176 | Exactly How I'd Organize My Home If I Started from Scratch

Speaker A: If I woke up tomorrow and my entire house was completely disorganized, what would I do? First, knowing everything I've learned after 18 years of helping people get organized, what exact steps would I take to create a home that feels peaceful, beautiful, functional, and the most important, easy to maintain. So today on the podcast, I'm going to walk you through exactly what I would do if I had to reorganize my home from scratch. And, uh, part one, I would not start with organizing. So join me on this week's episode and find out exactly what I would do.

Speaker B: Are you ready to work less, feel more organized and productive, streamline repetitive tasks and implement systems that allow your coaching business to run smoothly even without you? If so, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Organized Coach podcast, your go to source for practical tips and solutions. I'm your host, Tracy Hoth, professional organizer, certified life coach, simplifying expert, and most of all, down to earth fellow coach just like you. No matter if you think you're missing the organizing gene, have adhd, or just love anything organizing, I'm here to help you become an organized coach with a business that works for you. Pull up a seat and let's get started.

Speaker A: Okay, let's get straight into it. What would I do if I was starting from scratch? After 18 years of helping people get organized? What would I do? And like I mentioned, I wouldn't start with organizing. Here's what I would do. Uh, first, and remember, when I first started, I would never have even thought of this. I would have just went straight in and started helping people get organized. But now what I would do is I would get very clear on my future. I would ask questions like, what season of life am I in? What will my life likely look like in a year? What about five years? What am I going to be doing in my life? What do I need in order to do those things? How do I want to feel when I walk into my home? What am I optimizing for? And just this morning, I talked with someone who feels a low level of stress all the time. When she's in her house. She drives into her garage and feels like it comes, uh, on immediately because there's clutter everywhere. She has to watch where she's going in the garage. She sees it all around her. She has boxes she hasn't unpacked in years, and it's all right there. And she hasn't even gotten in her house. She's just in the garage. And then she gets in her house, and everywhere she looks there's things that are feeling heavy. They're yelling out, you should have already done something with this. She looks for things and can't find them. And that is not the life that probably any of us want to live. It's not the home we want to have. It's not the situation we want to be in. So I'm going into a house from scratch. What am I going to do? And the first thing I would just do is think about what am I wanting in my life? Where am I going? What is the destination I'm going to put into my gps. Now I think about it for myself. I'm entering a new season. My children are grown, and almost very soon will be all out of the house. And I don't want to spend my life managing stuff. I want to feel peaceful. And I've mentioned this before, I want to feel elevated. I want to feel calm and free. Free and minimal. I want a home that could be listed for sale in a weekend. I want to leave my children a legacy. Not a storage unit, not a pile of stuff in crammed closets that they have to go through. I want to walk into every room and smile because the only things I need are in there. They're the things I love, they're the things I use, and they fulfill the purpose of. Of the room that they're in. And that's it. Why do I need more than that? I don't want more than that. Then I can spend my life doing the things I want to do. Now, obviously, if there's things I want to do that need stuff, I want to have that stuff available to me, easy to find and easy to get to. But I don't want a bunch of other stuff in case I might want to do something else. I only want to have the stuff that I need for the next season of my life or for the season that I'm in. Organization isn't about creating a beautiful house. It's about creating a life. And the house supports that life. The stuff supports the life that you want to live. So that's part one. I would think about what I want my life to look like, what I want it to feel like, and be really intentional. Even make a list of the things I want to be doing, the purposes of each of the rooms in my house, and what things are needed for those purposes. Then the next thing I would do is decide what matters most. Now, I always say to people, there are three questions when they ask me, where should I start? The number one question is, where's or what is causing the most friction? For example, you can't find the papers that you need, or your kitchen counters are buried, and every time you cook food, there's just friction constantly. Maybe it's laundry. Your laundry is so backed up, friction is there. Or maybe there's no place to sit in the living room, so notice. Or the closet. You just hate getting dressed every morning. You never can find what you need. Those are the things you want to go to first. Don't waste time doing other things. If you know there's one of those areas that are causing you the most friction, start there. The other question I ask is, what would make you the happiest? Would a peaceful bedroom and getting in bed and reading before you go to sleep and waking up every morning just be so lovely that you would want to start in the bedroom? Or you really focused on your health and a clean kitchen would be the place you want to start? Maybe it's an office. You spend. You work from home, and you spend all this time in the office. Maybe that's where it is, uh, wherever it is that would make you the happiest. And then the third question. What would be the easiest win? Because success creates momentum. So maybe there's a place in your house that would be really easy. Maybe it's your purse or your car. Maybe it's a drawer, your silverware drawer, your main cabinet that has your plates and glasses. Maybe something like that would be super easy. And you could create momentum. You could see a win, and it could be done in a shorter amount of time. So there's no right place to start. But use those three questions, and then I would pick the place that I want to start, decide there isn't a right place. It's the place that you decide you'll start and actually finish. Okay, so you've decided on one place to start. And then remember how I say you make the decision right? You're going to decide where to start, and then you're going to tell yourself, this is the perfect place for me to start. I'm 100% all in. I am going to start and finish this place, this room, this cabinet, whatever it is, and we'll talk about that in a second. But then you're going to have a finished space that every single day you can walk by and you can see evidence I can do this. Look what I just did. I can do this. And I don't care if that's a cabinet or your trunk of your car or wherever it is, but go to that space. Every single day and look at it. But even if you just do one portion of a cabinet, I want you to see that cabinet every day and see, I can do this. And you have that. Then the next time you work on that part of that area, you say, I can do this. Look at this and open that and enjoy it and just admire it and celebrate. It is totally possible for you to do this. The next thing I want to remember is that everything else is going to get worse first. This is something that maybe people don't talk about enough. But when you're working in an area and organizing an area, there are things that are not going to belong in that area, and you need to put them somewhere. There are things you decided to keep, and they need to go somewhere. So I always say, where do I want this item to live? Where is its home going to be? And put it as close as possible to the place where its home is going to be. So let's say I am working in the living room, and I find a bunch of office supplies, and I bring them up to my office, which is a total mess, and the closet's crammed full and there's no place for office supplies to go in any of the drawers. I am just going to put those office supplies on the floor in the corner of that room or in the closet or wherever they fit. Because when I get to the office, I'm going to organize the office. But in the meantime, I'm going to know that all office supplies live in the office. They live by the closet or the dresser or desk that they are going to go in. But for now, I'm not going to go worry about that. I'm just going to know if I need an office supply. I'm going to go up there. I might have to dig through a few things. That's totally fine in the meantime. But I'm keeping my focus on the area I chose. Let's say that would, uh, have been the living room, and I'm going to finish the living room, but the other areas are going to get stuff put in them, and that's totally fine. Just remember that organization is often messier before it gets better. And temporary chaos in those different areas does not mean you're failing. It means you're actually organized. All your office supplies are now in one space, where before they were all over the house. Now, they may not be what you want them to look like in that space, but you are actually organized. Because remember, the organized means that you know what you have and you can find it when you need it, you know what you have. You've put it in the office, and you can find it because you know what's in the office. It might take a little bit longer than you want, but you will address that when you get to the office space. And that kind of leads into. I'd complete one entire space before moving on. Instead of every room being 20% better, I'd rather have one space that's 100% transformed. Not perfection, but just you finished it for this layer, and you can walk in there and you can enjoy it and sit in there, and it makes you so proud and so happy that you completed that space, because that's when you get to experience the peace and you create momentum. You build your confidence because you can keep going back there, and you get to practice maintaining that space. So one room, one section, one corner, and then maintain it and then build from there. I remember a client telling me, tracy, I cleared a portion of my countertop, and I've been maintaining that space, and it makes me so happy every time I see it. And then I cleared a little bit of more of the counter space. Now that a little bit more is clear, and I get happy every time I see it. And she can maintain that. You can get confidence and create happiness and be so proud and enjoy any space that you finished, even if it's a portion of something. The next thing I want to share, let's say number six. I'd follow the organizing steps every single time. And this is where you have, you know, my organizing steps. They spell the word space. Sort is where we pull everything out and we sort it into categories. Purge. We decide what stays. We keep our favorites. We connect to our identity. Who am I? Am I a person that keeps things that I don't use? Am I a steward of my things that if I don't use it, a good steward will allow someone else to use it. And I give it, and I trust that the exact right person is going to come across the item at the exact right time they need it. And I don't have to worry about any of that. I just need to steward it well. By letting it go, I connect with my future vision, with where I'm going. I know what I need. I can ask myself, does this support who I am becoming, or does this support this season of my life? That's how I'd make decisions in the purge step. And you might have a question that you ask. I like looking and thinking about these questions. One of, um, them would be like a feeling Question, does this make me feel kind of like Marie Kondo's does this spark joy? But do I feel heavy or light when I'm holding this? And then another question would be more the essentialist question, like, is this essential in my life? And then a way to think about the third question is the one I'm asking myself, does this make me feel elevated? And maybe that's because in this season of my life, I want to walk into a space and feel elevated. So as you had decided in this initial first step of this, what season of life are you in and how do you want to feel? Maybe there's a question that ties you to that. Okay, so sort, purge, assign homes. Everything gets a home given to it. Now this is a, uh. It may be a long process if you're doing your whole house, but as you go, you're assigning homes to things. And again, this is where it might get messy until you get to that space, which is totally fine. Then C is to contain, only contain things. Don't buy anything. Shop your house first for any container, divider, piece of furniture, drawer, anything that can help you contain the things that you're keeping. And this serves the purpose of when that container is full or when that shelf or drawer is full, then you know that you have to go back through it also keeps it neat and tidy so that you know and can enjoy and maintain the organization of the items. And then energize is the E. This is where you're going to create routines and maintenance systems. And you're going to enjoy that energy and use it to move on to the next step. You're going to use it to enjoy your life that you're in or enjoy the things that are most important to you in your life right now. But you have to maintain that step. So you're going to tie it to something you already do to maintain that step. And I've used the different examples. If you grocery shop before you put the groceries back in the fridge or the pantry, you're going to tidy up those two areas. Every time you do laundry and you put laundry away, just tidy up a drawer or your closet rod or something. Every time you do laundry, remember that organizing isn't a project you finish necessarily. It's a skill that you're learning. Organizing and following these five steps is a skill, and you're going to get better and better at it. At first, you might be really clunky. It might be super hard for you to assign homes. It might be really hard for you to make Decisions. It's totally fine. It's totally fine. You're just not practiced at this enough. So every time you organize a space, you're going to follow these steps. And to put this in perspective, too, if you're organizing, let's say, your closet, you can do one category at a time. So that's kind of like the sort step. You're going to pull out only one category. Maybe that's in your kitchen. You're only going to pull out all the beverages, and you're going to purge and assign homes and contain just the beverages or just the baking supplies or just the coffee mugs. So you're just going to do an area, but you're pulling out and sorting. That's the sorting part. One category at a time. Instead of a whole room or a whole closet or a whole shelf, maybe it's just one category. So you can use the six, the five steps in either situation. A whole room and sort everything in that room first, or you can just do one category in that room. And both ways work. They both work just fine. So either way, you decide, remember, you make it right by continuing to get skilled in practice. Okay, number seven. I treat every space like a project. This is a big mindset shift. I wouldn't say necessarily that I'm organizing my whole house. I'd say I'm organizing my pantry, I'm organizing my bedroom. Um, so each of those projects gets a start date and an end date. You're going to break that project down into steps, and you're going to assign times on your calendar for those tasks that you're going to do. If it's not on your calendar, at least a time block that says work on organizing project, you're not going to do it. It's mostly just a wish. And anytime you have something in your head like, I'm going to do that when I have time, I'm going to do that on Saturday. But it's not on the calendar. As a decision you're making that you are going to do that, then most of the time we don't get around to it until we put it on our calendar. And because we've lived like this for so long or it's been disorganized for so long, it's kind of like, I, uh, mean, I lived with it this long. What's a little bit longer? So you need to make sure you follow the organizing steps for each project, for each area, by sorting out all the tasks, purging. So in that you're going to delay Delete, delegate. What of those tasks could you delegate? And then you're going to assign those homes on your calendar and you're going to contain them in a time period on your calendar. And then you're going to continually maintain that by going back to the calendar every night, looking at it, deciding, this is when I'm going to do my organizing project, my 15 minute declutter and working through. If you did it, what made you do it? What were you thinking that made you follow through? If you didn't do it, what were you thinking that made you not follow through? And learn from that? Get the support you need in that instance, number eight, I'd build accountability in from day one. Research shows accountability dramatically increases follow through. I think it's like 75% increase in your follow through, in you reaching your goals. If you have accountability now, this could be from your family. Maybe the family in the house is all on board. Maybe it's a friend and you guys go over and help each other or you tell each other what your task is for the day and you send each other a picture. Maybe you have a coach because you need to invest in your own mind. Because the reason we don't reach our goals is because of a skill or a mindset gap. And mindset is huge when it comes to, well, when it comes to anything, it's really important. That's why coaching is so valuable, because you have someone seeing your mind and helping you intentionally choose and decide what uh, you want to believe and what you want to do. You have a clear plan of what you're going to do. And then you have accountability where you meet and you say, did you do this or not? And it's without judgment, but you get to investigate why or why not and what are we going to do differently? And you have someone there walking you through, especially someone that has the organizing background so that if you have practical questions you have that answered as well. It could be a coach. It also could be an organizer you have and hire someone local that comes into your house and and helps you organize. That is 100% support right there. You cannot run and hide or quit in the middle because you are paying someone and they're there with you to be able to do that. Or it could be a program like Organized Life Academy where you have that support. You have that got the guidelines and the boundaries of the coaching calls, the planning calls, the resources there. Most people don't fail because they don't know what to do. You probably know. And now you've listened to this podcast. So you know that you sort, purge, assign homes, contain and energize. You know that. But why you fail because you try to do something hard all by yourself. You don't have the support you need or the support that keeps you going. I think that's part of the big part of it. It keeps you going and you have that mindset support that you need in order to keep going. So if I had to organize my home from scratch tomorrow, I wouldn't start by going and buying anything. No, no, no. I wouldn't start with getting some labels on things. I wouldn't even start with one particular room. Remember what I would start with? I'd start by deciding who I am in this season of life, remember, we get to decide. We just get to choose who we want to be. Do I want to be an organized person? I get to decide that my past and the evidence that I. My brain would go to in the past. It doesn't matter, because now I get to decide that I am an organized person and I'm going to create a home that supports the version of me that I want to be. The version of me that has guests in my home, the version of me that invites people over for dinner, has people spend the night if they need to, and has a guest room ready. Organizing isn't really about this stuff, remember, it's about creating a life that feels like home. The home is supporting that life. And so it's deciding who you want to be to start with. So if you're listening to this and thinking, I know exactly where I'd start, but you don't really think you'll actually follow through. That's why I created Organized Life Academy. We don't just teach you the practical steps of organizing, but we also help you become, um, the kind of person who follows through, who knows what she wants, and takes one small project at a time. I think about this. You know, I always want someone just give me a meal plan, just tell me exactly what to eat, and I can follow that. I can do it. But it really is more about me, about what I want to do, what my family likes, about how my family lives and what I'm willing to. The time I'm willing to put into it. And so I always want someone just to tell me what to do. But then the best way in which I know this, I still want someone just to tell me. I think that's going be easier. But the best way is just deciding yourself what area do you want to start with? Which one causes the most friction and start there. Now for us, in Organized Life Academy, we started in January with the bathroom, and then we moved to clothing and the bedroom. Then we did the office. In May, we did paper. In June, we did our kitchen and our pantry. I'm so excited about that because I just finished doing some areas in my kitchen. I organized my pantry. I moved some things out of some upper cabinets and put them in a buffet that I got. And now I have more room for pantry items up there, and they're easier to access. And then in July this month, we're doing our living in our dining room. And then we move to digital In September when it gets a little cooler, we do a storage room. In October, our garage. November, our guest room, and December, our linens and laundry. Now, remember, I made that order up. I've been doing this for six years. We've changed the order of things, I think every year. But this year I thought if I was going to make it so someone could do it easily. That's the order I chose for this year. But it doesn't matter. You can do whatever room or whatever area you want. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. You are creating a home that supports the life that you want, and that is the main goal. So if you're listening to this and thinking, I know exactly where I'd start, exactly where I want to start, but I don't think I'll actually follow through, then get the support you need. Is that hiring an organizer? Is it joining Organized Life Academy? Is it getting a coach? It's not just about the steps of organizing and what to do with the stuff. Although I love that we combine that alongside of mindset. What's keeping you blocked? What fear do you have? How are you looking at things in your life now? And how could you be thinking about them differently? What would help you make the decisions that you need to make? Making a decision is an action which comes from a few feeling that you have based on something you're believing or thinking. So we have to uncover what you're believing and thinking about something in order to change your action of getting rid of it, letting go or keeping it or displaying it or honoring it or stewarding it. All those things are based on what you believe and think. And those beliefs and thoughts that you think come from a lot of places. They might come from how you were raised. They might come from a friend saying something to you. They might come from pictures on Pinterest or Instagram. But now that you're aware of what you're thinking and m believing you can choose intentionally in order to create the actions you need for the result of a beautiful, elevated, clean, organized house that supports this life that you want to live in this season. So I hope this was helpful. I hope it got you thinking. And of course, if you want to book a, um, consult call with me, you can go to simplysquaredaway.com appointments have an amazing week. What's one action you can take from this episode? And we'll see you next week.

Speaker B: Wait.

Speaker A: If you're finding this podcast useful, you

Speaker B: must check out the Organized Coach Academy. It's my course where I walk you through every step to get your business organized. To get yourself organized, to save money and time. To prepare to hire someone to do all the things that you want to do in your business with ease. Check that out@simplysquaredaway.com OCA Also, I'm sure you've heard this as a million times,

Speaker A: but I would love it.

Speaker B: It's my way of knowing that you're enjoying the podcast. If you leave a written review, I have lots of freebies for you. They're linked in the show notes. You can find them in my bio on Instagram at tracyhoath. And until next week, have a beautiful day.