#62- 18 Words for Home Organization and Decluttering

Welcome to episode #62! In this episode of The Real Life English with Gabby Podcast, you'll be learning useful vocabulary about home organization and decluttering. You’ll learn real-life phrasal verbs, slang, and idioms like pack up, nesting, minimalist, purge, and lighten the load. The goal is to teach you real American English that native speakers actually use all the time. These expressions will help you talk about cleaning, moving, and getting rid of things in a natural and confident way. Whether you’re organizing your home or just want to sound more like a native speaker, this episode is packed with helpful tips!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] On today's episode of the Real Life English with Gabby podcast, I'll be teaching you 18 phrasal verbs, slang words, and idioms about home, organization, and decluttering. You'll be learning vocabulary like hoard, weed out, purge, lighten the load, and more. Let's get to it.

Hey there! Welcome to the Real Life English with Gabby podcast. I'm your host, Gabby—your fun and friendly English teacher from the one and only New York City. My goal is to teach you phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang that will help you speak English confidently and understand real American conversations.

Are you ready to improve your English skills? Let's jump right in.

Hey, hey, hey! Greetings from New York City. Welcome to episode number 62. This episode is [00:01:00] all about home organization and decluttering, and it was actually inspired by the events of my personal life currently. If you don't know "decluttering," don't worry—I will explain it shortly.

On my end here in New York City, my family and I are doing well, trying to enjoy the summer. This summer hasn't really been that great of a summer. It's either been extremely hot or extremely rainy, but we have been getting a few really nice days. The main thing we've been doing, though, is waiting for the arrival of our daughter next month.

Pretty exciting, right? For those of you who don't know, I'm a mom of two boys. Jacob is seven and a half, and Miles turns four today—actually, the day that this episode airs. And I'm pregnant with a little baby [00:02:00] girl arriving in August of 2025. It's been pretty crazy over here—moving furniture around, buying new things, a lot of decluttering, throwing things away, and giving things away.

While I was recording the previous episode, this episode idea popped into my head. So I switched the order around of episodes a little bit because I realized that home organization and decluttering is a really great topic on the podcast. We've talked about cleaning your home before, but organizing and cleaning are very different. And I mean, a lot of the time they happen together, but the actual topics are different. This is a very common thing for people to do at any time of year—organizing your home and getting rid of things you don't need is a very common [00:03:00] task to do between seasons or when something big is happening.

I'm not sure about your culture, but in American culture, we do this a lot between seasons—when we switch our clothes from summer clothes to winter clothes, for example, or we prepare for the new school year or a holiday season. It's very common to do these things.

Or, for some of you, when something big is happening in your life—you're going off to a new university, starting a new job, things like that. In our case, we are doing it because we're trying to make space for a new, tiny little human to join us. Just to give you some fun updates here: in light of everything that's gonna be happening in the next month, there are actually a lot of updates for English with Gabby.

Firstly, I'll be taking off one month from the podcast once [00:04:00] the baby arrives. It'll probably be part of August and part of September—so maybe the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September—or it may end up being the entire month of September.

Let's see how things go. If you're on my email list, you'll definitely be updated on what's happening. I will also be posting some things on Instagram as well.

Also, something I'm very excited about that you'll hear more about: I'll be launching a new mini course called English Through Media. I'm so excited that it's finally ready!

It's a mini course that I created that was inspired from a course that I've taught here in New York City for maybe about four to five years. It's where I use media—like TV clips, movie clips, music, podcasts, celebrity interviews, etc.—to teach English.

You've heard me say this [00:05:00] often, but media is kind of like a little shortcut to learning English because there's so much vocabulary, grammar, and listening practice. There's so much in one episode of a TV show, for example, and it definitely gives you an advantage when you study English. We'll talk about this in the future, but I am very excited that that's coming.

And then I'll also be launching a new website. I found a new company—or site or tool, you can call it—to manage the business. So hopefully everything will be looking a lot nicer, easier to follow, etc. You'll notice a lot of differences—hopefully they'll be for the better. So stay tuned for updates, because the last part of 2025 should hopefully be very exciting.

Also, before we continue, I just wanna remind you that there's a study guide waiting for you along with [00:06:00] the episode that will give you all the tools you need to remember everything that you hear in the episode—so that you can become confident enough to use all of the new vocabulary in your daily English. To get that study guide, click the link in the episode description.

Alright, so now back to the episode. Let me introduce you to the new vocabulary that you'll be learning in this episode.

First, we have: clutter, make room for, clear out, junk, pile up, sort through, let go of, hang onto, give away, box up, hoard, weed out, tidy up, pack up, nesting, minimalist or minimalism, purge, and lighten the load.

[00:07:00] Now I'm going to read you a story that has all of the vocabulary I just mentioned in real life contexts. See if you can guess the meanings of these words based on the context they're used in.

Then afterwards, we'll review the definitions together and I'll give you more examples. Okay, here we go.

When Aisha and Leo found out that they were expecting their first baby, they were excited, but also a little overwhelmed. Their small apartment was full of clutter, and they knew they needed to make room for the baby.

“We really have to clear out the spare room,” Aisha said one morning. “It's been our dump zone for years.”

Leo [00:08:00] nodded. “Yeah, it's where all of our junk has piled up.”

So over the weekend they got to work. First, they sorted through old boxes filled with books, papers, and random electronics. Some things were easy to let go of, like old chargers that didn’t work anymore. But other things were harder.

Aisha wanted to hang onto her high school notebooks, but Leo reminded her, “You haven’t looked at those in 10 years.”

So they decided to make three piles: keep, throw away, and donate. They gave away bags of clothes and toys to a local charity and boxed up the items they wanted to store.

“This is harder than I thought,” Aisha said, wiping sweat from her forehead. “Why do [00:09:00] we have so much stuff?”

“I think we both hoard things without meaning to,” Leo laughed.

Over the next few days, they continued the process. They weeded out old dishes from the kitchen, tidied up the living room, and packed up winter clothes to put in storage.

Aisha started nesting, too. She began decorating the nursery, organizing baby clothes by size, and even labeling drawers.

“I want the baby's room to feel calm,” she said. “I'm kind of going for a minimalist vibe.”

They did a big purge of their closet and finally let go of clothes they never wore. With every bag they donated or threw away, they felt lighter.

“It feels good to lighten the load,” Leo said, stretching after a long day. “This place already feels more peaceful.”

By the [00:10:00] time the baby arrived, the apartment looked completely different. Everything had its place. The nursery was cozy and ready.

Aisha and Leo were tired, but proud. They had made room in their home—and in their hearts—for the newest member of their family.

The end.

All right, so let's talk about these words and definitions. The first word is clutter. Now, clutter is a huge word that we use here in the United States, and even the title has declutter, which is the opposite. So let's talk about this quickly. Clutter is when you have too many things in one place. It makes things messy or disorganized.

Clutter is a noun. It's a thing, like you could say, "We have so much clutter in my [00:11:00] apartment." The adjective form would be cluttered, like, "This room looks very cluttered." So the title declutter or decluttering is actually a verb, and it means to remove all of the clutter.

An example of clutter would be, "There's so much clutter in the hallway that I can't even walk through."

Next up, we have a three-word phrasal verb: make room for. "They wanted to make room for the baby." Make room for means to create space for something new. For example: "We need to make room for the baby's crib in the bedroom."

Next up, we have the phrasal verb clear out. Clear out means to remove unwanted things from a place. So if you have a room and there are a lot of things in the room, and you want to remodel it, you're going to want to clear it out.

For example:
 "I spent the weekend clearing out the closet."

We often use it in this context for storage or closet space.

Next up, we have the word junk. I'm sure you've heard this many times before. Junk is a noun, and it's old or broken things that are just not useful anymore. So if you have things that you can't use—maybe they're broken or old—we consider that junk.

For example:
 "This drawer is full of junk that I don't use anymore."

Next up, we have the phrasal verb pile up. Pile up means to collect or increase in amount. We also use the word accumulate. When something accumulates, oftentimes you pile things up and you create a mess.

So imagine you have a lot of [00:13:00] English books—English textbooks, English course books—you start to put them on top of each other, and then you could say, "Wow, my books are really piling up."

For example:
 "The dirty laundry keeps piling up because I haven't done the wash."

By the way, in this example, you'll notice we have the wash or laundry. We use both of those expressions.

Next up, we have another phrasal verb—so we're gonna have a lot of phrasal verbs in this episode, which is really cool. The next one is sort through. This is to look at a group of things and decide what you want to keep and what you want to throw away.

So I have a bunch of clothes. I want to sort through them. I want to look at each of them and make two piles: what do I want to keep? What do I want to throw out? What do I want to give away? Maybe add a third pile.

And that's how you heard it in the story—that they had three [00:14:00] piles: keep, donate, or throw away.

For example:
 "She sorted through her makeup and threw out all of the old products."

Next up, we have a three-word phrasal verb: let go of. This is to stop keeping or holding onto something. Oftentimes, it's special to you in some way—you don't want to get rid of it—so you keep it. But it's finally time to let go of it.

For example:
 "It's hard to let go of my childhood toys, but I don't need them anymore."

Next up, we have the phrasal verb hang onto. This is to keep something, often for emotional reasons. Like, "I'm just hanging onto this thing." We also sometimes use hold onto in the same way, same [00:15:00] context.

For example:
 "I'm gonna hang onto this photo album from college. I don't want to let it go. It has emotional meaning to me."

Next up, we have the phrasal verb give away. I'm sure you've heard this one. This is very common. Give away is to give something to someone for free.

So when you have things in piles, sometimes you want to throw them away, but sometimes you want to donate them. You don't want to waste them. Here in the United States, we have these popular groups. They're neighborhood groups. They have an app, but they're often on Facebook as well, and they're called Buy Nothing.

And basically, if, for example, my son is done with a toy and I don't want to throw it away, I go on, I take a picture, and I say, "Hey guys, this is free. Come and collect it." And you would be shocked at how many free things people give [00:16:00] away and trade. It's awesome. It's a way to reduce waste.

This is a big thing in the United States. Sometimes people put things right outside of their house so that other people can come and take them—because we don't like to waste products and things like that.

For example:
 "We gave away our old sofa to a friend."

Next up, we have the phrasal verb box up. Box up means to put something in a box and seal it, close it—usually for storage or moving.

For example:
 "I boxed up the winter clothes and put them in the attic."

The attic is the highest level of the house. Usually it's right above the top floor and it's smaller. It's very common in American homes.

Next up, we have the verb hoard. To hoard is to collect and keep too many things, even if you don't need them.

In the United States, we have a lot [00:17:00] of people who hoard things. We even have a TV show called Hoarders. Basically, you want to keep everything. You never want to get rid of anything, and so your house just has so much clutter.

Some people might say, "Oh, I'm a hoarder. I don't like to get rid of things." But it's very bad.

For example:
 "My uncle hoards newspapers and never throws them away."

Hoarding newspapers is actually very common in the United States. It's not one of the worst examples of hoarding. People who hoard everything—that’s seen as being very problematic. But hoarding one or two things—not too terrible.

Next up, we have the phrasal verb weed out. Weed out means to remove things that you don't want or need.

We use weed out for people as well. Like, you can say if you are a manager of a company, you want to weed out the bad employees. So you give assignments that will show you who are the [00:18:00] strongest and who are the weakest.

For example:
 "We weeded out the broken toys from the toy box."

Next up, we have tidy up. Tidy up is to quickly make a place neat and clean.

So if you're going to have guests in 30 minutes—for example, your sister calls, "Hey, can I stop by?"—you say, "Oh my gosh, I have to tidy up!" I have to quickly make the place look neat, organize things.

For example:
 "Can you tidy up your room before dinner?"

Next up, we have the phrasal verb pack up. Pack up means to put things into bags, put them into boxes. You're gonna move them, you're gonna store them. They're gonna switch locations. Sometimes you can say pack up. So, in a classroom, for example, I'd say, "All right,
[00:19:00] students, you can go ahead and pack up. We're not gonna be doing any more work for the rest of class." So, put things in your bags, take them home.

But in the context of organization, it's similar to box up. Except pack up is not specifically boxes. It can be any kind of containers—bags, et cetera. For example: We packed up all the kitchen stuff before remodeling.

Next up, we have nesting. This is preparing and organizing your home for a new baby. I want you to think of a bird and their home, which is a nest—a bird's nest. This is where we get this from. Nesting is preparing your nest. Oftentimes we call our home a nest, and for many pregnant women,
[00:20:00] nesting is something that we do in our third trimester before the baby arrives. We wanna make things look pretty. We wanna organize. We wanna prepare. For example: She started nesting during her last month of pregnancy.

Next up, we have a minimalist. This is a noun. This is a person who likes to live with only a few things. The practice of this is called minimalism. It's very trendy right now in the United States with people who wanna get rid of most things, and they only wanna keep what they need. A minimalist is a person who prefers to live like that. For example: After moving to a small apartment, he became a minimalist.

Next up, we have the verb to purge. To purge is to get rid of a lot of things at once. Decluttering is really when you remove the clutter. Maybe sometimes you can move things to storage, but purging is getting rid of things—
[00:21:00] like maybe you throw out a lot of things at once. For example: I did a big purge of my closet and donated five bags of clothes.

And lastly, we have to lighten the load. To lighten means to reduce the weight of something, and a load is like a big package. So lighten the load is to reduce the amount of things you have—things that you're carrying. Okay? For example: Getting rid of old furniture really helped us lighten the load before moving.

Lighten the load is an idiom that we use very often, and you can also use this in an emotional and mental capacity as well. So, if you're going through a very difficult time and your friend says, "Why don't you talk to me? Let's hang out," so you can lighten the load. This can be physical, mental, emotional.

Well, guess what—
 [00:22:00] you just learned 18 awesome phrasal verbs, slang words, and idioms about home organization and decluttering. Now I have some homework for you. Step one is to go download the study guide if you haven't already.

The next bit of homework that I have for you is to pick seven to ten of the vocabulary from this episode and make it your goal to use them this week. You can write them in a journal and make your own sentences. You can record yourself in an audio file using them out loud. You can try to use them with a friend. You can even teach these words to someone else, because teaching helps you to remember these words even more.

However you decide to use these words, that doesn't really matter—as long as you do it—so that you can use these words in your English confidently.

[00:23:00] Well, that's a wrap for today's episode of The Real Life English with Gabby podcast. Be sure to download today's study guide so that you can learn how to use this vocabulary confidently.

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more weekly adventures in English learning. Also, I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a review.

Thanks so much for tuning in.