Hi there, I'm Caroline Thor, professional organizer, konmari consultant, teacher and mum of three. I started off my life as a mum feeling overwhelmed, disorganized and desperately trying to carve out some time for me amongst the nappies, chaos and clutter. One day, one small book called the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying changed everything and I began to learn strategies for making everyday life easier. Today, I have the systems in place that means life can throw almost anything at me, and I want to share them with you. If you're an overwhelmed mum struggling to keep it together, then this is the podcast for you. Grab a coffee and settle in for a quick chat with someone who gets your reality. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Living Clutter Free for Ever podcast. I'm Caroline, a Konmari consultant, professional organizer and mum of three, and my hope with this podcast is to give you some hope that you can discover your clutter free ever after.
Speaker 1:Today's guest is Kristin, a virtual pro-home organizer and certified Konmari master, serving Chicago and beyond for over six years, she's dedicated to teaching creative entrepreneurs how to let go of stuff to attract a truly abundant life. Kristin applies project management and innate creativity to transform homes with order and in style, all in the name of radical self-care. Now I'm trying to have regular guest slots from other Konmari consultants, as I think it really helps you to get a different perspective on things rather than just listening to me banging on about the method all the time, and today's chat with Kristin will hopefully help you understand the difference between tidying and cleaning. I think a lot of people seem to confuse. She has top tips, a couple of which I will be starting to implement with my own family and clients, so grab a coffee and join us for a chat.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome today to Kristin. Thank you for joining me. Thank you, caroline. It's so cool to have the opportunity to connect with another Konmari consultant. I love it when you guys come on my podcast, so tell us where you are. Where are you based?
Speaker 2:I'm based in Chicago, in the Wicker Park neighborhood, and how long have you been a?
Speaker 1:Konmari consultant.
Speaker 2:I have been a Konmari consultant for six years now. Yep for the love of Tidy is six years old. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1:I love the name of your business, for the love of Tidy is perfect. I love it. Brilliant, thank you. So what got you into Konmari, or organizing, in the first place? Was it always your dream job or how did you get there?
Speaker 2:Well, it definitely wasn't my dream job. Initially I was working in the engineering space, the energy efficiency space, as a project manager and government contractor for 14 years, so far left of what I'm doing now. But as we all have windy paths, mine was definitely a bit challenging because five years into my project management career I realized that I didn't have that spark or that fulfillment for what I was doing anymore. I actually saw my boss and he was really passionate about something one day and I realized, wow, I don't feel that kind of way about this work anymore. But I put my head down and I kept working in that field for 10 more years or so but I always was exploring other pathways, kind of moonlighting. I went on to getting a graduate degree in interior design and thought that was the direction I was going to go, but that took four years while I was working full time still as a project manager. So when I graduated it was really hard to make that leap from project manager six figure salary corporate life to entry level interior designer. So I just continued to volunteer in the hospitality space, specifically thought I was going to go work for a hotel brand, and then I decided to take an adulting break, which I defined as kind of taking a break from financial responsibilities. So I ended up moving into my parents' basement, still working full time, but really taking a year really specific amount of time to figure out what the next step was going to be, and I had no idea what it was going to be at the time.
Speaker 2:But the universe gifted me the life changing magic of tidying up. I read that book. I already had an affinity for putting things in order and making spaces beautiful, especially interior spaces, so it definitely was something that I was like, oh, a new, take on this, let me grab it and read it. I did, and usually, you know, I would just say, ok, there's a pile of things that I would like to do. And usually, you know, I would just say, ok, there's a pile of things. I had six bags ready to go for donation. I would just purge them. But then I noticed there was $300 worth of clothes in that pile that were brand new. They already had tags on them and I had decided they didn't spark joy. So usually I would just say, ok, I'm just going to have a swap party, and instead I ended up just asking myself why, which is kind of the core of the method, you know, digging deeper, leaning into that awareness that the piles give you.
Speaker 2:And when I asked myself why, I realized I was just doing all this excessive shopping to just bury the guilt, the shame I felt around unfinished business, that I had Unfulfilled career aspirations. I was just in this gray moment in life and it was really expressing itself by the way I consumed goods. It was my way to kind of check out and ignore or suppress deeper issues that I was having. And I was so surprised that my clothes and my clutter taught me that lesson so early on that I just kept going through the process. And by the time I got to the middle of the process that miscellaneous the Camono Mountain I had text my friend and I was like you know what, if Marie Kondo ever comes to the United States, like I'm right there.
Speaker 2:I don't know if this is going to be a training or if she'll have consultants, but seems like she has something like that in Japan. If they have it in the States, I'm there. And then two months later, like the whole program opened up and I was able to get trained as Consultant number 12, eventually certified as well.
Speaker 1:That is such a cool story, kristen, and I love that your passion for something has led you down a completely different path. I think we all know when we get that aha moment, and it's amazing how many people this book does that for. It really is Totally crazy. Okay, so my my journey, as my listeners know, is fairly similar in that I read the book and had this aha moment and it completely changed my life and made my life as a busy mom so much easier, and one of the things that it made so much easier was cleaning the house. And it got me thinking, and I and you and I had had a conversation in the karmari consultant group about this idea of cleaning and tidying and I think a lot of people confuse the two things, and I know that you feel the same as me about this, so I would love for us today to have a chat about what the difference is between cleaning and tidying. So what would you say? The definition of tidying is Sure.
Speaker 2:I believe the definition of tidying is decluttering plus organizing. So decluttering is the decision making, organizing is the finding a place for everything and making sure things are in order. So it's addressing the objects. That's how I view it.
Speaker 1:I completely agree with you and I think once we have gone through the karmari method in our homes and done the decluttering and the organizing so the tidy parts, then the tidying each week, like things that the kids leave lying around or the things you've left lying around, it's so easy, isn't it? Just to put them back away, because everything has a place to go back to and luckily.
Speaker 2:I always talk about how, every day, my house pretty much gets messy, like I'm almost constantly living in mess but it's not because I've just left everything out intentionally is because I'm using my house to its fullest potential. I'm able to reset my home to zero in less than 15 minutes because of all the fantastic choices I made seven years ago during my original tidying event, and that's so important. So I don't walk into the mess or look at the mess as, oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed. Nothing has a place. There's too many things. The number of things in my home is too great for me to manage right now, and then I look at it as oh wow, there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 2:Just to set up this podcast, I had to make a master to record, because I record from my closet, so I had to pull my hamper out and move my vacuum. I had to go pull a box from the other room to set my laptop on, so there was a lot of rearranging. So if you took a snapshot of my house right now, you'd be like she's an organizer. But all of these things go right back into place, and so I think it's so important to not chase this vision of perfection when it comes to our homes. Our homes are meant to be lived in, like. If my home didn't look like this, I'd be concerned for myself. I'd be like what are you doing? Are you living? Or are you just spending literally every second putting things away even as soon as you're like right after you're using them, you know, without just relaxing and living your life? So I like to take a more organic approach to the maintenance part of tidying.
Speaker 1:I love that you said that, because this is what I'm always harping on about. We live in our homes. It should look lived in. I've got three kids, two cats and a dog in the house and a husband. It very often looks like very chaotic, but, as you say, I have this 15 minute rule every day that everyone just grabs the stuff they've been using before they go to bed and puts it away, and we're good to go the next day and it literally takes 15 minutes for us to reset everything. So that makes life so much easier. When it comes to the other word that we mentioned at the start, that we get confused with, and that is cleaning. So what do you see cleaning as?
Speaker 2:Sure, I see it as completely separate effort. I like to divide the two very distinctly and I see it as addressing nature. So addressing the things that we actually can't control the dust that falls on things, the spills. We can control the objects in our home that we're tidying, we can control the amount, we control where they go, but we don't have a lot of control over what needs to be clean or messes, things like that. But, yeah, definitely confronting nature. So we're kind of confronting ourselves when we're tidying up, especially during our original tidying event, and we're confronting nature when it comes to the cleaning side of things the dirt build up, the grime, mess.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think a lot of people say to themselves on a day that they've decided they're going to do the cleaning I'm going to do the cleaning today. Today's my cleaning day and they spend most of the day tidying up and putting everything away, and after that their energy levels have just gone and they just can't get around to the actual business of cleaning, of getting rid of the dirt, and so they put it off for another time, by which time the chaos comes back, everyone gets the stuff out again and they're back to square one, which is why they feel like they're perpetually tidying and it makes cleaning so much more difficult, because you're wasting so much energy on tidying all the time and it isn't actually cleaning.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I really feel like they're complementary activities, they're cousins, but I find it really helpful to divide the two because I actually like one more than the other. So if I combine them I would just hate everything. But if I can say you know what, right now I'm just going to put everything away and then the one that I don't like as much, the cleaning that I can isolate because I have to work harder at that one to find the motivation and get excited about it. And if I ever get excited about it I could literally tidy my way to like one bowl in one spoon and still be like oh my God, I have to clean this, it doesn't matter. I've tried absolutely all the methods of really just getting in the right mindset around the activity and I just realized, you know, eventually when it's a financial priority I'm going to outsource it because it's just not something I can get excited about at the moment, but it's something that I have to do as an adult. So I kind of got figured out a way that works for me.
Speaker 1:I am 100% behind you on that. I keep saying to my husband once my business is earning enough money, the first thing I'm going to do is hire a cleaner. I cannot stand cleaning, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's something like I love this. The process of the Khun Marie method really is so rooted in so much like self discovery and self awareness and self love. You know being kind to yourself, recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, and that's something I've walked away from. This method, you know, with having that always in my back pocket, I could tidy all day. I love it. I could tidy with my eyes closed. I could tidy for other people I like, I just. It gives me life, it gives me energy. But I also recognize the things that drain me, and one of those is cleaning completely behind you on that one, okay.
Speaker 1:So I think one of the reasons lots of people confuse cleaning and tidying is because, in the end, the result is the same when you clean or when you tidy. The end result is that it does make your house look better. It has an aesthetic result, but, as we've just said, the two things are very, very different. So how do you think the Konmari method makes keeping a home clean easier?
Speaker 2:Well, tidying pays you back in so many ways, but one of the ways it pays you back that's relevant to cleaning is it gives you time. So when you have less things, it takes less time to put things away. Therefore, you have more time to shift towards the things that truly matter, like keeping it healthy home by making sure it's germ-free and clean, and also working on all the other lovely aspects of your life, like your health and your career and your family. So I love how Marie really shifts perspective on keeping house to gratitude, and I think that cleaning definitely falls under that.
Speaker 2:I have a client, for example, who had a pantry and we organized it and then we put a picture of her family within the pantry just to remind her of the purpose of keeping the space clean and tidy in order to root it in nourishing her family, so that sometimes women a funk about having to clean, like just remembering that this is a gift to myself, this is my self-care.
Speaker 2:That's something that I like to lean on for sure. So the fact that the method teaches us to root things and respect gratitude and joy is definitely something that comes up when we focus more on the cleaning side, and also, I believe that just having things out of the way or having only the things that you love out, so less maybe accessories around, if you choose, based on your vision of your ideal home in life, less decor, things that need to be dusted I know I've literally looked at my home through that lens of everything on the counter has to have a really, really clear court case reason why it needs to be there, because I know it will collect dust and I'll have to clean it. So that ability for us to understand that we can choose to make this task easier. It's not gonna be perfectly easy, but we can make it a little bit better by just the choices we make about the objects that we have to clean in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, and as someone who really doesn't like cleaning and I know now that you're the same so that makes me feel really good about things. The whole point with the Konmari method is this idea that we're visualizing our ideal lifestyle and that our home is supporting us in our ideal lifestyle, and in my ideal lifestyle, I'm doing as little cleaning as possible. I mean. That for me, is an absolute end goal. So, therefore, having not much stuff out, as you say, less to dust, less to move in order to dust or clean round in the kitchen or white ground in the bathroom that makes my cleaning go so much faster, that brings me joy and that helps me have the lifestyle that I would like to have, where cleaning is quick and easy and it doesn't take much time each week, which is perfect. Yes, love that.
Speaker 1:So, kristen, we're aiming here for a home that is serving us, that is easy to tidy up and therefore easy to clean, so that we don't confuse the two things. So what would you say are some good strategies for making tidying up go quickly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I would say always the best strategy, in my opinion, is to make sure that you truly have walked through the entire process in an event style, and you can call it what you want a party, a journey, a path, whatever it is just has to be a concentrated amount of time that you work through all of the five signature Camari clutter categories clothing, books, paper, miscellaneous, sentimental.
Speaker 2:And because I run into people all the time who tell me that they have a really hard time maintaining their tidy and the first question I always ask them is where are they at with their original event? Because I see people stutter, stepping through the event and then trying to judge their ability to maintain a tidy home, which you should never, never do. It's way too early, you haven't gotten enough practice in, you haven't established the habits, and that just comes with the making of the thousand decisions that show up in your original Camari tidying event. So the best thing you could do to maintain a tidy home quickly is to make sure you actually invested the time into your original tidying event, in my opinion, I totally agree with you, and I think very often as well.
Speaker 1:People sort of do clothes, they do books, they sort of start on papers but get bored with that so skip the rest of that or think they'll come back to it and move on to kimono. But because they've not finished categories or gone through everything, not everything in the home has got a place to go back to. So maintaining it, as you say, becomes really, really difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like two steps forward, three steps back, or it's like trying to cook in a messy kitchen. You haven't gotten to the root of the problem, so that's why it's so hard to maintain it at a surface level. Putting things away because everything hasn't found a place yet is how I describe it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. And I think also what people are not aware of is the fact that as they bring perhaps something new, a new item into the home, that then needs to be addressed OK, where is this going to live, what category does it belong to, where are we storing those things? And that there needs to be regular maintenance. Because if you've got kids, for example, and they're growing out of clothes and things need moving out, or toys are no longer age appropriate, very often people think, well, we've tidied, we've done the whole Konmari method, and now it's not working. It doesn't work. Well, it doesn't work because you're not then removing those items that are no longer serving you as you go along. It has to be maintained. It doesn't sort of magically make everything leave your home in the future just because you've done it once, although that would be quite cool, I have to say.
Speaker 2:Oh it won't. I tell people all the time like I can't put your socks away for you. We can tidy up, we can find a place for them, but that it's not that kind of magic, you know, unfortunately. But but the magic is really in the practice, in understanding how to make values based decisions grounded in your vision, and practicing that over and over and over again and giving a little attention to the let go side of things, like you mentioned. I think that's really underrated, or just you know it's unglamorous, so people don't really talk about that part.
Speaker 2:But it's important to, after you're finished, in order to continue to tidy quickly have really good systems in place for what's leaving as well as all the things that you've celebrated that are staying. So I like to, for example, for my mom, clients suggest that they put something I call a thank you box in their closet for their kids' clothes or toys. So the kids you know understanding things like respect, gratitude and joy. That's like deep, deep things for kids to understand at first, but especially younger ones. But if you have in a closet, you know visually, something that says thank you, they understand talking to things very easily. It's way easier for them to do that than it is for adults.
Speaker 2:I found so like making it fun having a specific area in the closet where they can take, you know, grow that self agency to understand. Okay, this shirt doesn't fit anymore, I'm going to put it in the thank you box. Starting young I love that because that will eventually help everyone do things quicker, because you're getting people involved and people are, you know, especially the young ones are taking ownership for the things that they have very early on. So starting those good habits early I love that idea.
Speaker 1:I'm going to steal that.
Speaker 1:That is a brilliant idea, kristen, very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so I'm also very aware that clients need support in the maintenance part, because it's all very well going through the process, but if you don't, then learn how to maintain it and build habits you just mentioned the word habits in your sentence before.
Speaker 1:If we don't learn to build these habits, then it becomes very, very difficult to keep on top of things. If you're naturally someone and I put myself in this category who will put something down and forget about it, then I wouldn't ever think to go back and get it and put it away. I literally have to set myself a reminder on my phone each day for a 15 minute tidy up. I think I'm verging on the ADHD side of things we've decided. So I think it's really important to talk to people about habits and realize that this is something you need to work on. Just because you've done the tidy festival, it's not going to suddenly magically happen for you that you remember to put everything away. So have you got any tricks that you give your clients, other than tidying up for 15 minutes every day, that help them remember where things go?
Speaker 2:Sure, yes, tricks I give my clients, tricks I use for myself, especially for that cleaning side we talked about earlier. Yeah. So let's see, well, the main trick actually that I like to do to get myself in the right mindset is to change my language a bit. So, as I mentioned, cleaning is something I have to do. I try to change that language to cleaning is something I get to do and that tends to shift my spirit into being grateful for the fact that, you know, I love my wood floors. They're beautiful. I'm cleaning them because I have this roof over my head. I'm very grateful for my home with all this great character. You know, just changing those words can help you kind of shift in that mindset, whether it's I have to tidy or I have to clean. So that's, that's one trick I start with.
Speaker 2:I also love timers. I usually do just 25 minutes timers, sometimes 15 minutes. I've realized like the time itself really doesn't matter, the amount of time, it's more like just knowing that there's a timer going gives you that sense of urgency, that kind of gets you, you know, spark something. Yeah, so if you have to extend it, oh oh well, or if you get done early, great. You know it doesn't really matter, but just you know, I love just saying Activating my Google. I won't say the word, so it'll go off right now, that 25 minute timer. Some other things that I do is to make sure that I am getting something done in addition to what I'm working on, so like passively working on something else. So what I mean by this is I make it fun. I usually put a face mask on, like a clay face mask on while I'm mopping, for example, and that really helps me feel like getting even more done.
Speaker 1:I've got visions of you now with your mop and your face mask. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yes, anyone who follows me on TikTok probably knows I'm always looking crazy with my face mask on. I have multiple ones that I always have on when I'm doing all of my radical self-care. I also like to ask myself how can I make this task easier or more tolerable? Just sit with that question for a minute. Usually that means turn on a podcast or turn on Netflix or something like that, because I actually like to reward myself while I'm working on the task rather than just giving myself that treat at the end. But that's also something I do. It's just like how can I look forward to relaxing afterwards, so giving myself that reward? So I start to associate that reward with the action that I'm working on tidying or cleaning.
Speaker 1:I am totally with you on that because I also think as busy women. When we give ourselves a reward for after, the danger is we're gonna get to the end of what we're doing and find actually we haven't got much time left and therefore our reward is sort of cut short or something happens with one of the kids or there's a phone call and it gets disrupted. So I am all for rewarding myself as I'm doing the task as well, especially with things like cleaning that I really don't want to have to be doing Earbuds in, listen to a podcast, or I very often will carry my laptop around with me and have, as you say, a Netflix series or something that I'm listening to while I'm doing it. The only problem is when you're vacuuming you have to keep pausing it, which irritates me. I get really, but it makes me vacuum quicker because I want to get back to listening and watching what I was interested in.
Speaker 2:Yes, totally been there. I swear I have like different categories of Netflix for different levels of attention. I have to give it okay, subtitles. Okay, I can't watch this one, this one, I can't really have streaming, I have to focus on the plot. So I have buckets of different types of Netflix shows I can watch, but I totally have to vacuum my couch today and I was thinking I'm on the last episode this very long series I was watching and I'm going to have to pause it every time when I'm vacuuming because I can't miss the finale. So, yeah, totally get it.
Speaker 1:Totally get it. You're out with that, and I always as well select things that I know my husband would not want to sit and watch with me. We pretty much watch the same stuff for everything, but there's a couple of like documentary type things that there's no way he would want to sit and watch them with me. So I always use that as my time as well. I get to watch the things I want to watch. Nice Prioritize, see, living my ideal lifestyle while doing the tidying and cleaning doesn't get better than that, does it really Right?
Speaker 2:love it.
Speaker 1:You made it work for you. Yeah, making the most of our time, and I think a lot of us underestimate the power of habit building, like we will all just go and brush our teeth automatically, but if we know that we are going to be doing something while we're doing something else, it helps us build this habit of doing the things that we're less likely to want to do, and I think that's so important to be aware of. I'm always telling my clients about that as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I'm one of those people that walks into habit building like I'm going to do all these things. Here's my 15th step morning routine. And then I quickly realized that I've set my expectations way too high. My mom always gets on me about that and then I kind of disappoint myself because I'm not checking every last box. So I've really tried to be a lot more kind to myself this year around that and just focused on one thing to do consistently, so focusing more on consistently rather than the number of things I get done, because I find that if I do something consistently for a while, then I build something else on top of that. It works better.
Speaker 2:So, like right now, I've been going to Pilates three times a week and I just focused on that. Even if I have more energy to do more like cardio based intense or like hit workouts or something else, I don't do them because I'm like nope. The goal right now is just to show up at Pilates three times a week, even if you have more energy. Just focus on the consistency, not like all the stacking.
Speaker 1:And I think this is the mistake people make a bit. Like you were saying like we'll set up a morning routine, I've made this mistake as well. I had this vision that I was going to do this morning routine and, let's face it, I just do not have enough time in the morning to have a morning routine. So I think people underestimate the amount of practice that's needed to be able to get into the habit of doing it without thinking about it and also underestimate the fact that you really do need your whole home completed, every category, with the Konmari method, as we said earlier, for it to be maintainable. Otherwise there's no way you can maintain it because there's other stuff still flying around that's going to get in the way. So, setting yourself one goal for a few weeks of, I am going to consistently spend 10, 15 minutes tidying up every day. Or, if you're not yet finished with the method, this week my focus is bathroom and I'm going to make sure that every day I spend 10 to 15 minutes going through a cabinet.
Speaker 1:And I think also, people make the mistake of thinking it's all got to be done on one day. Yes, and it. I mean it took me. It took me over a year to do our house, because I was just taking pockets of time as I found them and carrying on with that category where I'd got to and doing the next bit, yes, yeah, and I think if you build that into your day, it then becomes a lot more manageable and it actually becomes quite fun because you could be doing your next bit of Netflix or your next bit of podcast while you're working on it and you get the momentum and it becomes something you enjoy doing and that's what is so important I've not worked that out with cleaning yet, but with tidying, that it becomes something you enjoy doing and actually look forward to, because it makes your life easier.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I see that all the time with folks thinking, ok, yeah, this is going to take like a day to two days. I'm like actually how let's remember how long it took for these things to accumulate in your life. You know, if we really think about that I always ask that question with all of my clients up front is when we actually compare the amount of time that an average tidying event takes and that's anywhere between 15 to 60 hours, depending on if you're depending on a lot of different factors if you're working with a professional, the volume of clutter in your home, if you share your home with anyone, the pace of your decision making there's lots of factors. We could do a whole podcast on that. But considering that you know, on average it takes anywhere from 15 to 60 hours, like it's when you compare that to the number of years or even the number of months that you've spent feeling cluttered in your home, like it's like a fraction of that time.
Speaker 2:So it's amazing to me what, when people say this will take forever, I like to like make sure people are realizing that actually this is an exercise in self care.
Speaker 2:That's not kind of unbounded, it's very tangible, like there's a finite amount of things in your home. There's a finite amount of things in that bathroom. You're not going to be able to tie them all in one day. But if you break it down and set your expectations like a bit lower there, just like I was saying with the timer, you know, rather than saying OK, I'm going to set a timer for an hour, you know to say I'm going to set a timer for 15 minutes and it's going to be just for a small segment, like just the toothbrushes and the floss, you know, in the bathroom. And if you get done early, great, you know you keep going or you stop. You know it's all about just making sure the consistency is there and just the action of getting it done, practicing that motion, even that taking that first step, leaning in to an uncomfortable, chaotic drawer or category of clutter Just taking that step is what you're actually building on, not necessarily like, oh, how fast can I do this? You know that's not really the goal.
Speaker 2:No, and I think also when people try to do it quickly, that's when they actually don't do it thoroughly and they end up back at square one very, very quickly, definitely definitely, and it makes it a lot harder on the maintenance side if you rush through things, because we have to realize that the decisions we make, you know, are going to change because our vision is changing.
Speaker 2:So I make sure my clients recognize something I call Kanmari Light, like Kanmari LITE, and it's all about like recognizing you've had a change in your life and you have to kind of activate this tool that you now have, kanmari and your adulting toolbox, when this influx happens. So examples are if you move into a new space and the boundary of your home completely changes, if you're up sizing or downsizing, if you're welcoming in a new baby, all of those things result in like an influx of chaos or clutter. So we have to recognize that you haven't failed Kanmari. If things get chaotic at that moment you just have to activate the tool again. I always make sure my moms and clients in particular understand this because with growing children cycling through toys and clothes like very quickly, they're almost guaranteed to have to have Kanmari Light more regularly than someone who lives alone or doesn't have children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've experienced this recently. I had my parents come to visit from the UK recently for a week and we have we actually have a bar in our cellar which is, yeah, huge. And my father had gone down to the cellar and gone into the bar and came back upstairs and said I thought you were an organizer because the kids have all now reached the age where none of them are playing with toys anymore none of them. So they'd had a clear out all three of them of their bedrooms and removed everything they were no longer playing with and put it all on the landing outside the bedrooms. And I was thinking no, no, no, no, no, no, this cannot all stay here. So the bar was not being used at the moment. We tend to use it more in the winter months.
Speaker 1:So everything was taken down to the bar to be sorted into categories of things to donate, to sell online, to sell at a flea market, and that's how it was left. I mean, it literally looked like a flea market in there. It was horrendous and, of course, my father had gone in. You couldn't walk into the room for all these kids stuff. But it was a, it was a work in progress and it had an end date by which it had to be done, because we had a flea market coming up and we've started putting things online now for selling. But this is life happens and, as you said right at the start, we live in our homes and it would be really weird if we're three kids in the home, there was nothing lying around anywhere. I would be very, very concerned about us all.
Speaker 2:It's just not realistic.
Speaker 2:Even Marie Kondo has admitted that it's not realistic for her anymore now that she has three kids, and so she recognized everyone thought she was like saying that she's quit her method and you know, sorry guys, this doesn't actually work.
Speaker 2:But what she was really saying and she clarified this is that her priorities have just shifted. Where her priorities used to be to keep her home extremely tidy all the time, every second of the day, 24, seven, but now she's relaxed her personal standard to make time, basically more time to spend with her family, which makes sense. And the reason she can make that decision and it feel comfortable for her is that she's still and she clarified this as well that the fundamental aspects of her Kamari method are still in place, like that original tidy event that she had for herself. She's able to shift that priority and have it feel right for her. So I love that she was able to clarify that, because so many people were thinking that she quit the method and I'm like, no, I can get why people would think that if they had absolutely no context or didn't understand the fundamental principles, so I love that she's gone ahead and let people know she hasn't given up.
Speaker 1:So I did a whole podcast episode on that. At the time it hit the media because I was also getting friends and family ringing me going well, that wasn't worth training and that was it. That's not what she was saying and I love that's. What I love about the method is that wherever you are in your life, whatever season you're in, this method works for you because at the end of the day, it's all about you living the lifestyle that you want to, with your home supporting you, and that is shifting all the time, and I am enjoying not having toys everywhere anymore.
Speaker 1:I did used to find it really quite annoying to have to keep getting the kids to tidy up all the time. There's stuff for 15 minutes every evening and we did. We used to. We had games, it was fun, it was something we did, but I don't have to do that anymore. That 15 minute of part of my day is gone, Although I do. We used to do it as a dance party and I do miss that. That was fun, but I think my 14 and 16 year old now would think I was crazy if I said come on, we're having a dance party.
Speaker 2:And he was like no, mom, too much, too much. Yeah, now they've got to like dance while they're vacuuming, or something like that.
Speaker 1:They can help you out with the cleaning part they do and they're really good at that actually. Oh great, they do. They all clean their own bedrooms and they all put their own laundry away and they're all responsible for cleaning the bathroom that they use. Oh, that's awesome. I don't need to clean it, really do I? That's why I had three kids. That was the end of it. Great Cleaning help.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't want to Okay.
Speaker 1:So we've talked in a lot of detail about tidying and how it's important. I'm just interested do you have a cleaning schedule? I mean, obviously it's going to be quick and easy for you to clean because you can quickly tidy up, and that is separate from what cleaning is, as we've established. But do you yourself have a routine to help you stay on top of the cleaning?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. Well, one decision I made really early on in my life that kind of relates to this is to live within a small footprint. So I should be transparent that I live underneath a thousand square feet. So I really find that just having less literally can walk like probably like 20. So I think I counted at 1.20 steps or something from one end of my house to the other. So that really helps. So I found that if I just clean in the moment, like right now, I noticed my bathroom mirror this morning had some water spots on it and my sink needed to be clean Like if I clean when I see it, it helps me a lot. So I don't have to create like cleaning days that take up my weekend time. That really helps. So that's something I've started to do. I just make sure I'm cleaning as I go.
Speaker 2:And then the major things, which are cleaning the bathroom or parts of the kitchen, or vacuuming or mopping my floors, those are what I put into my app. So I have a app called Todoist that I use T-O-D-O-I-S-T and it's really helpful. I put a lot of reoccurring things in there. So I put birth dates in there, I put business anniversaries in there, reoccurring business tasks as well as reoccurring personal tasks, one of which is mopping the floor. So that's one that I put in so that I have a regular reminder. That's not in my brain, that's like outside my brain and in this app to help me remind myself to do that.
Speaker 2:That works for the most part. Sometimes I let that reminder just drift a bit, but I always come back to it, like the couch I have to vacuum today that's the other one I have in there, flipping my new couch. I like to make sure that the cushions are evenly worn down. So I flip my couch, I think, about once a week or twice a week. So that really helps me just cleaning as I go and then having like what? Like I was talking to my friend about this when you think about your whole house, like what is the thing, if you did it consistently and regularly would have like the biggest impact. And for her it was like mopping her floors. So I was like, hey, I think that's probably the same for me too. So I started really just focusing on getting consistent with that task and then it's helped other things to kind of fall in place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I find for me, with all the animals and the kids in the house, if I don't vacuum every day, then I've just got pet hair and stuff everywhere. So I invested a few years ago in a robot vacuum so that I can just set it off every day. But I have to remember to do that. So I do have like a specific time each morning before I go out to clients where I set it off and by the time I come home it's done its job on the ground floor. So at least the ground floor looks presentable. And I'm like you.
Speaker 1:I have reminders for things that I meant to clean the sinks or do the bathrooms or you know, and my husband's got jobs cleaning, jobs that are allocated to him that are not my problem. So I can, they can go out of my head. They're down to him to do, and then obviously the kids have got their stuff as well. So I think it's a case of getting everyone on board and not just assuming it's, if you live in a family situation, that is not just one person's job.
Speaker 2:Yes, for sure. Yeah, and I actually I've heard this from a fellow consultant of Patty Morrissey this idea of sitting down and having like a responsibility to share. I don't know what she called it. That's like a horrible day of responsibility sharing, but basically you sit down and you write down on cards. Each person writes like what they're responsible for, and you can narrow it down to like what you're responsible for when it comes to cleaning or tidying, and then you all kind of like share and then maybe trade cards or swap cards or see who stack is higher than the others, so that it's even and everyone has like a clear understanding of what their roles are.
Speaker 1:I love that idea. I've had Patty on this podcast, actually as a guest. We were talking about donating things to charity, but we have a family meeting where we had sort of talked initially about who could do what. That was age appropriate, and one of the things was that they'd wanted the animals, so therefore they need to look after them, and the girls had tried doing it so that one of them was going to clean out the cats one day. One of them was going to clean out the rabbits and then they were going to swap, and we did this for quite some months and we've done this with other jobs in the home as well.
Speaker 1:But what then became clear was, because they were swapping all the time, everyone would forget what they were meant to be doing, and then the jobs wouldn't get done, and then it was down to me to remind them. And then it's back, it's back to mum to remind everybody. That's not what's meant to be happening here, guys. So we ended up moving it so that everyone has one set thing. So Rebecca's now rabbits, amelia's cats. End of story. It's your job every day, girls, and that's great, and then I don't have to remind anyone and there's no confusion. So I think that works quite well, sometimes as well, but I think you have to be flexible because otherwise someone might end up with a job like me with the cleaning that they really don't enjoy doing and therefore it's fair to swap it around a bit so that people get to do things they enjoy doing or don't enjoy doing and it sort of balances itself out a bit.
Speaker 2:Love it. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how I would do that as someone who is single plus dog, so I couldn't really do the cards. So it's like, oh no, all this is on your shoulders. But I guess that's where outsourcing comes in.
Speaker 1:Or you put cleaning cloths on the dog's paws and then, as they walk around, they can be on the floor for you, you see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good idea. I've seen those for humans, the microfiber cleaning slippers. And they probably have them for dogs.
Speaker 1:They must do.
Speaker 2:I wish my dog loved booty. She hates them, she kicks them off, she throws them around. Yeah, but I'm sure that that exists somewhere.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's wrap it up and just summarize what we've been talking about and think about how we create this balance between cleaning and tidying, because the two things are so very, very separate. What do you think is a good balance or a way of sorting it out for yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess just the language. Coming back to that again, I see so many people come to me as a tidying expert saying, gosh, I have so much trouble keeping my room clean, and the first thing I want to say is, okay, let's dissect that Like, is it the putting the stuff away part or is it the like wiping things down part? So yeah, just making sure we're calling it the right thing so that we can understand Is it the both tidying and cleaning that I don't like, or is it one or the other?
Speaker 1:And I think also, as we've already said, allocating time for tidying and time for cleaning as two separate things. If, each day, you're keeping on top of the tidying, then you don't even have to think about that. The cleaning is then the thing that needs to be done, but you've got a clear deck on what you do. There's nothing on the floor, there's nothing on the work surfaces, and you can just go for it and get it done in record time. Right exactly Okay, so you mentioned TikTok earlier, tell us about your TikTok.
Speaker 2:Oh, I just love my community over there.
Speaker 2:I was not on TikTok for so many years, although I got tons of people telling me I should be over there, so I hopped on that platform earlier this year and just have 75,000 people in that community who are focused on radical self care, which are tedious tasks that are uncomfortable, unglamorous, underrated, but necessary for us to learn and grow, and that's what I champion over there, and I also talk a lot about the Konmari method and a lot about visual clutter as well, which is something that I feel passionate about taking the tags off of things, word information, unnecessary noise that can over-stimulate us in the home and we don't even realize it.
Speaker 2:It's beyond the physical clutter a bit, but it's definitely tied to that. So that's what we're doing over there. I just love my folks. They just have such great questions and they're really loving what I'm putting out, so I'm going to keep doing it. I'm trying to stay consistent myself, which is something I've mentioned multiple times during the podcast. One of the things I promised myself was to post a video a day, and I have missed a few days, but for the most part, again landed on that cadence, so it's been fun.
Speaker 1:So what's it? What are you called on TikTok? How do we find you?
Speaker 2:Sure. So my tag is the same everywhere, on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, and that's at for the love of Tidy, f-o-r-t-h-e-l-o-v-e-t-i-d-y.
Speaker 1:for the love of Tidy, I'm going to be checking you out on there, thank you, and you've also got past podcast episodes as well on the Konmari method that people can listen into. So I will put all the links for anything that you're involved with in the show notes that if people want to find you, they can.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have over 98 listening hours around Sparkjoy Podcast and I say we have. I co-hosted it with another certified Konmari master, karen Soshi, and we did retire at the podcast. We had to sunset it a few years ago, but the information is evergreen. So, even though there's not new episodes, there's 168 episodes to explore that will keep you busy and we cover absolutely everything from Konmari-ing the way you date or or how you pick up kids toys. We have got a lot of parenting experts that we had on the show, a lot of people we just admire, like Gretchen Rubin, as well as Peter Walsh, who is kind of a legendary organizer.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, kristen. It's been an absolute joy talking to you today and I think it's so important to clarify this difference between tidying and cleaning, and hopefully it will help everyone moving forward to not waste their time doing a mishmash of jobs and making life harder for themselves. Yes, thank you very much. I hope we'll have you back on at some point. Thanks, carolyn, had a great time. Thank you, I hope you enjoyed that. It was so fun talking to Kristen.
Speaker 1:If you want to see some video of her sitting in her closet, you'll have to check out my Instagram at carrowthor to see the video footage of my reels. Now, if you want to learn more about her, all the links are in the show notes. And if you're inspired to find a Konmari consultant local to you who can come and work with you in person, you just need to check out the Konmari website, where you can search for consultants by location. That link is also there for you. There are lots of changes happening with my Instagram at carrowthor, my website and with my online course, so prepare yourself from exciting announcements in the coming weeks. Until next time, bye.