Let me know if this sounds like you. I have a free podcast community where listeners of this podcast join so that I can give them visuals and pop in and share things from time to time. They can ask questions. They can share wins within a supportive, encouraging community.
And one of the things I do when you're getting ready to join is I ask the question, what is the hardest part about getting your home organized for you and the common thread that runs through all of the folks that were closing in on a thousand that have joined this group is the getting started where to start how to get myself to take action so if this sounds like you Stay tuned because I'm going to share a little hack I just did for myself that got me going and it
is instrumental in my decisions about decluttering now so that I can keep things organized and have a whole lot less inventory to keep up with. A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid. Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys. It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow fish brain. If you're looking for a place to get understanding, understanding encouragement and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks then i'm glad you're here let's ditch the type a advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique together we could have a joy-loving home. Before I start on my hack, I feel like I need to share two things.
One, if you're interested in this community, you go to bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity and you can join us there. I would love to have you. Secondly, I have never loved the idea of hacks because, well, they just mean here's a shortcut to something you're wanting to do. A lot of times it's sort of oversimplified and you're like, right, if only it was that easy.
But I am using it today for two reasons. One, yes, it's a clickbaity title and hopefully you will actually click on this so that you can learn what I'm trying to share. But two, because sometimes our ADHD brains will blow up a project so that it seems so daunting and so large and so timely that we will not take action. So if you can do something to hack into your brain, to give yourself a shortcut, to get yourself moving, it's never that we're incapable.
We are so capable of all the things we want to do. We can vision them in our heads. We can make them happen if we can get ourselves to start. And so that's where this hack, while any traditional organizer would tell you it's the absolute backwards way to go about things, that's okay. I'm not a traditional organizer. So we're going to jump in and learn about that. My hack. I call it rearrange and stage first.
So if you ever have an organizer come in, just a little behind the scenes FYI, you and the organizer will talk about the space. She'll take some before pictures. You can choose to share them on her socials or not. You have total free will in that. Usually they will do, well, actually I think always they do do that anonymously unless they're asked to share. Like you can share it publicly, but they will usually do it anonymously.
But even if they don't share them anywhere other than with you, sometimes you forget what the before looked like so that you can truly appreciate an after. So it's really valuable. Even if you're being your own organizer, take a before picture so that you have a starting place in your head and you can rejoice in your after. But what they will do is once you've discuss the place, they will begin by taking every item in that space and sorting it.
And then y'all will decide if any of it needs purged. And then once you see what actually needs kept, you can make a plan of how it's going to go away in a way that suits you. And then if at that point you need any kind of containers to help keep things organized, all of those things happen in a very specific order in which the final step is the making everything pretty, right? I am asking you.
If you can have the space to do it, pull all of the things out that aren't major pieces of furniture that you know are going to stay in the room anyway, and start rearranging. Rearrange, vacuum, dust things down, spray some things, make it smell good, make it look good, make it feel good. Have it look like you're about to sell your home and you want this photo on the real estate listing. You are so thrilled with how the space looks.
What you will be left with is a giant pile of mess in an adjacent room. I just did this yesterday. I, about six months ago maybe, moved out of my closet office and into a proper room, would be termed a bonus room, that has two actual windows and real ceilings. If any of you have seen my closet office, it's over our garage.
And so I have like a sloped ceiling and there's one teeny tiny window way at the opposite end of where my desk would sit because I couldn't put my desk where the window was because the ceiling was really severe there. So anyway, I was so excited to move out and I was on some sort of weird timeline that I was like, this is going to inspire me and this is going to get me going again.
But what I neglected to do is I just kind of drug everything into the new space and decided I would figure it out after the fact. And I have sat in this new space sort of frustrated and uninspired because there are just, I would just pile things up against the wall that needed to be gone through because at least it was all in the correct room. Can it work that way? Yes. Is it ideal? No. So yesterday I was just like, enough is enough. I haven't podcasted in forever.
I have it like, I just can't get myself going and enough is enough. So to get myself out of the slump, I literally pulled everything out into the hallway and. I rearranged and rearranged and rearranged the furniture that was left, deciding to get rid of a couple things completely, pulled those out as well, until I finally got to this feels really good. Aesthetically, it feels nice. It's all clean and dusted and vacuumed. And I even hung some art and I created like a daybed couch effect.
I'm trying to put more things in here that will help with sound because that is the only downside of moving out of my closet office is the clothes provided a lovely bit of sound barrier. So I am waiting on curtains. I even ordered them yesterday. Hopefully that'll help a little bit more. But I am so, so thrilled with the results now. That I am actually recording, number one, hallelujah. But number two, is I now am ready to face what is awaiting me in the hallway today.
So let's talk about this again. This is sort of the if you build it, they will come sort of if you take this kind of action, you will then be moving and be motivated to really be discerning about what you now are going to allow in that space. You actually have something worthy of protecting now instead of a vision that you think you'll get to one day or you think you'll figure it out along the way. My vision is now a reality. This room feels good, looks good, is so exciting for me.
So this bonus of action you're no longer sitting idle is awesome and this second bonus of being I now get to be the gatekeeper to any clutter that is going to walk into this room so I am being so much more discerning and brutal with what I am allowing to be in this space because I love how it looks right now. I will always, always, always tell you function first, function first, function first.
So the things that I'm going to allow in are things that I absolutely need for this space to function like an office, like the spare guest bedroom that it is, but in a way that is as pared down as possible and put away where I know I will find it, where I know I will get it out when I need it, where I know it's not so hard to put back away. So that when guests come and I need my office to be just so and somebody stays in this room, it still looks good, feels good, functions well.
Sorry about that. I forgot to put my phone on silence before I hit record. Clearly, I'm rusty. Anyway, I wanted to share this direction of doing things because it's so much better than not moving at all. I know it's not perfect. It is not perfect. I am facing a pile of stuff in the hallway. So my bonus tip, my added little hack to this is try and do this where you have a a realistic deadline, but a real deadline awaiting you.
So in my case, we have that first wave of company coming next Friday, not this Friday. It's not so soon that I will end up scooping all this up and shoving it somewhere, which is what we know we do when guests arrive. But it is far enough away, but it's still there waiting that I can be like, I actually can do this.
I can think it through, I can pull the things that I need, I can take the things I don't and either throw them away or recycle them or get them to Goodwill or donate them wherever else so that it is actually a continued functioning space for both myself and the occasional guest. So I hope that hack is helpful. I'm going to stop here. I don't love for my podcasts to get too long. But the one thing I did want to share.
If you were in my group already, and you were with me in August, I went live in August for 10 days straight, well, weekdays, 10 weekdays straight, sharing with you what an activity was like within the membership group. I also have a membership group. We do a different activity theme challenge, challenge is the right word, every single month, and it changes is every single month. And in August, we had done an Olympic themed decluttering challenge.
And if we completed all the steps, we became a decluttering decathlete and we removed 100 things from our home. It was so fun to do that with you all. It was a great challenge. I was letting you know that the membership group was opening for new members so that we could all do September together. We are are doing a really fun September challenge in the membership group too. And I forgot to come back out on the podcast and say, hey, it's open.
So I am going to update my website today. Right now it says it closes September 3rd or something. I'm going to leave it open for September. I'm just, I, I've, flaked out on you all. That's okay. So I'm going to, if anybody has been sitting on the fence, thinking about, I would love to join the membership group. I'm going to leave it open for the duration of September. I would love to welcome new people in. It is $10 a month. Join in this window, cancel anytime.
And just, you can jump into this particular challenge that we're doing in September at any moment. You are not behind.
You haven't missed any great things. I go live every Monday to get us going I do work with me Wednesdays every Wednesday where we actually do the challenges together, yeah it's just fun we have the best ladies they're so encouraging and if you would like to join that go to joylovinghome.com membership and you can join there and if you have any questions ever or thoughts or comments please please email me joy at joylovinghome.com All right, until next time, continue to choose joy.