What Your Home Knows About You That You Don't | Ep 7

What if your home was trying to tell you something? Not about your stuff but about your life.

In this episode, I'm introducing something I've been thinking about for a long time. I call it The Home Blueprint, and it completely changed how I look at my home and my clients' homes. After being in hundreds of homes, I started noticing that I could read someone's life just by walking through their space. 

Every room reflects something back at you — your habits, your identity, your relationships, your energy.

Today I'm walking through the three spaces that impact your daily life the most. I call these your Daily Triggers — what you do, what you eat, and what you wear. That's your entryway, your kitchen, and your closet. And as I go through each one, picture your own home and notice what comes up.

This isn't about organizing tips or buying better bins. It's about changing the way you see your space — because when that shifts, everything else shifts too.

Download The Home Blueprint — a free guide to seeing every space in your home and what it reveals about your life: https://discovertheorganizedway.com/the-home-blueprint/

🎙️ Tame the Chaos is a podcast about the mindset side of organizing and what it really looks like to create a home (and a life) that works, hosted by San Diego professional organizer Elyse Metzger. New episodes every other week.

Connect with Elyse:

Instagram: @the.organized.way

Facebook: The Organized Way

YouTube: @theorganizedway

Website: discovertheorganizedway.com

In the San Diego area? I work with clients for home organizing and move management. Book a free consult.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want you to try something with me today. Imagine you're floating above your home looking down. It's a bird's eye view. You can see every room, the hallway, the bedroom, every corner. These are the physical spaces in your home. Now imagine that instead of the typical labels like your kitchen, closet, bedroom, each space was labeled with what it actually represents about your life. Your kitchen doesn't say kitchen, it says the heart of the home. And your closet doesn't say closet, it says how you see yourself. This completely changed my view of my home and the way I organize. And that's what we're talking about today. I'm Elise Metzger and welcome to Tame the Chaos. Have you ever walked into a room in your house and just felt off? So you clean it up, rearrange a few things, maybe do a little organizing. It works for a few weeks, but maybe that feeling of this just isn't working comes back. We've been taught to look at our home in a really flat way. The kitchen is where you cook, the closet is where your clothes go, the entryway is where you dump everything when you get home. So when something feels off, we think the answer is just to organize it better, find a better system, or try harder. But what if the space isn't the problem? What if it's the way that we're seeing the space is? When you change the way that you look at a space, the way that we organize the space changes too. It's not just about making a space look good, but making it actually work for you. Honestly, to make our spaces work for us, we need to think a little bit deeper. It's more than just shuffling things around and maybe adding some bins. And that's exactly what I started seeing after years of organizing other people's homes. After being in hundreds of homes, this is how I look at every space now, both mine and my clients. It's like flipping a switch. So today I'm going to walk through three spaces that have the most impact on your daily life. These are the spaces that we live in every day. I call these the daily triggers. It's what you do, what you eat, and what you wear. What you do is your entryway. It's how we exit the home and enter the home. Then we have what you eat. It's the kitchen. Our food and our water are in the kitchen. And then what we wear is the closet. Our clothes live in the closet. As I go through each space, imagine your own home and how these spaces make you feel. The first one is the entryway. This is the transition between the real world and your inner world. It's the threshold to your personal life. It's the line drawn between you and the real world. It's where we can exhale from the outside pressures. Whether you enter your home from the front door, side door, garage, this is a really busy area. And to me, it's the area that screams, hi turnover, because it's fast, it's quick, and it needs to be efficient. This area can either be stressful or calming. It definitely shows your daily habits. But also, in practical terms, it needs to be efficient. This is where we drop our bags, take off our shoes, hang up our jackets, and drop all of our stuff. It's where the shoes pile up, the dog greets you. A lot is happening here. This transition can make or break a moment because it sets the tone for when you're coming home or leaving the home. If it's really hectic or cluttered, it can make you stress out and possibly trigger some anxiety. This area creates the mood to when we return home or exit the home. If we do return home and have a place for everything and we're able to put everything in its place, then you can just drop it all and not think anything of it. You don't have to worry about it. Next time you come back home or leave the house, take note on how you feel. Do you feel stressed out when you walk in the door or is there a sense of calm? Next, we have the kitchen where we eat. Like I always say, the kitchen is the heart of the home. We typically think of the kitchen as where we cook and eat. But when we step back and really look at the interactions we have in the kitchen and dining room, it's connection. It's where the most interactions happen with our family, housemates, roommates, our visitors. We come together to eat meals, have conversations, and just be together. Those little moments in the kitchen turn into long-lasting memories, like baking cookies with your kids or cooking home-cooked meals for your family. I always have that warm, fuzzy feeling when my son is sitting at the kitchen counter. Me and my husband are making dinner. We talk about the day, future plans, silly things. We just enjoy being together, relaxed and not rushed. Then we eat dinner and go on with our nightly routine. That's our typical weekday routine. It's our shared moments together. That sliver of time spent in the kitchen each night is one of my favorite moments of the day because it's our bonding time. It happens in the kitchen and I cherish it. That's why I set up my kitchen for moments like these. Think about what happens in your kitchen beyond just cooking. What conversations do you have? What are your favorite moments in the kitchen? Next, we have the closet, what we wear, and how we express ourselves. This is our most private space. Nobody sees it but you and maybe the people that live with you. It holds everything: who we were, who we are, and who we want to be. This is the secret part of ourselves. It holds our desires, our insecurities, how we see ourselves, and how we want others to see us. Of course, our closet has clothes that we wear on a daily basis, but it also holds those items that we no longer wear. It's those memories we hold on to. It's outfits that we hold on to because it reminds us of a time in our life, not because we wear them, but because we don't want to let go of that memory. It's the aspirations, what we hope to become, saving that outfit for when we lose 10 pounds, or maybe the jeans that we hold on to from college, or maybe the outfit we plan to wear someday. Those are the memories you're holding on to in the form of clothes that you never wear. I have been in countless closets, and in every closet I've been into, there's at least one item that is in there just for the sole purpose of being a memory. It's not something that somebody actually wears. It's more common than you think, and it's often not thought about. Are you holding on to anything in your closet? Are you merely holding on to something that serves just as a memory instead of actually using it? What story is your closet telling you? I have more really interesting insights on the other areas of your home, like your bedroom, your bathroom, even your laundry room. In the show notes, there is a link to download my home blueprint. It gives you a full picture of what your home actually reveals about your life. The topic of this episode isn't about having a perfect home or judging yourself for having a messy garage or messy kitchen. It's about getting curious and understanding that the spaces in our home serve us on a deeper level than we think. Your house isn't messy because you're failing. It might be reflecting something that needs your attention in a completely different way. Once you start viewing it differently, you can stop blaming yourself for the way you feel. You don't have to fix everything all at once. You just have to start seeing it and acknowledging it. It's a process. Because you start seeing your home this way, you'll naturally start making different choices. Not because you found a better system, but because you're finally seeing what the space is really about. Sometime today, when you're home, pick a space that you gravitate towards. Tune in to what the space is reflecting back at you. Just notice it. That's it. See what comes up. We'll go deeper in future episodes. Thanks for listening. Check in the show notes for everything I mentioned today. And don't forget to subscribe and like. I'll see you next time.