#38: You Decluttered. Now How Do You Keep It That Way?

You decluttered the room. You gave everything a home. You feel AMAZING. And then two weeks later, your shoes are sitting next to the shoe cubby, the Amazon box is almost but not quite in the recycling, the clean laundry has been hanging in the laundry room for three weeks, and somehow every cabinet door in your kitchen is open. So... how do we actually KEEP our homes decluttered? That's what I'm talking about with professional organizer Rana McAnear. We get into the part of decluttering I don't think we talk about enough: maintenance. And specifically, why that last 10 percent of a task can feel so damn hard for an ADHD brain. Rana helped me notice all the tiny points of friction in my own house that make me less likely to put something away. A sticky drawer. A squeaky door. A container with a lid. A laundry basket in the “right” place instead of the place where the clothes actually land. And my personal favorite: the shredder that I never use because it's in my husband's office. The big takeaway from this conversation? If you keep failing at a system, maybe you don't need to try harder. Maybe you need to change the system. We talk about making things easier to put away, creating systems around how you actually live, why picture-perfect organization can be impossible to maintain, the dreaded “last 10 percent,” and why having less stuff may be one of the simplest ways to have less mess. This is for anyone who has ever cleaned up their entire house, and then one week later, look around and wondered: How did it get back to THIS so quickly?  Get in touch with Rana Here: @Mama.Rana.Organizing [email protected]   (720) 515-4807