this marketing thing about how one time A year we're going to clean out our closets and scrub everything really deep and pull out our furniture and vacuum behind it. As if this isn't something we can do anytime. And marketing plays into this. Did you know they sell 30% more cleaning products this time of year? And while I think it's great sometimes to have like the motivation of oh, I should in the spring, don't let that be the reason today isn't the day. Every day can be spring cleaning day. It doesn't have to be a month. It doesn't have to be on your calendar. It doesn't have to be something you pencil in. It can be five minutes right now. It could be 10 minutes. You don't even have to be done. You just have to get up and get started and do it badly and messily. And you need to be like fierce about reclaiming your home, cleaning out your fridge of all the old stanky things. Can you do that in 10 minutes? Yes, you freaking can. Are you going to scrub every seal? No. Is it going to be better? Abso freaking lutely. Clean out your fridge right now. Does it stink? Does it have an odor? Tackle it. What are you waiting for? Get a bowl of hot water and vinegar and a splash of dish soap. Pull out the leftovers. Don't you dare empty every drawer. Just give a wipey wipey. Pick something up, wipe it, put it right back down and call that a day. Call that a day. You got a closet that you're like, I don't even know. I got scentsy stuff in there. If you got some scentsy old candles, some Bath and Body Works lotions you got from your mother in law for Christmas and you hate that scent, throw it in the trash. Could you donate it? Sure. Are you going to? Absolutely freaking not. Why? Because you got five minutes to make that entire closet better. And you are not wasting it on perfection. Because you deserve better. Because you are wasting the the time within that extra five minutes that you do things perfect for 10 minutes, you're going to move something in there that you actually wish you had space for. This is how you change your life. It is fast, it is messy, it is like radical. And, and it's giving yourself permission for it to not be perfect. In fact, doing it kind of bad on purpose is the secret fun interesting fact. They did a survey which asked people like, what would you be so embarrassed if somebody found out that you were neglecting to clean? Like, what is the thing thing that you just don't clean often enough that you Feel kind of shamed about. And 56% actually said, the fridge. The fridge. At first I was like, well, people say dusting, but no, the fridge. And then the second thing with 29% is washing their sheets. I feel this in my core. I do not wash my sheets enough. But isn't that so crazy? Like, cleaning your fridge is something if you feel shame about not doing. You can do that in 10 minutes. It's five minutes to change your sheets. What are you waiting for? What is something you've been procrastinating doing? Is it dusting? Grab that duster and don't even move stuff. Just start wiping things. It doesn't have to be perfect. Maybe there's still some dust on there. Who cares? We're. It's not all or nothing. Stop it. We can do these things in, like, a shortcut, cheaty, crappy way. And it's so, so much better than waiting till tomorrow to do it perfectly because it's done good enough today. And now we've got momentum, and now we've got, like, this fire in us. What else can we do in five minutes? What else can we change? And it's that fire that's going to make the difference in your home. It's going to help you take back control. Another little, little survey people were asked, what is more relaxing, coming home to a clean and organized home or going and, like, getting a massage? 72% said that coming home to a clean home is more relaxing than going and getting a massage. I'm going to be honest with you. I think coming home to a clean house feels better than anything you could possibly give me. And I've asked clients before, too. I've said, like, would you trade everything in your house that you don't use and love if I could come and, like, wave a magic wand for a house that just feels clean and tidy? Every single person says, without a doubt, yes, I would trade you in an instant. Oh, my gosh. If you could wave a magic wand and just give me a clean and tidy home. I don't even care what you take. Take my firstborn child. I don't care. Have it all. Guess what? You're the freaking magic wand. And, yeah, it's not going to happen today, but it could. If you rent a dumpster, you're trading it by just putting it in a trash bag or loading it up in your car and taking it to Goodwill. And. And you don't have to be precious about it. You don't have to make piles like, well, I would donate My shorts. But I want to know how many pairs of shorts I have first so then I can decide how many of what are you doing open? Look at your. Do you like those pair of shorts or not? Of course you know. If you're not sure if you like those pair of shorts, you don't. Okay. If you're not sure if your kids wear those jogging pants, they don't. If you're not sure if your kid likes that toy, they don't. If you're not sure if you use that extra platter, you don't. All these what if, maybe some days is why your home feels out of control. All this rambling is to say you do not need a special season. You don't need a special occasion to clean. You don't need to make a production out of decluttering. You don't need to put it on your calendar. You just need to take action and take bad, shitty shortcut action right now. And I want you to ask yourself these four questions, okay? Number one is what do you wish your house had? Like, what do you wish you had in your home? Don't just say storage. Storage for what? Number two, where are you wasting space? Number three, what do you wish you had more time for in your home? Or what do you wish you had more of in your home? Is it entertaining? Is it baking? Is it reading? What do you wish you had more of? Is it board games? Family night? And last but not least, what are the labels of these spaces? What is, what is the purpose of this space? The name not just for the whole space, but sections within the space as well. And if you can answer those, that's going to be your road map to success. And now it's time for you to roll up your sleeves, grab a trash bag and make it happen. I have to take a second to thank Caraway for sponsoring today's podcast. I switched to Caraway cookware and honestly, not only do I feel like a big grownup for having grown up pots and pans, they're easier to clean, they're non toxic, but they also save space in my kitchen. And talking about decluttering and radically taking back storage space, I was able to to declutter so many things because my caraway cookware means I now can fry and put the sauce in one and then take that thing and pop it right in the oven. No longer like cooking in one and transferring it to another dish in order to cook it differently. It is streamlined the way I do things in my kitchen and they also come in beautiful colors. So, that being said, if you want to give Caraway a try right now, you can save up to $230 on the 2012 piece cookware set instead of buying it all individually. Plus, if you want to include their fan favorite mini duo, you can save up to $350. Visit carawayhome.com clutterbug10 to save an additional 10% off using the code CLUTTERBUG10 on your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners, so visit carawayhome.com clutterbug10 or use the code clutterbug10 at checkout. That kind of leads me into a new segment that we're trying. At first, I was calling it Not Today Satan, where I rant for 30 seconds about something that drives me crazy. But you guys didn't like the Satan reference. I hear that. It's okay. So instead we're gonna call it oh, hell no, Things that Just fire me up. And you ready? We're gonna start a timer. I only get 60 seconds. This is like therapy. And go blessing people with your hand me downs. This drives me bonkers. Why? Because you are trying to re home your stuff like it's a cat. So you're like, oh, my sister would love this. And my aunt or that person I go to church with, they have kids. I'm gonna pack up all the clothes my kids have outgrown, and I'm just gonna bless them with it. Bless them with this stuff, which is really then this expectation and this pressure of the person who's receiving it to do something with it or keep it because you gave it to them. And now it's a gift and it's this vicious cycle. And I'm not saying that it's not great to share things. What I'm saying is we all have to share with it being clear that you could throw this all in the trash if you want to. There is no expectation here because it's the expectation and the guilt and the shame and the, oh, I gotta pass this on. These burdens that are not blessings, they are, in fact, making us all suffocate. So let's just stop it. Stop. Stop. It's not a cat. All right, it's time for talk to Cass. This is my favorite part of the podcast. And we have a question from Emily.
- [47:52]
Emily
Hey, Cass. This is Emily from Washington. I know I'm not a detailed person. I have lots of big bins for things, but I can't figure out if I'm a ladybug or a butterfly. The quiz says butterfly, but a lot of visual things is stimulating for me. I think the quiz says butterfly because I don't put stuff away when I'm done. But I also think that's because I don't have the right place for it, for it to be easy to put away. I also keep paper clutter out so I can remember to do something with it. But I also think that that's because my house is not a well oiled machine yet. So I can't think clearly to remember it. But also maybe I think I'm not visual because I have too much clutter and stuff around. So that is why I don't like looking at my stuff. So how do I figure out if I'm a ladybug or a butterfly? Thanks, Cass.
- [48:55]
Cass
Emily, you're a butterfly. Okay. I don't even have to, you know, I don't even have to see your house to know that you're a butterfly. But yeah, you're feeling like I don't want to be a butterfly because you still have so much clutter that you are like, I just don't want to see all this stuff. And being a visual organizer doesn't mean you like looking at your crap all the time everywhere. It means you need that visual reminder, that cue to do things like pay the bills or that you want the everyday things that are super important to you to be out and really easy to access. That doesn't mean everything. You are not going to forget you own clothing and walk out the door and naked if you put your clothes in a closet. You know what I mean? So we have to first of all radically declutter. Second of all, come up with those quick solutions that you can like a get ready bin in your bathroom where instead of just having it out on the counter, you have a bin where you put in all the things you use to get ready in the morning. Not that maybe I want to someday put a face mask on Emily. No, just the actual everyday important stuff. And then now you have one thing. Instead of 50,000 bottles, you have one basket, right? It's those type of solutions that are going to help you thrive. And yes, the things that you don't use every single day don't need to be visual. The things that you don't need a visual cue don't need to be visual. You can put it in a bin, put it on a shelf, make sure you label it so that when you open the door it's visual. But I think, I think the step one is saying enough is enough. I'm sick of living like this. Getting a trash bag and filling it. We can't even think about organizing until you've decluttered. Okay? Okay. Now let's hear from Zyle.
- [51:02]
Silen
Hi Cass, My name is Silen from Florida. I want to say that I love your videos. I always borrow inspiration from you. I just put my earbuds on and start cleaning the house and organizing. I'm really thankful for all the videos that you have done. I have learned a lot today. I need an advice from you. If some, if I'm not mistaken, you said all the kids are butterflies. I did the four tendency quiz on my 13 year old boy and he came out as rebel, which I already knew. But the question is, how can I teach him how to be more organized? He's a kid that is kind of lazy. I would say he leave his shoes like under the bed even though you know, the shoe rack is next to the door, his school uniform on the bed or everywhere. I managed to put like some hooks behind the door, behind the computer, but he doesn't use it. I also put a trash can for all the garbage also in his room and he doesn't use it most of the time when I see his room, I get kind of frustrated and I get anxiety. So yeah, I just want him to learn how to be more organized. I don't know, to be better at that. So thank you again for all your advice. I love your show. Have a beautiful day.
- [52:46]
Cass
Okay. This is so tough. And, and I'm so excited to offer some suggestions that you probably won't like. I have a rebel in my life. So I will tell you the. The thing about a rebel is you gotta make it be their idea. And it comes with a lot of praise. There can be no criticism. And what I heard you say is you called him lazy, you called him disorganized and you said a bunch of words that are going to shut down a rebel immediately. So what if a different approach like this. Now you have to wait till he's in a good mood, okay? And you may need to say it multiple times, but you go into his room and you're like, you are actually so smart. And I just learned that you organize differently than my d. Than my brain. And so I wonder if you have ideas of what you would like to have in your room to make it easier for you to put your school clothing away because it must be really annoying for you. You're like a smart kid to have to pick it up off the floor every day or what do you think the best solution is like, like first tie it into his identity, compliment him, make him think he's a freaking genius, and then let him come up with the solutions. Right? You can lead. And if he's like, I don't even care. That isn't a good time to have this conversation. Be like, cool, cool. I don't care either. Bye. We'll put a pin in this because he's not open to it. But you planted a seed, my friend. And so the next time you're opening this up with positivity and again having him problem sol with his big genius brain, he might be more willing to say, it'd be really good to have some hooks right here. Or maybe I could, like move the garbage can here and then, and then we do that. And as soon as he takes ownership, as soon as it's his idea, as soon as it's something he is, like, feels proud of, he's going to be more likely to follow through. Because if you tell him, he's not going to want to do it. If you ask him to do it, he's not going to want to do it. And if you make it about him not being enough and he has to be better, he's not going to want to do it. How can we play into, like, he's already so awesome. Let's just make him like, awesomer because he's so awesome and he's just going to spread his awesomeness. The thing is, I mean, I'm saying this because Joe's identity, who's a rebel. Joe's my husband is problem solver. Maybe your son problem solver isn't his jam. So another way that you could really approach this is just laying out the consequence. Like, if he doesn't put his trash in the trash, he doesn't get the WI fi password because you're going to change it. If he doesn't keep his room clean every night, he doesn't get an after school snack or he doesn't get a bedtime snack. Like, this is just a consequence. This is like if you. I'm not telling you you have to do this. I'm not making you do this. You don't even have to do this if you don't want to. But if you don't, then you don't have this. And they're going to be mad. Okay, he's gonna be. But like, that's just the consequence. Like, it's not. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It means you're gonna have to be firm. But then you'll see progress. Thank you so much. It was fun to do like an old school tough love rant with you and hopefully you are not only you got something done today, but you are really inspired to stop living on top of your house and start living in it. Start maximizing every square inch and make it you like, make it a reflection of you and what you love and what you want more of and making it just better. Just better. Not perfect, not awesome, not spending money, not renovating better. And you can do that today with nothing but a trash bag and some elbow grease, my friend. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.