The Truth About Clutter and Organization
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As long your closets and cabinets are full, your counters will be full too. So if it feels like you're constantly cleaning, but the piles just keep coming back in this episode. I'm gonna connect the dots for you and show you what's really going on, plus give you the step-by-step system for a home that is organized and running smoothly in 2026.
Hello, hello and welcome to Simplify, organize and Thrive, the podcast here to help you get a home that runs on autopilot so you can reduce your mental load and have quality time with your family. I am very excited to announce that we have a brand new free bootcamp to get you a tidy home. In just three days, you will get your house back on track without constantly picking up, nagging your family or giving away all of your things, and you will walk away with the step-by-step plan for a home that stays tidy in half the time.
To get signed up, all you need to do is click the link in the show notes. So go ahead and get your free ticket now before you forget, and let's get back to the [00:01:00] show.
today I want to. Start with something that almost every homemaker has probably experienced at one point or another, you clean the kitchen, you reset the living room, you put everything away.
You make your spaces look neat and tidy and organized, and then somehow within a day or two, the
mess in the piles and the clutter in the chaos, they all come back . Mail on the counter. Backpacks on the floor, random stuff that is just piling up on every single surface. And at some point you start thinking, why is this happening?
Why can't I keep up with my home? Why is my house always such a mess? Why is this so hard for me? Well, here's what I want you to really hear. Your house is not messy because you're not trying hard enough. It is not messy because you're naturally disorganized or because you're a naturally messy person. The reason why most homes are still cluttered, the [00:02:00] reason why 170 million people are still struggling with clutter and disorganization after.
Decades of organizing products and a massive decluttering movement is because your storage spaces are full. So your closets, your cabinets, and your drawers are packed to the brim. And then when life gets busy, as it always does, when your kids get sick, when there's a busy holiday season, when you're busy at work, when anything comes up.
The items that you're using on a daily basis are getting left out because you have nowhere else to put them. You can't put things away if your closets, your cabinets, and your drawers are filled to the brim. And we stay stuck because the home organization industry tells you to just buy more bins and baskets or to get a better cleaning schedule or to declutter your closet, but none of that actually solves the problem in the long term.
It doesn't actually put your entire home on autopilot so it can run smoothly and [00:03:00] stay tidy in half the time because tidying only works when there's actually space to put things away. If you open a cabinet and it's already stuffed, if your drawers are holding more than they can handle, if your closets are bursting at the seams, then of course you can't put anything away.
Of course, your stuff is going to pile up on the counters. Of course, your chairs and your tables and your floors are literally full of random things. It's not laziness. It's. Physics, there's no room for these things. There's literally no space for your daily life to land. And this is where the frustration really starts to come to a head, because on the surface.
It looks like a cleaning problem, a tidying problem. So you clean more, you tidy more often. You download another cleaning schedule or a chore chart for your kids, but the mess still keeps coming back because the root issue hasn't changed. You are [00:04:00] essentially trying to put things a way in a house that doesn't have room for anything, and this is why so many people feel like they need a bigger house.
This is why so many people believe that it's their fault, that they need to do something better, that they need to try harder,
But the good news is that when you get strategic with this, it's actually a very simple process. In order to finally get all of this chaos under control, I am a very strategic person and that is how I uncovered this process. So the types of items that are cluttering up your house that are. Are giving you a problem on a consistent basis.
They're not just random things. It's always gonna be the same types of items, the same things that you use on a daily consistent basis, like papers and bags and clothes and toys and chargers, and everyday items that you actually use and love. And there may also be new items that you bring into your house [00:05:00] like.
New gifts you got over the holidays that this is a big time of year where that I see that popping up in my client's homes and even my own home. I still have gifts that I need to put away because I have not taken the time to do so. And every single time I look at these gifts, I am reminded of.
Several years ago when I didn't know what the problem was, I would leave these holiday, these Christmas items left out for weeks and months on end because I literally didn't have room to put them anywhere. Now I'm not taking the time to do it because I have another wound on my foot. It's been super painful.
I haven't had the capacity to hardly do anything for the last two weeks since Christmas, but it's reminded me. Why so many homemakers are struggling with their homes because there's literally no room for these items.
So this is where a lot of homemakers start blaming themselves and believing that they just need a better routine. They just need to stay on top of it more, or. [00:06:00] Where they, where they start to think that if they were just more disciplined, then this wouldn't happen at all. But none of that addresses the real issue.
Believing it's your fault, while your home is a mess, is not going to solve the problem. Believing that you need to tidy more is not going to fix your messy home. The reason why your home is messy and cluttered is not because you're failing.
It is because your home is overloaded. And until that is addressed, until you have reset and overhauled your spaces and got your home back to a place that is manageable, as well as simplified and cleared out the clutter, then no amount of cleaning and tidying will ever stick.
It will never fix the chaos, but here's where things usually go sideways. When homemakers realize that cleaning and tidying is not the solution, they almost always jump right into the next thing that they've been told is the solution, the cluttering and organizing,
and that's [00:07:00] really where we need to slow down and take a pause here because there are four stages of home organization and most homemakers are using the wrong advice for the wrong stage that their home is currently in.
So that means that even the best organizing advice from the home edit still fails. Not because it's bad advice, but because it does not match what your home actually needs right now. So think about it this way, if you need a physical therapist to learn how to use your knee again after a knee replacement but instead you're going to an occupational therapist, well, yes, the occupational therapist will help you learn how to function.
Around the problem. They will help you learn how to get dressed after your knee replacement, but the physical therapist is what teaches you strength and mobility, so your knee is actually being used properly. If you try to go to occupational therapy, [00:08:00] it might help for a bit, but it won't solve the problem for the long term because you still won't have strength and mobility in your knee, and it will start hurting again.
If you try to declutter when your house is a mess and you don't have space for the things that you want to keep, sure you might let go of a few things while you are decluttering. And decluttering might help a little bit, but it won't solve the problem for the long term because the clutter will come back again and.
So basically you need the right support at the right time, and your home works the same way as.
Needing help for your knee if you try to declutter when your house is still a mess. If you try to organize when your storage spaces are already full, if you try to use planners and chore charts and routines, when there are piles everywhere and nowhere to put anything, it will never last. The piles will come back, the mess will return, and you will feel like you're constantly starting over [00:09:00] every week, every month, every single year.
This is exactly why decluttering and organizing have not worked for so many people. And it is exactly why. Despite decades of organizing products, bins, planners, and a massive decluttering movement, millions of homemakers, 170 million homemakers are still struggling and overwhelmed by clutter. Not because they're not trying, but because not everybody's home is in the same stage.
I wanna quickly tell you about the Tidy Home Bootcamp. This is a free bootcamp designed to help you reset your home and get it back on track.
I'm going to walk you through how to get the messes under control, create space so things actually have a place to go and set your home up so it's easier to keep it tidy in half the time. It's all happening in a private Facebook group. We start Monday, [00:10:00] January 12th, so go get your free ticket by going to the link in the show notes and I'll see you there.
So there are four distinct stages that our homes move through in order to go from messy and chaotic to calm, organized, and running smoothly.
And skipping one of these stages keeps you stuck or trying to do them all sporadically. So let me walk you through what these stages actually look like.
Stage one is kind of like chaos, where your house is both messy and cluttered. Your surfaces are covered with things you want to keep, but you don't have room to put them anywhere because your closets, your cabinets, and your drawers are filled to the brim.
So all you can do is pile things up on your counters and your tables or your floor. You could stack things neatly and shuffle things around and move messes from one room to another, and it kind of feels like you're tidying up, but nothing really changes. This is the stage where most people feel the [00:11:00] most discouraged because no matter how often they clean or tidy or declutter and organize the clutter in the piles always come back.
Now, stage two is when your home is cluttered, but easy to tidy. At this stage, the surface messes are more manageable, they're more under control. There's not a lot of stuff left out that you want to keep so you can tidy and the house looks decent, but it's still overstuffed. It's still way too full. It's still overflowing, and this is a very fragile stage because if you do not.
Simplify what's inside of your closets and your cabinets and your storage spaces. The house can slide right back into chaos. The moment life gets busy, the moment there's a busy holiday season, the moment you go out of town for two weeks, you come back and your entire house is a disaster again. So this stage is where many people get stuck for several years where they're constantly maintaining the appearance of their home, but never gaining real [00:12:00] space because they simply have too much stuff for the size of their home.
Stage three is when your home is organized but not sustainable because now you have space, you've organized, you've set up systems, and everything has a place,
but it's still not sticking because your habits and your family's habits haven't changed yet. So that means mail still gets piled by the door. Laundry still lands in a pile in the hallway. Things still get left out for later. And even with these great organizing systems and these command centers and these Pinterest perfect ideas,
the clutter slowly starts to creep back out. And that's why it's not sustainable. And then the final stage is when your home is peaceful and running smoothly . This is when everything finally works together. Your routines are working for you. Your cleaning schedules are simple and easy for everyone in the family to follow along, and your habits actually support your [00:13:00] home.
So you're learning how to put things away, right? When you're done using them, you are making an active effort to stop more clutter from coming into your house. And at this point, tidying takes minutes, not hours. Your kids actually help out and are motivated to keep their rooms organized.
The planners and the chore charts finally work. And your home feels. Okay, predictable instead of you reacting to everything, this is what it looks like when a home runs smoothly .
Now let's talk about why the four stages of home organization matters so much.
Because if you are in stage one and it seems like decluttering is going to solve the problem, it might help a little bit. Like I said, you might tackle an entire room over Christmas break and clear out a bunch of stuff and let go of dozens of bags of things, and so it might help a little bit, but it [00:14:00] doesn't solve the problem long term for your entire house.
Just like occupational therapy might help you function, it won't heal your knee. So if you declutter a little bit, you might let go of some things. You might feel a little bit lighter, but the clutter will come back because the mess itself was never addressed first. So the mess are the things that you want to keep that are left everywhere, that look visually cluttered.
And then the clutter is the stuff that's been accumulating for years or even decades that you need to sort through and decide what to let go of. The mess is almost always going to be things that you want to keep. Like I said, it looks visually cluttered, but you can't dec clutter it because it's all things you want to keep.
And this is where so many people get stuck because they try to dec clutter these messy, visually cluttered looking areas. But there's not really a whole lot of stuff that they want to let go of. When in reality, what they need to be [00:15:00] focusing on is clearing this mess first and then moving on to simplifying their storage spaces.
That way there is room to put the messes away. That way there is actually room to put your kids' toys in a storage space because you've cleared out towels that you haven't used in 10 years, for example. So I uncovered all of this back in 2020 after I had already decluttered a lot of my home because my house was still getting messy and visually cluttered every single week .
In fact, I decluttered over 50% of my belongings, and my house was messier than it had ever been. That's when I realized something huge that decluttering works for people whose homes are ready for it. Mine wasn't set up for decluttering to be successful. It's not that I was failing, it's just that I was using the wrong strategy for the stage my [00:16:00] home was in.
We had just downsized and we didn't have space for all of our things. So even though I decluttered over 50% of my belongings, I still didn't have. Space for the things that we wanted to keep. And most importantly, this was when I was going through a major, major life change. I had just lost my late mother.
I found out that my legs would be swollen for the rest of my life. I was very depressed for several years because of it.
And so because of all those major life changes, my habits changed drastically. I. noticed that I was letting stuff pile up. I was tidying and taking care of my home less because I was struggling internally with my own life changes and mental health. And so it didn't matter how much I dec cluttered, it didn't matter how much I organized.
It didn't matter the types of systems that I was setting up in my home. It didn't matter if I created an entire command center right by our entryway because my house wasn't set up for any of that to matter.
It's not that I was [00:17:00] failing, I was just using the wrong strategy for the stage that my home was in. So instead of trying to declutter piles of things that I wanted to keep, instead I focused on resetting and overhauling the mess from my entire house first, and then once the mess was under control.
Then decluttering was simple and easy. I was able to make decisions from a place of calm. I was able to sit down on the couch and effectively decide which items I wanted to get rid of because I wasn't surrounded by a bunch of piles of things that I wanted to keep because I, my brain wasn't overloaded with a bunch of visual clutter that was begging for my intention.
I could sit there and. Make quick decisions and decide what to let go of. And then from there, once my clutter was simplified for the home that we lived in, not based on what somebody else said, but based on what my home needed, then [00:18:00] organizing actually stuck. I was able to set up systems
and then my habits became easier. And my kids started to help out. As a matter of fact, during this time is when my youngest daughter just willingly gave away one of her Barbie houses when I was at work one day because she wanted somebody else to be blessed with something, and she knew that she didn't need it anymore.
So that's when I had this huge aha moment that this all happens automatically when we're really focusing on the strategies and the methods and the concepts in the right stage at the right time, moving through the stages in order changed everything for me, and it has changed everything for so many of my clients and students
this is what allows your home to stop cycling through chaos for years on end. This is what allows your home to finally stay manageable instead of copying someone else's organizing system. You'll use the right [00:19:00] method for the stage that your home is actually in.
And when you use the right approach at the right time, you'll stop spinning your wheels and finally reduce your mental load and have quality time with your family.
So once your home is back on track, once the mess is under control and you're not constantly reacting to the piles and the chaos, something interesting happens. You realize that being organized doesn't actually mean what most of us were taught.
Most of us were taught that organizing is the key to a great life. And for years it has been marketed to us as something very specific, like a perfect command center by the door, or labeled shelves, or matching bins or everything looking neat and magazine ready or you know, having all of your books in the Order of the Rainbow.
And that version of organization looks really amazing. It looks super impressive. But it never holds up in real life, especially in [00:20:00] homes with kids schedules, responsibilities, and very, very full days. Because there's something really important that I want you to remember here, those perfectly curated homes with the perfect organization.
Their homes were never messy and cluttered in the first place for any number of reasons. Maybe they're not somebody that struggles with clutter and therefore they never piled things up on the counter. Maybe they don't have any mental health struggles. Maybe they don't have A DHD or. Maybe they're not clinically depressed or maybe they have never experienced a traumatic childhood.
And the reason I point all of this out is because all of those things I just mentioned are all, they have all been proven to be directly linked to the reason why we struggle with clutter. I don't have the answers right now. None of us do. What they are finding is that all of those things in one way or another are the reason why.
170 million people [00:21:00] struggle with clutter while others don't because there is some sort of mental health, clinical depression diagnosis, or trauma in general that causes us to behave differently in our homes. And so those perfectly organized homes. They never struggled with clutter in the first place, and therefore it is easy for them to keep up with that.
But for us, that is not realistic. If you have ever had a cluttered, messy home, it is completely unreasonable to think that your home will be able to stay that organized. So instead. I want you to think about real organization, not as what your house looks like, but how it functions. Once you've simplified the clutter and you have created space,
organizing stops being about using ideas from Pinterest, and instead it starts being about. Setting up systems that support your real life like [00:22:00] systems, for the things that trip you up every day. A system for bags and backpacks so they don't always land on the floor.
A system for the homeless items that always pile up because you don't know where to put them. A system for papers and forms and mail. You know, report cards so that way they don't disappear the moment you set them down or a system them for meals and appointments and follow up phone calls so they don't live only in your head.
These are the systems that will help you organize your life so your home functions more smoothly, and so you can stay on top of things and reduce your mental load because when your mind and your schedule are overloaded, well, your house reflects that.
That's why organizing based on Pinterest ideas will never solve the problem because it does not address what's actually causing the mess in the first place. On the other hand. Setting up systems and organizing your home based on your [00:23:00] particular pain points.
The areas of your home that are bothering you specifically well, that is how you can get out the door without rushing. That is how you can get dinner on the table without going through the drive through. Again, that is how you can. Stay on top of your paperwork instead of having it pile up on the counter.
That is how your family can always know what is happening and where things go without you being the one to carry everything on your shoulders. That is the difference between staged organization and real life organization. One of them looks nice, the other makes your life easier, and when an organization is built around how you and your family actually live in your home.
Not how someone else's house looks. That's when it lasts for the long term. Not because you're being stricter, not because you have the perfect routine, but because your systems make sense.
I, so if you've been listening to this episode and thinking, oh my God, this makes so much [00:24:00] sense. I need this in my life. Well, I hope you're realizing that the next step is not to go to clutter a drawer or buy another bin.
Instead, the next step is to reset and overhaul your home so you can get it back on track so you can get it back to a place that feels manageable. And this is exactly what we're doing inside the Tidy Home Bootcamp. This is our semi-annual, the Cluttering Challenge, where thousands of homemakers come together to reset and simplify and organize their homes. It's not about decluttering your whole house. Setting up perfect systems or having a weekend clean out or getting rid of all of your things.
Instead, I'm gonna walk you through how to reset the mess and get things cleaned up after a busy holiday season.
How to create space and breathing room so your things can actually be put away, and how to set yourself up for organization that fits your real life. The goal is simple. We're going to get your home back on track so you can keep it running smoothly in 2026.
That way you're [00:25:00] no longer carrying the entire house on your shoulders. So if you're listening to this in January, 2026 and you are ready to have a home that stays tidy in half the time.
The Tidy Home Bootcamp is the very best place to start. We have over 1000 homemakers signed up already who are motivated and excited to get their homes in order. During this bootcamp, you will get more done than you have in months. To save your free seat, all you need to do is head to the link in the show notes.
It's from there, you'll enter your name and your email, and after you get signed up, you'll get an immediate link to join the free Facebook group where all of the live sessions are taking place. We start next Monday on January 12th, so make sure to get signed up now before you forget. Make sure to join the free Facebook group, and I'm very excited to see you there during our last challenge in October.
We had some incredible breakthroughs as some of the women said that they felt like they finally had a plan to keep things tidy for the first [00:26:00] time in years. And I can't wait to share this with you. So now that you can see what's really been keeping you stuck with the clutter, the next step is learning how to move forward one stage at a time so you can have a home that runs smoothly.
Go to the link in the show notes to sign up for the Tidy Home Bootcamp, and I will see you there. Bye.
