Ep 123: Squeezing in Time to Declutter when You're a Busy Mom
You’ve probably noticed that, when your home is filled with clutter, things are not the best - you have a difficult time concentrating, you don't feel at peace in your space, or even enjoy spending time in your home. And that’s sad because your home should be your sanctuary.
The best remedy for a messy home is decluttering the items you no longer want, need, or use. But, I can already hear the rebuttals…”I already have a thousand things on my plate. I am so overwhelmed and busy that there is no way I can find the time to declutter.”
And that makes sense until you realize that decluttering is one of the easiest things you can do to simplify your life and gain a little more joy and time in your day. That’s right! By doing a little more work now, you can be paid back with dividends in the future.
This episode of Wannabe Minimalist will show you how you can squeeze decluttering into your already busy schedule so you can take back control of your days and your home.
This episode of Wannabe Minimalist will also help you discover:
5 strategies for finding 15 minutes in your day to declutter
A hack for figuring how you you're spending your time
Simple solutions for asking for help
How to make habits work to your advantage
The temporary change that will make the biggest difference
Additional Links and Resources:
(some links may be affiliate links, which means I may get a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Thanks for supporting me!)
Statistics on being busy: https://raywilliams.ca/are-you-addicted-to-busyness-the-damage-to-productivity-and-well-being/
Episode 116 - Decluttering in 15 minutes with only 3 supplies
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Transcript
You're listening to the Wannabe Minimalist Show with Dean y, episode number 123. On today's episode, I am talking about how to find time to declutter when your schedule is so busy in jampacked, you just can't find the time. So if you've want it to declutter, but you just don't have that time and you don't know how to squeeze it in and you just really wanna get rid of the stuff, stay tuned cuz I have five ways that you can do that.
Well, hey there, my wannabe, minimalist friend. Welcome back to the show. I am thrilled to have you here and if this is your first time here, welcome. I am delighted that you've decided to join us, and I really hope that I can provide you some information today that is not only inspiring and encourages you to take action, but that we'll actually help you in your life.
I want to be very tactical and give you a lot of. So thank you for joining me and let me know how you like this show. You can join us over on the Wannabe, minimalist group in Facebook if you'd like to join the conversation there, or you can leave me a review and let me know. I read them all the time and they're very helpful for me to know if I'm hitting the right points and getting the right guests on the show.
That's what this show is about. It's really for you and to help inspire you on your journey toward living that fulfilling and wonderful life with less stuff, because the stuff is not what we need to find our true happiness. But let's dive into today's topic. I wanna talk about.
Having time to declutter. This is one of the questions I get all the time. I'm constantly having people ask me, How do I find time to declutter because I'm so busy and I get it right? Especially moms, we really, you. Can put everybody else first and we can not have the time for ourselves and not have time to do the things we want to do.
And oftentimes the stuff in our house gets in the way of that. So I really am a big believer that decluttering is one of the things that we can do to take care of ourselves. I know actually getting through this stuff, And having those big declutter sessions is not fun, and I'm not talking about that today.
I'm gonna talk about how we can declutter quickly. I've done episodes on this, I believe it was episode one 16. I will link to it in the show notes for how you can declutter in just 15 minutes a day. And I really do stand behind that. And so, That's gonna be a little bit about what I'm gonna talk about today.
How can we find 15 minutes at a time so that we can do the things we want to do in our life? I know that we all have 15 minutes. And so we're gonna talk about that. But I do wanna start with talking about busyness, right? Because I think that we have this, we wear a busyness as a badge of honor, and I think we can take a breath and take a step back.
And I'm not gonna get too philosophical on us. I don't wanna dive too deep in that today. But I wanna talk about a study that was published in the USA Today. Now, this was a while ago, so I can only imagine that it has gotten worse. But back in 2008, they published a multi. Poll and they wanted to determine how people perceived their time and their own busyness and how things were going in their life.
And they found that each consecutive year since 1987, people reported that they were busier than the year before. And over 65, I think it was, almost 70% of people responded that they were either busy or very busy. And we hear this all the time, right? I mean, You ask, Oh, hey, how are things going? Oh, so busy.
It is our knee-jerk response, right? It's our, it's the first thing we often respond with, Oh, I'm so busy. We wear it as this badge of honor. We think that if we're not busy, then we're not valuable. We're not promoting who we are to the world and we need to be busy in order to have value and worth.
And that's just not true. We are valuable and we are worthy just because we are beings and we are humans and we are here. So with that out of the way like I said, I don't wanna get too deep on the fact that we shouldn't be busy because. I think it's really hard for us to get over and I'm still that way.
Like I still feel busy all the time. I still answer with that, even though I try to really hard not have that be my first response. So I try to examine that and have something else as my first response and be prepared with that, right? I actually practice saying Oh, I've got this going on today, or I've got that going on today.
Or we've been working on. Or whatever it is in our life. I try to answer with that instead of the kind of generic, I'm busy because I think if we can start getting out of it within our own spheres, we can help other people stop having that reaction to, Cause I think we just say it because we don't know what else to say, right?
We don't really know what else to say. We don't know what else to do or how else to be, because our society values being busy and productive. So now that we all know we're busy and we all have a lot of stuff going on, I wanna talk about five ways that we can make our lives more busy. I'm just kidding. No, the whole point of this is that there will be a moment of a little bit of extra work to put in so that we get huge, giant.
And like just wonderful returns on the back end right, of less busyness, less stress, less time that we have to spend cleaning, less time that we are in a house where we don't feel nurtured and supported. We will have a little bit of work to get to the point where we want to be.
I'm sorry, I'm not a fairy godmother. I cannot just snap my fingers and have your home be the home you want it to be, but I'm going to help you. Create that vision and get the work done right? So we know that we're looking around our house, there's stuff we don't want, we want to declutter. If you're listening to this, that's kind of where I'm assuming you are in the camp of I want to get rid of the stuff that's in my house.
I just don't have time to do it. So you've already made that first kind of commitment to say, There's too much stuff. I do wanna go through some of it and I wanna get it out of here. Once you've made that point, now we just need to find you the time. So here are five ways that we can do that. The first way that you can find time to declutter is to schedule it in.
Your planner, right? Or wherever you schedule your tasks, your meetings, your things that you need to do. If you actually carve out that time, you will see that it can get done. Because I'm the kind of person that needs this, right? So when I have a lot going on, if I don't make a to-do list or make a list of things I need to do, I can.
Easily get off track. I can go down the Google rabbit hole. I can get wrapped up in whatever I'm doing. I can get sidetracked really easily, so if I have something in my schedule, it's much easier to make sure I do it. And so that is gonna be tip number one.
And really, we're not doing anything. Extraordinary here, but once it is written down and you decide okay, at 10 15 on Monday, I'm gonna have a little bit of time between this meeting and that meeting. I'm gonna go ahead and schedule 15 minutes for myself to declutter. Now we're not gonna talk about how you declutter in 15 minutes, we're just finding you those 15 minutes today.
If you want to know how to declutter in 15 minutes, hop back over to episode one 16 and then you will be able to work these two together. So this is just scheduling it in. It can be any time that works in your schedule, and if you don't know a time that works with your schedule or what you're spending your time on, you can do a time audit.
Now, this takes a little bit of effort and it's like a food journal, so if you've ever. Gone on a diet and you've wanted to know what am I actually eating? I've gained a bunch of weight recently and I don't understand why. Often a nutritionist will say, do a food journal, and that will tell you what you're eating and how much you're eating so that you can see how many calories you're actually consuming in a day, right?
It's all data. And so this was the same thing with time. If you write down what you do in a given day, you will see the data of how you spend your time, and you might be quite surprised with how that actually comes up. You can also do things like looking through your phone and looking through your computer and going to screen time apps or different productivity apps.
Often those will have a way to track what apps you've been spending time on. So if you have an apple I believe you can. Go to the Screen Time app and see where you spent your time, and that might be an eye opener without you having to go back or keep track over the next two weeks of where you spend your time.
That might be enough for you. If you feel like I don't actually have a way to schedule this in That's gonna help you figure out where you're spending your time and things like that. So number one,
get your planner out and find one time that's gonna work. And I do recommend trying to do this every day. Find 15 minutes a day and go ahead and do it. So the first one, find a spot in your schedule. The second one is to make it a habit. So if you are trying to declutter, I want you to make it a habit to make decluttering just part of your regular routine.
Now we all wake up, we brush our teeth, we brush our hair, we shower daily. Generally, we do our dishes. We run the dishwasher. We make our coffee. We have all sorts of habits that we. Every single day. And even if we don't do them for ourselves, because we're adults and sometimes it is hard to make ourselves be motivated, we generally can make our children do these things that they have to do, right?
So it's much easier for me to get my child to go to bed on time than it is to get myself to go to bed on time. So we just wanna start turning that mirror a little bit toward ourselves so that we can make this a. So make sure we're starting to put things away instead of just putting them down. So when we walk in the door, try to have, And this does not have to be completely away and super neat, right?
We can take steps to get to where we want to be. We can create a drop zone by the front door where the backpacks go or our purse goes. We can have a. Rug where we make sure the shoes stay on this rug when we come in the door instead of them being strewn across the entire entryway. So again, these do not have to be these giant, perfect systems as long as we're taking steps in the right direction.
So the second thing is to make it a habit, and you are going to find that. We will start to have less to put away, less to declutter. There will be less mess. And we're actually not having to carve out that time because it just happens as life happens. Okay, So that's number two is to make it a habit. What are the habits that we can establish?
Let's jump in. Right back into that and make sure we don't go too fast past this. So those habits, when you come in, where are you putting your stuff? Immediately upon walking in your house, Designate a spot. Where am I gonna put where the backpack's gonna go? Where the shoe's gonna go? Where's the purse gonna go?
Where the sunglasses and the keys gonna go? Where is the mail gonna go? And they can all be right in the same little area, right in your entryway, or they can be on a place. Next year, kitchen counter. I don't know. You can pick where it works in your house. Everyone's home is different, but just think about where you naturally gravitate toward putting those things and start there.
You can always tweak the system later, but we need to have a system in the first place so that we can actually make changes and adjustments to it. Another habit that you can do is every time you get up from a room, take something that doesn't belong there and put it away to where it goes. So this could be you're done watching television at the end of the night, pick up the blanket and put it away.
Pick up the dishes. Make sure they go back into the kitchen. If you had tea or you had dessert. Make sure those things are getting put away as you're doing life so that you don't have this giant mess and you don't have a lot of stuff. If we're dealing with clutter, have a declutter box. Like I love having a donation box.
In a central place in our house and every week we can just put things in there that we find that we don't need, that we're not using. You kind of run across it. You pass over it, you go, Okay, wait, I've passed over that now three times. I'm gonna go ahead and just pop that in the donation box because clearly I'm not using it, so I don't actually need it in my.
So those are some really good habits to establish. And they have worked wonders in our life. And it makes it easy because you don't have to worry about having this big moment of sitting down and doing the decluttering, right? It just becomes part of your everyday routine. And so that is what I mean by making it a habit.
The third one is not going to be very popular. But it is to actually make a little extra time in your schedule. So maybe you are really busy, right? Maybe you're just in that moment of life where things are just chaotic. Your kids need a lot of extra help. They're, you're running around a lot.
You've got a busy job. There are going to be times in your life where it is very difficult to squeeze in any extra moment or time in your life. This is a moment where you need to choose to get up a few minutes early or go to bed a few minutes later, but you have to be very clear about your goals and why you are doing the things you're doing.
So if you set your alarm for 15 minutes, you can start with five minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, and use that time to declutter and to clean. Same with, at the end of the day, you can say, Okay, my normal bedtime is, let's say it's 10 o'clock. You either can move ahead 15 minutes and stop watching TV or stop reading or get ready for bed a little bit earlier.
Or you can say, I'm gonna, okay, at 10 o'clock I'm setting my alarm for, I'm gonna set my timer for 15 minutes and I'm gonna go ahead and do a quick 15 minute of clutter, and then I'm gonna go to. So there are ways to do it a little before and after. Now remember when I said this wasn't a permanent thing, this isn't forever.
Once you get through the declutter, you can then stop, right? You can sleep in a little bit longer. You can go to bed a little bit earlier and you can get that time back. There are other times I have talked about stopping the inflow. And I'm not, That wasn't one of the points I was gonna make today, but it is one of the points I do wanna make now as I'm saying this, because once you have gone through and you've decluttered and you've gotten your home to where you want it to be, you need to then stop bringing as much stuff into the house, right?
It's like if you have a boat that has a hole in it and you are bailing out the water if you don't bail out the. And plug the hole, the water is going to keep coming in, and you are never gonna be able to stop bailing out the water, and that is how decluttering is. So I don't want you to be making these sacrifices of getting up early, staying up later, making it a habit, scheduling it in, squeezing in time, making your life a little bit busier, and never getting the benefits of having the decluttered house.
I do wanna make sure that you understand that we need to stop the inflow, right? Stop the water coming in, stop the stuff coming, stop the water from coming into our boat. Stop the stuff from coming into our house and just taking a minute and saying, Okay, I'm going to get rid of the stuff that's here that I don't love, I don't use If in the future I want new.
Perhaps I will need to upgrade. Perhaps I will need to swap out. Perhaps I will need to declutter something else in my house in order to bring this new thing in, because you will eventually get to that point of peace where the house feels good and we want to keep that momentum and that feeling going forward so we can't just load it all back up with a bunch of new.
All right, off my soapbox back to the list of five things we can do to find more time to declutter or work decluttering into our schedule. So the fourth one is to put down the phone. I am super guilty of this at times, and I go through waves of getting really wrapped up in my phone. Maybe I'll get it wrapped up into Instagram for a little while, or get a wrapped up into Facebook.
I actually had to delete Facebook from my phone, and so now I just look at it on my computer when I'm working and I use it as a work tool instead of just mindlessly scrolling. The other one that I get really wrapped up in is Reddit. And every once in a while when I feel like I have been wasting too much time on it, I will also delete it off my phone and then when I feel like I'm a little bit back, I can add it back in.
But these are cycles and they are just things I go through and I am okay with that. I've learned to be okay with that about myself of I get a little addicted to these things and I start to, once I notice myself doom scrolling, I'm like, Okay, that's it. Take it off. I'm spending too much time on this.
I, it's not adding anything really into my life. So I don't know why. Social media is very addictive and our phones are very addictive I don't know why I add them back every once in a while, but I do sometimes like to be connected and see what's going on, and then I realize that was not a good choice, but enough about me and my vices.
Let's look at your phone. I want you to look at the phone and say, What apps on here could I delete? If you did do that screen time app and look to see where you were spending your time, you might have noticed you spent. More hours on one social media platform than another.
Think about did it really add value to your life? Are you better off now than you were before the hour or so that you lost just scrolling through someone else's feed. And I was reading a book recently. It's untamed by Glenn and Doyle, and I have loved that book. I've actually listened to it now twice straight.
And in there, she, one of her chapters is on the phone. And how sh you know, she took her phones away from her teenage children. And I think one of the really cool things was her son, who was obviously not excited about it, but did, had recently read that Ed Sheeran had given up his phone and the point was, Ed Sheeran had decided he's a creator and he wanted to create things.
He wanted to get back into that creative spirit instead of just reading or listening or getting fed by other people. And I think that's some of the things we need to be cognizant of too. Pick a few resources and a few ways that we can get our information, but understand that in order to implement the things that we are learning, we need to then step away.
The learning things and go do, right? So we can learn, but then we've got to do and implement. And so hopefully this will allow you to go take action and get out there and make these changes that you really deep down want to make. And I know it's hard but we're gonna get there. So that was number four.
Put down our phone and actually do the work. And the last one is to get help. So step number five or tip number five is to. Help. And that can be with a friend. You can even swapping childcare with a friend and you can watch each other's children once a week and while the other one works on their house, you can barter.
I watched, I heard from somebody that was saying that their friend comes over and helps them. Declutter and then her husband goes over and helps them do some small, handy work things at their house. And that can be a really nice barter system where you're working with your friends and your neighbors to help each other along the way.
You can also ask your family to come help you. And this could be one thing we do in our house. And we've gotten away from it a little bit cuz I think it just became that habit. After you do these things for a while, they do become a habit and it is the five minute power tidy. So every night we will tidy up for at least five minutes and it just is of the reset for the day, right?
It's putting the, any toys we got out, it's putting away craft supplies. It's cleaning up after dinner, it's starting the dishwasher, it's setting the coffee maker. It's. Making sure that if we had done laundry that day, that the laundry gets put away. So there are just these few little things we can do and it helps me throughout my day if I see a little mess around the house or like in the afternoon, it helps me go Okay, we're gonna deal with that after we do this.
And so mentally I already know that it's gonna happen and it's gonna get taken care of. So I don't have to stress or put any extra mental energy on. Waiting through that stress and that mess, I know it's gonna get taken care. And so that's just one of the easy ways that we have worked that help into our habits.
So now we as a family race around and put those things away and then whoever wins gets to have a little prize, or they get to pick the show we watch or. They get to pick the dessert we eat, whatever just a way to gamify it a little bit or just get bragging rights, that's totally fine too because our daughter loves to beat us in anything that she can.
And so that was number five. So to get help and that can be just. Like you're doing now, listening to this, you're getting help right now to help you declutter for the next level. Go listen to episode one 16 and listen to how you can declutter in 15 minutes with just three items, and that will help you do these.
Quick power tidies around your house and as you do them, you will be surprised how much you can get done in 15 minutes and it will help you really just kind of power through and do another one the next day and another one the next day. And it's like working out, Set your schedule, say, Okay, I really want to work out five times a week.
So maybe cut it back and say, I'm gonna start with three times this week and then next week I'm gonna try. That went well, I'll do. And if that worked well, maybe I'll try four again just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. And then I'll do five the next week, and then I'll keep trying to do five as long as I can.
And if there's a day or a week that I can't do five declutter sessions, I'm gonna do four declutter sessions, or I'll do three declutter sessions and I will know that I am still making progress. The worst thing you can do is set a giant goal that you're like, Yeah, I'm gonna knock it out of the park.
Because trust me, I have done this so many times in. I'm gonna knock it outta the park, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna work out every day and I'm gonna feel great. And then by the third day you go, I didn't work out today cuz I was tired. And shoot, now I failed and I'm never gonna do it again. Okay. I don't want you to do that.
I want you to say, I'm going to try. To do it. And you know what, If I don't do it today, I'm gonna do it tomorrow. And then really commit to saying, Okay, why didn't I do it? Go back, say, Okay, clean slate. Let's start again. And just even little bits of progress if you can just make little bits of progress.
If you can't do 15 minutes, do five minutes, Do. Do you know, walk around with a basket and just put everything that goes into a different room in there that counts. You're making progress, and then the next day put it away and then just keep doing that around your house. Until you find that things are becoming under control, you're feeling less overwhelmed, you will start to feel less stressed.
It will start to free up times you can be less busy. And then just take a moment to breathe with it, and don't worry about filling up that time with other things. Don't worry about trying to become busy and productive and boost your value. You are valuable. Once your house is more under control, you're gonna start.
Be able to breathe a breath and just this relief is a sigh of relief, right? And all of that weight of the world will start to fall off your shoulders. So hopefully these five ways of kind of squeezing in a little bit more time in your day will help you. And I know it's counterintuitive, right?
We're gonna squeeze in a little bit here, but we're gonna get huge relief on the back end. So I want you to just kind think about what is the end game, what is that end goal? And know that these five things are, some of them will be temporary. Hopefully the waking up early and then going to bed late to get into cluttering sessions will be very temporary, hopefully.
The scheduling it in will just help you become more of a habit so that you don't really, even, it doesn't bother you. It just becomes part of the routine and it kind of goes on autopilot at that point. And then hopefully your family will be able to help you out so that you're not doing this on your own.
Or you can have reach out to friends, family, have a play date, see if the kids will play and you and your friend can go through your closet together. All sorts of stuff like that and trust me, trust me, trust me. You are not alone in this journey. I promise that if you reach out to your friends and you ask for help, they will be more than willing and probably very delighted to know that they are not alone too.
I have seen that time and time again. We think we're alone on our little islands. We think we're the only one dealing with these things, and yet when we finally reach out and ask other people, they go, Oh my gosh, thank you. I'm not alone. I'm not the only one dealing with this. So please, if you have an inkling to ask a friend for, Please do because they will probably appreciate the fact that one, they're being asked for help, and two, they're not alone.
And then you can help them in return, right? So it's not a one, It's not a one, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. It's not a one way street. You can help and give back and reciprocate as well. And maybe the next week you can go over and help them clean out their closet. With that, I want to ask you how you declutter or how else can I help you declutter come on over to the wannabe, minimalist group and let us know.
Maybe one of these tips really resonated with you. Is there something else you do? Other people would love to learn from you as well. you know, If you come out and share, it might be the way someone needed to hear it and help them on their journey.
So please come over and join us in the group. It's Wannabe Minimalist Family Group on Facebook. You can search for us, find us there. You can also find the link in the show notes, and I cannot wait to hear all about it and help you on your journey. And if you liked this episode or found any episode helpful.
Please help me out and subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating or review. I would absolutely love it. I would really appreciate it. I read all the reviews and they make my day, even if they're not the best ones. I know that I am helping people because I want people to feel something.
And of course if there's anything you want me to talk about or you have questions about something I discuss, you want more detail, you want me to dive deeper, pass along your suggestions, you can do that in a review. You can email me, you can DM me on Instagram. I wanna be clutter free on all the socials.
I'm pretty easy to find. And you can email me@deannaatwannabe.com. I do read all my emails and do my best to get back to you quickly. So that wraps up today's episode. I will be doing a guest episode next week. I will be speaking with Natalie about being our own makeup artist. And actually this was a suggestion that came from a review.
I do listen to these reviews and. I am excited to have Natalie on this show. We talked all about minimizing our makeup bags, and we talked all about different brands of makeup and trying to be a little more clean and friendly with our makeup as well. So it was a fascinating episode. Makeup is definitely not my forte.
So I was thrilled to have Natalie on board and you will definitely not wanna miss it. So again, if you have any suggestions, let me know. Like I said, I do listen to them and I was able to book Natalie on the show because of your suggestions. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and I will see you back here next week for that show.
I'm Deanna Yates and you've been listening to The Wannabe Minimalist Show. Cheers.
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