Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 258: Double Down, Dig Out: 20 Days to an ADHD-Friendly Home Reset

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258: Double Down, Dig Out: 20 Days to an ADHD-Friendly Home Reset · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  If you are listening to the podcast today in real time, which is Monday,
• 0:04
  March 2nd, welcome or welcome back.
• 0:07
  I am Joy, and I am here to invite you to the Double Down Dig Out Challenge.
• 0:14
  And we will discuss all the details of that.
• 0:18
  But first, I wanted to explain why we want to jump into this this month and
• 0:23
  why it's also not too late.
• 0:25
  So February was a really, really rough month in my household.
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  Home care slipped self-care slipped sleep slipped
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  everything has been a rough go
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  because I have an old
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  dog and a medium-aged dog I guess one had surgery one is showing end-of-life
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  complications and things have been rough I need to dig out and the best way
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  for me to do that for myself is to invite you in.
• 1:00
  The one thing I have discovered in three years of doing this podcast is that I am not alone.
• 1:05
  You are not alone. If you struggle in your home and things derail you all the time,
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  whether it's because you have been diagnosed with ADHD,
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  you believe you have ADHD, you just struggle with your home in spite of your
• 1:20
  best intentions, then you are in the right place and what you are missing,
• 1:25
  first and foremost, is just friendly accountability.
• 1:30
  And that's what I would love to offer you this month. And I want to give you
• 1:33
  all the details right after this.
• 1:37
  A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
• 1:42
  ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.
• 1:46
  Well, Fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
• 1:52
  It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
• 1:56
  I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain.
• 2:01
  If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
• 2:05
  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
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  then I'm glad you're here.
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  Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
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  Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
• 2:22
  I want to quickly say that if you are not listening to this on Monday,
• 2:28
  March 2nd, do not feel like you missed a chance to join us on this challenge.
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  The beauty of my ADHD-friendly challenge at challenges is that there are always
• 2:38
  loopholes that you can jump through to get back on track with us.
• 2:44
  It is never bad to say I did 15 days of the 20-day challenge.
• 2:49
  All of that is perfectly wonderful.
• 2:52
  What I would love for my listeners to embrace is that we can do things even
• 3:04
  if we can't do them perfectly,
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  and our brains will fight against that.
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  We have such an all-or-nothing attitude, but we need to start embracing that
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  even if I I can't get all of it done the way it was designed.
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  My efforts in doing any portion of it are well worth it.
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  And so with that being stated, I want to sort of explain how this challenge
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  is going to work, invite you in, and I want you to hear why and how this is
• 3:37
  really friendly to your brain.
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  And I think that there are enough questions,
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  pieces into this challenge that are going to excite your brain,
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  keep your brain interested, and allow you to keep going even if there's a misstep.
• 3:52
  Okay, so what I want you to know is that first of all, I have two ways for you to get accountability.
• 4:00
  One is completely free. That is joining my podcast community.
• 4:05
  To get there, you go to bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
• 4:11
  I will put the link in the show notes.
• 4:14
  That is just a free Facebook group and I will pop in there once a week with
• 4:19
  some encouragement and I will go live where you can join me.
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  You can put it on, you do your 20 minutes while I do my 20 minutes.
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  If you can't join me at the time I go live, then you can watch it later.
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  It will be there and we can work together.
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  That is there for you. just completely free.
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  You can post your befores and afters. You can post, hey, this is what I did today.
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  Work together with other really encouraging people who have the same mindset as you.
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  Inviting you to that. Second option is I do have a paid membership.
• 4:57
  It is $10 a month. And in that $10, you will be getting me going live every
• 5:03
  single day for 20 minutes where you can say,
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  I get to work every single day with her, whether it's in the middle of a live
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  or watched on tape delay.
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  That way you can say, I don't even know where to start. I'm going to do wherever
• 5:18
  she does today, whatever, just take that piece of your stumbling block out of it.
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  It will allow you the timing is there because I'm setting my timer.
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  It will be 20 minutes. You just follow along and you know you have done 20 minutes.
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  In addition to that, every single week on Tuesdays, we have Tackle It Tuesdays,
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  in which four times during that day, I do Zoom sessions in which we can actually see each other.
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  We can talk to each other. We can talk about what's tripping us up.
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  We can declare our intention of what we're going to cover in that time.
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  And that is four one-hour sessions.
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  And you can go to whichever one and whatever time zone fits you best.
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  I have folks from Canada and Australia and all the way across the US.
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  So there is a time zone that should work for you where you can join it at least once.
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  I have so many women that join multiple times in a day.
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  And we even give ourselves the added accountability of like,
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  hey, when you see me in three hours, ask me if I did this, because then it pushes
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  them to do some things in between.
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  So there's lots of options there.
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  You have a more curated collection of ladies that really are encouraging to each other.
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  And they're just they're lovely.
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  So either option is great. If you choose to do the $10 a month membership, you can cancel any time.
• 6:42
  You can try it out for this month and then be done with it if you want.
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  But that, to get there, you go to joylovinghome.com slash membership,
• 6:50
  and it will lead you right to how to join up.
• 6:55
  So let's talk about the double down, dig out challenge.
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  And the reason I am calling this this is I needed help just making sense of
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  the fact that I have let every single space in my home fall apart.
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  And I thrive better with challenges because it gives me a finite amount of time
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  to concentrate on something.
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  It gives me a bit of novelty because I set it up with some parameters that I
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  don't normally follow in my everyday life.
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  I have the timer, which helps me have a sense of urgency.
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  And like I said, there are some loopholes I've built in and some ways for you
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  to be part of this regardless of when you're hearing this particular podcast.
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  So the challenge is going to be 20 days. For me, that is weekdays.
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  It is going to be two 20-minute sessions, and I'll explain what you do during
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  the two different sessions, and there is a 20-item challenge piece to this.
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  So what we're going to do is we set our timer for 20 minutes once a day,
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  whenever it suits your life, and you tackle something that is maintenance-like.
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  So you turn the timer on, and if it's 20 minutes in a bathroom,
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  if it's 20 minutes in a bedroom, if it's 20 minutes in the playroom,
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  if it's 20 minutes in the kitchen, whatever maintenance-type thing there is.
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  That's what we're doing for one of the 20-minute timers.
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  And then the second 20-minute timer has a 20-item challenge.
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  And in that 20-minute challenge, we are attempting to either throw away,
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  donate, or put away things that we know we want to keep that have actual homes,
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  20 items in those 20 minutes.
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  It can be any combination of that. So it might be 10 things you're throwing
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  away, 5 things you're donating, 5 things you're putting away.
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  It might be 20 things you're putting away. It might be 20 things you're trashing.
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  It might be 20 things you're donating.
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  Any combination of those three categories in 20 minutes.
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  Now, that 20-minute timer, I'm going to add a little like caveat loophole,
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  is the 20 items is more important than the 20 minutes, but I'm having you put
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  the 20-minute timer on because one,
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  it will push you to think less.
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  I need this to not be hard, complicated items. I need this to be quick and easy, clear items.
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  So if you see a pile of magazines sitting somewhere and you're like,
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  oh, most of this is probably recyclables. Great.
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  Do a quick keep, nope, keep, nope, keep, nope, keep, nope.
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  Count. Oh, wow. There were seven magazines I'm throwing in the recycle bin,
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  boom, you're already at seven on your challenge.
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  Then you turn around and you see that some kid left cracker wrapper and,
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  you know, crumbs all over the place or whatever.
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  Scoop that whole pile up, count that as whatever you think it is,
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  three items of trash, and now all of a sudden you're at 10.
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  Then you look around and you're like, oh, I haven't emptied the dishwasher yet.
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  I know where all the dishes go.
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  There's at least 10 more items in here I can put away before this timer goes off.
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  If the timer hasn't gone off yet, and you want to keep working because you're
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  realizing, wow, I can do more than I thought in 20 minutes, great. If you are,
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  faced with a pile of things that all go in various different places around your
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  house and you are hoofing it as fast as you can to take them all the way to
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  where they get put away and the timer went off but you have two left go ahead
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  and do the other two so that the 20 items,
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  is the is the more important part than the 20 minutes okay so let's hope that all made sense.
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  I will try and in the group, put a little sort of print out of the, I hate the word rules,
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  of the sort of parameters of this particular challenge so that you can have
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  it if you want to stick it to your refrigerator or paste it to the coffee pot
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  or whatever so that you're seeing it every day to remind yourself,
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  oh yeah, I'm in the middle of a 20-day challenge right now.
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  Oh yeah, I'm still doing this. Whatever the case may be, we are going to try
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  and keep helping encourage and reminding each other that this is happening.
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  We are in the midst together of a 20-day, 20-minute, 20-item double-down dig-out challenge.
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  The reason I didn't say this is a 30-day, 30-minute challenge because I have
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  that many days left in March and I could have done that is because there is
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  no option for grace or flexibility if I do that.
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  And I need us to have some grace and flexibility.
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  I've already looked at my March calendar. I already know I am traveling on a
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  Thursday and Friday twice during this month.
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  If I said this had to be 30 days, I'm already setting myself up for failure.
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  But because I know those days are out there, I can work on a Saturday or a Sunday
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  and bank my days so that I'm still going to get 20 out of this.
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  It didn't have to be the 20 weekdays.
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  I also, as a podcaster and as I'm a professional organizer, I do online organizing
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  with people as well. I am.
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  Protect my weekends. That's just something I like to do.
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  So having those days as overflow days, if the weekdays don't work for me...
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  I like knowing I have those loopholes. Additionally, if I still want to protect
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  my weekends and I want to know that I'm not actually going to touch those times,
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  20 minutes twice a day is only 40 minutes total.
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  If I want to do two sessions of this in a single weekday to make up for those
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  Thursdays and Fridays I'm going to miss, the option is there.
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  I have it. I want you to know that if you are listening to this on March 5th,
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  you're not too late. Do a couple double days.
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  If you're listening to this on March 10th, it's not too late.
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  You can do double days until you're caught all the way up to your 20-day challenge.
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  So there is no excuse that you are an all or nothing because there is no all or nothing.
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  I have not done the math to be honest to see what is the minimum amount of time
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  if I did this all in one day? Is it even mathematically possible?
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  Are there 20, 40-minute blocks in a single day?
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  Yeah, I guess if there's 24 hours. We both know that's not realistic, but you get my point.
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  Get rid of the excuse of I am starting this too late because this is very, very possible.
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  You can do your two 20-minute sessions back to back. You can spread them out in the day.
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  Whatever works for you, do them in the moment you think about it.
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  It doesn't have to start on the hour.
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  It doesn't have to start on the half hour. It can start at 2.12 in the afternoon
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  for 20 minutes and you finish at 2.32.
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  Don't get hung up on perfection in the action.
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  Don't get hung up on where to start. If you are horrible at maintenance and
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  you aren't sure what the heck you want to do to find your maintenance option, then go.
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  For like challenge yourself to do the hard thing
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  if it's every day my 20 minutes is
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  going to start by trying to clear the flat surfaces in my kitchen then you might
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  only spend the entire 20 days at 20 minutes a pop trying to keep the kitchen
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  clear and guess what you might discover by day 15 it doesn't take all 20 minutes
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  and you have five minutes to spare.
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  If you are trying to figure out where to do your 20 item challenge,
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  maybe you start at the doorway where everybody walks in.
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  I will steal a little tip from Dana K. White and say start in a spot that's most visible.
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  So your family actually will see the progress maybe by day 5 or day 10 or day 15.
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  Maybe if nobody else notices it but you, you will see it because you are doing
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  it in a space that was important to you.
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  If to you it's your bedroom because that's your sanctuary that doesn't feel
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  like a sanctuary, maybe you do all of your 20-item, 20-minute segments in your bedroom.
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  You get to choose. It is entirely flexible. This is about you making the most
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  of doing a dig out, just like I'm trying to make the most of doing a dig out.
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  I am in a scenario where my dogs need a ton of attention. I can't step too far away.
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  So I think 90% of this for me is going to be on my main floor where both of
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  them are being kept right now so that I can be within earshot and eyeshot.
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  I don't think that's a word, but you get what I mean, of seeing if either of them needs anything.
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  There's plenty to do there. I can spend 20 days, 20 minutes a pop on my main
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  floor in my kitchen or my living room or my mudroom getting things dug out.
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  And it's going to be worth it, even if I never, ever run upstairs or downstairs.
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  So I hope that you'll join me.
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  I will remind you the links are in the show notes, but join the free group for
• 16:45
  this challenge by going to bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
• 16:50
  Jump in on the membership. Go all in for $10 this month.
• 16:54
  Cancel if you didn't like it at
• 16:55
  the end. But you get there by going to joylovinghome.com slash membership.
• 17:00
  We would be happy to welcome some new faces into that crew.
• 17:04
  Okay, I think that's it. That's all you need to know. Quick recap. 20 days.
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  First 20 minutes is a maintenance process.
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  Second 20 minutes is a 20 item. Throw away, donate, or put away 20 items during that second 20 minutes.
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  Double down, dig out. That's what we're going to do.
• 17:27
  Until next time, continue to choose joy.