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Episode 2 – What is decluttering, organising and tidying?

As Professional Organisers we use the terms decluttering, organising and tidying all the time. We believe they are three different actions and in this podcast we discuss the difference between the three and ask ourselves if there is an overlap. We believe it’s best to declutter first, then organise and tidy on a regular basis.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The Declutter Hub Podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman.

0:28  
Welcome and hello listeners to episode two of the declutter hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid and I'm Lesley. If you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is the show for you. In today's episode, we're talking all about the difference between decluttering organising and tidying. So Lesley, we are both professional organisers. But what does it actually mean? And is there a very clear difference between decluttering organising and tidying? Or do these things kind of overlap?

0:57  
They definitely definitely overlap. Yes, we call ourselves professional organisers. We quite like that fancy term, I think. But yeah, actually, what we do is we do decluttering we do organising and sometimes we do tidying as well. But for the most part, our job is to declutter and organise other people's homes or our own homes as well,

1:16  
definitely. Yeah,

1:19  
it's really sort of grey area. And it's when we're at this stage in our journey, where most of our listeners will be where their house has got a lot of clutter in it that they do want to sort out. I think the important thing is that we make sure that decluttering organising and tidying is done in the right sequence. So I think it's, you know, it's got to be done in the right order. Now, the important thing,

1:39  
I agree with you, I think they are three very different things. And I think that's why it's so important. We discuss it in this podcast, because if you met if you confuse the terms, you might start off on with the wrong activity.

1:55  
Yeah, I mean, if we're given an example of a child's bedroom, so how many times have we gone to our kids go upstairs untidy room when the room is a complete mess? And the poor child has got absolutely no idea whatsoever? Yeah, where to even start? And the reason is, we've said tidy room. And what we're actually saying to them is go declutter your room, get rid of the stuff that you don't want. Organise your room into some kind of semblance of a system, and then tidy it and then probably clean it as well. Yeah. And so that's the thing. That's where it all gets messed up. And that's when things become overwhelming. So I think if we can split it down for our listeners, if we can split it down into those things. Yeah. So there's very clear goals in mind, then I think that's the important. Yeah, really.

2:35  
So I mean, if I'd love to let's start at the beginning, then. So let's talk about decluttering. First. So for me, decluttering is basically deciding what do I keep? And what do I let go off? And that is what it comes down to in my, in my mind. And but, of course, the tricky part is how do you decide what you want to keep and what you want to let go of? So

3:03  
I think that's the important thing for me is, and you hit the nail on the head there with the word deciding. So I think decluttering, for the most part is about making that decision and then executing practically on that decision. So yeah, you know, actually putting stuff to go somewhere or recycling or reusing. So yeah, it's the decision making process. And that's the hard bit for most people. To be fair, most sometimes people find the decluttering bit bit hard, some people find the Organising bit hard. But the decluttering is where the emotion kicks in, sometimes and the guilt kicks in and so on. So that's the difficult bit gonna talk so much more in loads of different podcasts about all the emotions associated with decluttering. But for now, just want to make it clear then that the decluttering Is that is that sort of emotional decision making process about what stays and what goes from your belongings?

3:53  
Yeah, I think what's really helpful is that I asked my, myself or my, my clients when I work in homes with with my clients that I say, do you actually use it? Do you need it? And do you love it? And if the answer to all of those three questions is no, I actually don't use it at all. And I actually don't know why it's in my house and I don't like it even and then it's maybe easier to gonna go oh, oh, that's okay then. So if I don't need it, I don't use it. I don't love it. It can actually go and it can make somebody else happy. It can go to a charity shop. It can go if it's broken, it can go into the rubbish bin or if it's paper or plastic, it can be recycled. So I think that's the for me the first phase into those different activities. Yeah, absolutely.

4:42  
And it's got to start with that initial you know, before we can do anything else, we have to you know, downscale the excess in our homes. Then we can move on to the next step. Well, yes, organising. Yeah. So do you feel that we've explained decluttering? Well, is there anything else that we want to say about that?

5:00  
Well, I think what I think what also I want to explain to the listeners is that if you are thinking about decluttering, a lot of people think that decluttering is about putting stuff in nice looking boxes. So they start to buy things to get more organised. But I think you and I both are in agreement that actually having a happier home and having a Yeah, how you could explain that a home you really are you feel good in starts with paring down the number of things you own, because it's much easier then to decide where everything lives. So I think, for me, indeed is step number one is that decluttering first,

5:46  
yeah, and there's always decluttering. But I think it's fair to say as well that there are some homes where decluttering takes place all the time, and there's not an excess. Yeah, and so you can jump straight to the stage of organising what you've got. And it's all about those organisational systems in place. So not everybody needs to declutter, although for most people, it's an ongoing thing. So for me, yes, as the clutter fairy, my house is fairly, you know, fairly pared down with the amount of stuff that's in it. But I can still easily get five, six bags worth of stuff because I've got a busy family, we buy things, we bring things in. And so there's always decluttering to be done. It's a continuous process. Now I wanna Yeah, no,

6:23  
I mean, I've got two kids that are growing up. I mean, every season, there are clothes that no longer fits. And instead of keeping them in the wardrobe, they're taken out, they are either given to somebody else who's got a boy or a girl that's still not indecisive. If there's the clothes are still in good condition. But if they've been, you know, worn and they've been there done, then they can go to the charity shop, and they can either sell them office rags or trying to sell them in the shops or whatever. So yeah, I agree with you. I think decluttering is definitely step number one in the process of getting a more organised home. Yeah, and a more decluttered home. So let's then look at organising. So we've kind of alluded to it already. How do you feel about what is organising then if you if it's not decluttering?

7:13  
So I think organising is taken to the next level. So decluttering? Is the decision making about what's going to stay in what's going to go the organise the Organising of your home is deciding where it's going to live. So this kind of old, a place for everything and everything in its place that we talk about all the time in the decluttering world, which is absolutely, if only it were that simple. Yeah. But yeah, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get a place for everything, because it's only when we get a place for everything that we can put it away at the end of the day. So what we've bought every home is not the same. And so the scale really and the difficulty then is trying to work out what's going to work because often in homes, it's not been working. And that's why it's things have not gone in the right place. And it's never going to work because the system is just not set up right for that individual family. Because obviously, a family of with six young kids or a school age is going to work very differently to someone who lives on their own in a studio flat, or an elderly couple, you know, it's going to be very, very different depending on the size of your house, how much storage you've got, what makes you tick, what activities you do. And so organisational systems are very different. But it is that thinking about what's going to work for me what's not working already, and fixing Ludo and going along with things that do work, but changing things that don't. So I think that's what organising is for me.

8:29  
Yeah. And I think as well, I think it's in with decluttering you make a decision if it if you want to keep it or not. And I think for me, if you're organising your basic deciding where stuff lives. Yeah. And like you said, that's different in everyone's homes, because nobody's got the same lifestyle, the same family, the same home. Having said all of that, you need to put stuff in a place where it makes sense to you. So for example, sometimes my clients say to me, well, Ingrid, but I don't know where the right places and I will say well, where would you look for it? Yeah. And that will be the place where to live? I mean, I can make a suggestion. Of course, if, if somebody says to me, Oh, Ingrid, I've got absolutely no idea. Where does she live? Okay, well, you've got an option to put it here, here or here. But where would you look for it? When it makes

9:23  
sense to you? Exactly. It's about trying to find something logical, but what's logical to me is not logical to someone else. So it's how you know, you know, we all learn and work in very different ways, you know, and we have to sort of factor that in. So organising is different things to different people.

9:39  
Yeah. And I think also part of organising is not only putting stuff in the right place, but also using stored bulk storage boxes. And tissue boxes. I don't care mushroom trays, you know, it doesn't really matter. But to actually containerize items that go together, so group items together. So for example, if I have a drawer in a in a in a chest of drawers, and my underwear and my socks live in there, I would want to put them in two different sides. You don't muddle them all up, because then it's more difficult to find. But I think

10:25  
it's fair to say it's good to keep it simple. Well, isn't it in terms of containerization. But if we think about, you know, you've given the example of an underwear drawer, the one that springs to mind, for me is a kind of junk drawer, we've all got them, we all need them, you know, but we try to have like a kind of, it's not really called a junk drawer in the professional organising world, but it kind of is, as well, and, but so I've got a junk drawer. What that means is, it's things that I want to hand really close to me in a kitchen, so it's gonna be some pens, you know, I might have some old batteries in there that I'm waiting to take to the recycling, I might have my placemats in there. I might have a few medications in there that I take every day, you know, things like that. But what my junk drawer looks like is an organised place. And so because it's containerized Yeah, everything's containerized. And so yeah, it's probably got the same thing as everyone else's junk drawer in it. But actually, I've got little sections for everything. So it doesn't look junky anymore.

11:17  
Yes, I think that's true. And I think by putting stuff in containers, and it can even be you know, in an office in a when you've got a lot of stationery, and a lot of pens and scissors and staples. And if you divide up that drawer, which is little trays and little boxes that are open, it's easy to see what it is, but because it's all assigned to its own little place. Yeah. It all of a sudden is organised.

11:44  
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's about the same amount of stuff, but anywhere where there's big volume. So underwear is a good example, a junk drawer stationery those where we've got big volumes of things, and we need to divide them. Yeah, divide and conquer. Yeah.

11:57  
Right. So now I think we've got clear what dechlorination with organising is. But then you've got something called tidying. I mean, that's something completely different. I mean, I do it all the time. I think and I've been, you know, I mean, a busy house with with your children. So I tidy up a lot, but because I think I don't leave everything until the last minute every day. I find it easier. But what do you think is the difference between declutter, organising, and then tidying so what's tidying for you?

12:28  
I think tidying is something that you do, you know, that you need to do regularly. So for me, you know, I like to have, there's a couple of times in the day when I want my house to be in inverted commas, tidy, doesn't mean clean, you know, because that's probably only going to happen once a week. But it means tidy, so it means everything's kind of put away in its place. And so I psychologically, I don't want to come home from work to an untidy kitchen, psychologically, I'm fine, after dinner, sitting down watching a bit of TV, and leaving five or six plates for the following morning to deal with. And so I have a couple of times in the day where I kind of use this term reset on sort of reset my house. So so I will tidy up twice a day. And then on a weekend, I might do a bigger tidy, because there's certain things that might have, you know, codes that have gone, that sit on the coat stand or whatever, or whatever, and, um, shoes that might need to go back upstairs. So a few more things that might go so I might do a bigger tidy, but I would say, you know, tidy, and I'm probably only given half an hour a day, and then maybe an hour on the weekends, so it doesn't become but if you leave that throughout the week, yeah, then it becomes this mammoth task and what you've got to say, I've got to clean the house. Well, actually, you've got to spend five hours tidying it before you can even embark on the cleaning, and that sort of clean and tidy and get all muddled together. Yeah. So I think I think that's really important. You know, to do that resetting every day, we can talk a lot more about that and how that might work in other podcasts, but just give you an idea of what tidying looks like for me. Yeah, for

14:02  
me as well. Before I leave the house in the morning, I make sure that you know all the breakfast items are put in the dishwasher. I might not turn the dishwasher on yet but um, I've put it away. I might say okay, I'm gonna put some stuff in my recycling bin. So my clean my kitchen looks nice and neat. When I come back in from working and I agree with you, you know, when something has to go upstairs, I put it on the stairs. Then the next time I woke up, I take it with me and I put it where it belongs. I sometimes use an example. When you have to write a card for somebody or wrap up presents. You you you gather your your wrapping paper and your scissors and your sticky tape and your card and your envelope. So when you've wrapped the presents, for me, the next step is to put the items back where they came from. So that's tidying for me as well. So you finish that little job up, so you don't leave it for another time. No, at that moment then and then you put back the scissors with your other stationery supplies, you put the wrapping paper back with the other wrapping paper. So you finish that little job. So it's not for me only daily tidying of empty cups of coffee or tea or water glasses or things like that. It's also when you cook a meal. While everything is in the, well, your everything is in the oven. And I already do a bit of a tiny of the equipment that I've used as well. So you don't create a backlog for later.

15:37  
I think it's fair to say you and I are in that mindset. And that's why we're in the job that we're in. So, you know, and but I think that's the challenge for a lot of our listeners is going to be, you know, changing that mindset to become, you know, because it's hard work. Yeah, yeah, maintaining a Homer, you know, particularly when you've got a big family, is it a hard job? And you've got to be continually working on it? Yeah, you know, but I think the important thing is not to make it become this overwhelming job. So for me, I'd rather spend half an hour a day or whatever it is tidying up and keeping on top of it, rather than it become this mammoth job, I don't want to spend my weekends. tidying My house is mean I want to go out and enjoy myself. And so therefore if you can just sort of chip away at it while you're doing other things, kind of typical multitasking really, like you say, while you're cooking dinner, make sure that things are loaded with things that that kind of thing. Yeah. So that's tied in for me.

16:27  
I think also what you will see that once you like you alluded to earlier, once you start to tidy up your house on a more regular basis, it gets much easier to run a Hoover around, or to wipe a kitchen counter, and not let the cleaning build up so much that it's going to take you two days over the weekend to clean your whole house. You can also start to chop that up in smaller chunks, it's easier to do it I think tend to clean so yeah, I think for me, we've got everything discussed that we need to do in this podcast. And I think the difference so listeners, how do you feel about decluttering organising and tidying? Do you have clear in your head now what the different activities are? Because that's it for this episode. And we hope you've all enjoyed listening and are inspired to take action. And think about what we've spoken about today. Try and get it clear in your own mind what these three terms mean to you, because we will use these terms a lot in our podcasts and also in our declutter hub community. So thanks for taking the time to listen today. If you'd like to get more tips and advice follow us on social media. And if you don't want to miss the next episodes, subscribe to the declutter podcast. See you next time.

17:44  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Declutter Hub Podcast. Check out declutter hub.com For more inspiration, don't forget to tune in next week.
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