A graphic of a chaotic and messy living room in need of organising and decluttering
Episode 107 – The Sweep

In this episode we are talking about something we see all the time in our clients’ houses and we know lots of people do it! The Sweep! This is essentially a quick tidy up of the home, where you go around with a bag or a basket and collect items around the home to put away. This leads to issues longer term.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter of podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your hosts professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:31  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 107 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. Now, in today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about something we see all the time in our clients houses. And we know lots of people do it. It's the sweep. Now, Lesley, first of all, I think we need to explain to our listeners, what is the sweep? I mean, it's, I think it's your terminology, I think, but I've kind of now taken it over. But I think you came up with a term, didn't you?

Lesley  1:11  
I think so. Yeah. So maybe we do need to explain it, I definitely think I do make my own little terminology up from time to time and hope that everybody else understands what it is that I'm talking about. So what I mean with the sweep is, someone calls you Hi, I'm just gonna pop in for coffee. Is that all right, and you're like, Yeah, that's fine. Just thinking about all the mayhem that there is in your house at the moment, you don't want to say no to your friend who wants to pop in on an impromptu basis for a coffee. But you don't want her to see the chaos that is in your house. And so you frantically go around your house with a carry a bag or a box or a bag, and you sweep everything into that bag off your countertops off your coffee table of your kitchen work surfaces, and you leave it in a spare room, put it under the stairs, put it in a cupboard, never to be seen again.

Ingrid  2:08  
That, and that's exactly where the problem lies isn't nice. We find these plastic bags, laundry baskets, boxes, and you're like, What is this and they're like, Oh, I had to do a quick tidy and I kind of put it down somewhere. And that's the problem. It's never to be seen again. I mean, if somebody would come to my house unexpectedly, nine out of 10 times, it's fairly tidy. But if something like that would happen, I would maybe take a box, put a few bits in it. But then of course get that box out later and put it away. But that's the problem. If there's a lot of chaos, and man, those bags with random things kind of are put down somewhere. Something else happens life happens children, schoolwork, everything. And then those bags and boxes. Never ever see the daylight again. But that's a big problem, because lots of stuff gets lost, doesn't it?

Lesley  3:07  
Yeah. And the problem is, is because you're clearing work surfaces and coffee table. So things where things naturally land, there can be some quite important things in there as well, some kind of very current things. And that's the problem, isn't it? So let's, let's talk about why people do the sweep, Ingrid,

Ingrid  3:26  
I think there really are like, okay, you know, somebody comes over unexpectedly. Or suddenly somebody decides, can I pop round over the weekend, and they feel probably a little bit embarrassed about the status of their house. They often don't do a lot of entertaining at home anyway, because they are embarrassed about the house. But some people you kind of have to let into your house basically. So they're like, Okay, let me just do a quick tidy, so at least looks half decent for when people come in, and then it's just, it just actually just all makes it worse, doesn't it? Really, it all boils

Lesley  4:06  
down to the fact that you should in principle, once your house is together, yeah, once you've done all your decluttering you've done all your organising, you've found a place for everything. Your daily reset or your weekly reset should mean that you can return your house back to normal fairly rapidly. But the weekend it might take a couple of hours. on a weekday morning, it might take half an hour, 45 minutes to get to that place. Sometimes it's longer depending on how many people live in your house. But once we start to let those things build and don't do those daily resets, there's lots and lots and lots of stuff in there. So it's all really interconnected, isn't it? The sweep is interconnected with emotions, which is embarrassment, guilt. And it's connected to the fact that we've not got a place for everything in our house. So there's a little bit of chaos in there. And it's all about putting on a facade to friends because we don't want them there. To judge us for the state of our houses, you know, and that's something that a lot of people who have lived in chaos or clutter, are definitely used to dealing with

Ingrid  5:09  
an adult. And I think it's not only visitors that pop around expectedly or unexpectedly, I think it's also when you're in a home and your table is very chaotic. And you suddenly decide, okay, I need to do some crafting or a school project has to be done, or the family suddenly decides they want to do board games on the table, and you need to clear a table, and then it kind of gets put to the side in a bag quickly, somewhere. So you can actually have a place to work, but then that bag ends up somewhere. And then suddenly, the next day or three days later, everybody's like, my stuff was here on the table. So where's it gone now. And if there's multiple bags of randomness that are lying about, then it gets the thing, it gets really overwhelming really quickly.

Lesley  6:00  
Yeah, and it's exactly the same in a kitchen as well, we suddenly decide that we want to do some cooking or baking or something like that, that involves a little bit more space than normal. We've got random bits of paperwork, and pens, and batteries and things from school that that are all over the kitchen work surfaces, and we need to get rid of them quickly. So again, we do a sweep of the countertop or the work surface. And we're back to square one, we have this carrier bag full of random stuff that has got nowhere to go, we put it away, and then we forget about it. So we've said never to be seen again, haven't we, but actually, we do see it again, we see it, we certainly see it in client's houses or when they're tackling spare bedrooms or Understairs cupboard. And quite often we've got that, gosh, I forgot that I even had that. I can't remember seeing that for two years or whatever. And these bags are tricky things to deal with, aren't they?

Ingrid  6:49  
Yes. And I think that's the problem with the sweep. These bags contain everything, you know, they contain indeed batteries that no longer work and that need to go to a battery recycling point. They have junk mail in them, they've got a half opened envelopes. Somebody found their passport in a plastic bag, you know, that happens like oh, like utter panic ensued because the passport was missing. And we found it in a plastic bag because somebody had done a sweep. But it can also be, you know, indeed exactly what you're saying. It can be pens, it can be an artwork that the kids have done. These bags contain so many different categories. And that's, I think, why they're so incredibly time consuming. Once you start to think of them, it's a bit like a handbag or a purse, you know, everything in here, anything under the sun goes in there. And then when you have to sort out five or six or seven persons, because people go from one thing to the next. It just takes a long time spare change different currencies, half a half use tissues, you know, dried up makeup. I mean, it's incredible. And I think that's why doing a house is a lot of work. But tackling those bags, because the stuff in there has to go to so many different places. And that's why it's so time consuming. So Ingrid,

Lesley  8:19  
why have we got this problem? Why have we got this need to do a sweep? What could we do to fix that problem so that we don't have to do a sweep again?

Ingrid  8:29  
Well, the thing is, Lesley, as sweep is actually it seems like a kind of perfect temporary solution, right? Let me just clear some space, and put it in the back and then I'll put it away. And I'll do it. We'll do a deal with it later. But the problem is that it's a temporary solution. Because if your house would be more organised and more decluttered, you wouldn't have to do with sweep because instead of sweeping it up, you can actually quickly walk around for 10 minutes and put it away. And the problem is that things don't have a home. And that's why they end up on counterspace is on services on tables, side tables in bedrooms. Now this stuff doesn't have a home to go to. So it gets left out for them tend to end up at some point in the back somewhere. And I know this is all age old saying a place for everything, everything in its place. But that does really work stuff has to have a home where it lives. A dead battery or a battery that works. They need to have a place in your home where they live. So you know, I've bought new batteries. This is the drawer where they go in this battery is no longer working. This is the pot or box where it goes. So it then goes into recycling. And if those all those small items don't have homes to go to, that's when they're left out. And that's how they end up in a plastic bag after a sweep. So you need Start finding homes for things. But also that means that you have to start working on your cupboards, don't you, Lesley? Yeah, so it's

Lesley  10:07  
a tricky one. I mean, if I just want to jump back to what I was talking about when we did the podcast last week with my children, we talked at one point about the basket. Okay, so a basket is kind of my version of a sweep effectively. So if I find things in my kitchen, in my hallway in my office, that belong elsewhere in the house, rather than take them one item at a time to put them back in children's bedrooms, back in my bedrooms, we have a basket at the top of the stairs, that effectively becomes a temporary solution, everything goes into the basket. But the key to this is that once every day, once every couple of days, the baskets contents get emptied back where they need to go. I don't put them away for the children, they have to do that themselves. But it's kind of that's almost like a sweet, but it's an organised sweet, it's a sweet with intention. So I'm not going to be stupid enough to carry on going back upstairs every five minutes with one item that I find that's not where it should be, I'm going to do that all together. Yes, I'm going to take one trip instead of 10 trips to put things away. But that's the key is you have to do some with that carrier bag. So there's no problem doing a little sweep, I would definitely suggest that having a basket is a fantastic way of doing that lots of people got stair baskets, all those kinds of things in aid. To me, that's an absolutely critical part of any function in home, is to have something like that just because you don't want to be going up and down stairs all the time. But something has to be done with that. So if you do your sweep when someone is coming round for a coffee, you need to remember after they go actually now I need to sort out the contents of that bag or that box that I did my sweep into. Does that make sense?

Ingrid  11:47  
Yes, let's see, that does make sense. But for example, in my house, in my hallway, I don't have a boss because because I don't have the room for it. But I put things on the stairs. And every time somebody goes up, they should take something up. It's normally Mom, it's normally me who does that I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. It's normally me who brings up the stuff. But I then hold five, six items in my hand. And I just walk around past all the rules, putting the stuff where it belongs. And it's in my system to do it all the time. And I remember my mum saying to me, never walk up the stairs empty handed, take something with you upstairs. Because of course, in Holland, we have very steep stairs. And we've got very small houses with very steep stairs. So everybody always had to take something upstairs. But I can hear her voice saying it in my head to do that, and I'm trying to teach the kids as well take this up to your room, take it with you. And then it doesn't get this mammoth task at the end of the day. And all these bags end up in the spare bedroom, because that's the thing. Everybody always says to us. But the room is so overwhelming, the rooms are overwhelming, because they know that there is five laundry baskets, 12 Amazon boxes, and 24 Carry backs from the local grocery store in there with random bits.

Lesley  13:10  
So it's an interesting one to talk about. So we really wanted to talk about it to make people aware that that is not a great solution. And a lot of people want us to tell them what to do to fix it. And this is where it's quite tricky. Because to get to a point where you don't need to do that. You've got to go through the emotional process of not feel embarrassed or guilty or judged. You've got to declutter and organise your whole home so that everything has got a place and so that you can then put it away when you're tidying up. And you need to incorporate a daily and a weekly reset into your house to make sure that the little bits of random things that life throws at us every day, are dealt with on a regular basis and don't build up. So a sweep is a thing. But the solution to a suite is huge. Because it means go through the last 105 podcasts and listen to everything that we've told you. And that's the answer. So it's quite a lot, isn't it recognising that that is something that you do. And then it's not a great solution. And actually to have one box with all these random bits that have got to be sorted out is a huge job. So try not to do that if possible. That's really a good starting point, isn't it? Yeah, I

Ingrid  14:24  
think so too. And I think what really helps as well is to, for example, make sure that all that random this doesn't come into your home in the first place. You know when you grab your mail from your post box, put that junk mail immediately in the recycling. When you open letters. Don't keep the envelope and the letter together immediately recycle that envelope. When you are out to the grocery store or when you're shopping try not to pick up the freebies that then are cluttering up your counter somewhere. So it's not only being more aware of that a sweep doesn't get you anywhere, but also being more mindful of thinking what actually comes into my house? And how can I prevent all this randomness in the first place, so I don't give myself so much work later.

Lesley  15:13  
Exactly, it's quite a big job, isn't it? So we're just gonna go here, go, don't do the sweep anymore. That it's really something that people are not aware that they do, and that how negative and how difficult it can be to deal with that. And actually how a lot of the things that you worry about all the time are in those sweep bags. Because on your countertops, you might have taken your wedding ring off to do your washing up, all of a sudden, it gets scooted into a carrier bag with all this random stuff and your wedding rings in there. We see all the time those bags, they were big deal. And this is very similar to a junk drawer, isn't it. But a junk drawer also needs to be organised. It's a very useful thing. We like to call it the drawer of organised things, don't we, rather than a junk drawer. But people do need that in their kits, you do need somewhere to keep random bits of batteries and a pen that you might need or some posters that you might need an odd time. You need that kind of thing in your kitchen as well. So it's not a bad thing to have that. But it can't become this big jumble of random things. You need to know exactly what needs to go in a junk drawer, and how that's going to help you to be more organised at home.

Ingrid  16:20  
Yeah, and I'm actually thinking, so maybe the listeners are maybe now listening while they're shopping. Or they're driving around in their car thinking, I do this, I do this lesson ingrates. Why am I doing this, and I need to start working on it. You know what, it's really starting one back at a time opening, finding them all from under your sofas from in the corners, under the tables, where are those bags and actually start to look at one bag a day, and just go right, I'm just going to set myself a mission. And I'm going to go through one bag a day. And I know I'm going to find in there probably some things for recycling. So have a recycling box there, I'm going to find rubbish in there to have a rubbish back there, I'm going to find stuff that maybe needs to go to the office. So you need to start to separate it out. And you probably need to create some space on where to do this. So maybe your first aim is okay, I'm going to make sure that I keep a table clear. That's my everyday that table needs to be clear, I'm going to take one bag out and I'm going to tackle one bag at a time. Because otherwise you get gripped by that overwhelm. And by that complete procrastination of I don't know where to start, it's so much. It's it's really making the decision, I'm going to do one bag a day or one back every other day, or how many backs there are, and make that commitment to yourself. Because otherwise, you will lose so much stuff. And you will lose so much time searching for things all the time. And we talk a lot in our membership about it doesn't have to be in the perfect place yet, as long as it's in the right room. And then later, you can find the right place in the cupboards. But it needs to go in your house where you would look for it. So a lot of people say to me, but Ingrid, you haven't organised house, I want a copy of your house. I want your house exactly to be my house. So can you just do your magic and create my perfect house because it like your house? And I'm like, but it doesn't work that way. Because you will look for stuff in a different place. And I would look for it. Sometimes I get a phone call from a client, Ingrid, I've lost this or that? Where do you think it could be in my house? And I'm like trying to visualise a house. I'm like, have you looked here? Have you looked there? Have you looked there? Because an item can only be in one or two or possibly three places to look for it?

Lesley  18:52  
Yeah, it's all about that logic, isn't it? And logic is very different depending on who is applying that logic. And that's the thing. But you know, when we're working, there are some things that are universally logical, aren't there, like stationery needs to be together. So there's only two or three places. But as you say, it could be in a very different room depending on the house that you're working in. So we've told people about the sweeping grid, we've explained what it is, and we've tried to highlight the fact that some people are doing it. So I hope the light bulbs are going on with people like oh, yeah, I'm doing that. And I need to do that. So how can we help?

Ingrid  19:24  
Well, let's see. That's exactly what we're doing in a membership, isn't it? I mean, we help people find homes for things. So we help them with that decluttering we help them with their organising, we help them with the storage. And we always say from the start, don't start with your worst room. You have to create space in other places of your home first, and then you can start to work on those chaotic spare bedrooms and those rooms of doom and all of those things. And it's so interesting because we see our members are like okay, bye about, because we have, we've got a whole roadmap where we say this is what you do first, and this is where you go next. And that's what you do then. And we show them with videos. And we should have show rounds over our own houses. And we have quick wins on how we do one tiny projects to compare a whole room. So if you've got everything in the membership, and we show with videos, how we do it in our own house, and we then say, Okay, this is the strategy you need to follow to have much more success in your decluttering people go okay, but I want to start here first, and then they go, you're right, I should have started where you said I had to start because it works, what you're telling me and I've got much greater success and and you see all the light bulbs going off in our membership with our members, don't we? Lesley.

Lesley  20:48  
I think the interesting thing is, you know, we take people through a process, you know, we've talked about our reset your home cycle, where it's thought by thought room by room, day by day, and the sweep is almost an add on to the day by day, isn't it. And so he's right at the end of our cycle. And so there's an awful lot that needs to come before you need to tackle those emotions, you need to tackle those rooms, find a place for everything. So you can put everything back in back in its place. Think about your daily resets. And then what you're left with is just a few random bits that need tidying up from this morning. And then it's not something that needs to be shoved into a carrier bag and put underneath the stairs.

Ingrid  21:25  
And that involves work. It this is not a quick fix. This is not a let's just tidy up for a couple of days. And we'll get there. This involves work. And that's why exactly why we've got our membership where we take people through that whole process and we teach them. And this is something you can learn to.

Lesley  21:43  
Yeah, absolutely. So right, Ingrid, well, listeners,

Ingrid  21:45  
are you now thinking to yourself, hmm, I do this too. I do this all the time. This is not good. I've got bags of stuff. And owl, it actually has a name and it's called the sweep and I need to really work hard on trying not to do this anymore, because actually, I'm just making things worse for myself. Well, maybe this is the perfect opportunity for you to join our membership and learn as well how you can learn to be decluttered and organised and not having to do a sweep anymore. So that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed it, and you are inspired to take action. And we appreciate you taking the time to listen today. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with others. Maybe your friends and family would love our show too. And on our show notes page on our website, you can find all the sharing buttons. If you want more handy tips and advice from Lesley and I, you can find us in lots of places. We have a fab support a Facebook group called the declutter hub community, which is a great starting point. And we are on Instagram and Facebook page too. And you can find us at declutter hub, we'd love to see you there. Take a look at members dot declutter hub.com To find out more about our VIP membership. If you don't want to miss the next episode, please subscribe to the declutter have podcast and it will pop into your notifications each Friday. And we've been asking for reviews which make a huge difference trust and we just love reading them. And thank you so much for everybody's putting in a review. It's absolutely fantastic. So if you love listening, please leave us a review too. So thanks so much for being here, and we'll see you next time.

Outro  23:25  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com for more inspiration, and don't forget to tune in next week.
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