Latest / More Organised Less Clutter / 245. 3 Steps to clutter free clear surfaces
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 it ever feel like you're the only person in your home who even sees the clutter? Like every surface is calling your name, but no one else seems to bother. Welcome back to More Organized Less Clutter. I'm Norrell King and today I'm going to walk you through three simple steps focused on just your surfaces. So there's no room makeovers, no perfectionism, no color coding pantry required. It is just the solo surfaces that you can control. This is going to be gentle and gentle. ADHD friendly and totally doable, even if you're already running low on energy. Think small, kind actions that make a big difference to how your home feels and how you will feel in it. Let's take the pressure off, lower the bar in the best possible way, and start with those everyday surfaces together. Let's jump into this more organized, less clutter episode. Thanks for joining me for today's solo episode where I'll be sharing. three steps to clutter free clear surfaces. So I'm going to walk you through those three steps that you can do to clear your surfaces within your home. So step one is you're going to choose a surface that you can actually control. So when I'm in control, it's like something that you can do yourself. It's not worrying about anybody else in the actual house. So you could start small like a surface that's like screaming out to you Get these things off me right now and it's really impacting how your A room is feeling. So things like your kitchen table or your kitchen bench are shared spaces. So we're not tackling those right now. We're tackling ones that are just for you and a solo surface. So something that you've something that you can control and nobody else should be adding things to it. So A great example is your bedside table. Maybe you have like a tiny section in your kitchen that's like a landing zone or a landing pad. Maybe you've just got like one of those roundabouts on your kitchen bench and that's your thing. Or maybe it's a stool. I had a client recently and she had a stool which was hers, and that's where she put her things for work and things when she was leaving the house. It might be a desk or a corner of a desk, or maybe it's a shelf. or a hook that's near your front door. Maybe you actually have a bathroom that's all yours and so you can control that as well. The only job for step one is to pick a surface and you're going to clear that of the obvious rubbish and things that do not live there. Then we move on to step two and it's giving the regulars a simple home. So the regular things are the visitors, the things that you actually over and over end up putting in that same spot. So an example, I looked at my bedside table to see what the regulars are. They are hair ties and bobby pins that I take out before I go to bed because I don't like my hair up at nighttime. And sometimes I don't go back and get those because then in the bathroom when I get ready, I just grab a new one and put them up put my hair up. And so they sort of build up. So there are regular that I have that actually probably need a home or some strategy of getting them back into the actual bathroom. So you might have keys, it might be your phone, headphones is another one that I find that I have sitting around beside my bed. Maybe it's medication or sensory tools, or maybe it's like school notes and library books or a favorite mug or pen. So think about a Easy home. It could be a tray, it could be a bowl, it could be a basket. And it's something that you can then place that's easy for you to then put the things into. If it doesn't fit in that container, then it doesn't live there. So you're setting up that home that's big enough for those items to sit there. So for myself, I had jewelry, hair ties and bobby pins, as well as my ear pods that were beside my bed. So I actually had a container. I had a bowl and then I had a s container that actually has three sections. So I have allocated that beside my bed so that I can actually have each thing in each section of the bowl. Only because I am a cricket when it comes to the clutter bug, so I like to microorganize my things. But if you were a macro organizer, you could use the bowl instead. Now if you have a PDA profile. That is a persistent demand for autonomy. You then need low demands, not a million rules. If there's rules, you're going to be like, I'm not following this, I'm not doing this. So it's a gentle shifting of the environment. We're setting it up so it's easy to succeed. So think about it for you and your brain and how you like to work things. Just focus on it being visible. Maybe it's like a clear container. It may even have a label, but that may possibly be a demand, so you might not want to add the label. Created a small home for those things that you find that generally live on that surface, which means it's going to make it easier for our step three. So step three is the two-minute surface reset. So thinking about an anchor. So you're going to attach that anchor to the reset. So for example, after maybe your morning copper or maybe after you take medication or after the school drop-off or maybe before you go to bed or when you put your phone on the charger or one of mine is brushing my teeth. That is when I do a two minute surface reset in my bathroom on my side of the vanity. Mine is in the morning is when I'm going to do the reset for the one beside my bed as well. And it's two minutes, so it's not a huge cleanup. It's just putting the regulars back into the new little home that you've created and taking the things that don't belong, which may be dishes and rubbish and moving them off the surface. In most homes that I work in, and in particular with neurodivergent folk, the surface is not going to stay perfectly clean. And that's not the goal. The goal is that it's able to be reset in just a couple of minutes. Two minutes ideally. And if you miss a day, it's not that you failed. It just means that you get a better before and after feeling of your reset the next day. So one thing that I find is sometimes clients will feel really resentful that they're the one who notices and fixes the things like the surfaces. And this is really common and it makes sense. But sometimes we just need to start with what we can control. And the best thing that we can control is the small visible items that that are in our solo surfaces. And that's why I've given you those ideas of things that you can look at for yourself. So quick recap on these three steps. First one is choose one surface that you can control mostly yourself, even if it's a small section of it. Give the repeat items a simple home. So those items that you find in that same spot somewhere for them to actually sit. And then do a two minute reset And make sure you link it to an anchor, something you already do within that area. And it's then going to help you to do that each day, or it's maybe each week or each couple of days. So choose your one surface today. And I'd love for you to send me a before and after, even if it's not perfect. You don't have to fix the whole house, remember, just the one surface is enough for today. Thanks for listening to More Organized, Less Clutter. If you find yourself wasting precious time searching for misplaced items and wishing for a more organised life, then you need my 5-minute declutter ebook, the ultimate guide to quick and easy organizing solutions for a clutter-free and happy home. Forget about spending months commaring your house. These fun solutions are designed to give you immediate results in under 5 minutes. Head over to Simply Happy in the resource section and download your free copy and start seeing results in minutes. I'd like to acknowledge the Wotherong 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.