Latest / More Organised Less Clutter / 261. Spring Clean Gamified for Neurodivergent Brians
Transcript
- Narelle King: Welcome to More Organized Less Clutter, a podcast to empower individuals and neurodivergent families with practical, realistic tools to create a more organized, sensory-friendly, clutter-free, and intentional home that works with your lifestyle and brain, not against it. I'm Norelle King, a professional organizer and neurodivergent mum who understands the unique challenges of family life. I help people just like you simplify your space. Build sustainable organizational systems and create more breathing room physically and mentally. Every fortnight you'll hear solo episodes and guest conversations filled with practical strategies on decluttering, home organization, routines for neurodivergent families, mindful living, and how to build a home that feels safe, calm and functional. You'll walk away with actionable takeaways you can implement even if you only have 10 minutes to spare. Does decluttering feel overwhelming and is task initiation a problem? Today on More Organized Less Clutter, I am exploring why gamifying spring cleaning by imagining your moving house is helpful for neurodivergent brains. Let's jump into this More Organized Less Clutter episode to transform your spring cleaning into a fun experience. Thanks for joining me for today's solar episode, where I am going to be sharing some ideas on how to tackle. Spring cleaning. And I'm going to share a gamified task, a way that you can do this, which will give you that task initiation, maybe even motivation to do it. Winter is that time when we want to hibernate and stay inside. And it's also when we have the heater on, which also contributes to dust building up in our house. And once we move into that springtime, we also then might feel like we want to dust and scrub. But it's also because of winter when we're not going outside. I also find that there tends to be piles of things that actually pile up in houses and even in particular rooms because we're not outdoors a lot. So we just leave everything in the house. So this is the perfect time to refresh your space, your home and areas in your home. But that's the thing. Cleaning doesn't have to feel like a really daunting hard task. So I am going to make it even easier and more enjoyable by sharing this mindset shift for you. It's about gamification. So this gamification idea that I want to share with you around spring cleaning is hopefully going to give you maybe the motivation or even just the inspiration to spark you into action. So you're going to imagine that you're actually moving house. So for neurodivergent brains like myself. Having this on your to-do list is not going to give you the motivation to start. We need to look at task initiation. Saying I need to do this is not very powerful, whereas I want to do this is going to help you with that task initiation and make it a lot easier to get started. So this moving house mindset gives you like structure, a clear goal, and things that will help reduce stress and decision making. It just makes the process more playful because that's what gamification is and more fun. So you stay engaged and you don't burn out halfway through and give up and leave it half done task. So the moving house mindset is that you're going to imagine you're preparing to move to a brand new house. And then what does your ideal space look like? How do you want it to feel? Is it safe? And then the last part, which I think is the most important, is how is it going to function? So visualize that you are moving through each room and zone in your house. And then you're going to use this step by step to help you get started. So you know when you have moved house that you actually not only pack everything up, but you do the deep cleaning and maybe also the decluttering if you've got time before you're moving house. So that's what we're imagining we're doing. So when we break down room by room, we're going to grab four boxes. or containers or washing baskets, whatever you've got, even paperbags will do. We are going to have a donate slash sell so they can be together to start with, just to reduce the amount of decisions. Then we're going to have the rehome that's going to somewhere else in your actual home. It doesn't belong in that particular room that you're in at the time. I'll give you an example that we're in our kitchen area and there might be someone's shoes are left in the kitchen area. They need to go back to the front door or the bedroom. So we'll put them into that container. Then we have our recycle, things that can go in your recycle bin at your home or you can send somewhere else. And then finally your rubbish. And these are your sorting categories. So the items that you want to imagine taking with you, they're gonna stay. They're just gonna stay in your actual kitchen. You might lift out everything from one particular drawer, have a look at it, say that's going to stay and that's gonna go back in. And then move the things for donate, sell, and make a note of when you're going to deal with those later down the track. But this is that great opportunity then to clean the drawer as well and put back in the items that you're going to keep. This is really great in your utensil drawer because there's always extra things that are in there, but there's always crumbs I find that are in there. So that's a really great one to even start with. It's probably quite easy because there's maybe Not a lot of things there that need to maybe be donated or sell, unless you have like five spatulas that are all in that same drawer. But otherwise it's quite an easy drawer to start with and then make your way down to harder draw. To handle the overwhelm is make sure that you're having breaks. So you wouldn't do the whole kitchen in one day. You might break it down and just do ten minutes and then reward yourself. It might be just 10 minutes and you do the utensil draw and you do another draw another day. It doesn't need to have the whole room done. Get your kids and family members to help with this in the game because it also helps them to build routines that they can then take on to later in their own life. And it also gives you that shared responsibility. So it's not just on one person in the house. This strategy helps you just to move forward step by step without overwhelm. So I know for myself, if I had to just clean the house from top to toe, I'm less motivated to do that. Whereas I find if I'm organizing it, then I'm just doing a quick clean of it, it doesn't feel so overwhelming and it's breaking it down. So I'm gonna give you 13 different jobs that you could do that are going to fit perfectly into the moving house because you would do these cleaning jobs as you move house. And you can then also declutter and sort while you're at it. So our first one is clean ceiling fans and light fixtures. These are places that dust really does build up. And you only need to usually do them once a year. Number two is clean your window seals and wipe down the glass. It because of the condensation on there, it may get like a small amount of mold around it. So springtime is the perfect time when we're opening our windows anyway. And It just l also will help let more light in because you've now got rid of any of the dust that's on there. Number three is clean and repair fly screens and wires. And right now we have a real problem with mosquitoes in our area. So I definitely want to make sure that all of ours are clean and repaired so we're not getting them in into our home. I always find there's also a lot of spider webs that accumulate on our wires over winter as well. Number four is to dust and vacuum your heat events. And if you don't do those heat events, that's when we'll have problems with our heater. So it's great to get rid of all that dust off the outlet and it's then fresh to start again for the next winter when we need it again. Number five is cleaning the exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathroom. So when you're doing one of those drawers in your kitchen, that's when you might do your exhaust fan. as well. So it's that cue to go, ⁓ I'll do one of those things in my kitchen as well as one drawer. Same in your bathroom. You might go through one of your drawers in your bathroom and throw out any of the expired or items you're not using anymore. And then also do the exhaust fans in your bathroom. Number six is wipe down the baseboards and your door frames and even around your door handles, like giving it a good wipe. antibacterial wipe around it. Number seven is to deep clean carpets and rugs. You might have your own machine to do this or you might go and hire one or maybe you get an expert in to actually do it for you. I also do my cushion covers at that stage as well and put them in the wash and all the blankets that we've used during winter that we use on the actual couch when we're watching TV. Number eight is clean behind and underneath furniture. So moving the furniture Dusting underneath, it's amazing. How much dust will build up under there? And if you have pets, maybe it's all the fur as well. Number nine is to wash curtains and blinds. Again, it's just about the dust. So when we have too much dust on things and then we add moisture to it, so the condensation, that is when mold builds up. So if we can get rid of the dust, we're gonna then limit the amount of mold building up in our homes. Number ten is Clean and replace the air conditioning filters again. It's like pulling it out. It's quite easy. You can always look it up on YouTube if you're for your own particular air conditioner. I've done so many in clients' homes just to help them get it down, clean it. And they're surprised how dirty they actually are. Number 11 is wipe down kitchen cupboard doors. And again, you'll be surprised how much brighter your kitchen feels when you've actually given them a wipe as well. Number twelve is to declutter your bathroom and let go of those expired products. This might also flow into your laundry and checking all the laundry ones and the ones in under your sink as well. And number 13, if we move into the bedroom then we can go and we might change over our clothes and change our winter and summer clothes around if we don't have room to have it all out or we have some up high and some Down low and we just swap those over is to look at the clothes that you maybe don't fit many lot more or also that you haven't worn in the last 12 months. And you might then donate those. So these are just 13 jobs. They're small enough to do in 10 to 15 minutes, but they're gonna make a big difference in how your home feels, but also moving that dust out so we can prevent mold building up in your home. Now, the way I do some of this and plan this with some of my clients is we look at weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and then quarterly tasks, and we have like a checklist. So once you've done that spring clean, the keys to keep those good habits going without, you know, burning out. I recommend breaking your home into maintenance, into those three Useful checklists, weekly, monthly and quarterly. And things you might have on your weekly is tidying things, wiping surfaces, quick vacuum and sweep. Maybe it's your laundry routine and putting things back where they belong and keep your home just feeling manageable day to day. It might be like having a catch-all basket or a lost property basket where everything goes during the week and then you go and put it away. Maybe it's also tidying your landing area inside your front door. where everyone comes into the house or it might be the side door or through the garage. Maybe it's putting away items on the surfaces in your bedroom when you make your bed or in the bathroom when you're brushing your teeth. Then the next one is monthly and this might be deep clean one area, one zone, one maybe appliance. It could be like clean out the fridge or the pantry or declutter a small area like a drawer so you revisit one of those drawers or shelves or checking expiry dates. on herbs and spices is the great one. And then the quarterly. So every three months, which is roughly when we change our seasons as well. So it might be then a big declutter session. It might be wash curtains and rugs. It might be organize your paperwork and also doing some of those maintenance jobs like changing your filters, checking your smoke alarm. Maybe it's cleaning out the drum of your washing machine or your dishwasher. Having a checklist will also help you to keep a rhythm and routine. And then it doesn't feel like a big chore and it breaks it down into those bite-sized tasks and it's going to then reduce your overwhelm and you're gonna spread that workload over time as well. So to wrap up, I want you to visualize your ideal home and then use your moving house mindset to guide your decisions and break your cleaning into fun, manageable little jobs. Remember, spring cleaning doesn't have to be a chore. It can be a game where you're making real progress at your own pace. And if you feel inspired, pick one of those quick spring cleaning tasks and try the moving house game as you do it. You'll be surprised how much easier it is, even if you only have 10 minutes to do these jobs. Thanks for listening to More Organized Less Clutter. Moving to a new house? Make your relocation a breeze with our Free Moving Essentials checklist. You'll have everything you need for a smooth and stress-free moving day at your fingertips. Don't let the chaos of moving overwhelm you. Download your Free Moving Essentials checklist from simplyhappy.com.au in the resource section. I'd like to acknowledge the Waterong people of the Kulin Nation on which this podcast is recorded as the traditional custodians of the land. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.