I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. Welcome to Stepping Up the podcast where we explore all things organization, mental health routines, personal.
Development, motherhood and health.
I'm your host, Steph Pace, and I'm the woman behind Just Another Mummy blog and also the founder of Steph Pace Planners. But I can assure you this is not just another podcast online. I'm known for my organization tips and tricks and the occasional banter, but it definitely wasn't always this way. I used to be a hot mess and occasionally still am. And I'm here as your honest and real friend each week to show you how I turn my life of chaos into clarity.
Between the house, health, kids.
Work, and wanting to be the best version of yourself, it can be overwhelming, and I'm here to give you the tools and tips to stop you feeling like a slave to your daily time, asks, home life, and especially the expectations you have on yourself.
Join me as I share my.
Journey and insights into the art of balancing at all and speak to guests who can help us all live a better life. Whether you're looking to streamline your daily routines, fish your wellbeing, achieve your fitness goals, diamond to personal development, or find inspiration to steff up into the best version of yourself, We've got you.
So are you ready to step up your game? Let's go.
Hello, guys, and welcome back to Stepping Up Today. We are going back to the OG stephing days now. If you've followed me from the beginning, you would very much so know what the term stephing is and remember all of the organization content and the schedules and the free downloads and everything I put up every single week for you guys. And I do miss those days dreadfully, and
I promise it is coming back very very soon. I'm actually recording this podcast to celebrate that i've finally, after five years of having SPP, launched out clean Up Schedule Magnet. I can't tell you how many years you guys have been asking me for a cleaning schedule Magnet for a long time. And she's beautiful she's got everything you could possibly need to follow this next tip and keep on top of it, and keeps a whole.
Family in the know.
They match our other magnets. It's got the gold foiling, it's got a section for AM and PM routines, and it's got Monday to Sunday and also a section for occasional tasks.
And it's a game changer.
So I thought today I was going to go back to the OG days and talk about cleaning schedules, which is my most downloaded resource over one hundred thousand times or more.
And now you.
Can create your very own cleaning schedule with this custom magnet I created to really work for you, not against you. There's so many cleaning schedules out there that are just too overwhelming and they don't really work. So this one is great because you can change it whenever you want, because it's a magnet, so you can reuse it. So
I'm really really excited to announce that. And that is one of the biggest questions I've always gotten asked, is how do I manage to keep on top of the housework where I run a business and I've got kids and all the things happening at once. I've actually never been good at being overly tidy. I'm naturally more on the messy side. It's something that I've always struggled with. You guys remember the shower curtain story.
If you're knew here.
Basically, when I was little, my shelves were so messy. I remember we had all these old sheets and here I am going on a tangent. But this was back when Pokemon was like humongous, and I know it's big again. I love Pokemon. I was a Pokemon master. I had every card, and I hate that I never kept them.
But anyway, so what I would do is I'd draw my favorite Pokemon onto a sheet, and I would cut the shoutline of it on two layers, so I had like a front and a back, So the front that had the drawing on it, and then the back, which was just a sheet that was in the same shape.
And then what I did is I would sew up the edges.
And I would stuff it and I'd make my own toys, and I used to even sell them sometimes, soe I've always been an entrepreneur, would sell them on the street to my friends in the neighborhood. And then I also would just like make them for myself. So I was very crafty, so shit like that. I had all these random things. Anyway, So what my parents did is they hung a shower curtain across my shelf so you couldn't
see everything that was going on. So what I'm trying to say is, after all of that tangent is I am naturally a messy person. And of course, as someone that has ADHD, my executive function, which basically means having the ability to actually do tasks and carry out tasks from beginning to end and initiate the task is really body hard, and it gets to the point of being so overwhelmed and.
You just physically like to start.
Such a basic task is like pulling teeth, And it's so hard to explain to people that don't get it, but it is like pulling teeth. So over the years, I've had to learn routines and hacks and rituals. Because I love a tidy house. I love a clean house. I struggle to concentrate and just relax when the house is messy. Now I've gotten pretty laid back with the state, especially when your kids get older. When they're babies, you can contain them to a certain area.
But as they get.
Older, they can just run wild and they just you know, they run free. They put bloody toys everywhere. They get all those little hatch and more toys and you step on them every two seconds and break your foot. A lot harder to control that, which is fine because they're kids, and kids need to have fun and they need to make mess and that's life. And even without kids, your house gets messy. But I'm here to let you know that I'm here to change your life. This podcast right
now is about to change your life. How you upkeep your house and the housework, how you look at housework, everything. It's going to change the game. And it's also going to make you realize why we do get overwhelmed when we have to do a big house tidy. This episode has multiple hacks, and you were going to want to stay till the very end because the last hack is literally my favorite hack of all time.
Drink every time I say hack.
It's basically going to combat that overwhelm you get when you know, you walk into a room or like the main living area and there's this stuff everywhere. There's like kids clothes, there's toys, there's lip arm, there's male, there's all this random shit. It's like all the objects in the house decide to have a meeting in like the one's place, and they come together, and that is what the mess is. So make sure you stay to the
end for the life altering hack. Now, before I get into the tips and routines and hacks on how to upkeep a tidy home and your sanity as well and not be a robot, I'm gonna give you a bit of a reality check on why homes get messy. You could be Marie bloody condo and your house still needs to be lived in. It still gets messy. I don't know if you guys saw. She actually came out after she had kids and said, like, she realizes how different it is now when she's had kids, like keeping a
house tidy or something. I can't remember what she said, but it was something like that, and I'm like, yeah, that's what happens when you have little humans running around making bloody mess and putting jam everywhere. Why don't always use jam and peanut butter when I talk about mess anyway? They are a delicious combo though, So that's probably why. So the reasons why homes get messy daily is because
the main spaces of the home are active. There's people living there, people come and go, there's daily activities that naturally create clutter and mess. And that's just normal things like you know, the kids playing. You may be taking your stuff downstairs to do some work. The next thing that creates a lot of mess is cooking and eating, and that's something that we unfortunately do have to do
like multiple times a day. Things like prepping meals, cooking dishes, making your kids a million snacks because you're a snack bitch. That type of thing that creates so much mess. Things like personal care. Even you're just like having a shower or putting on your skin care, there's gotta be towels dropped. You've just put makeup on or you've done your skin care, and there's products all over the vanity. That type of thing that just creates mess up bathrooms and kitchens and
things like that. They are the ones that can get the messiest the quickest.
Changing your clothes.
I know my kids like to wear twenty outfits a day and they can't reach the top railing in their wardrobe. So I just get them to like chucking in a pile. But yes, actually in the new house, Oh, this is totally off topic. In the new house, the wardrobe for the kids, the top bar has like a handle attached and you can pull it down and then they can reach the top bar themselves. And we've got it for
us as well. But how cool is that Now I don't have to be like them coming in every two seconds ask me to get a bloody dressed down because they want to be ELSA. Other things that create messes is just like unexpected messes like spills, dirt, kids bringing things home and the other thing that creates clutter and builds up clutter because clutter doesn't just peer in your house. People bring it into your house. And that's going to be one of the hacks later on about a rule
around this. So every day, I know my kids, honestly, they bring home, Especially Willow, she brings home like twenty pieces of artwork a day. I need to open an art gallery, honestly, and she loves it and it's so beautiful and I love her art, but she brings home a lot. They're the way is your house gets messy? Is this the fact that's just the way of life? So the first tip or rule that you want to do to upkeep your home is don't put it down,
put it away. And now don't neant to roll your eyes with this, because I'm sure you've heard of it before, but this is something that when I'm really exercising this rule.
The house is so much cleaner now.
Some examples of don't put it down, put it away is when you get home and you take your jacket off or your jumper, don't check it on the bed, hang it up, or usually wear again hook. Yeah, you wear again hook is the best. If you guys don't know what it is, it's basically command hook. And this is the hook for clothes that are too clean to gone the wash, but too dirty to go back in your wardrobe and you know you're going to wear them again. Literally why it's called to wear again hook. Perfect for
work uniforms, stuff of the kids. Just use the wear a gun hook. Another example is if you're working at a desk, it depends out you get highlighters out you're doing your planner. Once you're done, put them away. You know the moment where you look at a surface or an area, it could be kid's bedroom floor and you look at it and you're like shit, like I just don't want to do this. It's too much and it just feels like so much effort. But when you do do it, it takes not long at all. That is
because when you're looking at all of the items. You know, I said before, all the items in the house are like coming together for a meeting, and they're from all
over the house. The reason why you get so overwhelmed and feel like you can't start it is because not only does your brain have to do the executive function of starting the task, it has to look at every single item that's in front of you figure out what it is, what does it do, and where does it go, which is going to lead me on to my next point. And I know I don't have to say this twice,
but clutter equals mess equals more cleaning for you. So this is also where doing a daily decluttering practice comes into play. And now when I say that, I don't mean I want you to pull out everything in a drawer or like take a section each day, which you definitely can. And as I always say, when you're decluttering, I do not want you to think of the whole house. It's like what they say about the staircase. You don't want to think of the whole staircase. You want to
think of the first step. It's the same as when you declutter your home. And I will link my decluttering challenge below.
That is a great way to get started.
But what I mean about doing a daily decluttering is, for example, I get home from work or from the gym and I see there's a couple of toys chucked in the back, there's a bit of rubbishoved in like the cup holders.
I will just grab that. Stuff goes in the bin, Stuff goes where it lives.
And it's just doing these like little daily tidy ups as you go. And this will kind of go into my next point. But if you see a surface or a draw that has a little bit too much stuff, or you know, like half of this stuff's just junk, just quickly do It'll take you two seconds. So once you get into the practice of that, and then you can be a bit more intentional by doing like decluttering sessions where you literally spend fifteen minutes on one area,
you'll be so surprised what you can do in fifteen minutes. Honestly, So when everything has a home Not only does your brain have to work less hard and try to solve the problem, it helps you find things quickly. And everyone in your family also knows where things go. How many times does your partner not know where to put shit? Like mate, you live here too, So once everything has its home and everyone becomes aware of that, you can
actually help each other. Now you're probably asking, Okay, that's all well and good, Stuffy, I'll do my decluttering every day, but how do I actually organize everything into a home. I've done a couple of episodes on organization and doing this, so I will link them below, But the main ones are before you organize any space, you do want to do a cull.
It's like a draw.
So say, if you've got a drawer and you've got like pens and pencils and all this stuff, and it's really messy and there's rubbish in there. Are you going to try and put tubs in that and organize the mess or are you going to get rid of the mess and then see what's left, categorize it and then.
Put your storage in.
Literally the process cull, categorize contain Definitely check out the episodes I link below. There is a kitchen organization one which is really really helpful and that's so budget friendly if you do want to like buy items, but it actually really takes you through the process of organizing. I'll make sure I link all of these episodes and resources in the show notes below. Now, if you're someone who really struggles to look at a space and organize it, I kind of want you to think of your room
or home as zones. So you know, you've got your entryway zone. So when you come in the door, you've got space by the door, maybe you have a bin for shoes.
You walk through and you think about what you're doing.
So you've got keys, you've got your phone, and now you want to think about Okay, so how am I going to store this? So you want to start designating zones for practicality. That's where things like my drop off zone comes in. So a drop off zone is basically storage. I've set up near the door where we chuck our shoes. You can chuck your bag, you put your keys in there, and you have like those coins and mail. They all have a place and we all know where to put them,
and you also know where to find them. And then you can really break it down into specific shelves or drawers or containers that you keep all your tech charges. So we have a million phone charges and things. I don't know why. I have this big plastic ikea container
that's divided into a fair few sections. Then I organize the cables into sections by what type of charger they are, even down to having a certain spot in the kitchen, in the cupboard for anything the kids need for school lunches, whether that's the lunch box themselves, the lunch cooler bag, the insulated cup for breaks. Everything goes in the one spot. Now, you may not have a lot of storage, so this is where you really want to be utilizing vertical space
as well. I've done this so much in the unit here I get over the door hangers that have organizers on them, even under the bed storage, which is really good for like you know, your seasonal close, extra toys for the kids, things like that, but just really like think outside the box.
You can use the door organizers to store your shoes. We use the kids.
Door organizer for school shorts, certain items that they were losing all the time because I know they're up off the floor and they're like literally as they go to walk out the door. They're rite there because every day I bought them these little shorts to wear under their school dresses, and they'd always lose them. And since I've put them there, no problems. It's all about just trying
to think of like a solution. Another thing that can really help with declattering is having the one in, one out rule, So every time something comes in the house, something needs to go, and that just really helps with, yes, stopping the accumulation of stuff that gets brought into the house every single day at Bay. Now, before I move on to tip number three that you need to do every day to keep with the clean house, I want
to do a quick recap. So the first one is don't put it down, put it away, and the second one is everything has a home and doing a little bit of daily decluttering every single day. And if you like the one in, one out rule. Now, the next thing, which we all know is from the OG steph days, is having a daily and weekly cleaning routine. Again, I don't enjoy cleaning. I don't really know who does enjoy cleaning. Maybe on the rare occasion when there's not too much clutter around.
It's okay.
You need to listen to a podcast, but it's not my favorite thing to do in the planet. But coming up with cleaning schedules is my jam. I love it, and mine has changed a lot over the years. Now I'm able to outsource a cleaner just to come in and do the deep cleaning, which is one of the tips I'll give you soon. But I have to say here at the unit, it is much much faster to clean. It's very quick, and it's one of the great things about it having a small space is how quickly you
can clean up. But as I said, as your lives and lifestyles change and your you know, routines change, so does this cleaning schedule. You can't always just expect yourself to do the same thing throughout your whole life. I know people probably hear the word cleaning schedule and they roll their eyes. They're like, oh god, it sounds horrible, and they're like, oh, you know, I work full time,
blah blah blah. But I'll tell you, once you start doing a cleaning schedule, because you're cleaning certain areas on a consistent basis, the cleaning gets cut in half even more so, and you get quicker at it. When I'm consistent with my cleaning schedule. My weekend cleaning is courted at least because the thing is the reason why I started doing this too is because I want to be with my family. I don't want to spend my whole bloody weekend cleaning the house with Ryan.
We want to be with our kids.
And it's important that you do get your partner to share the load. And I know that can't be the same for everybody, and I very much acknowledge there's single parents, there's people that with fly in and fly out, there's people out there with health issues one hundred percent. But I'm saying, if you have anyone in your household that you can get to support you with cleaning, please do because you deserve to be helped. Now, I want you to think of a cleaning schedule like keeping your email
inbox organized. Imagine during the day you're receiving all these emails. If you take ten minutes once a day or twice a day at certain times that allows you to read, reply, delete, do whatever you need to each email as they come, then your inbox stays half manageable and you can also find really important messages easily. Now I want you to think, if you don't do that and you leave your inbox for say a week or even a month, imagine coming in and then having to go through all of those
emails that have come in. That would be so overwhelming, and that would take you hours, and you would most likely put it off as long as you possibly can until you get in trouble or fired.
It's because of the sheer volume of what you have.
To deal with, and having a cleaning schedule works is the same way as checking your emails twice a day. Literally, I have an AM and a PM non negotiable routine. By having a certain routine in the morning and in the afternoon, that allows you to do what I did with the inbox.
It allows you to get.
In there, sort the clutter that has come in throughout the day, get rid of the rubbish that's come in, and put things back to their homes.
But if you leave it to even just the end.
Of the day, or if you leave all of the cleaning of the house till the weekend, you're going to be way more overwhelmed and you're going to spend a lot more time doing it. I am going to do a full episode on each of my AM and PM non negotiable routines because they are again life changing and really really helpful to keep you in a proactive situation, not reactive because no one wants to get up in the morning. No lunch is are prepped, you don't know
what you're wearing. You haven't even washed your clothes that you're supposed to wear. The kids' uniforms are still in the wash too. Everyone's having a shit time and we're not here for it, so we're not doing that anymore. So I'm going to only briefly touch on your AM
and PM routines in the morning. It's all about resetting from the night to the next day, so things like making your bed, resetting your bedside table, checking your planner, and then cleaning up any mess that's happened from breakfast, all the kids have left around, things like that, so
you're really set for the day now. Gocial routine is super important, and this is going to allow future you not to get pissed off, because future is going to be really pissed off if she wakes up to go to work or to deal with the kids all day and last night's dishes are in the bloody sink and there's toys everywhere, and you haven't made their lunches for school, and everything's a fucking shit show.
She's going to be pissed off.
So these non negotiable routines make sure future you is going to be pissed off with now you. So things like prepping bags, doing the dishwasher, doing a nightly reset, that type of thing, making any meals for the next day, just getting it done.
That's what your PM non.
Negotiables routine is for things like spot vacuum cleaning, fully resetting the kitchen. And I know it's a time and it's an energy, especially at that time of night. But things that you can do to help this is setting a timer. If you're a competitive person or even you just know, like I only have to do this for like twenty minutes.
I'll pet you anything.
If that timer goes off and you're not completely finished, you will see, oh there's not much left to go.
I'll just keep going and you will, and then it's done.
And the hack at the end is one that's going to make this end of day task so bloody easy.
I can't even tell you.
Now let's move into the weekly cleaning schedule again, I want you to designate your weekly cleaning schedule into zones, so you can do bedrooms, kitchen, living room, bathrooms, entry, away, outdoor spaces. I want to give you an example of what ours is. So Monday's bedrooms, Tuesday is floors, so I have a full day just for floors, just because I can smop and vacuum, and I always will do a spot vacuum at nighttime. Wednesday's kitchen, Thursday's bathroom. Friday
is living areas. Saturday is laundry and meal reset, so meal prep and that type of stuff, and then Sunday is sheets and laundry and any outdoor areas because you know, Ryan loves to just do out in bloody water the grass for no reason.
It's like a man thing. I don't get. Now.
To make this work and to actually stick to a cleaning schedule, you need to have it visible to the whole family and in a place where you guys are always there, so that's where the cleaning magnet comes in. You can also delegate zones per family member, So say, for example, you'd be like Monday's I'll do the bedrooms, Tuesdays you do the floors and get seeds on them magnet. If it doesn't work, you can wipe it out and change it so easy. And then on the magnet you've
got your AMM your PM routines on there as well. Now, if you are someone that you just like, I can't even do zions. It's just too much. All I want you to do is spend twenty minutes a day cleaning.
That's it.
I don't want to even think about what you're going to clean or where you're going to clean. Just do twenty minutes a day. Now, for me, personally, I prefer to do like the schedule way because I feel like I take twenty minutes anyway. But at least it's kind of a reoccurring thing because I know I'll forget to maybe do the outside area for a while, and then I go out there and.
It's a shit show.
So that's why I do promote having a cleaning schedule. But even if you do, just do twenty minutes and then you keep going until your house is a little bit more clean, a little bit more clean, and then over time it just gets quicker and quicker to clean.
Now we have finally.
Reached the part of the podcast that you've been waiting for. And this is the life altering hack that's going to change everything, literally change the game for you. I've mentioned it a million times. Clutter is just random objects from around the house that you need to tidy up, really bloody, annoying. So there's toys, there's remotes, there's that fourth bloody spachela that you're meant to throw out. It's just everything. They've all just kind of got together. And this is where
I'm going to introduce to you the catchull basket. And this is where you have a basket in the main areas in your home. So for us, it's the living room, and we have one upstairs, and then we have one.
On the stairs.
You guys would already remember the upstairs basket. I've done that for years, and I did that in the old house, So I had a basket at the bottom of the stairs. Anything that had to go up, we'd go in the basket and we take it up at the end of the night. This is the same kind of vibe, but basically it is you're placing a basket in the main areas of your home. So throughout the day when people are finished with things or there's just things that do need to go away and they just can't be bothered.
It gets put in the catchual basket.
You just chuck it on in there, and then at the end of each day you take it with you and you just put the stuff away and that's it.
That's literally the hack.
Well there's even like these stair baskets I saw because if you guys upstairs, you know the bloody pain that it is of having to constantly put things on the stairs and then no one else in the family takes
it up and it drives me bloody bonkers. It still happens with the baskets, but basically you put everything on the stairs and then no one takes it up, and then you're trying to like carry all of this shit and then you end up being like, oh, I'll just take half, and then you won't make the trip back. And that is why having these baskets is really really helpful.
Another tip for this hack is allocate a basket to certain family members or so to Ryan, you do the downstairs basket or do the living room basket, and the kids can do the upstairs basket.
Like, get the.
Kids involved and it's going to make it so much easier. You can even make it a game, you know, you put some music on, put a timer on it. People can see how quick they can empty their basket, you know what I mean, and just make it fun. But yes, the catch or basket is a game changer. It can
be a laundry basket. You can get cute baskets from kmart. Now, these methods I've said, like the catch or basket daily declutter, you can pop them on your AM and PM routines on your cleaning magnet on the fridge, because that will give you a reminder. The thing is, and this is why I never will say to use a digital planner, because your phone also is attached to so much ocean and the outside world where you will always get distracted.
You'll go on your phone to maybe check you to do list and then you end up on bloody Instagram. Whereas when you have a planner, when you physically write things down, you're eighty percent will likely to achieve them. And the fact is, with the magnet, it's right in your face and everyone in the family can see what's going on. It's like having the meal planner. The reason why we love the meal planner is you don't have
to think about it. So just to do a bit of a recat we've got, don't put it down, put it away. Everything has a home, a daily declutter, daily AM and PM, non negotiable routines, a weekly cleaning schedule, use a timer, have the catch all basket, and involve the family in tidying up, and it will make it so much easier. I hope this episode has helped guys. I know for me, doing these things just made a world of difference. I know housework can make a lot
of people feel inadequate. How does everyone else keep up with their houses? And the thing is that they don't. It's an ongoing thing. It's never going to be fully clean. But if you can implement things like even just to catch all basket, even if you can take one of these things that I've just said and start it, it's going to make a world of different And I would love if you guys get your catch or baskets or have you wear again hooks or whatever.
Please do tag me on Instagram. I love to see it.
Please tag Steph Pace, Underscore and Stepping Up on Instagram because I just love to see you guys implementing these tips and how much it's helped you. So anyways, guys, make sure if you want to jump on and graub the cleaning schedule magnet, you do that now because they have been flying and I knew they'd.
Fly off the shelves because you've been wanting it for so long.
But it really is a game changer, and things like this just help people like us with messy minds to live their lives more easily. Anyways, I love you and I'll talk to you later, babe. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today's episode of Stepping Up.
I don't want this to.
Be just another podcast that you listen to you get inspiration and then you don't take action.
If there's been something in this episode that will help.
You step up into the best version of yourself, open up your trusted planner and make a plan. And if you've loved listening to today's episode, take a screenshot and show me where you've been listening from.
I love seeing it.
Make sure you tag us at Stepping Up and steph Pace underscore on Instagram so we can see it. And make sure you subscribe because you won't want to miss what's coming up next week.