Hello, and welcome to the Joy Loving Home podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a cluttering hack that I am actually going to borrow from some financial advice on how to get out of debt. But for us, we're going to get out of clutter. So let's dig into that right after this. 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. Okay, so not sure if you are familiar with Dave Ramsey and his Financial Peace University. Full disclosure, I have not ever taken his class or read his books, but I have heard enough about it, you've seen things on YouTube and such, where I have seen him talk about his seven steps to becoming debt-free. And step two in his system is to pay off all of your debts except for your house using something he calls the debt snowball. all.
And what he does is he has you list all of your credit card debt in order from the smallest balance to the largest balance. He completely disregards the interest rate on all your cards, which has gone against traditional, I guess, financial advice, because typically you're trying to get rid of your highest interest card first because that's costing you the most money. And.
He acknowledges why financially that is wisdom, but he's seen enough people struggle to get out of debt that he just wants people to make some headway.
And the way and the reason he says this works is if you have it all lined up from the smallest balance to the largest balance, and you agree to pay the minimum necessary amount on all of number like two through however many credit cards you have, and you put all of your extra funds and energy into the smallest balance until it's gone, hopefully fairly quickly.
Then you take what you were paying into that one, start on the second largest, still paying all the minimums, but you have one less minimum you're attacking, and all of your money is going into the next one and the next one. And as you keep paying these off, the amount you can put towards the larger and larger bills grows and grows and grows because you're not paying the other minimums and you're making progress.
You're making progress that you can see. You're making progress that you can feel because you're knocking these credit cards literally out of existence for yourself as you build towards the biggest scary one that was your biggest balance. Possibly your biggest interest rate. Who knows? But you're seeing progress. You're feeling lighter.
Your money is making more of a difference because instead of scattering it everywhere and trying to pay lots down in different places, you're literally putting all of the energy into something until it's gone. Okay, so what does this have to do with clutter? Let's look at it, our houses, in the same way. So instead of expending all of our energy, doing a lot of little things all over your home.
Let's figure out how to do the minimum necessary amount, like the minimum payment, into the most, you know, the important things that keep recurring. Let's get the minimum amount taken care of, and then put all of the other energy and time that we have into decluttering so that once items are gone from our house, they don't come back. So what do I consider the minimum amount in our sort of recurring areas? To me, that is dishes, laundry, bathrooms, and maybe a five-minute pickup, right?
Your hierarchy of importance might be different than mine. But dishes are going to keep rolling through. So we need to put the minimum daily effort in to just clear them out each night, each night, each night, so that they're not building into this mound that intimidates us and we don't want to walk in our kitchen. Plus, it's going to feel like the kitchen is more on track if the dishes keep at least cycling through.
Same with laundry. We don't want to find ourselves at the end of every week with absolutely nothing clean and nothing to wear. You can do your laundry in any minimum amount of effort you would like. It can be one full laundry day. It could be a load a day. Whatever works for how your brain functions. But reminding yourself that you have to keep it going. You're not doing all the things all the time all the weeks. You're getting what you guys are wearing on a regular basis through and clean.
Bathrooms, a basic wipe down. You're not doing intense deep cleaning all the time. It is a minimum amount to keep it respectable so that you're not completely embarrassed by it just enough to keep it going. Until you're getting a handle on the rest of your house, you can't do all the deep cleans all the places.
And then if you routinely get yourself into a five-minute pickup, it is the minimum amount, five minutes, but you can start to see what a difference five minutes can make in places if you're trying to do it fairly frequently. So if that is your minimum payments due to your house every day, then you can take any added energy you have into going, okay, I need less because less will make this house feel better.
So then you're saying, okay, well, where do I start with the less? My whole house is a mess. What is the lining my credit cards up in the order, right? You also need to line, whether in little sticky notes, down a piece of paper, on a chalkboard somewhere, on a whiteboard, just tacking things to a thumbtack so that you have a visual of all the spaces you'd like to tackle. Put them in order of the least intimidating to the most intimidating spaces
and start to feel progress. If you're or, listener of Dana K. White, who you all know I admire very much, her suggestion is always, always start with the most visible location. Because if you start with the most visible location, the reinforcement that you have when later you walk by it and you see it and your family sees it and people ringing the doorbell, it won't bring panic to your heart anymore that you have to open the door to a clogged entryway all the time.
All of those things will reinforce that you're making progress. And so it builds the energy in you to continue to do it. Totally respect that. I think that's wise, wise advice. But I will caveat to say, if you cannot bring yourself to do the most visible place and you find yourself stopping and, you know, just the energy draining because the thought of facing that most visible space is more than you can tackle, then just do any space.
It's okay to do any space because I keep always saying just getting the, you know, pedaling the bike, just getting it moving in any direction is going to build the momentum you need to continue into other spaces.
So if you walk towards your entrance and just it drains the life out of you and you turn around and you're about to go sit back down on the couch but you glance over and you notice you know what there's that little entry table that has a drawer that I don't even remember what's in it I'll agree to open that drawer and just deal with that drawer today if that's all you've got in you do it it's okay there aren't rules there are no rules it is a suggestion to start with the most
visible space yes will it be the most helpful to you? Yes. Will it build energy? Do I encourage you to try it? A hundred percent. However, if you're finding yourself resisting, don't, don't. Don't shut down. Just go, okay, that is me trying to swim upstream and I don't have the energy to swim upstream today. My little fish brain is going to turn around and wherever the current takes me, if I can find a space that I'm like, today I just feel like organizing scarves and hats in the winter closet.
That's all I feel like today. Then go do it. It's okay. Go do it. You are going to feel a lightness in the fact that you are going to get these things out of your house. Once you have taken care of deciding you're done with some things, get them straight to the car so they're at least ready to drop off the next time you're out and about.
If you have the gift of having places in your neighborhood that are willing to pick up from you and you know that they'll come on a regular clip, then please, please try and declutter on days when you know there's a pickup the next day, because then it gets swooped off your porch the next day, never to return again. And as you build this momentum, much like the debt snowball works, you will feel the momentum continuing into more and more spaces in your life. So I hope that's helpful.
Glad I got to borrow from some financial wisdom and apply it to some decluttering. I hope you all are having the loveliest week. And until next time, continue to choose joy.