Today, I want to discuss what happens when you have a space that you have just worked so hard at. It's now decluttered. It's organized. It looks beautiful. Your goal is to keep it that way and then life or you just blink. And somehow it just is as messy as it was before you did this tremendous before and after. And it could even be worse. So you hear all the little monkey brains in your life say things like, well, it's about routine consistent maintenance.
I don't know why you don't understand that life takes routine maintenance in order to stay that way. You want to just sort of scream because your brain, A, hates routine, total boring, is consistency as we've discussed before is like your kryptonite. And then just hearing the word maintenance doesn't give you that dopamine rush that knowing you could create a before and after does. And so what does that mean for us?
Are we doomed to continually messy existence or moments of niceness that all just blows up in our face again? Let's dig into that thought today. 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 Fishbrain. If you're looking for a place to get 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.
Welcome or welcome back to the Joy Loving Home podcast. This is episode 221 and we're going to talk about a hack I am currently using that is sort of maybe making this maintenance thing work a little bit better. But just as an aside before I get started, ironically, as I am recording this, I am in the middle of one of my membership groups, Tackle It Tuesdays. And what we do with Tackle Tuesdays. If you've ever in the past heard me talk
about work with me Wednesdays, it has just been rebranded. Can you tell I love an alliteration? I am now doing these Zoom collective accountability calls on Tuesdays and we get together and we just sort of announce what it is we're going to be focused on during 15 minutes worth of time. And then we get busy on it and then we check back in and see, did we accomplish it? Did we not? What are we trying to move forward to work on next.
And I am literally with three other people on a Zoom call right now that are holding me accountable for completing this podcast so that it gets out to you tomorrow. So I'm recording this during a Tackle It Tuesday. Goal is to be publishing it tomorrow, which is Wednesday. So if that kind of accountability sounds fun for you, I have yet to close my membership, which I have promised I was going to close twice already. So if you can sneak in by the end of tonight, I'll still let you in.
Right now, we are just, we're rolling with it because I have not had a moment to get back to my website to lock down that membership group again. It is joylovinghome.com slash membership if you are interested. Anyway, I'm digressing and so I'm going to jump into, let's talk about this. I know I have mentioned this analogy before. It bears repeating and so So I'm going to, and I may be using it in a slightly different context this time.
So just roll with me if you're like, oh yeah, yeah, I've heard her talk about that. I want us to think about what's happening in our life, particularly in our homes, as a boat full of holes. And it is taking on water at whatever pace it's taking on water, which is just daily life. It just happens. So living is messy. Living is not a museum. Living is not these snapshots we see on social media. It is messy. Life is messy.
And so in order to stop all messes in your home, you've seen probably that short that's supposed to be all cute and funny of, you can have a house as beautifully clean as mine. Just get rid of your kids and your family and your dog and your whatever. Ha ha ha ha. Because they're trying to say, like, life happens. Like, we have to embrace it. Great. But what if you actually are saying to yourself, I feel like I am that person
who will never get out from under this sinking boat. It is taking on too much water and I can't ever keep up with it. It just seems like it's all futile. And so what we're wanting to talk about is my sort of mantra for the year, not my one word theme of the year, just my, in my head, this is what I'm working towards every day. I am calling it bail and build, bail and build. In my life, I need to keep the bailing process going.
You are sitting in this boat taking on water and it is necessary to actively just bail it out, bail it out, bail it out. And anything that just doesn't look like it's moving the needle, it doesn't look like it's making a change, but if you were to just sit in that boat and not bail it out, you would sink. It really would get far worse than it is right now. So know that those bailing efforts are actually useful. you're getting somewhere with them.
Secondly, the building part, and I know it seems weird that I'm not saying build a boat, I'm more saying clog a hole or like, yeah, clog a hole in your leaky boat, but build it so that that hole doesn't exist. So what activities are those? Those are things like, Are there things in my life I need to eliminate permanently so that it is not the same water coming back in?
Is there something that I can set up that is constantly the main of my existence so that it actually works for me in a better way so that I am not doing this thing in the hardest, most time-consuming way possible? Can I build a system around something that I see myself bailing out constantly? So those are your build things. So you have your bailing and you have your building.
So as you go about life this year and you think, I don't want to consistently maintain, you don't have to worry about doing the exact same thing every day or I've now got a cleaning routine. I've got to follow it now. I've got to, you don't, you just, this is the hack I'm doing. This is what I want you to try. I've done it now for five days and it's working beautifully to the point where I find myself sort of playing against the system to make sure I'm hitting 25 every day.
And so what I do is I open my notes app on my phone and I just in the heading put 25 day. So this is a day I'm going to get 25 and I'm just playing off of the year 2025. That's why I'm doing where the 25 came from. And so I am challenging myself to just start moving and start recording anything that can count as progress, as bailing this boat. It all counts.
So you got up, you brushed your teeth, you got dressed, you made a bed, you made lunches, you got the kids off to school, you emptied a dishwasher, you filled a dishwasher, you wiped down a counter, you took out a bag of trash, you started a load of laundry, you switched laundry when the buzzer went off, you folded that laundry, you put that laundry away, you picked some toys off the floor, You gathered all the errands and got them into your car.
You dusted a piece of furniture. You vacuumed a room. Every single thing that is just under that bubble of routine maintenance, routine task, routine life that we all have to do, you get credit for all of those. And you're trying to scoop 25 buckets, air quotes, of bailing out of your boat today. And it doesn't have to be in any order. You can be the mouse with the cookie and still get this done. Like you can be all over the place and get credit for 25 things.
Now, here's where it gets a little trickier. And this is where the fun comes in is when you get to the end of that day and you look down and you go, are there any things in here that I would consider a build? Did I do any of these that are actually furthering me along? One, one of the goals I set for my year and my 25 for 25. That's a podcast a few back if you want to listen for that. is it a regular activity that I was hoping to do?
Like I actually went to yoga yesterday or I read a chapter in that book I've been wanting to read or I sent out the email that is going to be about the podcast guest I want to get. Like things that are a step forward instead of just a bail it out. You're stepping forward towards a goal. those are your build, go back and use in that app the font and highlight those. Pick a color. It comes with like five color options. I'm using blue for build because we have established I like alliteration.
So I'm using blue for build and we can just start to see that not only are we bailing things out, but every tiny step we're taking forward to build towards something we really wanted to do that we don't seem to feel like we ever can do because all we do is bail ourselves out. Yeah. We can start to notice it in these lists. And every day you open a new one and every day you start the challenge again.
So if it gets towards evening and you're like, uh-oh, uh-oh, I only have 18 things, I only have 18 things, what could I do to feel like I can go to bed with 25 bales on my baling list and I can, oh, I didn't actually clear the table off. Oh, I didn't actually load the dishwasher and get it started. I didn't actually straighten up the couch pillows and shut down the house nicely, whatever to start stacking some extra bailing outs into your list.
I've noticed myself starting to do that, which is just fun to see myself pushing myself against the 25. I am hoping that this little maintenance task idea, hack, whatever we want to call it, could help you as well. I think you may be surprised giving yourself permission to kind of write anything at first just to get the momentum rolling. Then that allows you to start being, well, I'm going to be a little more discerning. I'm not going to put get up as one of my tasks. I'm going to get up.
Maybe I start with the brushing the teeth or maybe I know I'm always going to get up and brush my teeth. So I'm not going to start until I know I got dressed for the day. Like things that maybe you tend to drag your feet for, you'll start to see if you're going to make the challenge a little harder and harder for yourself as you walk through those steps.
All right. I have been recording for 12 minutes, which means I am about to close in on hearing that bell that my 15 minutes with my accountability group is up. So I will stop here, but I hope this helps. Reach out to me with any thoughts, questions. I can always be reached at joy at joylovinghome.com. And until next time, continue to choose joy.