Systemize Modern Organization Tips For Your Home

There’s no handbook to owning a home. That’s why Jessica Duncan with Scenic Sotheby's International Realty goes beyond the transaction to share tips to improve the homeowner experience.

Each week, the seasoned Gulf Coast realtor shares sound advice for smarter decisions in the areas of home maintenance, avoiding scams, refinancing, buying, selling, investing, increase your home value, downsizing, estate planning, Florida insurance, money saving hacks & building wealth.

Her area of expertise is the Florida panhandle including Pensacola, Gulf Breeze,Milton, Pace and Navarre. No matter what season of homeownership you’re in, Jessica Duncan Just my opinion is adulting made simple.

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

This is Jessica Duncans, just my opinion. And I'm Jessica. There's no handbook to owning a home. That's why I go beyond the transaction to share my insights and advice for adulting made simple. So today we are gonna talk about systems that make your house run itself So wouldn't that be easy if your house 100%. Ran itself. So we're not gonna quite get that far. AI has not gone that far in technology, but we are gonna talk about the ways that make it so much simpler for your house to be this system that is a well-oiled machine. So why a system? Let's dig into that a little bit more. systems really don't fail, like our motivation does. We may wake up one day and we're highly motivated and we're gonna join that gym in January, right? And we're gonna go all year long. And then what happens? We failed two weeks later and stopped going to the gym. So we really wanna create a system instead of just motivation to keep our house running like a well oiled machine. We don't wanna have that temporary, here's this motivation that's creating this temporary movement. We wanna have that permanent system. So the core systems that we really wanna work on in a house to make it a well old machine is your cleaning, laundry, meals. Gotta figure out what you're gonna eat and how you're gonna get it. Scheduling, and as well as your budget or your money. And we're gonna dig into each of these a little bit deeper. But first I wanna talk about why. Systems fail. There's a lot of people who try to create systems, whether it's at home or work or with your kids, and they fail. So why do they fail?'cause if we know why they fail, we can get in front of that and really anticipate these problems before they happen. One reason is because they are way too complicated. Have you ever had anyone give you a system that's like a three page long spreadsheet and your I crossed before you got halfway down the page? Well, that is gonna make it fail. And if you do that to your family, your system is probably gonna fail. So we don't wanna overcomplicate it. We wanna make it super easy. We also wanna make it realistic if it's not realistic. It's going to fail. If we expect our homes to be in 100% order all the time, it's going to fail. They are lived in, we live in them. They're meant for us to enjoy them. So let's be realistic with what we are setting. Another reason why a system could fail is because certain people weren't assigned certain tasks, or no one knows who's assigned what task. So you wanna be very clear with the mission, who's doing what in your system, when are they doing it, all those type of details. A system will also fail because there's way too many changes. Maybe you start one week doing this, then the next week you change it up'cause you think that that's not working. Which really leads me to why a lot of systems fail, which is they don't give it 30 days. So whatever system you create, you wanna give it the full 30 days. And the reason why you give it 30 days is because. it's 21 to make a habit. we're gonna miss a day or two. So let's just go ahead and push it to 30 and help make this a habit and a lifestyle of how you're gonna keep your home in order. So first, let's dig in on a cleaning system. So when we're talking about cleaning in your house, we don't have to have an extremely detailed chart of every little thing that's being done and when it's being done, but maybe a basic overview. Who's doing what and when are they doing it? And if you just start to implement. Little small things to help keep your house in order and keep'em in for 30 days before you add another one. Maybe wait two or three months before you add another one. It will help create that very well-oiled system within your house that doesn't feel overwhelmed with constant change. So what is an example of what I'm talking about with this? Maybe it is, like one that we do in our house is our dishwasher gets turned on every single night. It doesn't matter if it's half full, if it's completely full, if there's three things in it. The dishwasher gets run every night and every morning my husband empties it, So he knows it's his role to empty it every morning. I know it's my role to turn it on every night. That way. Every day we start with a clean, empty dishwasher. And throughout the day it's really easy to fill it. Also, while you're cooking dinner, it's really easy to be cleaning while you cook instead of waiting till the end. because No one wants to finish dinner and then spend 30 minutes cleaning the kitchen, right? So that's a very simple, easy system that you can implement that's just gonna help make sure your kitchen stays a little cleaner. And so that's what I mean. Don't make this overwhelming process. Start with these simple things. And you'll notice what I did there is at a certain time, this always happens. You can also do it maybe with a certain trigger every time X happens then, then B happens. No matter what that is, every time you walk in the door, you stick your keys here. Every time you walk out of the bathroom, you do this. Just little things like that that can help create, systems that will help the house run itself. So let's talk about laundry. Everyone loves laundry, right? Said no one ever. We all hate laundry and it gets piled up. And unless you're outsourcing it to someone, it's probably piled up in your house as well. But there are so many ways you can create simple systems. one of the things that, I've seen especially homes with many of many people, lots of kids, especially adult kids in the house, is they will do. One person per day, everyone gets their own laundry basket and everyone's responsible for their own laundry. And everyone has one day that week that the washer and dryer are open to them because there's nothing worse than going to do laundry. And someone else left their clothes in the washer or they left their clothes in the dryer and no one wants to fold someone else's underwear. Right? Especially if you have teenage kids. So create a system that's super simple with laundry, maybe one person per day, one person per basket. in my house, one of the things that I do, my husband does his own laundry and I do my own,'cause I have all these special wash, which he's actually learned pretty good to jump in and help me. But I, as I take my clothes off. I have a laundry basket that has, five bins in it, and I sort my clothes as I'm taking them off. Darks, whites, special washes, towels and jeans. That way I never have to spend time sorting clothes. I always know when there's a full load so I can throw'em on and laundry doesn't become such this daunting task. That I spend an entire day doing laundry. It's, oh, hey, look, my whites need to be thrown on. Let me do that load right now. But it's just a simple step that's made it really easy for me. And again, that's following that rule that I was talking about before. When I do this, I do that. When I take my clothes off, I sort them. So it makes it just a super simple system, even for your laundry. So one of the big challenges that all households, I don't care how many people you have in your house, it seems to be a challenge for everyone is meals. What are we eating for dinner tonight? And of course it always goes back to the decision if you're going out to eat, who's deciding where we're going that no one ever wants to make that decision. Right? But then as soon as you choose something. Yeah, I didn't want that place. So we're gonna talk about meals and how you can create a system to really run itself and make it more simple. So you wanna pick, maybe one day a week that you do your grocery shopping and you plan your meals out for the week. Don't try and plan more than seven days. I used to be very, very organized and would try and plan out 30 days ahead. Sounds great. Very, forward thinking. Unfortunately, life happened and that would get completely messed up. So you wanna try and stay seven days ahead. What am I going to eat over the next seven days? What am I gonna prepare for meals for the next seven days? Do I need lunch stuff? Do I need any other household items? Right? Once a week, we want to plan out what we're gonna cook that week and what we need and do shopping one day instead of running to the store every evening after work. Create that simple system. I want you to be realistic with this though. Look at your schedule. We all have great intentions of cooking seven nights a week, staying home, not spending the money on going out to eat. But let's face it, life happens and that is not what's gonna end up happening. So be realistic with that. I always look at my schedule and go, wow. I. Three nights in a row that I'm going to events or working with clients until really late. So I may not be getting home till, 8 30, 9 o'clock, three nights in a row. I may not be starting to cook at nine 30 at night. So let's think a little ahead. Let's not buy groceries for those nights I'm just gonna have to throw away. On the flip side, I also plan ahead. So anytime I make something that's easy to make a large amount of and freeze, especially things like soups, enchiladas, lasagnas, different large casserole, anything like that, I go ahead and make extra and throw it in the freezer. So those nights where I don't feel like cooking, I can pull something outta the freezer real quick. Or the nights that I have an event and maybe my husband's at home, I have those backup meals ready for'em. That's just another system I'm doing. I. Always have soup in my fridge so that if one of us gets sick, or in my freezer, I should say, if one of us gets sick or if a friend gets sick and I wanna drop by unexpectedly, just really last minute notice to bring them some fresh homemade soup, I can do that. Because let's face it, no one gets sick when it's planned and convenient. It's always when it's not. So create this system with your meals and how you're planning this out, as well as when you're shopping and how you're going to get that stuff. I am a huge fan of the grocery delivery services, whether it's Instacart, Walmart, delivery. I love them all It is so much more convenient, and I seem to spend less money because I only get what I need instead of. Getting everything when I go to the store, when I'm hungry, So we use Instacart as our grocery shopping system. So what do I mean by that? My rule in the house is, if you want it, it must go on the Instacart list. If you use the last of it and you want us to buy more of it, it has to go on the Instacart list. That way everyone in the house too knows what we need and I can make sure and get it ordered. I don't be wanna be responsible for, Hey, I used the last of the mayonnaise and I failed to tell everyone, or they tell me, and I, it's my responsibility to put it on the list. We've got enough going on in our minds, right? So put it on the list and it gets ordered. It's that simple. I will say I'm also a huge fan of automating anything. I can automate that stuff that we know we're gonna need all the time. I don't like to do this with perishable items because life does happen, or you go on vacation and you end up wasting it there. But things like Fin's, dog food. We know Fins dog food is gonna have to come. I think we have it set up on about every five weeks, and in the beginning, sometimes you have to switch this up until you figure out the exact amount of time. originally I think we did every four weeks or six weeks and then had to adjust. But I have his dog food set up on automatic delivery. I never have to run outta dog food. I also never have to go pick up a 40 pound bag of dog food. It just arrives at my door. things like deodorant, laundry detergent, all of our vitamins that we take. They're set up on Amazon, they just show up at the door right about three days before I run out. So set everything up. You can automate it just to make it super simple. And if you do something like Amazon, it is really easy to go in and adjust those times. And you can also, you can push one just back a couple weeks if maybe something happened and you quit taking that vitamin and so you have too many or you can reset your whole order. All right, so we've talked about your cleaning system. We've talked about your laundry system, talked about meals. Now let's talk about scheduling. So scheduling in a house can be important because depending on how many people you have, who's going where, when do you have to be somewhere and how do you communicate that? So you have to have some sort of centralized. Calendar, whether that's an old school calendar on the wall, a corkboard, a dry eraser board on the fridge, or even an app or an Outlook or something like that, that you're inviting each other to. Everyone's gotta know what's going on in the household and when and where you have to be somewhere. So make sure you're using some form of scheduling system. Don't make it too complicated. just something simple. And when it comes to money and your budget, we've got to have a really good plan there. You don't wanna end up with late fees or missing bills or your power being shut off'cause you didn't pay that, So come up with a really simple system. Again, I love automation. I use the bill pay through my bank to pay as many bills as I can, automated my house. Payment comes out automatically. It's sent to them. But let's talk about how you set that up. It's very important to me that I don't allow people to pull money outta my bank account. I want to have my bank pull the money out and send it. And the reason for that, if you ever had a mortgage, get sold to a new servicer, and now you have to start making your mortgage payment to a different company. Sometimes they keep pulling that money out and it's really hard to stop it. Or have you ever had that gym membership that would not stop pulling money outta your account for eight months? So things like that. I don't like companies to pull money outta my account, but through your bank, most banks offer bill pay and it's super simple for you to go in and stop it. At any given time, you are in 100% of control. So in our house, we have a system like that. All of our bills that we can automate, we automate. I'm not a fan of things like power and water being automated because there can be things that happen where all of a sudden you have a very expensive water bill because maybe there's a leak out by the street or something like that. And so you want someone looking at those, not just automatically paying'em or automatically charging it to a card or coming out of a bank account. So on those, it's. Good to have. Who pays it and when are they paying it? So my husband handles all the utilities. As soon as they come in that day, he pays them automatically. That's his system, so he never has to forget. He checks the mail and as soon as he gets a bill. Right then he just goes online and pays it. But create that system for your family, whatever it is. Alright, so now it's time for our home hack. So our home hack is just some cool gadget app. Neat thing that I'm dealing with right now that I'm just really loving for the house and the one I'm gonna talk about today is very in line with setting your house up on a system. it is probably for those who have a little bit more complicated schedules. So it's called motion ai and it is an app. It also works as a desktop model, but it is an app that is. Pretty advanced into ai. we use it in our household as well as in our team because it allows us to schedule it also, if you would like, can allow every member of the family or workforce to see your schedule. So my, everyone in my family and all my team knows exactly where I am at any given moment in case they're trying to reach me and I'm recording a podcast and they can't, they know why I'm not answering the phone or if I'm with a customer and can't answer right, then they can see that it makes it. Super simple. So the home hack this week is motion ai. It's a really, really cool calendar app. It also has this awesome task formula on it that I love. So I can just tell my phone, Hey Siri, schedule this task in motion. And it will automatically schedule the task. I can tell it how long it's gonna take. When the start date is, when the end date is, and it will program it into my schedule anytime there is availability. So when I'm looking at my schedule and going from this listing appointment meeting to meeting with this, new seller, this closing, whatever, and it sees I have a two hour break, it will automatically plug those tasks in for me. It is awesome as well as I can invite people. So if I'm going to an event, my husband needs to be there, then I make sure and invite him. So it shows up on his calendar. He does have to accept it. But at least he can know, Hey, I need you to be here at this time with me. So it's really cool. Make sure you check out Motion ai. I will say it's a little bit more expensive than a lot of other apps, so if you don't have in-depth scheduling, maybe find something cheaper. But that's our home hack of the week. I hope you enjoyed it. This has been just my opinion. I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe, like follow, so that you've never missed an episode. Remember, this is adulting made simple.