When your house is a mess and you're feeling the stress, what
you need is a friend in your ear.
Start the job and you'll see it through.
With Ronnie talking. To you make the chaos disappear.
Clean with Me podcast is here. Thanks for joining me.
It's time to gear up for our decluttering session.
Maybe you need to straighten up the immediate front entrance of
your home. That could be an entryway, a
foyer area, or just your living room.
Or maybe you need to quickly do an empty reload and run of your
dishwasher. Or if you're hand washing, get
that first sink load of dishes soaking.
Sometimes there are some. There are pressing matters that
you need to take care of before you dive into a decluttering
project. Because life goes on and you
have those daily chores that you need to keep up on.
But since this is an episode on decluttering, I'm only going to
give you a few minutes to do whatever needs to be done first.
Whether it's a quick pickup of the floor somewhere or getting
your dishes soaking or starting a load of laundry, you know what
needs to be done. Or maybe you're ready to
declutter, but you need to spend a couple minutes getting
yourself feeling presentable. Sometimes washing your face,
using a spray bottle on your hair, and brushing your teeth
can work wonders. I recently heard about something
called the 215 rule and this is this one's for a stay at home
mom. So I realized not all of you
have time for this, but the 215 rule is about spending one hour
on your house, one hour on exercise, mainly walking, and 15
minutes on getting yourself fixed up for the day.
Now obviously that 15 minutes wouldn't include a bath or
shower, but if you showered the night before, you can get
presentable in 15 minutes for sure.
Especially if you're using makeup removing wipes or a
washcloth and you have a spray bottle for your hair.
Trust me, I've learned to get ready quickly over the years.
Hopefully you're taking care of whatever was pressing, whether
it was getting yourself ready for the day, straightening up
your immediate front entrance or front room, or getting your
dishes soaking or loaded into the dishwasher, or doing a
laundry switch and starting another load of laundry.
You're going to need a trash bag and then another container that
looks different for things that you're getting rid of but not
discarding. We'll call it a donation box,
but it could be a basket, just it's whatever you have on hand.
You could also use two different colored trash bags, 1 white and
one black. The point is you need to have
something for trash and another container for things that are
going to go out to the car to be donated somewhere.
And you'll also come across items you're going to keep, but
you can put those in a pile somewhere.
So go ahead and gather up you need.
As far as containers, you could even use three containers if you
wanted to, you know, maybe a bag for trash, a box for donations,
and a laundry basket for items you're going to be relocating
around the house. Or you could Simply put those
items in a pile. Now, when it comes to
decluttering, everyone's house is so different and problem
areas are different. So be decluttering in an area
that needs decluttering, even if it's not specifically what I'm
talking about. But I'm going to talk as if
you're decluttering. The areas I tell you to
declutter. OK, we're going to start out in
a living room or family room. But of course, if you're just
super minimalist and you don't have any clutter in a living
room or family room, you can work in another area like a
bedroom or closet. And these decluttering episodes
are not as specific as an episode where we're cleaning the
kitchen and everybody has the exact same things to do.
Wash your dishes, clean the sink, wipe the counters, and so
on. But the important thing is that
you at least have a trash bag and a container to put other
things in and you're ready to declutter while you're working
in the living room or family room or wherever you're
decluttering. I'll just talk about the things
in my living room that I have to declutter regularly.
I have a coffee table that opens up.
I have to declutter the inside of that coffee table.
Sometimes junk mail ends up in there.
I don't know who put stuff there, but I I go through that
stuff periodically. Sometimes there'll be an article
of clothing that belongs to one of my grandkids.
I might just stick it inside of the coffee table as a temporary
holding spot. Sometimes my kids put their art
supplies in there when they're quickly straightening up and
maybe they've been drawing, you know, on the coffee table or
something. But the reason it's important
for me to declutter the inside of that coffee table is that
it's it's a pop up coffee table. And remember, we're talking
about preparing for holiday guests.
OK. So when my holiday guests are
here, there are going to be times where we need that extra
seating. Not everybody's going to fit
around the table. So one of the other eating
stations is the pop up coffee table.
There's also a breakfast bar in the kitchen with three bar
stools. And then three or four people
can sit on the couch and eat at that pop up coffee table.
Well, when it's popped up, I don't want it to be full of
junk. So I need to remove everything
out of it. And then once I've done that,
take my my vacuum hose and just vacuum out any dust or debris
that's inside of it. And I may or may not decide to
keep a few things in there, but whatever I keep in there needs
to make sense and be visual, visually appealing, and not look
like I've just stuffed things in there to straighten up my living
room in a hurry. OK.
And even before, I had a pop up coffee table, which seems like
kind of a new invention. It's designed to pop up to a
level where you could use it as a desk for your laptop or you
could sit there and eat. Even before that, I had coffee
tables that opened up just, you know, for storage reasons.
I used to accumulate magazines back in the day inside of my
coffee table, and from time to time I'd have to thin that stuff
down. It's still an area to declutter.
You don't want to be hoarding junk that you don't need and
maybe you put something in there that you forgot about and I
realized some of you have a coffee table that doesn't open
at all and you were hopefully working on something else in the
living room. Another piece of furniture that
I had in my living room was the TV stand.
It had a couple drawers and then a shelf underneath.
I have moved that TV stand to my dining room slash kitchen.
I moved it in there and made it into a coffee station.
Off and on I have coffee stations, but for a while I have
had my Keurig and my other Brewer just on the kitchen
counter. But in preparation for
Thanksgiving I wanted to free up more counter space and the
reason I moved that so-called TV stand because it doesn't really
look like it has to be ATV stand.
It's just a piece of furniture. You know, it could also serve as
a sideboard. When my 18 year old son moved
out, he had a huge TV in his bedroom.
He he's in the Marines now, so he's out of state and just comes
home on leave for a few days at a time.
Before he left, he told us we could switch TV's with them and
that gave me the idea to do another coffee station because I
used to have a desk in the kitchen.
Didn't really look that great and I ended up moving it to the
bedroom to use as a desk. So you might have another piece
of furniture like that that has drawers, or you might have some
kind of entertainment center that has shelves, but deal with
the cluttered drawers or shelves around your TV area.
Unless you're like me and you've switched to a wall mount.
I do still need to declutter those drawers.
Even though I put that piece of furniture in the kitchen, I have
not removed everything out of the drawers because ideally it
would have like coffee supplies in the drawers now that it's in
the kitchen, like extra K cups or whatever.
Another piece of furniture that you might be clearing out right
now could be an end table. Maybe you have an end table with
a drawer and you can be going through that drawer, but you
might have visible clutter in your living room.
Maybe you have a toy box that's overflowing, and that doesn't
mean you need to get rid of the toys.
Sure, get rid of the broken toys, but maybe you just need to
take some items out of circulation or move them to a
bedroom toy box. Because if you have a toy box in
your living room and a toy box in a kid room, maybe over time
you're just sticking things into the living room toy box and it's
getting too full. Our overflow toy box.
My, my if. If you've been listening to the
show, you know this, but my youngest child is 13.
But I have grandkids ranging in age from 1:00 to 7:00.
So when I'm talking about the living room toy box, I'm talking
about stuff for little kids. I have an overflow toy box out
in the garage. You know when I'm doing a purge,
so hopefully as you're going through these drawers, storage
areas, messy corners, what have you, you're throwing away trash,
broken toys, paper clutter, and you're making a pile of things
that you're going to relocate around the house or perhaps
putting those in a laundry basket and maybe there's
something to donate. Typically when I'm cleaning up
my living room there's there's nothing to donate.
It's usually either trash, excess toys that need to be
moved to another room, or in the case of the pop up coffee table,
articles of clothing that I need to put in a bag and take to one
of my daughter's. But you might have some obsolete
gaming cords, controllers, stuff like that.
When I found stuff like that the other day while working in my
living room, I had my son go through those items because I
didn't know what was obsolete and what he might still be
using. So I made a pile of little
electronic items, like little, I don't know what they're called,
but game cartridges, things like that.
I had him go through all that stuff and decide what to keep
and what to throw away. So sometimes you need to go
through a pile of unidentified items with your spouse or your
kids, and you might also have some type of a basket or bin in
your living room. Kind of a kick I'm on is
something I call going shopping in my own house.
And what I mean by that is when I need a container or something,
I use something that I already have.
Let me give you an example. For the longest time I had two
matching decorative crates, I'll call them they they're made of
wood, metal and canvas. One was a toy box and one was
used for electronics. But I've decluttered a lot of
the electronics and most of the gaming happens in the boys room.
Well, and my daughter's room, she has her own system too.
Once I dealt with all those controllers and cords and things
and then down the toys, I I realized I really only needed
one of those crates, but I still had them both kind of on display
in the living room and I just kind of distributed the toys
among the two. Then I was thinking, I wish I
had a way to organize my yarn and have it all in one place
easily accessible when I'm doing my knitting this time of year I
knit. It usually starts back up in the
fall. Disclaimer, it's loom knitting.
It's it's a lot easier than the knitting with the 2 needles.
You can Google it if you want. It's more similar to knitting
and crocheting than it is to waving something on a waiver's
loan, but it makes it to where you don't have to really count
as much or worry about the tension.
So in a lot of ways, in my opinion anyway, it's easier than
crocheting or traditional knitting.
However, if you already know how to do one of those things,
whatever you're doing is going to be easier because you already
know how to do it. But my point is, I was feeling
frustrated because I, I can't spend money right now on
anything other than essentials just due to a tight season we're
going to be in for the next few months.
And I was kind of lamenting the fact that I didn't, you know, I
couldn't really get some kind of a storage unit to display my
yarn or whatever. And then I thought, what if I
just consolidate the toys into one of those crates and I take
the other one to keep my yarn in?
And then I realized there was a perfect spot next to my bedroom
recliner and it looked really good.
And then there's a box of all my little knitting implements and
stuff. I put that in there.
I put the yarn in there and I've got plenty of room to spare.
I can get more yarn if I want to.
But that's what I mean by shopping in your own house.
When you declutter, sometimes you eliminate the need for a
certain storage container, whether it's a basket or a shelf
unit or plastic drawers. You know, whatever storage
containers you have, you know, even just a rectangular plastic
container, you can then repurpose that to organize
another area where you have stuff that doesn't have a home.
Another example of this that I did recently.
Well, let me move you to another area and then I'll talk about it
for the next few minutes. I want you to work in a closet.
This could be your linen closet or your coat closet or even a
bedroom closet. OK, And just thin it down.
Find some stuff you can donate or perhaps relocate if things
are getting put into the closet that you need.
But they don't really go there. Sometimes with a kid when they
clean their room, they're stuffing things in the closet.
And if they're young or they're at school right now, you might
want to go through that. OK for me, I recently took some
bulky comforters and blankets out of my linen closet, which is
kind of small, folded them and moved them to a spot in my room
where I already had like items. You want to store like items
together, but you also don't want to overstuff any closet.
We need a lot of blankets. It's not like we need to get rid
of them. I mean, that's something
arguably you would need during a natural disaster if the heat
went out, but you also need them when you have company anyway,
while you're working on decluttering and organizing a
closet. Another item that I found in my
house without even having to get rid of anything, I had this
container. We have these promotions at our
grocery store where we earn points and then get kitchen
stuff. I've gotten a lot of cool stuff
like that. Some kind of tray to use on the
grill, knives, stainless steel wok I got a few years back.
We've gotten a lot of cool stuff, but one year they had
these storage containers and one of them is a plastic box with a
lid. And then it has kind of a white
basket looking. It's plastic, but looks like a
basket liner inside of that plastic box.
And that's where I keep my onions in the pantry.
Well, I was looking for something to use on the coffee
station that I set up for a little tea box, bags and hot
cocoa packets. And I thought, wait a second, I
don't need like this box within a box.
So I took the little white basket out of that plastic box
and just now the onions are just in the plastic box without that
inner basket. It's dark enough in the pantry
for storing onions and potatoes without having this little
opaque basket within plastic box.
I feel so anyway, that's what I mean by shopping in your house.
But often when you're decluttering, you come across
containers that you can use elsewhere.
Another word on closets while you're working in there, I often
purchase those little plastic dressers and put them in closets
just for storing small items or whatever.
I have a plastic dresser like that in my closet, and then I
label each drawer with what I put in it.
And it's pretty random stuff that's not going to be relatable
to you. Like there's one drawer for
like, my dog breeding records from when I was breeding Boston
Terriers. But a lot of the drawers contain
things that I don't even need anymore.
So once I've cleared those out, I can relabel them.
And then I'll have more places for things that need homes.
You know, eventually you want a home for everything.
You want to have less visible clutter, even inside your
closets. And that's probably not a huge
priority when you're getting ready for company.
But the reason the linen closet came to mind, a lot of times
when company comes, it's like, hey, do you have a blanket?
And then my husband is like, yeah, in the linen closet.
So it's possible somebody might open the linen closet.
OK, or what if someone wants to hang their coat in your coat
closet or someone forgot their jacket and they ask for a jacket
or sweater? Hey, you can look through these
and you know your coat closets presentable.
And I didn't mention this because I think of it more as a
cleaning task that you do regularly rather than
decluttering. But of course, in a living room,
you need to move your couches and recliner, if you have one
from time to time and deal with whatever debris you find under
there. And also remove the cushions,
remove any debris and vacuum them out.
One of your guests could misplace their keys or drop
their phone and kind of reach down into your cushions or
remove your cushions or move the couch.
Maybe it's not super likely, but it it can and does happen in
another episode I'm planning. To have you clean out your couch
cushions and clean under the couches.
But for this episode, I wanted you to just focus on those
storage areas in your living room and get those decluttered.
And let's face it, some of these tasks that we're doing in
preparation for hosting holiday get togethers are not that
crucial. Obviously, when it gets closer
to the event, you're gonna deep clean your kitchen and bathrooms
couple days beforehand. You're probably gonna vacuum the
night before or the morning of, but downsizing and removing
clutter while we still have weeks to go can still just give
you a sense of accomplishment and help you feel less
overwhelmed by your stuff. And you're also probably
removing obstacles that will make it easier to do your daily
cleanup. And some of these areas that
we're decluttering are actually going to matter, especially if
you're having overnight guests. For example, an overnight guest
might want to hang up some of their clothes in a closet in
that room they're staying in, or they might open a drawer
somewhere looking for a pen or something.
Anyway, I hope you got a living area and a closet decluttered
during this episode, and maybe you even found a container that
could be better used elsewhere in your home.
By the way, you can unlock longer episodes through an Apple
podcast subscription, or you can also do it on Spotify or
Patreon. You're not going to be on the
full program until you unlock those bonus episodes.
But I realize not everybody's able to purchase a paid
subscription. And there's still a way you can
help me without spending a dime. And it's giving this podcast a
five star rating on whichever app you're listening or just
simply clicking follow or the plus sign so you don't miss the
next episode. Anyway, I hope you got a lot
done. Special thanks to those who have
already given the show a five star rating and of course, to
those who are financial supporters.
But most of all, just keep listening.
I appreciate each and everyone of you and as always, happy.
I'll talk to you in the next episode.