#617 Making Your House Work For You

#617 Making Your House Work For You

by | May 14, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free Podcast, Decorating, DIY, Home, How to, Organizing, Podcast | 1 comment

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617 – Making Your House Work For You

Kathi sits down with Tenneil Register to explore practical ways to make your home work for you, not the other way around. In this episode, they discuss: 

  • Designing spaces around your natural habits and routines
  • Examples of functional home solutions (such as paperwork organization)
  • Why entryway, kitchen, and bedroom spaces are key areas in your home
  • The power of taking photos to evaluate your spaces with fresh eyes

Kathi and Tenneil will be sharing their 3 challenges spaces (Entry, Eat, Rest) pictures! Take the challenge and you can post your pics over at Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy group. We have the most amazing corner of friends who cheer each other on!

Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released, or here to receive Kathi’s Clutter Free Kit!


Kathi’s shoes that guests love and it keeps her home clean at the same time.


Here’s a peek at Kathi’s kitchen now — head over to Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy group to find out what changes she would like to make (to love and use the space even more!)

 

The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home

Homesteading [hohm-sted-ing]
noun
1. an act or instance of establishing a homestead.
2. the act of loving where you live so much that you actively ignore the fact that your house is trying to kill you on a regular basis.

For Kathi Lipp and her husband, Roger, buying a house in one of the most remote parts of Northern California was never part of the plan; many of life’s biggest, most rewarding adventures rarely are.

Kathi shares the hard-won wisdom she’s gained on her homestead journey to help you accomplish more at home, gain fresh perspective, and give yourself grace in the process. Here’s a handful of the lessons Kathi shares:

  • Prepare before the need arises
  • Everything is always in process, including us
  • Your best household solution is time and patience
  • You don’t have to do everything the hard way
  • Be open to new and better ways of doing things
  • A lot of small changes make a huge difference.
    Highly practical, humorous, and inspirational, The Accidental Homesteader will encourage you to live with more peace, joy, and contentment.

Order your copy of The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home here.

Favorite Links:

A House That Cleans Itself

Sign up here for Kathi’s newsletter or here to receive her Clutter Free Basics Kit!

Clutter Free Resources:

Learn more about Clutter Free for Life

Join our Clutter Free Academy Facebook Group

What key areas in your house would you like to focus on? Share your answer in the comments.

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

  • Leave a note in the comment section below.
  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest 

 

Tenneil Register

Tenneil Register can be found creating, repurposing, decorating, gardening and welcoming guests to their reclaimed barn storefront. She and her husband, Cowboy, established rural roots for their blended family of 7 in their DIY ranch home in Iowa. Connect with her on Instagram for practical ideas to reclaim your home or visit R7Reclaimed.com.

 

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

Kathi (00:00)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And guys, one of our newer members of our team, but she’s got all the style, my friends. And she is, I love how she’s stylish and practical at the same time. You guys, it’s Tenille Register. Tenille, welcome back to the podcast.

Tenneil (00:27)
Thank you, I’m so happy to be here. And I love that you say stylish and practical because that is my goal. Yes, yeah, you nailed it.

Kathi (00:34)
That’s your intersection, huh? That makes me super happy, because that’s really, when we have these discussions, that’s really what comes through. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, because I think it’s so interesting. Something you said, and I don’t know if I’m quoting you correctly, you can always say, no, Kathy, that’s not what I said. Let me tell you the right way to say it. But we just had the Abundant Home Conference.

which is a conference about, it’s for our clutter-free community, but it is, we did a lot of like clutter-free adjacent things. So we had Tanya talking about hoarding and we had Roger talking about beginning gardening and we had you talking about design in your home and function. And you said, I don’t work for my, this is what I remember, but again, please correct me.

I don’t work for my house, my house works for me. Did I just get the spirit of what you said or is that actually what you said?

Tenneil (01:42)
I don’t know for sure. I think, I bet it’s what I said. Here’s what I can tell you about the heart of that, Kathy, is I can vividly remember, I mean, I was probably 20 years old, I bet. I’ve always been one to buy houses, flip them, fix them up. Homes are important to me. And I remember standing in line at the Christian bookstore and they have $5 books that you can add onto your purchase. And one of these books is called A House That Cleans Itself.

Kathi (01:43)
Okay! Okay.

Okay, please.

Yeah.

Oh, I remember that! Yes, it was by Harvest House, yes!

Tenneil (02:15)
And I remember laughing and handing it to the cashier and saying, I’ll take a house that cleans itself for $5, sure. And that is what really framed from my very earliest days when I was really too young to even own a home for goodness sake, like my mindset about my house that I wanted it to work for me. So.

Kathi (02:22)
Yes, yes

Right?

Okay.

Tenneil (02:41)
Yeah, that’s where the spirit of it comes from.

Kathi (02:42)
Okay, so here’s a question. Do you remember something that you started doing differently because of that book?

Tenneil (02:50)
So the main takeaway from that book was I started taking snapshots of a space and thinking about what I really was using that space for.

Kathi (03:01)
Oh, interesting. Wow, and that book was before digital, I mean, at least camera phones, I would think.

Tenneil (03:09)
It was 100% like I had to develop the film from it. Okay. Right.

Kathi (03:13)
Oh my gosh, that’s a commitment, right? You had to go to the Walgreens and get those photos developed. That’s impressive. Okay, so what did you learn from taking pictures inside your house? This is fascinating to me.

Tenneil (03:21)
Yes!

Yeah, so you see your habits, right? Because this isn’t, I clean the room and then I take a picture of it. This is, you know, after three long work days, I take a picture of the entryway or I take a picture of the kitchen countertop. That’s when you start to discover, I opened the mail next to the kitchen sink, right? I leave my coffee cup near the front door regularly, right?

Kathi (03:34)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Ah, okay.

Right, right.

Tenneil (03:57)
where it might make more sense to have the mail by the front door and the coffee by the kitchen sink. But whatever your habit is, is your habit. And rather than trying to retrain yourself, you rework your space.

Kathi (04:02)
Yes.

Right.

Okay, so this is really interesting to me because you talk a lot about this. You’re not trying to change the people in your house. You’re trying to change the environment.

Tenneil (04:22)
Yes, like I think it’s an act of love where we accept the behaviors of ourself and those around us, and we find solutions that work for our natural behaviors.

Kathi (04:29)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, so tell me some things where you’ve seen that conflict between personal habits and home organization and what did you do because also we’re not saying kids leave your stuff everywhere. I don’t care if you eat, you know, in your bedroom and leave the dishes. I mean, that’s not what we’re saying, right? If that’s what we’re saying, I have to, we have to end the conversation now.

Tenneil (05:01)
Absolutely, it’s not what we’re saying. And in case my youngest who’s still at home is listening, it will never be okay for you to leave your empty dishes next to the couch. That’s a hot button. However, on the issue of snacks, one of the difficulties is our family room is on the lower level, our kitchen is on the upper level, the main level. And then you have this parade of snacks, right? Up and down, up and down. So…

Kathi (05:09)
Good good to know okay, okay?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right. Mm-hmm.

Tenneil (05:30)
when we had the time, the energy, the budget, we put in a snack bar just off of the family room.

Kathi (05:37)
Ah, so tell me about this snack bar. I’m gonna need a picture of this too.

Tenneil (05:43)
Okay, so it’s just got a kitchen sink and a microwave and in clear containers we have the cereal bars, the pop tarts, the popcorn, the things that you eat snacky that kind of make a mess, that don’t require like kitchen prep, and then it’s there for the easy taking and because they’re in clear containers I can kind of restock them and it’s on open shelving.

Kathi (05:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Tenneil (06:09)
So it helps me with the grocery shopping part of it and it helps them with, I’m not like getting out all of these boxes of things. I just select my snack. There’s a garbage can nearby. And it was almost like a trade-off. If I make it easy for you to get snacks, will you make it easy to clean up your snacks?

Kathi (06:17)
Right.

Right. You know, we did something very similar because we have retreats here in our house and Roger didn’t always want to be, you know, going down at 530 in the morning, you know, when women were downstairs and stuff like that. So up in our bedroom, actually in my office, we’ve put a coffee maker, some snacks and a microwave. And we don’t have a sink really, but we’re not doing heavy prep up here and

Tenneil (06:49)
Yes.

Kathi (06:54)
It is, and oh, and the other thing, the most important thing that we put up here was a little fridge. And so one, it has helped us drink more water because we’ve got cold water all the time. And it’s made such a difference in our lives to be drinking all of this water all the time. But I also have like my crystal light packets up here. And so it’s just made it so, yeah, there are less dishes coming upstairs. There’s a less.

Tenneil (07:01)
Oh.

Kathi (07:22)
There’s less everything. Because we think it’s just the kids, but then all the kids move out and you’re like, oh, it wasn’t just the kids. Darn.

Tenneil (07:29)
That’s my third coffee cup next to the nightstand.

Kathi (07:32)
Yes, it’s so true, right? Okay, so you and I have both made these adjustments in our house that say, okay, we recognize the behavior. We are not the people on TV who just eat at the kitchen table. In our house, we do very little eating at the kitchen table. I’m not gonna lie. Because that’s not what we wanna do, and we’re adults. We get to do what we want.

So what are some other adjustments that you have made that have made a big difference?

Tenneil (08:04)
think a lot of people are going to relate to this. We have an island and our entire life happens at the island. That’s where people eat, that’s where we fix food, that’s where we come and go and drop our keys and our sunglasses, and it’s also where all of the paperwork lands. So we have an office but we were never going to carry this paperwork from the island back to the office, file it, and then come back and finish our conversation. That wasn’t going to happen.

Kathi (08:10)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Right. Yeah.

It’s so true, right?

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Yeah.

Tenneil (08:33)
And so a wall just adjacent to the island, we put clipboards on a nail for each person. And then that makes it very simple. Whatever the paper, whichever person the paperwork coordinates with, and we have one for pets too, I can just slap that paper on the clipboard.

Kathi (08:40)
Mm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Oh, nice. Oh, that’s really interesting. Okay, we wanna hear more of these ideas and of course we’re gonna need pictures. We’re gonna have to take a quick break and then we’re gonna come right back and we’re gonna get all the scoop from Tenille Register. We’ll be right back. Okay, friends, we are back with Tenille Register and we’re talking about how do you make your house work for you instead of you working for your house? I’m gonna ping pong back. I’m gonna tell you something that

I have done and that is I have invested in a really good floor mats. Like the door mats, like outside, we have door mats outside our house and inside our house in all the main doors. So you have ample room to get your shoes cleared off and where we live between the dirt, the garden,

The chickens you really want to have those Dormats there and the other thing we’ve done is we have indoor outdoor shoes by every exit and that has made a huge difference in our house and the other thing we’ve done which I will be happy to post a picture about is we have a rack of Probably I don’t know maybe 15 different pairs of slippers

in different sizes that get washed every time somebody wears them. But it keeps our floors so much cleaner. And people love these slippers, by the way. They they just adore them. And it’s really, really helped. So I will be sure to share a picture of that as well. Tenneil, what’s another example of you don’t work for your house. Your house works for you.

Tenneil (10:42)
So another example would be how we use our personal spaces. So in each bedroom, thinking about how do we get alone? This is a lot of people in a house. And so what are some things that you need, like your reading zone or your art zone if you’re into art or your gaming station? And I feel like when we invest in

Kathi (10:49)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yes, yes.

Mm-hmm.

Tenneil (11:12)
the person’s going to enjoy that personal space, then we free up more of our common space.

Kathi (11:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm, okay, okay. Yes, yes. So give me an example of something you’ve done.

Tenneil (11:28)
Okay, so an example would be a daughter who is really into music. And we have a piano and so all of that music stuff could end up in this music space. But I didn’t want all that stuff there, right? So what do you do? You get a music stand for the bedroom. You put a shelf on the wall for the instruments.

Kathi (11:37)
Yeah.

Right?

Okay.

Tenneil (11:55)
We have great hooks for guitar hangers for the guitars in the house. So that all of these things that could land on the floor that are super important to someone, right? You’re saying like, I love that you love music and I love that you want these instruments so much that here’s the space where you can hang it and use it and love it.

Kathi (11:58)
Yeah.

Right, right.

Yes, I think that’s really important too, because what you’re doing is you’re saying, I’m committing this space to you because I honor your passion and what you do. I have learned not to honor the passion until I see that it’s a long-lasting passion because I can’t tell you the number of things we invested in because it was good for the kids and ended up on, you know, Facebook free groups.

Tenneil (12:32)
Hahaha!

Kathi (12:44)
And so, yes, but I think you’re absolutely right. We did kind of the opposite thing when we first blended our family in that we took half our living room and put an L-shaped desk there, and we got each of the kids a computer. Because we wanted them to be using their computer in a common space. And this was before all the smartphones and things like that.

But everybody got their own chair. So we invested well and heavily. So it wasn’t happening like on the couch or in the dining room or something like that. They all had this space. And we could see what they were doing and it was good for them, yes.

Tenneil (13:23)
Yes.

I love the intentionality of both. What do we want for common space activities? What do we want for personal space activities?

Kathi (13:29)
Right?

Yes, it looked like we were running a call center. I’m not going to lie where everybody’s on their headphones and at their monitors. But, you know, at the time, that’s what we wanted to have for our family. So if somebody is struggling with no, I’m a slave to my home. That’s how I feel. I feel like I work from my home all the time. Where would you ask them to start investigating what they could change?

Tenneil (14:00)
So I would start with the pictures of where you walk into the house, a picture of wherever it is you eat, and a picture of wherever it is you try to rest.

Kathi (14:03)
Yeah.

So entryway, rest, and eat. Okay, why would you start in those places?

Tenneil (14:15)
Yeah.

Because I think those are the things we spend the most time doing at home. And they’re all transitional.

Kathi (14:24)
Okay.

What do you mean by transitional?

Tenneil (14:29)
At the entryway, we’re in and out, out and in and out, and we’re taking things with us. Where we eat, that’s something we do multiple times a day that requires things to go with it.

Kathi (14:35)
Okay.

Yeah. Got it, okay.

Tenneil (14:44)
And then similar with the personal space, you’re getting ready routine. And so it’s really about recognizing what are the routines that I want to support from this space because we’re really not talking about stuff, we’re talking about living. And this.

Kathi (14:54)
Okay.

Yeah, it’s so true. And recognizing, I think it’s so important, recognizing change in your house or change in yourself. Like, this is the first time in my life I’ve had long hair and that comes with a lot of ties and bands and scrunch, all the things and more hair product than I’ve ever used in my entire life. And for the longest time, I’m like, why is this bathroom no longer working for me?

Well, because things have changed. I now have long, I never had hair accoutrement before. I just never did. But now I do. And it’s like, okay, recognize that and set it up so that it’s actually easy to use. It’s so true, it’s so true. And to say, you know, but also to recognize when I’m over something.

Tenneil (15:42)
Right? You need a little dish for all those hair bands and clippies, don’t you?

Kathi (15:52)
Like, I’ll just be honest with you, right now guys, I am not cooking sourdough bread, I’m not baking it. There’s just not room in my life at the moment. Let me just put it this way, I haven’t made it a priority. So I’m not spending a lot of time doing that. So it’s okay for me to put all that stuff away. I don’t need it out. I can reevaluate my space and say, you know, we don’t eat like this anymore. Or we don’t eat like this now. That may be even a better phrase.

you know, if you have a whole bunch of like, cake mix, and you’re like, well, we just found that I’m gluten free, get rid of it, you know, give it to somebody who’s actually going to use it, not save it for the time where you’re magically ungluten free, you know, or whatever, what is the transition you need to recognize in your

Tenneil (16:41)
Yeah, and I think that’s where the like assessment comes in, right? Whether you’re visually taking a picture with your eyes, whether you’re journaling about the space, or you’re taking an actual photo, it’s sort of this assessment of how am I living in this space and what would I like to do differently.

Kathi (16:44)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love the assessment because I think we can become clutter blind sometimes. I know I can. To walking into a space and it’s like, I’m not really looking at it. You know, it looks okay. But, and I’m not saying to be harsh or judgmental. But, you know, I’m just noticing like right now, I’ve got a giant extension cord in my office. I’m thinking, how long has that been there? What?

What did I use that for? You know, and it’s like, okay, well, I probably used it for when I was filming something, but that could go away now. And taking a picture would be like, oh yeah, I could get rid of that, and it would make it feel better when I entered the space. So I love the idea of taking those three pictures. I think I’m gonna go do that. I’m a little scared to post them though, I’m not gonna lie. Okay. Okay, I’m gonna post the three picture. Yeah, okay.

Tenneil (17:49)
Oh, we want to see them.

Cause wouldn’t that be such a fun challenge, Kathy? If you post a picture of the space and you list five things you can get rid of, donate, put away, whatever, right? Like such a five minute exercise.

Kathi (17:58)
Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. Post the entryway, where you eat, and where you get ready or where you sleep. Okay.

Tenneil (18:15)
Yeah, like your personal space, you know, some people that’s in their bedroom, some people that’s in their bathroom.

Kathi (18:21)
Okay, okay, I’m gonna do it Okay, two of those three spaces don’t look too bad right now We won’t talk about the other one. Okay. Yay Okay, here’s the problem guys I know it we are recording this in the middle of March and I’ve got I still have my nativity up because I really like It and it’s just weird that in the middle of March. I still But you know what it’s fine, it’s fine. It’s

Tenneil (18:49)
You love Jesus a lot, Kathy.

Kathi (18:51)
I love Jesus a lot. I love baby Jesus even more. Oh, Tenille, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

Tenneil (19:02)
Oh, thanks for having me and enjoy assessing your spaces.

Kathi (19:07)
Yeah, are you gonna take the three pictures as well? I’ve just given you more, you know, I’m like, oh this podcast will just take 20 minutes And now I’ve given you homework. Don’t you love it?

Tenneil (19:10)
What?

100% I’m going to go take pictures of those spaces because I know they are all in disarray right now.

Kathi (19:23)
Okay friends, we’re gonna challenge you to go take those three pictures because I think it’s gonna help you really evaluate What you want to change and what you want to do differently? Okay, you’ve been listening to clutter free Academy I’m Kathy lip now go create the clutter free space you know Okay friends, you’ve been listening to clutter free Academy. I’m Kathy lip now go create the clutter free life. You’ve always wanted to live

 

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#615 Breaking Free from Decorating “Rules”: Creating a Home You Love Part 2

#615 Breaking Free from Decorating “Rules”: Creating a Home You Love Part 2

by | Apr 30, 2024 | Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Decorating, Home, Perfectionism, Podcast, tips and ideas | 1 comment

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615 – Breaking Free from Decorating “Rules”: Creating a Home You Love Part 2

Are you struggling with judgmental voices from your past that insist your home décor must be showroom perfect?

Shun the shamers in your head and learn how to break free of their nitpicky demands!

Join Kathi and bestselling author Myquillyn Smith, also known as “The Nester,” as they continue their discussion about Myquillyn’s new book, “House Rules: How to Decorate for Every Home, Style, and Budget.” They’ll delve into:

  • Why you don’t have to fill every empty space
  • Using the concepts of “house hushing” and “one sane space” to quiet your quarters
  • Getting past perfectionism to love your space your way

As Kathi says in today’s episode, “if you love your house enough, it doesn’t matter what other people think.” Tune in now to learn how to make this your motto!

Order a copy of Myquillyn Smith’s newest book House Rules here. 

Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released.

Would you like to receive Kathi’s Clutter Free Kit in your inbox? Sign up here.

The Clutter-Free Home: Making Room for Your Life

When it comes to your home, peace is possible…

Longing for a place of peace from which you can love others well? The Clutter-Free Home is your room-by-room guide to decluttering, reclaiming, and celebrating every space of your home.

Let author Kathi Lipp (who once lived a life buried in clutter) walk you through each room of your house to create organizational zones that are not only functional and practical but create places of peace that reflect your personality. Kathi will help you tackle the four-step process of dedicate, decide, declutter and “do-your-thing” to reveal the home you’ve always dreamed of, and then transform it into a haven that reflects who you truly are meant to be.

If you’re also feeling overwhelmed by the care and upkeep of all the stuff under your feet or sense that your home is running you, instead of the other way around, come discover how to create a space that doesn’t have to be showroom perfect to be perfect for you and the people you love.

Order your copy here!

Favorite Links:

Myquillyn Smith’s website TheNester.com.

Myquillyn Smith on Instagram @thenester

Order Myquillyn’s newest book HOUSE RULES: How to Decorate for Every Home, Style, and Budget here

Take Myquillyn’s decorating quiz here

Clutter Free Resources:

Learn more about Clutter Free for Life

Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook Group 

Where is your “one sane space?” Share your answer in the comments.

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

  • Leave a note in the comment section below.
  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest 

Myquillyn Smith

MYQUILLYN SMITH, also known as “The Nester,” is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Welcome Home and Cozy Minimalist Home. For the past 17 years, she’s been encouraging women to embrace their space—imperfections and all—and make it their own. Her previous homes have been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Cottages & Bungalows. She recently purchased and redecorated a1905 Queen Anne Victorian home in Morganton, North Carolina, the inspiration for her new book House Rules. She’s never met a home she didn’t love.

Find her online at TheNester.com and on Instagram @thenester.

Transcript

Kathi (00:00.174)

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And guys, I just, yeah, if you heard last week, you know I’m gushing, I’m not gonna gush all this time, but it’s Myquillyn Smith. The book is House Rules. You guys, she is my favorite decorating guru.

And I know you shouldn’t have gurus. You shouldn’t because you gotta create your own style. But she has helped me figure out who I am and how to live in my house. And I want her to do the same for you. Plus, you guys, she gets people who maybe wanna keep too many things in their house. She is not, she’s not judgmental. She understands our people. Myquillyn welcome back to the podcast.

Myquillyn (00:57.51)

I’m so glad to be here. You are my people. I love it.

Kathi (01:01.722)

Yes, yes, we need to we have to have a lot of crossover in our communities. I’m 100% And guys if you haven’t listened to last week go back and listen to that that’ll give you a lot of context for this week But I uh, I may love this book as much as I loved your first book Again, it’s House Rules: How to Decorate for Every Home, Style, and Budget And the reason that I love your book so much is because well

This is called House Rules. You don’t have a lot of rules or you teach us how to break the rules that maybe, I don’t know if other people feel like this, that I’ve had some very judgmental voices, house decorating voices in my head from the past and maybe kind of kept myself a little trapped. Have you ever worked with anybody like that?

Myquillyn (01:55.125)

Yeah, I mean, I have myself, I have experienced that as well, thinking I am going to get shamed or I’m gonna get told off or someone comes in my house and says, we need to get those drapes hemmed and when are we going to do this, that and the other to finish the house? That’s the kind of, yeah, I’ve experienced that myself and had to pull up my big girl pants and say, this is it, this is what I’m choosing to do so that I can

Kathi (01:57.62)

Okay.

Myquillyn (02:24.897)

have the rest of my life be full and look the way I want it to look.

Kathi (02:29.822)

You know, I remember when we sold our last house, it was, I loved it, I loved it so much. But the one thing my husband and I just said, okay, you know what, it’s just not as important to us as it is to other people. And you guys are gonna, everybody’s gonna scream when they hear this. We had popcorn ceilings. And in California, they’re very expensive to get rid of. And it’s like

we had to make choices and people would come in and say, and what are we gonna do about those popcorn ceilings? I’m like, if that’s the first thing you notice in my beautiful home, then, you know, my decorating style is not for you. It just isn’t. And so I think it’s so interesting what some people fixate on when they’re in other people’s homes. And we think, oh, nobody’s gonna notice. And it’s just weird that some people do, isn’t it? That what…

What are we going to do about those drapes on the floor? I mean, we’re going to enjoy them and love them and see that they pool beautifully. Ha ha.

Myquillyn (03:34.362)

Feel free to do something with your own money and your time.

Kathi (03:40.198)

Yes, you have volunteered. Well, okay. So I think that if you love your house enough, it doesn’t matter what other people think. It really, really doesn’t. But you have to love it. You have to say, this is what I’m doing to make my house as loving and lovely as possible. I want to dig into your rules here, because we’ve already done seven and five, you can’t ruin something you already hate and resourcefulness is the ultimate resource. But let’s talk about

Okay, this is for my cluttery girls. Rule 11, luxury isn’t having more, it’s needing less. Talk to, okay, I’m not gonna say a word, just talk to us.

Myquillyn (04:21.693)

Okay, I was reluctant to learn this because all of my life I feel like luxury is having everything at your fingertips, no matter what you could possibly need. That is the very definition of luxury. So we moved into this house and it’s a 1905 Queen Anne Victorian. And I’m pointing out the master bedroom is like the largest master bedroom we’ve ever had. We’ve never had a big bedroom.

And when we moved here, we had a bed and like my nightstands were like this big because our last house, the room was this big. So they’re like, pip squeak. I mean, we had nothing. So our bed was in there. I purchased a little sofa from the previous owner. So I had a little sofa at the end of the bed. I ended up buying a pair of nightstands and I had a couple lamps. I put up drapes. There were shutters on the window.

And one day I walked up to the room, I had painted it a little darker, beautiful muddy blue, one of my personal neutrals. And I walked up to the room and it just felt just right. I couldn’t believe it because there was no gallery wall. There was no like 300 beautiful pillows. There wasn’t three layers of rugs. There wasn’t like layers of throws. It was like so simple. There was no vignette on both of the.

Like I nothing it was so quiet and I felt like rich I felt like I was staying in a high end hotel. It was like the lack of chaos and excess was luxurious. And I have heard that my whole life. But to experience it. I was like, Oh, I get that now I get like the almost the privilege of not having to fill up my space with all of this.

Kathi (05:48.612)

Oh.

Kathi (06:06.135)

Yeah.

Kathi (06:10.752)

Mmm.

Myquillyn (06:11.677)

just in case stuff was extremely peaceful and serene and welcoming and I love beautiful things I still have you know stuff in my home but that is one space in my house that I probably will continue to keep really sparse and it feels great.

Kathi (06:21.421)

Yes.

Kathi (06:32.234)

Okay, well, the conviction is here. I have, our bedroom is big. It’s the biggest bedroom we’ve ever owned. And I love our bed. I’ve got a Suzani print couch that is just, it’s everything I love. And then I have the gray chair. And the gray chair collects all the things and has no business being in there. But I had room.

And my cluttery brain says, but you have room for it. But it brings me no joy. Why do I still have it? Why did I need you to come on a podcast for me to say, okay, it’s time to get rid of it?

Myquillyn (07:11.349)

Because our default is that empty space is like incorrect and needs to be filled. Empty space is waiting to be, it’s unfinished, which is not true. We need margin in our lives, in our decor, in our schedule, in so many things, but like I’ve learned to, sometimes I can’t get it through my brain. Like actually I would enjoy having less in my family room. So I do a little practice, I call it house hushing, where I just tell myself, you know what?

Kathi (07:37.944)

Yes.

Myquillyn (07:39.605)

we’re gonna give it 24 hours. I’m gonna just take all my little cute tchotchkes and smalls and my clocks and my pillows and my plants. And I’m gonna take everything extraneous out, just have the furniture, and I just put it in another room like crazy in the dining room on the table for 24 hours. And it’s like zen and relaxing and without fail every time I choose out of my own free will.

Kathi (07:44.857)

Mm-hmm.

Myquillyn (08:04.981)

to not bring as much in. No one has to, I don’t have to like pick up everything and ask if I love it or if it brings me joy. I don’t have to like clear and make decision fatigue. I just experience the results first of like a quieted simple space. And then I can choose if I want to get rid of something. It’s like, to me, it’s backwards decluttering and it works.

Kathi (08:10.944)

Right?

Kathi (08:25.59)

Yes. It’s the creep. It’s the creep of life. Like, I love this little thing. I’m going to put it here. I love this little thing. I love this little thing, but I don’t love the 72 little things that end up in my kitchen in six months if I don’t do something about it. And I’m not talking about, you know, the bread tie. I’m talking about the little planter or, you know, the little thing that my friend gave me.

Myquillyn (08:41.761)

Yes.

Myquillyn (08:49.975)

Yes.

Kathi (08:53.214)

And it’s okay to enjoy things for a season and then release them. And I’ve also learned it’s okay to just have that thing that my friend gave me out in the fall. It’s not a fall decoration and I love it, but it doesn’t need to be out 365 days a year because I enjoy a quieter space. I really do. I love that. And if you live near me,

Myquillyn (08:57.762)

Yes.

Myquillyn (09:18.133)

Yep.

Kathi (09:22.23)

Check Freecycle for this really beautiful but unnecessary gray chair that needs to that needs to go Okay Again for my clutter free people you are in our brains friend rule a one sane space Talk about that

Myquillyn (09:40.693)

That came about when we were living in a fixer upper and every room was in chaos. We didn’t have a sink in the kitchen. We had like plastic sheets as walls, you know, a weird electrical thing. You could get electrocuted if you weren’t careful. And I just remember thinking, okay we got to have, we have to feel like a little bit normal. We can’t have every room be in chaos. So even with the plastic walls, I just got some paint and I painted over because it was like

Hunter green walls with the wallpaper. I pulled down the border real quick. Didn’t prep it perfectly, just thought, I gotta get something up and we’ll do it better in a few months. Threw a white paint on the wall, put a rug down, got our sectional in there, a couple pillows, a lamp, the television, the dog bed, like we can watch Andy Griffith, we can watch Survivor at night. A place for our family to feel relaxed and like.

sanity in the midst of living in a complete fixer upper. And even if you’re not in a fixer upper, if you’re, the relief of having one space that feels however you need it to feel, maybe it’s more minimal, maybe it’s more cozy at this stage in your life, while you do things in your other rooms is really powerful.

Kathi (10:57.986)

Not 20 minutes before we started these interviews, I was on a call with a nurse talking through her clutter situation. And she’s sneezing through the whole thing and is just sick and run down. And she goes, but I need to declutter, I need to declutter. And like, you cannot make any decisions right now. What I want you to do is just, where do you spend most of your time when you’re

as you’re recovering, she goes, in my living room. I said, I just need you to have a clear spot where your eye line isn’t seeing any clutter. And we can deal with this when you have more energy to make decisions and to do what you need to do, but you have to have a place to rest. And if your eyes are distracted by things, all these hanging chads, all these things that still need to be done.

You can never rest. Your brain is always flipping on, oh, it’s the hunter green paint. Oh, the dog’s bed isn’t in here because I don’t wanna get stuff on. You just have to have one place that you can open your eyes and rest. And this is, I love the name of it, One Sane Space. I’ve never thought of it. I always say you just have to have one place where you can escape, but Sane Space says,

No, I can rest and recover in this area. I love that so, so much. Okay, we’re going deeper into the rules, my friend. Number 98, make your own house rules. So explain this, and I wanna hear a few of yours, and I’ve got a couple of my own as well, because I have done this, but explain this concept.

Myquillyn (12:49.761)

Well, I give a book of 100 house rules and that’s one of them. I think that we should all come up with our own rules to live by. You know, about 10 years ago on Pinterest, it was a big thing. Everyone was making their own wooden sign with like house rules, you know, dogs on the sofa and whatever, no, whatever. It was like all fun things. I love that. Like that’s one of the reasons that I liked this name for the book because I think culturally it conjures up that memory of like the fun.

Kathi (12:53.292)

Right?

Kathi (13:04.212)

Yes.

Myquillyn (13:18.541)

house rules, the relaxed house rules. But one of my personal decorating house rules is that I like my life full of color, but I like my house full of neutrals. I am persnickety and I change my mind. In the spring, if I am furniture shopping, I will buy teal furniture and blue furniture. And in the summer, I want red and pink furniture. And in the fall, I want rusty colors and muddy. And in the winter, I want white. Like I have learned, I can tell when I buy a piece of furniture,

that’s a color based on this, because it was like the season, whatever season was, the color I’m craving. I cannot do that, because I can’t buy a new sofa every four months. So, I learned I am way too like finicky and wanting to change my colors. So I will get all of my base things neutral. And then if I want colored sheets, if I want colored pillows, if I want a colored sweater, I’ll put up books with colors and flowers with colors.

Kathi (13:51.788)

Oh, yeah.

Kathi (13:57.856)

Right.

Kathi (14:10.798)

Hmm

Myquillyn (14:15.585)

but I’m not gonna buy my main pieces in color because I wanna change my mind, I wanna change it up too much. That is not a rule for everyone. Someone else might have the opposite rule and they should. So that’s my example, what is yours?

Kathi (14:24.77)

Right.

Kathi (14:30.946)

So I’ve got a practical one and I have a fun one. So in our house, flooring needs to be functional, not fabulous. And I just needed to do it because, I mean, we live where there is a high chance that chicken poop will get in our house at one point or another. We’re just not precious about stuff. And we need stuff that is functional. And we can put the pretty stuff

at waist level or above. But yeah, the floors just have, and I would never have chosen the floors that we have downstairs, but they’re exactly the right floors. The previous owners knew what they were doing when if we needed to, we could take a hose to them. We don’t do that, but we could if we needed to. And then the other thing is, my style is things we love.

And that’s just, there is nothing in my house that I don’t love. I used to have things in my house that other people loved. Like we had, I bought a pillow one time for Christmas and in red letters it says Joy. And I was so sad to put it away after Christmas. I’m like, is Joy just reserved for December? And so now I have this Joy pillow out all year long.

And it makes me so happy all year long. And it’s like, we only have things in our house that we love. And if there’s something in our house that we don’t love, we have to question, you know, I don’t love our emergency kit. We have it in our house, but it’s not something I’m displaying. And so that’s our style is things we love. And it’s never going to fit into any genre, but I…

I wake up every day and I’m happy. So

Myquillyn (16:31.021)

That is perfect. The whole goal is for you to love your home. You have arrived. Like when we love our home, we use our home. So do not change any of that.

Kathi (16:34.71)

Yeah.

Kathi (16:39.34)

Yes.

Yeah, and I’m reluctant to leave, because the world is not suited for me in any way, shape, or form, but my house is. Okay, this one. You’re a genius, this is all I’m gonna say. Rule number 99, make a we did it list. This is genius, please expand upon what this concept is.

Myquillyn (16:50.605)

and I’ll see you next time.

Myquillyn (17:06.989)

Gosh, I think when it comes to home, we are so focused on all the stuff we have to do and all the undone decisions and all the ceiling fan that needs to be replaced and we haven’t gotten to the back porch yet and the flooring in there. If we can take a moment and take stock of all the things we have done, I do this at least every year and look back like everything in our house, we do it with our goals too, like what we did with our family, but.

Kathi (17:16.91)

Hehehehe

Myquillyn (17:34.561)

You and everything counts. If we made a chicken coop, if we replaced the faucet, if I’m like, and I dusted behind the sofa, write that down, you know, change the light fixture, whatever, it all counts. I think we would be shocked at what we accomplish in a year, in a month in our home. We need to give ourselves credit for all that we’ve done in caring for our home.

Kathi (17:59.246)

And do not discount making a chicken coop because let’s be clear the one we got was advertised as like a Michaels do-it-yourself project and it turned out to be a Home Depot expert pro project It I mean it is it is a fabulous chicken coop, but holy cow. Yes I think it’s we have such I do this with decorating I do this with God, but what have you done lately? What have you done lately like?

Myquillyn (18:12.301)

It’s true.

Kathi (18:28.074)

You know, yes, I have worked so hard on my house. I forget what it was like to move out of the upstairs of our house to put flooring down. You might as well burn the house down and start over again. It is so much work, but it’s done. And it’s done for the next hopefully 20 years. But it’s so easy to focus on, yeah, but the kitchen light fixture. Like I haven’t done the kitchen light fixture.

Myquillyn (18:43.894)

I’m dead.

Kathi (18:56.858)

And I love that you’re taking stock. And this is so true in our cluttery communities. We always talk about, we declutter and then it just gets to look like that again. But here’s the thing, once you get the stuff out of your house, you never ever have to deal with that book or piece of furniture or piece of clothing ever again for the rest of your life. You may have to deal on what you’re bringing into the house but look at what you’ve done.

And we’re so proud when our kids do something, we need to also recognize ourselves for the accomplishments we’re doing. Because let’s be honest, some of these projects are hard and they take big grownup decision making that is sometimes, and you’ve saved money to do things. And if you’ve brought in outside help, that doesn’t always go the way, and you have to negotiate with the people you live with. And so anytime you accomplish something, it is…

It is a win. And guys, if you are ready to, especially if you’ve done some decluttering, I really think one of the best things you can do for yourself, and I know I learned this term from you, after you’ve quieted your house, you can take a look around and say, is there something that I want to do? Because now that my house isn’t screaming clutter at me, it can reveal its personality. It can reveal who it is.

And guys, I’m just gonna really encourage you. Take a look at this book, House Rules, How to Decorate for Every Home, Style, and Budget. Myquillyn this is, I get so inspired when I spend time with you. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom today.

Myquillyn (20:37.341)

Oh, Kathi, you are so dear. You could, you know all of this. You don’t even need me. Like you are beyond. So I just, so happy to know you and man, you are so wise.

Kathi (20:49.758)

Okay, even if that was true, here’s what you do. You help me be brave. You help me not get, I think so many of us who deal with clutter are such, we’re perfectionists in such hard ways. We don’t do anything until we know we can do it 100%. And you’ve given me permission to say, even if I think I can do it, I should try. I’m probably not gonna burn the house down. I probably am not going to have to repaint the whole room. And…

You know, maybe some $20 decisions are okay to take a flyer on. So I know a lot of what you teach, but you helped me be brave to enact it. And that’s what I want for everybody in my community. So thank you. Thank you, friend.

Myquillyn (21:36.749)

Oh, happy to be here. Thank you.

Kathi (21:39.69)

And friends, thank you for being here. You are the best part of us gathering each week. You’ve been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter free life you’ve always wanted to live.

More Posts 

#613 5 Steps to Unstuff Your House

#613 5 Steps to Unstuff Your House

by | Apr 16, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free Podcast, Decorating, DIY, Home, How to, Organizing, Podcast | 0 comments

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613 – 5 Steps to Unstuff Your House

Are you feeling trapped in a home overstuffed with, well, STUFF? You’re not alone! In the latest episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi teams up with Tenneil Register, an incredible mom who mastered the art of living clutter free – even in the tight quarters of a fixer-upper with a blended family of seven! Tune in for their tips on:

  • Making your house a home instead of a storage unit
  • Using things you love as creative storage solutions
  • Letting go of things that are no longer your vibe

In this episode, Tenneil mentions using repurposed items to decorate her space. Here are the promised photos!

And here’s Kathi’s favorite Suzani couch:

Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released, or here to receive Kathi’s Clutter Free Kit!

 

The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home

Homesteading [hohm-sted-ing]
noun
1. an act or instance of establishing a homestead.
2. the act of loving where you live so much that you actively ignore the fact that your house is trying to kill you on a regular basis.

For Kathi Lipp and her husband, Roger, buying a house in one of the most remote parts of Northern California was never part of the plan; many of life’s biggest, most rewarding adventures rarely are.

Kathi shares the hard-won wisdom she’s gained on her homestead journey to help you accomplish more at home, gain fresh perspective, and give yourself grace in the process. Here’s a handful of the lessons Kathi shares:

  • Prepare before the need arises
  • Everything is always in process, including us
  • Your best household solution is time and patience
  • You don’t have to do everything the hard way
  • Be open to new and better ways of doing things
  • A lot of small changes make a huge difference.
    Highly practical, humorous, and inspirational, The Accidental Homesteader will encourage you to live with more peace, joy, and contentment.

Order your copy of The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home here.

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Have you made creative storage solutions out of objects meant for something else, like Tenneil did? Share your answer in the comments.

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Tenneil Register

Tenneil Register can be found creating, repurposing, decorating, gardening and welcoming guests to their reclaimed barn storefront. She and her husband, Cowboy, established rural roots for their blended family of 7 in their DIY ranch home in Iowa. Connect with her on Instagram for practical ideas to reclaim your home or visit R7Reclaimed.com.

 

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

Kathi (00:01.463)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And guys, we love her. She may be newish to you, but she is going to become a regular over here at Clutter Free Academy. You guys.

It is my friend, Tenneil Register. Tenneil is a business owner. She has the cutest little store you’ve ever seen in your entire life. She runs an Airbnb. She’s had a blended family and is one of the coolest, most stylish people I know. Well, let me just call it, it’s country stylish, right? Okay, so welcome Tenneil. And when I say country stylish, I’m not saying, I’m not making that go down.

We were just talking about how Dollar General is, what’d you call it?

Tenneil (01:05.364)
is the rural girl’s Target

Kathi (01:07.455)
It’s so true, right? Like, you know you live out in the country when you’re like, oh, I could use that as decor. Like, it’s a different thing, right? And I mean, I just love it. And you have such an eye for that kind of stuff, which I do not. And so I love to see you decorating and stuff, but you had to get your house decluttered before you could make it all your own, didn’t you?

Tenneil (01:37.394)
I absolutely had a challenge of a lifetime when we bought our house after blending our family.

Kathi (01:43.851)
Okay, so I want to know the stats, like how many people, how many square feet, like how many his, how many yours, how many ours, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Tenneil (01:54.222)
Okay, so stats is five acres, 1800 square feet on an upper level. Yes, and then we have a basement, but it was unfinished.

Kathi (02:01.847)
I didn’t know it was that small

Kathi (02:07.64)
Oh my goodness. 18. Okay. Uh, how many people did you have?

Tenneil (02:12.13)
So I brought one to the table, he brought four. So there was five kids plus the two of us. So that made what we call our seven.

Kathi (02:14.359)
Right. Okay, oh.

Tenneil (02:23.28)
and

Kathi (02:23.351)
Okay, yeah, by the way, okay, so Roger and I did 1400 square feet, four kids, but one of them’s like, I’m out of here. Cause she was 18 and she didn’t wanna share a room with a 13 year old, which we totally got. But it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done when it comes to house and clutter and all the things.

Tenneil (02:45.802)
Yes, and we didn’t have all of them living with us full time, but there were times they were all here and we wanted everybody to have their own space. So in the house that we bought, it was a fixer upper, like there were no floors, just sub floors, and it had five bedrooms on that 1800 square feet. So you can imagine how small the kitchen-living room combo were to have five bedrooms in that 1800 square feet.

Kathi (02:49.956)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (02:54.917)
Right.

Kathi (03:01.384)
Oh no. Oh no!

Kathi (03:09.079)
Yeah, right.

Holy cow, that is a ton. I mean, that is just a ton of people in such a small space.

Tenneil (03:15.09)
So.

Tenneil (03:20.658)
and all of those people come with stuff. And when you’re new to a blended family, your own stuff is really important. I can remember such long arguments over what to pack in a suitcase so it wouldn’t be over the weight limit and so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed with the amount of laundry and things to keep track of. When Jesse and I got married, I had one three-year-old kid that I was pretty OCD with.

Kathi (03:28.135)
It really is. It really is.

Kathi (03:48.545)
Yeah.

Tenneil (03:49.187)
So transferring this to a large group of people, whoa.

Kathi (03:52.567)
Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot. And for all of you out there listening, we all have that one seemingly insurmountable clutter challenge. Maybe a parent has passed away and you’re bringing all their stuff to your house, or you’re blending a family, or you have to downsize quickly because of a financial situation or a health situation, or…

you are taking, you know, several of my friends who are Gen X or in the boomer generation, their kids are coming home with, you know, their spouses and their kids. And so these are all huge, huge situations. So when your house gets stuffed like that, like it’s almost like yesterday, okay, Tenneil this is a terrible illustration, but I have to share it now.

We went to a place called, I think it’s called Bad Donuts. I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s something like that. And what they do is they give you a donut. Roger and I have been wanting to try it. Oh, it’s called Bad Bakers, that’s right. And we’ve been wanting to try it. So we got this donut and they give you, I’m not joking, a medical syringe filled with cream that you stuff into this donut and this donut like puffs up. So by the way, it’s one of the best donuts I’ve ever had in my life.

But that’s how your house can feel like during these circumstances, right? It’s a weird one, but yeah. Yes.

Tenneil (05:19.254)
that’s an excellent illustration because you love your donut and you love your home and then when you fill it with something it kind of feels overstuffed.

Kathi (05:29.767)
Yes, and that’s exactly what was happening yesterday. I love that. I didn’t even pull that out. But yes, I love the donut I love this cream filling. It was a chocolate cream filling. Oh my goodness. It was amazing But yes, it felt like too much. It was getting everywhere Like i’m not even joking. I took Moose in for her doctor’s appointment I get back in the car and i’ve got this streak of chocolate on my face. I was so embarrassed, but you know what? If I have to be embarrassed, let me be embarrassed by chocolate. So

I, we’ve come up with five steps to unstuff your house. So I want to go through this with you and let’s figure out how we can help people who are in these circumstances, um, get through it. So the first step that you and I talked about is acknowledge and accept. So tell me what that looked like for you when you and Jesse got married and your house felt out of control.

Tenneil (06:22.422)
Yeah, so I think one thing is acknowledging the clutter issue. It’s not a people issue. It’s not a family issue. It’s an issue with stuff that needs to be changed and can be changed. So this isn’t about changing like our relationship with people. This is about changing our relationship with stuff so we can improve our relationships with people.

Kathi (06:26.691)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Right.

Kathi (06:35.062)
Right.

Kathi (06:41.731)
Oh, it’s so true. And I think you have to give people a vision for it. Like, we know that this stuff is causing anxiety in our house. And we want to change that for everybody. Because it feels like it’s the people who are it’s such a good point Tenneil it feels like it’s the people who are giving you anxiety when a lot of it could just be the abundance of stuff, because that really can raise anxiety.

Tenneil (07:10.09)
Yes. And what am I holding on to? Like, why is that stuff bothering me? So for example, shoes by the front door, right? Am I really upset that the people are here and they took their shoes off? No, that’s what I want them to do. I want them to come here and I want them to take their shoes off. What the real frustration was no place for the number of shoes because we had so little floor space we couldn’t afford to give any up.

Kathi (07:13.415)
Hmm. Yes. Yeah.

Kathi (07:20.398)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (07:25.952)
Right.

Kathi (07:35.979)
Yeah, you know, I don’t know if you know this story, but when Roger and I first got married, we had the shoes at the front door situation as well. And so I bought a bookshelf for people to put their shoes on. And I asked Roger to build it, and I asked him to put it behind the couch so that nobody would see it. And there was only one person in our house who ever used it. It was Roger. It wasn’t even me. It’s like, I’m not gonna go.

Tenneil (07:59.946)
Roger. I knew it.

Kathi (08:05.359)
So yes, to be able to say, and I think it’s important for us to say, this is temporary. Like we’re not gonna have teenagers forever. We’re not gonna have little kids forever. But right now we want them to take their shoes off because yeah, subfloors and things like that. I think that’s really important. So how did you set achievable goals in the whole idea of decluttering?

Tenneil (08:31.798)
Yeah, so I think with the achievable goals, we had to look and say, okay, what is it about this space and what can we do about it on no budget and without like really changing people’s behavior, right? And so on the shoe thing, right? It was deciding which of these things are the real problem. You know, is it the number of shoes? Is it where we’re keeping the shoes? So our first step was to…

Kathi (08:39.584)
Bre- Yes.

Kathi (08:44.517)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (08:52.892)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (08:57.132)
Yeah.

Tenneil (09:00.534)
to recognize what we needed to get rid of. So I had always prided myself in having an entryway that was pretty. That when you walk in, people go, wow, okay, that needed to go, that was not a priority in that season of life.

Kathi (09:13.535)
Yeah, okay.

Kathi (09:18.975)
Right, you’re in survival mode at this point. Yeah.

Tenneil (09:22.526)
Yeah, and so, okay, how can we make this space work? So, all that decorative stuff was put out of the way and I chose pieces that were decorative that would do the job. So I found my favorite coat hanger. We actually made it from old architectural salvage trim and put big hooks on it, right? And this set limits, cause there’s seven hooks, seven people. You get one hook.

Kathi (09:26.631)
Mm-hmm. So what’d you do?

Kathi (09:33.243)
Yeah.

Kathi (09:44.919)
Oh my goodness. Uh-huh.

Kathi (09:51.532)
Ah, you get one hook, baby.

Tenneil (09:54.338)
I’m not going to complain how over-stepped your hook is, even though I would like to, but you just get your one hook. And then I found this old hardware bolt bin. So this thing is like probably seven feet tall. It’s as tall as our ceiling. And it’s like, I don’t know, I think it’s five or six rows wide. I think Jesse and I shared a row for a while and full of cubby holes.

Kathi (10:00.074)
Yeah.

Kathi (10:04.237)
Okay.

Kathi (10:08.34)
Oh my goodness.

Kathi (10:14.311)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Mmm.

Tenneil (10:19.582)
And in those cubby holes, you can put your shoes, you can put your glove, you can put your baseball. I’m not gonna fight about what’s in the cubby hole as long as it’s not on the floor.

Kathi (10:27.243)
Right? Yes. It’s so true. It’s about agreeing on space, not arguing about stuff. And so this is your space. You can’t keep 10 pairs of shoes in there. It won’t fit. So you have to figure out, if you wear the same shoes every day, you’re golden, baby. But if you wanna change them out, you’re gonna have to put some things in your room, that kind of thing. Yeah, I love that.

Tenneil (10:43.351)
Right?

Tenneil (10:52.714)
Yeah, so we acknowledged what needed to happen. We sorted out what the space needed to be used for and came up with a function and a purpose for that, which led to good storage.

Kathi (10:56.443)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (11:07.019)
Yes, and I love that you know sometimes you have to do temporary things until you find what you love but You you found some things you love are those things still hanging in your house? Okay, i’m gonna need a picture of those because I want to see what we’re talking about here is that okay? Okay

Tenneil (11:18.102)
They are.

Tenneil (11:24.554)
Yeah, absolutely. And I will send you the picture that includes the shoes laying on the floor in front of the rack where they go, because we are still human, but it is so much easier to bend over and put them up in the shelf or to say something like, hey, you have till 5pm to get those up in the shelf. Now, I’ll tell you, I don’t know where this fits into our five steps. However, the key to implementing like this category and storage for the people when they were young.

Kathi (11:30.086)
Hehe

Kathi (11:33.879)
Of course.

Uh, I love it.

Right.

Kathi (11:52.631)
Yeah.

Tenneil (11:55.382)
was that I would say, okay, you have till the end of the day to use the systems we have in place. And then anybody who didn’t, I didn’t complain, I didn’t nag, I didn’t yell. I simply picked up all of the things and they went in a tub. And to get your things out of the tub, you would have to do a chore.

Kathi (12:00.27)
Right?

Kathi (12:14.303)
Nice I love that you had to ransomware it was ransomware it was an I Love it, okay guys. We’re gonna take a quick break. This is only step one of five So we’re gonna blast through those last five But we want to help you unstuff your house, and we’re gonna continue to do that when we come back

Tenneil (12:19.502)
Absolutely, it was highly effective for us.

Kathi (12:36.583)
Friends, we are here with Tenneil Register, who, she’s got the style, guys, she’s got the style. And we’ve already talked about our first step to unstuffing your house is to acknowledge and accept what the situation is. And I love what you said. It’s not that you want the people out of here for most of us. Okay, some people, at one point we did have to have a Come to Jesus meeting and say, you have to move out. You don’t live here anymore. But, but.

Tenneil (13:01.924)
Hahaha!

Kathi (13:05.431)
It’s the stuff and we need to figure that out as well. Okay, so let’s go to step number two, sort and categorize. So as you’re decluttering, we have our three bag, well, it’s really a five bag system. So put away, give away and put back. So put back is in the room that you’re already in, put away is, it’s other rooms, sorry, other rooms and then give away.

is what are you gonna donate? And then we have garbage and recycling. So is that what you did? Or how did you keep up on decluttering, especially during like a remodel and stuff? How did you do that?

Tenneil (13:51.726)
So definitely our categories were similar. Whenever we approached a space, I took the idea, what are we gonna keep? Because kids or all of us as humans, we have a hard time deciding what to get rid of. So we went into the space assuming we’re gonna get rid of everything other than what we’re gonna keep. Then once we had our keepers, we sorted out, okay, would you feel better about donating this, selling this or pitching it? And so that was really important.

Kathi (13:55.611)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (14:00.632)
Yeah.

Kathi (14:06.648)
right.

Kathi (14:11.216)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so smart.

Kathi (14:18.124)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Tenneil (14:21.994)
Because we live in the Midwest and we experience all four seasons in such a significant way, seasonal sorts were critical. Because we literally change out all of our clothes, all of our gear for leaving the house, the sports equipment, like everything changes by the season.

Kathi (14:25.52)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Yes.

Kathi (14:33.227)
Right?

Kathi (14:38.875)
Tenneil I had no idea. I lived in the Bay Area, which is the most moderate temperatures, probably in the United States. Like rain was such a big deal, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. And then I moved to the mountain where, today, on this day of our Lord, we are bringing down our summer winter stuff.

because and it’s like it’s a huge deal. It’s a huge deal. And today is the day we’re putting away the snowshoes. And I mean, it is such a huge deal. So if you live in these other places, it really, you’re not just turning over your house, you’re turning over your wardrobe, your equipment, all of that stuff, right?

Tenneil (15:28.054)
Yes, and so each time you do that, it’s important to purge, purge, purge.

Kathi (15:32.599)
Yes, yes, yes. And I love, you know, we’re doing this right now. And when we come, I’m purging two different categories. I’m saying, okay, what have I not worn all winter? And then as I pull down my spring and my summer, just really recognizing in myself, do I still love this thing? And it’s okay to say no.

It’s okay to say, you know what, I bought that last year at Costco because I thought it was cute, but it’s not my vibe. And I would rather it go to somebody who will love it and use it instead of keeping it and just punishing myself every time I open up the closet. We’ve had to do that with equipment that, you know, we bought what we thought was the right thing, turns out it wasn’t. And let’s get into the hands of somebody who’s it is the right thing.

How does that work out for you?

Tenneil (16:30.902)
Yes, I love that we’re only keeping what we love, what we use. And for me, at the beginning of the podcast, we talked stats. Stats were super important in helping us manage stuff for so many people in one household. So for example, I learned it at first when we were packing for trips, that I would have to be very specific. I want you to pack three pairs of shorts, three pairs of shirts, two swimsuits, right? I would give them the numbers.

Kathi (16:37.295)
Yes.

Kathi (16:40.759)
Yes.

Kathi (16:45.878)
Right.

Kathi (16:49.919)
mm-hmm yes

Tenneil (16:58.998)
The same helped when we would purge. I want you to pick your five favorite dresses. I want you to pick, you know, your two best snow boots. And then helping them find a meaningful place to pass it on was the best part of helping them let it go. So whether that was like a younger niece or nephew who would be thrilled to have their Nike tennis shoes or whatever. And then also like we used our local…

Kathi (16:59.343)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (17:04.623)
Hmm, yeah.

Kathi (17:11.409)
Mm.

Kathi (17:20.876)
Yes.

Tenneil (17:28.554)
like food pantries also give out clothing closets. And my kids really had a deep understanding that somebody else would really love to get their nice things. And that helped as well.

Kathi (17:32.24)
Yes.

Kathi (17:39.935)
Mm-hmm, right. Oh, I love it. Okay, step number three. Instead of discussing this, because what I wanna talk about, what step number three is implementing storage solutions. Here’s what I would love to, Neal. We’re gonna get the pictures of your bolt bucket and your clothes hanger. And if you have a couple other pictures of storage solutions that you’ve used, because we could talk about it all day, but…

Literally, a picture is worth a thousand words here. Would you be willing to do that for us?

Tenneil (18:15.658)
I would love to share pictures of how I used decorative pieces that have rural vibes because that’s who I am to organize the things. And that made it fun for me too because I got to pick something creative to manage all the stuff. So I’d love to share photos of how we managed all the things over the years.

Kathi (18:20.695)
Yeah.

Kathi (18:31.648)
Yes.

Kathi (18:36.567)
I can’t wait and then we’ll have to come back on another podcast and discuss how you How you use those because I think that’s gonna be really interesting to people and how you came up with it. Okay step number four and For me, this is I had to admit That I am not a minimalist

I’m not a minimalist. I like stuff. I like things that suggest who I am. And I’m wondering, where do you put yourself in that category?

Tenneil (19:18.286)
Hmm. I would also say I’m not a minimalist. I like to change out my decor seasonally. I like to use decorative pieces to store things that are typically from like a family travel. So like I love to like antique and thrift. So if I find a box that I love that has the name of a place that we are traveling.

Kathi (19:26.139)
Hmm.

Kathi (19:38.158)
Okay.

Kathi (19:47.891)
oooo

Tenneil (19:48.902)
I want to bring that home and I want to use it. So the key for me is to find like a purposeful way to use it.

Kathi (19:51.595)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (19:56.191)
Oh, I love that so much. Yeah, and I think it’s okay to say we’re not minimalist. That’s not our aesthetic, but we don’t wanna be stuffed either. We wanna find that happy meeting of having, I love things that have a story, just like you. Sitting on my bed is a teddy bear. This is a teddy bear that my son got 35 years ago, but it still makes me smile every time I see it.

Tenneil (20:14.271)
Yes.

Kathi (20:26.239)
Uh, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got a couch that I remember like, you know, I, I love it because it’s beautiful, but also the memory of finding it and calling Roger and taking pictures and saying, you know, I never called him and I’m saying, by the way, I’m buying this, but that’s what I did. By the way, I’m buying this because this is my, you know, how people have their heart animal, like this is my ride or die. That was this couch.

And so I’ll make sure I take a picture of that couch so you guys can see that. I’ve shared it here before, but it’s called a Suzani print, which is a Middle Eastern print that I adore it. And it’s just who I am. So I love that you collect things that are from travels and things that are important to you and your history. I think that that’s amazing. I think about like the gift that was most meaningful to my mom.

Tenneil (20:55.231)
Mmm.

Kathi (21:25.179)
from my daughter was a Kansas City pillow. You know, it just had all these things from Kansas City on it and my mom loves it. I mean, she loves where she was born so much. Her cat’s name is Casey. So, you know, we love that. Okay, and then step, oh, go ahead, yeah, please.

Tenneil (21:41.282)
So I was thinking as you were talking, Kathi what if we could answer two questions? Why do I love this? How or where will I use it? And then it’s a keeper.

Kathi (21:48.691)
Okay.

Kathi (21:54.047)
Ooh, those are such good ques- yeah, that is such a good question. And before you bring it home to be able to answer those two questions, I think is a real, and you know, if you absolutely love it and you haven’t figured it out yet, okay, if you just know, like this Suzani couch, I did not know where I was going to put it, but like, oh, we’re making a space for that. Um, which is pretty funny to do with a whole couch, but it’s some place I love.

Tenneil (22:02.603)
Yes.

Tenneil (22:19.702)
Ha!

Kathi (22:21.115)
But yes, I think that that’s so important. And I think it’s really important to not bring things home to fill a space because it’s very easy to be like, oh, you know, I could really use X, Y. And I’ll admit, I have a couple of pieces of furniture that were fill a space furniture. And one of them I’m giving away this week. It’s an extra wide chair.

that I just I needed to fill a space downstairs and now I should have waited for something I love the good news is I have a friend where this is the perfect chair for her and what she needs so I love that but okay number five um I think in unstuffing your house there there’s a time element which is to set time aside

but also to not rush the process, especially when other humans and emotions are involved. And it sounds like that’s what you did, that you started the process, but you were not telling people, okay, you have to be able to fit everything into a suitcase and otherwise you can’t have it in the house. You were making space for the people.

Tenneil (23:42.006)
And you have to be willing for error to occur. The bolt then that worked for our shoes was not my first attempt at where to put our shoes. You know, like tried putting them in the closet, you know, tried putting them under a bench, tried saying you can, I did try to say, you can only have one pair of shoes out here by the door, the rest go to your room. That was fighting behaviors in humans that I was going to lose.

Kathi (23:46.215)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Kathi (23:52.539)
Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah.

Kathi (24:02.149)
No.

Kathi (24:06.105)
Yeah.

Tenneil (24:09.11)
So you have to be willing to kind of make mistakes and learn from the process while you figure out which category of stuff should go here and what storage unit should we use to hold that stuff.

Kathi (24:17.732)
Yeah.

Kathi (24:23.871)
Yeah. So really what you were doing and I, it’s my favorite word in the world. You were curating. You really were taking your time. Curation does not happen in a day. It happens over a lifetime. And you were curating the space for your family.

Tenneil (24:42.778)
You know when we go into a space what makes us most comfortable whether it’s someone’s home, a hotel, an Airbnb, a restaurant is when we are guided through the process so simply that we never find ourselves asking where should I put this? What should I do next? And so how important that in your own home everyone who lives there feels comfortable knowing where should I put this and what should I do next?

Kathi (25:00.123)
Hmm, yeah.

Tenneil (25:11.138)
that that’s not disruptive to their feelings of home, especially in a blended family situation.

Kathi (25:11.384)
Yeah.

Kathi (25:19.332)
Mm, ah. Tenneil, I have loved this conversation. This has been amazing. And I’m gonna make sure that we have all of your socials on here. So if people wanna follow, because I just think your life, especially on Instagram, is so inspirational with what you’re doing and how you’re creating and curating things. I think people would love to follow you. Tenneil, thanks so much for being on Clutter Free Academy.

Tenneil (25:46.795)
Thanks for having me. I’ve enjoyed the conversation so much and I look forward to talking more

Kathi (25:49.183)
Yeah, it’s so fun and deep at the same time. And friends, thank you for listening to Clutter Free Academy, I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter free life you were always designed to live.

 

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#597 5 Things I Do the Day After Christmas to Stay Clutter Free

#597 5 Things I Do the Day After Christmas to Stay Clutter Free

by | Dec 26, 2023 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free Podcast, Decorating, How to, Podcast, tips and ideas | 0 comments

Listen Now

597 – 5 Things I Do the Day After Christmas to Stay Clutter Free

You made it through the holiday…but your living room didn’t! Are you wondering how to deal with all that Christmas clutter?

In this episode, Kathi and Roger Lipp share five timely tips for taming the mayhem left behind after all the merriment.

Listen in for their hints and hacks on:

  • Knowing whether to return, recycle, or donate stuff left over from the festivities.
  • Sharing out of your abundance.
  • Saving your after-Christmas sanity!

Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released.

The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home

Homesteading [hohm-sted-ing]
noun
1. an act or instance of establishing a homestead.
2. the act of loving where you live so much that you actively ignore the fact that your house is trying to kill you on a regular basis.

For Kathi Lipp and her husband, Roger, buying a house in one of the most remote parts of Northern California was never part of the plan; many of life’s biggest, most rewarding adventures rarely are.

Kathi shares the hard-won wisdom she’s gained on her homestead journey to help you accomplish more at home, gain fresh perspective, and give yourself grace in the process. Here’s a handful of the lessons Kathi shares:

  • Prepare before the need arises
  • Everything is always in process, including us
  • Your best household solution is time and patience
  • You don’t have to do everything the hard way
  • Be open to new and better ways of doing things
  • A lot of small changes make a huge difference.
    Highly practical, humorous, and inspirational, The Accidental Homesteader will encourage you to live with more peace, joy, and contentment.

Order your copy of The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home here.

Favorites:

An Abundant Place: Daily Retreats for the Woman Who Can’t Get Away

 

 

Clutter Free Resources:

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What things do you do the day after Christmas to keep your home clutter free? Share your answer in the comments.

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  • Leave a note in the comment section below.
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Meet Our Guest 

 

Roger Lipp

Roger is a productivity and quality engineer for a Fortune 50 company.

Roger helps teams reach their full productivity potential by teaching them the practical and simple steps to reach their goals. Roger and his wife, author Kathi Lipp, teach communicators how to share their message through social media and email marketing.

He and Kathi coauthored Happy Habits for Every Couple with Harvest House Publishers.

Transcript

Kathleen Lipp:
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And Roger, happy day after Christmas!

Roger:
Oh hey!

Kathleen Lipp:
Yay! Survived another Christmas, yay!

Roger:
Yes.

Kathleen Lipp:
And guys, as you probably can imagine, we are recording this before the day after Christmas. But we know,

Roger:
We don’t even have snow on the ground right now.

Kathleen Lipp:
I know, we haven’t even had snow yet. And yeah, we’re firm into winter up here, winter time up here. But Christmas brings a lot of chaos and Christmas can bring a lot of clutter. And so this is gonna be a… Very fast episode guys because I know you’ve got other things to do. I know I hope you’re still watching Christmas movies I hope you’re still doing all the Christmas things but I wanted to tell you five things that we and in the Lipp household here at the Red House do in order to stay clutter-free after Christmas and so We’re gonna go through this fast because I want you to enjoy your day after Christmas But number one, deal with the Christmas clutter right away. So anything you are keeping, break down the boxes. Recycle that paper if you can. If you’re a paper reuser or a bag reuser, please be a bag reuser. Fold those up, put them away. If you have family in from out of town, sort through this stuff. Every year somebody leaves a gift behind here and then. You know, it’s four months until we see them again. No, I’m not, I don’t want to store things for people. How else do we deal with the Christmas clutter, Rog?

Roger:
Oh, you know, probably a lot of families do this. We make a game out of throwing away of the wrapping paper.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yes.

Roger:
We have the big garbage bag. Can you make the shot from where you’re sitting with the

Kathleen Lipp:
Yes.

Roger:
crumpled up paper?

Kathleen Lipp:
Yes,

Roger:
So

Kathleen Lipp:
I-

Roger:
that’s just little things like that keep the system flowing and keeping the house picked up.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah, and another thing, if you have Christmas ornaments, Christmas decorations things, that year after year do not get pulled out, then it’s time to donate those. It’s time to donate them. And I’m being a bit of a hypocrite here because I have a whole dish set that I love, but there’s no place to display it or store it here at the Red House. We just don’t have the space for it. And… You know, the Red House is not our forever home because someday we will physically not be able to live here because it’s a crazy place to live. But I want to be able to have those dishes. If anybody’s familiar, the Macy’s log cabin design and they make me super happy. I’m not a China person, but this is like stoneware. It’s wonderful. But deal with the, if you have… Ornaments things like that never get put on the tree go donate them You know, that’s some of the things you could deal with right away Put all that stuff aside. Yeah, right

Roger:
If you have lights that don’t work, you might be thinking, oh, it’s a project. I’ll get that fixed someday. Will you?

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah

Roger:
I know I won’t.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah, and Roger’s a lighting guy like he’s a Lighting guy at our church and if he’s not gonna do it You’re probably not gonna do it or the people in your life are probably not gonna do it Is this why we have to buy lights almost every single year?

Roger:
Absolutely 100%.

Kathleen Lipp:
Okay.

Roger:
This is the

Kathleen Lipp:
Oh my

Roger:
only

Kathleen Lipp:
goodness

Roger:
reason.

Kathleen Lipp:
Uh-huh. The only reason not that our house gets more lit up like a Roman candle every single year Okay, so number one deal with the Christmas clutter right away. Okay number two make a meal plan with any leftovers. You have been cooking and cooking and you’ve had people come coming and cooking. So a couple of things, either repurpose those leftovers or eat them right away. Or one of the things that we do at Costco, we buy those to-go containers. They’re from GLAD, they’re plastic to-go containers. So you can pack those up and send them home with your guests. We pack up food and take it to our neighbor who doesn’t cook But he’s always he’s a volunteer firefighter. And so he’s on calls all the time. So we just bring him a meal and It’s good to go. So if you know, make a plan to eat up that food, that’s what I’m saying.

Roger:
Yeah, and I think there’s we’re also attacking this one from the other side this year by having a little bit more strategic plan going in to Christmas.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yes, yes. So we overcooked.

Roger:
I guess this is airing after Christmas, so the cows have left the barn for that one.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah, but, but you know, it’s a good thing to think about for next year. You know, every year I put on my calendar, not every year, but most years, do not buy wrapping paper. You have plenty. Um, one of the things that I have already put on my calendar for October next year is you only need the Turkey and three side dishes and two desserts. Um, we lost

Roger:
Yes.

Kathleen Lipp:
our minds this year. I don’t know what happened, but it was crazy. So yeah, you can make less usually. And one of the things that I really discovered is I used to make everybody’s favorites and I’m like, no, I’ll make that for your birthday. Let’s do that for your birthday. We don’t have to do that for every single holiday. So be strategic going in, but also plan to use up those leftovers because I don’t want you to cook just because you need a little variety. People can eat the same thing over and over again. Okay, number three. Schedule a day to do returns do not do returns on today on the 26th. That’s craziness. Don’t do it Don’t do it stay away from the stores. Don’t do it. You are too valuable Your time is too valuable. Your sanity is too valuable, but you know, could you do it? January 2nd could you do it? You know most places have 30 days you do not need to do it the day after I love Amazon returns we are buying less from Amazon but there are specific things that our kids sometimes want that are only on Amazon but I love that you can just go to like a Whole Foods or a UPS store and be able to do that return very easily Make sure that you can you know, if you absolutely can find those receipts Places like Marshall’s they’ll give you a gift card, but you can’t get your money back on your card Target I love their return policy because as long as you have a Target, you know account not their credit card, but like their frequent buyer you get the app as long as you have the app It keeps track of what you’ve purchased and you don’t even need a receipt

Roger:
But

Kathleen Lipp:
Anything on that?

Roger:
we can’t

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah

Roger:
talk about returns without talking about Costco.

Kathleen Lipp:
What why what

Roger:
Oh,

Kathleen Lipp:
oh you

Roger:
there

Kathleen Lipp:
mean?

Roger:
you can

Kathleen Lipp:
the

Roger:
return it for

Kathleen Lipp:
return

Roger:
like a

Kathleen Lipp:
anything

Roger:
year. Yeah.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yes

Roger:
It’s, it’s

Kathleen Lipp:
Which

Roger:
wild.

Kathleen Lipp:
is lovely. Yeah, we returned a computer recently now there is the infamous somebody returned to christmas tree after christmas If you’re that

Roger:
Okay,

Kathleen Lipp:
person,

Roger:
don’t cheat

Kathleen Lipp:
please

Roger:
the system.

Kathleen Lipp:
don’t be that yeah, please don’t be that person. That’s just gross But yeah, you know, I bought you some uh battery operated socks and because you’re often out there doing snow that kind of thing, but they didn’t work. And so I had them, I just returned them like in July after I had bought them in October and it was no problem. No, you know, by the way, we give enough money to Costco, it shouldn’t be a problem. And Sam’s club is the same way. I’ve never had any problems returning anything to Sam’s club is the but be a returner. Do not keep things in your house, be a returner. So yes, Costco, Costco’s great about that. Okay, number four. So you scheduled a day to do returns, I want you to schedule a day to do a drop-off at the charity shop. You know, if that’s not a regular part of your errands, either make it a regular part and you’re just dropping off like one little bag at a time, or. Schedule a day to do it after Christmas because when you get all this new stuff in There should be stuff going out of your house And especially if you have little kids who are growing out of their stuff They don’t have cousins or little brothers or sisters, you know get that back in there are people who could use that desperately and so um schedule a day to drop off at the charity shop and Then number five stay out of the stores It’s going to be very easy for me Christmas 2023 to stay out of the stores. My mom’s having eye surgery on the 26th. But Roger, if we were not taking care of my mom’s medical needs, I would want to go to someplace like we just went to an apple farm and that was so much fun. You could go to the dog park with your dog. Although, you know, if you’re listening to this in 2023, there’s a bad dog cough going around. So maybe stay out of the parks, but, or go to a movie. I think the day after Christmas is a beautiful day to go to a movie that’s not in a shopping mall. And guys, I wanna give a little warning here. I think that there are going to be some crazy sales in 2023, you know, between Christmas and New Year’s because I think retail was way down this year and so don’t be tempted just because something has a good price on it. I think these stores have a lot of inventory that they’re going to need to get rid of but it doesn’t need to go to your house. Anything you want to add to this list Roger?

Roger:
No, I think going in with a plan and just keeping up with things. You’ve got people at your house probably, and that’s where the clutter is coming from. So

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah.

Roger:
it is fine to enlist help in dealing with that clutter.

Kathleen Lipp:
Yeah, you

Roger:
I

Kathleen Lipp:
know

Roger:
think

Kathleen Lipp:
what?

Roger:
that might be another thing to think about.

Kathleen Lipp:
I will tell you one of the best things that the people in our family do is they all say, hey, I’ll take a bag of garbage home because they know how hard

Roger:
Yes.

Kathleen Lipp:
it is for us to get rid of garbage up here. Like that is such a gift. So we try to do, you know, we try to keep all the wet garbage, but the dry garbage and the recycling our family takes. And so yeah, ask for that help. I think that that’s really, that’s such a great thing. And you know, send those boxes home with the kids and the grandkids. You don’t need to be the one to take care of all that, unless they’re flying. If they’re flying, then everybody gets a pass.

Okay, guys, we hope that you had the best Christmas. We hope that this is gonna be an amazing new year. Listen next week where we’re gonna talk about ways to keep stuff from coming into your house. Today we’re really talking about getting it out of your house, but we want you to also keep it from coming into your house as well. Well, friends, first of all, Roger, thanks so much for hanging out with me.

Roger:
Thank you.

Kathleen Lipp:
It’s always fun.

Roger:
Yes.

Kathleen Lipp:
Friends, thank you for hanging out with us. You’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the Clutter-Free life you were always intended to live.

More Posts 

#596 Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Money

#596 Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Money

by | Dec 19, 2023 | Christmas, Clutter Free Podcast, Decorating, Gifting, Overwhelmed, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

596 – Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Money

 

Do you feel like Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year…until you look at your bank account?

Kathi Lipp and her co-host Deanna Day Young have clever, creative, and clutter-free answers to the question, “How can I celebrate the holidays and not overspend?” In this episode, Kathi and Deanna gift us with ten tips to keep the cost of Christmas down and the enjoyment up.

They have ideas to help enjoy the holidays such as:

  • How to use experiences as gift ideas.
  • How to involve those you love in your decisions.
  • And Kathi and Deanna share a brilliant surprise when giving gift cards!

 Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released.

Did you miss the first three episodes of this series? You can find them here:

Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Space

Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Time

Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Energy

The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home

Homesteading [hohm-sted-ing]
noun
1. an act or instance of establishing a homestead.
2. the act of loving where you live so much that you actively ignore the fact that your house is trying to kill you on a regular basis.

For Kathi Lipp and her husband, Roger, buying a house in one of the most remote parts of Northern California was never part of the plan; many of life’s biggest, most rewarding adventures rarely are.

Kathi shares the hard-won wisdom she’s gained on her homestead journey to help you accomplish more at home, gain fresh perspective, and give yourself grace in the process. Here’s a handful of the lessons Kathi shares:

  • Prepare before the need arises
  • Everything is always in process, including us
  • Your best household solution is time and patience
  • You don’t have to do everything the hard way
  • Be open to new and better ways of doing things
  • A lot of small changes make a huge difference.
    Highly practical, humorous, and inspirational, The Accidental Homesteader will encourage you to live with more peace, joy, and contentment.

Order your copy of The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home here.

Links Mentioned:

Deanna Day Young 

 

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Learn more about Clutter Free for Life

Which tip that Kathi and Deanna gave is most helpful to you when you are low on money? Share your answer in the comments.

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

  • Leave a note in the comment section below.
  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest 

 

Deanna Day Young

Deanna lives in southeast Indiana on the Young family farm with her husband of 35 years. She and Roger have two grown daughters.

Deanna is the Director of Operations for Iron Timbers, a family-owned custom furniture business featured currently, and for several years, on HGTV’s Good Bones show. Prior to this position, she was a paralegal and managed the international trademark portfolio for 34 years for the Hill-Rom division of Baxter International. Deanna has a degree in Journalism and Speech Communications from Ball State University and a Paralegal Certification from Saint Mary of the Woods College.

Fun Fact – Deanna and her daughter are also Chi Omega sorority sisters!! Hoot Hoot.

You can connect with Deanna at deannadayyoung.com

Transcript

Kathi (00:05.579)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutterfree Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am back with Deanna Day Young and we are talking all things Christmas, the holidays, and.

This is our series, your holiday game plan when you’re running low on blank. So we’ve already done space, time, energy. Here’s the one that I think a lot of people are going to identify with, money. When you’re running low on money, what can you do to still enjoy the holidays without breaking the bank? So Deanna, I’m gonna start us off.

Deanna Day Young (00:47.324)
Great.

Kathi (00:57.839)
And you and I each have five ideas. We’re gonna go back and forth. So number one, I feel like this is the most important one for me as I’ve done this, is to contact friends and family that you’re exchanging gifts with or that you typically exchange gifts with and set spending limits or maybe just say, can we have a pass this year? Deanna, have you ever done that? You have?

Deanna Day Young (01:23.518)
Yes, yes we did. So I have a group of friends that there are four of us that we’ve done this probably the last four or five years. We said no Christmas gifts and we go and we do an experience which actually leads to my number one or my number

you know, our next one, it’ll be my number one, our number two on our list of 10, is yes, we have done like where we will say we’re gonna go to Cracker Barrel altogether, or we’ll pick a restaurant. And have you heard of like, a lot of people have done this in the past where you go and you give an extra large tip, you prepare.

Kathi (02:01.388)
Oh, I have, yes.

Deanna Day Young (02:02.022)
And so like, yeah, so we have done this the last couple of years and it’s been so much fun. But we’ve also done before where we say we’re gonna take a spa day. So nobody’s gonna buy anybody gifts and then we just go somewhere and we do a spa day. And so it’s just really fun to do that.

Kathi (02:19.671)
Yeah, and I understand if you’re running low on money, you may be like, oh, a spa day. But here’s the thing, oftentimes you could do some of that stuff at home or you need to get your nails done anyway. Like that’s something you were planning on doing anyway. You know, Deanna, one of those things like, and we’re onto number two, brainstorm a list of fun and free things to do with those you love.

Deanna Day Young (02:33.462)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (02:48.855)
We’ve done a cookie day where everybody comes to one person’s house and what we do is we either prepare in our own homes and then we bring enough cookie dough of our recipe so everybody can take some home and then we have we bake one um one batch of it so we all get to taste it or yeah

Deanna Day Young (03:09.134)
That’s good.

Deanna Day Young (03:15.359)
That’s good.

Kathi (03:16.843)
And so everybody has cookie dough to bring home that they can do for their family or they can give as gifts. Isn’t that a fun idea? But think about something that you would naturally be doing other ways. But Deanna, let me go back to the spending limits. You have to talk about those in advance. So maybe you can’t do it for this year, but you say, hey, for next year, could we do…

Deanna Day Young (03:23.894)
That’s a great idea!

Deanna Day Young (03:42.561)
Yes.

Kathi (03:45.119)
$50 limit per family or you know what could we just exchange for the kids? you know or Guys, you know instead of buying me gifts, you know what I could really use this year there are a couple of big packs at Costco of like flour or Macaroni and cheese, you know like get specific people would love I remember one year my friend I said, what do you want for Christmas and

Deanna Day Young (03:50.475)
Mm-hmm.

Deanna Day Young (04:06.925)
Yeah.

Kathi (04:13.499)
Traditionally, you know Roger and I have had more money. She’s a single mom. She goes I would like a Costco pack of toilet paper She goes I’m so tired of running to the store paying too much and I’m like, I think we can do that for you So we did toilet paper towels And a couple of food things and it was so fun and she baked us cookies It was the perfect exchange, but you have some other ideas here of things that you can do that are free

Deanna Day Young (04:37.41)
That’s awesome.

Kathi (04:43.223)
Right? Tell me about those.

Deanna Day Young (04:43.262)
Right, yes. So, yeah, my number two is do experiences together with friends and family for Christmas. And they are, these are some ideas that are free or very, very low in cost. And so number one was PJs and pancakes. I did this with one of my groups up at church, and there’s, I think there’s six of us in our group. And so what we did is they came to my house in their pajamas or their sweatpants, whatever they were comfortable in. And…

Kathi (05:09.391)
Perfect. Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (05:11.946)
We made, I made pancakes and they each brought like a topping. I can’t even remember now, cause we did this a couple of years ago. I think somebody brought chocolate chips. Somebody brought fruit. Somebody brought a couple of different kinds of syrup. And then we just sat and we had pancakes together. And then we watched a Christmas movie. So no, yeah, it was, it was great. And we were done by, I think we were done by 11 o’clock. And then everybody had the rest of that Saturday to do.

Kathi (05:29.691)
Perfect. In the morning. I love that.

Kathi (05:40.105)
Perfect.

Deanna Day Young (05:40.454)
I’ve done things like that too with, you know, like with another friend where we say, you know what, let’s just spend the day together at one another’s houses. And we do the same thing. We love brownies. So we each brought our own kinds of brownies and then swatched those off. She loves, she always makes Ghirardelli like triple chocolate brownies, you know.

Kathi (05:50.115)
Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (06:02.282)
And then I have another kind of brownies just from a box that we make. And then we just sat and watched a couple different Christmas movies. We drank hot chocolate with our little candy cane in there. And we just had a day together that didn’t cost us any money.

Kathi (06:15.475)
I love that so much. And you’ve also done cookie baking exchanges with friends and things like that. You know what? So here’s what I am going to do with three of my friends this year. I haven’t proposed it. I’m usually the instigator of these things, but one of our friends in this group is financially, it’s really tough right now. But we are all authors and we’re all book lovers. And what I’m going to suggest this year,

Deanna Day Young (06:22.795)
Yes.

Deanna Day Young (06:42.679)
Yes.

Kathi (06:45.495)
That you take the three books off your shelf that you think the other three people would love So I can you know, it’s not buying everybody the same book, but it’s saying oh, I think Friend number one would love this book and I’ve already read it. So it’s not spending any money it’s just saying here’s the one I think you’ll love

Kathi

Okay, this is number three. Do you really need new wrapping paper?

Deanna Day Young (09:41.951)
Okay.

Deanna Day Young (09:46.882)
They did, you know.

Kathi (10:02.287)
Do you really need new ribbons? Do you really need new tags? Or do you just want new? Which is totally fine, I get it. So if you really want something new, you can limit it to one. Or go to the dollar store and see if there’s wrapping paper. But I’m really gonna challenge you if you’re really being careful about money this year, can you use what you already have? Can you use the paper you already have?

And here’s another thing I would say, look through like your birthday paper too, because you might just have some red stuff that’s hanging around or some green stuff or white. There are a million different things that you can put that on with. And I have turned birthday wrap into Christmas wrap by tying a little pine branch on it to just make it look cuter. So you can absolutely do that. Okay.

Deanna Day Young (10:54.826)
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Kathi (11:00.652)
Number four, Deanna.

Deanna Day Young (11:02.802)
It leads right into my number four. It’s all in the presentation. So my friends laugh at that, but I have said that for years and years. It’s all in the presentation. And so it doesn’t have to cost a lot, but it’s how you present it in a very special way. So let’s use, for example, a pedicure in a jar.

Kathi (11:06.315)
OK. Yes.

Deanna Day Young (11:24.086)
You could give that, you take a ball jar, you can put in a dollar pair of socks that you get, well the Dollar Tree is now 125, but a dollar 25 pair of socks, along with, you can buy those whole pedicure little kits at the Dollar Tree for a dollar 25, separate those out. So in your pedicure jar, you’ve got your socks, you’ve got all your different things for a pedicure, get a

couple maybe little fingernail and toenail jars and put that down in there or the fingernail polish and put that in there as well. Put the lid on the jar and wrap a ribbon around it. You may only have four or five dollars in that gift, but when you present it, because you’ve given it as the presentation, it looks like it is more. Another idea that I love to do, which kind of goes back to do you need more gift wrap,

is I’ve given cookbooks before, or this year we could give the accidental homesteader book as a gift, and instead of buying paper to go with that, use a dishcloth perhaps to wrap that. That’s part of the gift, and then maybe put a spatula on top, which those you can also get very inexpensive, like at the Dollar Tree, and then maybe put a spatula on top that makes it look like it’s a packaged topper. And so you really are

Kathi (12:29.314)
Hahaha

Kathi (12:39.088)
Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (12:52.098)
There’s a whole lot of good that comes in that. You’re giving a gift that’s a little bit less expensive. It’s in the presentation. And everything that you’re using to give in the presentation can be used as a gift.

Kathi (13:05.467)
I love that. It’s so good. It’s so good and it’s so true You know and oftentimes I never want to give somebody else my junk But I have a lot of good stuff in my house that I do I’ve never used you know Somebody’s given it to me or I bought a packet. You know like the ball jars you were talking about You know, I’ve got

Deanna Day Young (13:17.302)
Yes.

Deanna Day Young (13:30.601)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (13:31.759)
these giant ball jars that I’m just not using right now. Like that would be such a great thing. Not everything has to come with a receipt. But it’s all about the presentation and the thought behind it, 100%. Okay, for me, number five is meal plan. This is a great time to spend as little as you can on non-holiday meals by using up what’s in your pantry, your freezer, your fridge,

Deanna Day Young (13:40.726)
Yeah, that’s right.

Deanna Day Young (13:45.58)
Yes.

Deanna Day Young (13:52.731)
Definitely.

Kathi (14:01.211)
putting your food budget towards those fancier holiday meals. I follow somebody on TikTok. It’s called, she’s called Dollar Store Meals. And she really, she is so good about going to the Dollar Store because that is the most popular store in the United States. Like there are more of those than Walmart, than Target, than any of those. Because they’re often in rural areas like mine.

Deanna Day Young (14:11.744)
Mmm.

Deanna Day Young (14:23.651)
Oh.

Kathi (14:30.311)
And she says, you know, here’s how to buy a week’s worth of groceries for $20. And she’s done holiday meals beforehand. And so like with like a ham steak and things like that. And so just see what can you do with, you know, can you budget and use up the things you have that are in your pantries, in your freezer.

Deanna Day Young (14:30.379)
Yes.

Deanna Day Young (14:36.212)
Yes.

Kathi (14:56.575)
so that later on you can do a little bit more with your holidays. And that also makes sure that your food doesn’t go to waste. Okay, we’re gonna take a quick break. We’re gonna come right back and Deanna’s gonna talk to us all about listening. We are going to want to, if we can listen and save a few bucks, it’s a good day. Okay, we’ll be right back.

Deanna Day Young (15:01.174)
Yes, that’s great.

Kathi (15:22.711)
Okay, we are back with Deanna Day Young and we are talking about how to save money during the holidays. Okay, Deanna, number six.

Deanna Day Young (15:30.846)
Number six for me is listen to what people like, what they want, what they enjoy. Maybe it’s something memorable from the past. And so like, what could you go back and do and perhaps get something that may not cost any money? So let’s just, so listen to them throughout the year. And maybe it’s like for me, my neighbor, she’s 83, I think it is, and she said,

I never go out and look at Christmas lights anymore. She’s widowed now, her kids don’t live here. She has one granddaughter that she doesn’t get to see a lot because she lives a little bit far away, but now she has her own daughter. She’s like, I just really miss going out and seeing Christmas lights and she doesn’t drive after dark. So last year I said, you know what we’re gonna do for Christmas?

Kathi (16:23.076)
Right.

Deanna Day Young (16:27.466)
we’re gonna go drive around and we’re gonna look at Christmas lights. And that’s exactly what we did. We went and we had dinner together at a local restaurant. And then we went out and I drove her around to three different local towns. And we just looked at Christmas lights. Wherever she wanted to go, like she said, I know so and so lives here and they usually have Christmas lights. So we just drove and looked at that. Otherwise we had a little map.

Kathi (16:53.884)
Oh, perfect.

Deanna Day Young (16:56.322)
from our local bank, and they have like a little place, you know, almost like a little scavenger hunt, that you can go and look at different Christmas lights. So we followed that map, and it went into three different local towns, and that was one of her best gifts that she said that she remembers. It was just time that we were able to spend together, but I wouldn’t have thought of that, but I listened to her. I listened to her say, I don’t drive after dark. I listened to her say, I haven’t seen Christmas lights.

Kathi (16:56.558)
Yeah.

Yes.

Kathi (17:02.915)
Yeah.

Kathi (17:16.216)
Yes.

Kathi (17:23.555)
Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (17:26.218)
in a lot of years because of that reason and because she’s widowed and didn’t have anyone to take her around. So that was her Christmas gift from me this last year was just really the gift of time and getting to do something that she always wanted to do for the last several years but wasn’t able to.

Kathi (17:44.467)
I love it and you know we do that every year with my mom and it’s one of her favorite things one of our favorite things It’s amazing Okay And it’s free. You know, I know gas costs money little snackies but you can also like we used to do bring a thermos of decaf coffee or of Hot chocolate and then bake some cookies and you are ready to rock and roll. Okay number four

Deanna Day Young (17:59.242)
Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (18:04.932)
Exactly.

Yep.

Deanna Day Young (18:11.534)
That’s right.

Kathi (18:13.207)
I will say make your travel plans now. So, oh, I’m sorry, thank you. Okay, number seven, make your travel plans as early as possible. Get those hotel reservations if you need it. Get those Airbnb. You pay for a lack of planning. I pay for a lack of planning on a regular basis.

Deanna Day Young (18:15.99)
Number seven, Kathy.

Deanna Day Young (18:21.462)
Hehehe

Deanna Day Young (18:35.502)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (18:39.291)
And I’m not doing it anymore. I’m taking a look at my calendar months in advance if I can’t. But make those reservations early. You will have more choices. You’ll have more flexibility. And also, you’ll know what you’re getting into. Roger and I are going to an Airbnb next week. And I’m like, do they have a coffee maker? These are important things to know. And they don’t.

So I’ve got a mini coffee maker I am bringing with me so I can save money instead of going out to Starbucks and doing those kind of things. No we’re bringing we’re DIYing it and especially if you’re driving you can do that. We’re flying. So you know how committed I am to this coffee plan. But yeah why do places exist without coffee? I don’t understand. But make your pro your plans as early as possible and know what the situation is so that you can accommodate for that.

Deanna Day Young (19:10.059)
Uh-huh.

Deanna Day Young (19:22.026)
That’s right.

Kathi (19:36.127)
Okay, number eight, Deanna.

Deanna Day Young (19:39.434)
Number eight is to ship directly including, to save, excuse me, ship directly with gift cards included to save on shipping to far away people. So if you wanna give a gift to someone that is not going to be in person, ship it to them directly so that it saves on your shipping cost to you and then you going and shipping it to them, if possible. Sometimes, you know,

Kathi (20:05.977)
Right.

Deanna Day Young (20:10.07)
you want to include something that you’re getting. That’s obviously reasonable. But gift cards, so last year our daughter wasn’t able to come home for Christmas. So we’re like, what can we do to get her, these different things that she really did want, well, or we thought maybe she might like. And so I even purchased gift cards online.

that were sent directly to her. So you can purchase the gift card online, but then it will say what email address do you wanna use? And then I just put her email address into it. So then the gift card went directly to her. It was for a local spa. So I just went in there and she lives in Michigan. And so I just went in there and I bought the gift card, but the email address went directly to her. So we didn’t even, you know,

Kathi (20:47.919)
Yes.

Kathi (20:55.366)
Oh nice.

Deanna Day Young (21:07.974)
I mean, we didn’t even have to get a card and send it in the mail. The other thing for us, we are a little nervous of sending gift cards in the mail during holiday times. People can feel that there are gift cards in there. So that’s something to think about. But as this podcast is on how we can save money, if there’s a way to ship directly for somebody who’s not gonna be there in person with you, it’s a great idea to do that so that you don’t pay double shipping.

Kathi (21:16.46)
Yeah.

Kathi (21:35.351)
Yeah, I love that. And I’ll tell you something that we did for a friend who lives very far away. We were all, a bunch of us were sending her gift cards and through the email. Excuse me, through email. But we wanted it to be a surprise. So we set up a Yahoo account for her that said,

Deanna Day Young (22:02.42)
Oh!

Kathi (22:03.023)
her name, Christine, and then we put some random numbers after it, at yahoo.com, and we sent them all there. And then we gave her the password to that email address, and she was able to redeem all of those. Isn’t that? And it doesn’t cost you a thing. It’s super simple, super easy. I think it was actually a Gmail account, but it doesn’t matter. It worked out perfectly. OK. I’m going to continue with the gift card theme.

Deanna Day Young (22:15.074)
That’s awesome! I love that! It’s a great idea! It doesn’t! Oh!

Deanna Day Young (22:28.298)
Yeah, I love that.

Kathi (22:32.587)
And this is gonna sound a little scraggly, but stick with me, okay? 80% of Americans have gift cards that they have not redeemed for a year or longer. What if, you know, like I have GameStop gift cards. Deanna, why do I have GameStop gift cards? I have no clue. I’m guessing.

Deanna Day Young (22:33.247)
Okay.

Deanna Day Young (22:37.671)
I’m with you.

Deanna Day Young (22:57.416)
I’m not sure.

Kathi (23:00.399)
that like when we moved we were cleaning out drawers and these were ones that our boys had received. But can I now use those GameStop gift cards to buy my son the game he wants? Could I now use some of those Starbucks cards to send a pound of coffee to somebody that I love? Okay, I probably won’t do that because I use all the Starbucks gift cards. Let’s be super clear. But.

Deanna Day Young (23:13.867)
Yes.

Kathi (23:28.619)
You know, I’ve received Tarpa, excuse me, target gift cards for rebates, like $5 rebates. Those add up and I can use those to send a gift card. So if you have some scraggly gift cards, use those to send a gift to, you know, somebody that somebody was very sweet and bought you a spa gift card, but you’re not going to use it. That’s not your spa doesn’t take that, whatever it is.

Deanna Day Young (23:36.17)
Yeah. Right.

Deanna Day Young (23:42.635)
Yes.

Deanna Day Young (23:53.141)
Mm-hmm.

Deanna Day Young (23:56.586)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (23:58.255)
for somebody in your life who would love a spa gift card. I will say check to make sure that you, that there is money on that gift card. I’ll never forget, Roger received a pound of Godiva one time with a $50 Barnes and Noble gift card on it. The gift card had no money. Which I, we think.

Deanna Day Young (24:01.743)
Oh, that’s great.

Deanna Day Young (24:21.318)
Oh shoot!

Kathi (24:23.227)
that, you know, we don’t know what happened. And he wasn’t close enough to the person to say, did you mean that? He just said, thank you effusively and moved on. But dig through your gift cards. We had a lot of movie gift cards that we bought right before the pandemic and then we couldn’t use. Now we can use those to buy movie gift certificates for people we love. It’s a great way to go. Yeah, yeah. Okay, number 10, Deanna.

Deanna Day Young (24:46.826)
Yes, that’s great. That really is. That’s very good.

Kathi (24:53.347)
Bring us home with this entire series!

Deanna Day Young (24:56.474)
Okay, how to save money during the holidays here. We’re gonna look into our closets. So don’t buy new clothes, but rather make a game out of what’s in your closet. I have done this for years. When I worked at my old job, oh my gosh, it just became a game for us. I started the day after Thanksgiving, and I tried to go the entire time of not doing the same outfit. Doesn’t mean the same thing, but the same outfit for all the days.

Kathi (25:08.14)
Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (25:25.238)
to incorporate Christmas. Now, that doesn’t mean that I have 30 Christmas sweaters. That means that maybe I have a Christmas scarf. Maybe I wear a red turtleneck one day. Maybe I wear a green sweater another day. Bring in pins. I used to collect pins. And when I minimized those and decluttered my pins I didn’t wear, I did keep my Christmas ones. So maybe I have a big angel pin.

Kathi (25:31.468)
Right.

Deanna Day Young (25:54.442)
that I wear different necklaces that are red or maybe it has a Christmas pendant on it or earrings that have Christmas on it. So don’t think that you have to buy a new Christmas outfit. I used to think that years ago, but we don’t have to have new Christmas outfits. Find a way to put what you have together to make a new outfit for you and then just make a game out of it.

Kathi (26:11.066)
Yeah.

Kathi (26:18.058)
Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (26:22.83)
as in one of the podcasts that we did here, I can’t remember which one, if it was on saving space, but you were talking about the outfits that we wear, have your holiday go-to outfit. You don’t have to wear different outfits everywhere you go. You can have that holiday go-to outfit or look in your closet like I’m saying, put things together, make yourself a new outfit from the things that you already have.

Kathi (26:38.756)
No.

Kathi (26:49.251)
Yes, because you’re not going to see the same people at different places So you can wear that same outfit over and over and over again And let me just also remind you because this is a decluttering podcast My my biggest tip is if when you’re going through those Christmas sweaters or I’ve got a lot of long-sleeve Christmas shirts That just have like a saying, you know, jolly everywhere or something like that If you’re not wearing them anymore

Deanna Day Young (26:55.394)
That’s right.

Deanna Day Young (27:13.258)
Yeah.

Kathi (27:17.295)
donate them right away. Somebody is going to love that for their Christmas outfit, especially if you have kids that have Christmas clothing. Donate it, somebody is going to be thrilled. Deanna, this has been such a great series. Thank you so much for hanging out with me.

Deanna Day Young (27:18.976)
right?

Deanna Day Young (27:33.353)
So much fun. Thank you for letting me.

Kathi (27:35.659)
And friends, if you’ve enjoyed this series, would you consider giving us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts? Maybe it’s Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you love your podcasts. Those ratings help more than you know. And I’ll just tell you, we super appreciate them. You’ve been listening to Clutterfree Academy, I’m Cathy Lip. And now go create the clutter free life you were always intended to live.

Woohoo!

Deanna Day Young (28:02.999)
DED

 

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#595 Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Energy

#595 Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Energy

by | Dec 12, 2023 | Christmas, Clutter Free Podcast, Decorating, Gifting, Overwhelmed, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

595 – Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Energy

Kathi and her guest Deanna Day Young are returning for part three of their discussion on how to design your holiday gameplan! This week they are helping us know what to do when we are low on energy.

Listen in as they share ten ideas that will help us all to:

  • Think through what is most important.
  • Set realistic expectations.
  • Divide responsibility among family members.
  • Take care of ourselves.
  • Use our resources wisely.

Next week Kathi and Deanna will finish the series by talking about what to do when you’re low on money. Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released. Did you miss the first two episodes of this series? You can find them here:

Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Space

Your Holiday Gameplan When You’re Low on Time

 

 

The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home

Homesteading [hohm-sted-ing]
noun
1. an act or instance of establishing a homestead.
2. the act of loving where you live so much that you actively ignore the fact that your house is trying to kill you on a regular basis.

For Kathi Lipp and her husband, Roger, buying a house in one of the most remote parts of Northern California was never part of the plan; many of life’s biggest, most rewarding adventures rarely are.

Kathi shares the hard-won wisdom she’s gained on her homestead journey to help you accomplish more at home, gain fresh perspective, and give yourself grace in the process. Here’s a handful of the lessons Kathi shares:

  • Prepare before the need arises
  • Everything is always in process, including us
  • Your best household solution is time and patience
  • You don’t have to do everything the hard way
  • Be open to new and better ways of doing things
  • A lot of small changes make a huge difference.
    Highly practical, humorous, and inspirational, The Accidental Homesteader will encourage you to live with more peace, joy, and contentment.

Order your copy of The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home here.

Links Mentioned:

Deanna Day Young 

The Christmas Project Planner

Apple Hill in Placerville, California

Ace Hardware

Costco Holiday Paper Plates

Favorites:

Learn more about Clutter Free for Life

Which tip that Kathi and Deanna gave is most helpful to you when you feel low on energy? Share your answer in the comments.

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

  • Leave a note in the comment section below.
  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest 

 

Deanna Day Young

Deanna lives in southeast Indiana on the Young family farm with her husband of 35 years. She and Roger have two grown daughters.

Deanna is the Director of Operations for Iron Timbers, a family-owned custom furniture business featured currently, and for several years, on HGTV’s Good Bones show. Prior to this position, she was a paralegal and managed the international trademark portfolio for 34 years for the Hill-Rom division of Baxter International. Deanna has a degree in Journalism and Speech Communications from Ball State University and a Paralegal Certification from Saint Mary of the Woods College.

Fun Fact – Deanna and her daughter are also Chi Omega sorority sisters!! Hoot Hoot.

You can connect with Deanna at deannadayyoung.com

Transcript

Kathi (00:04.387)

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am back for part three of our series,

about your holiday gameplan when you’re low on energy. And I have been there, Deanna, how about you? Have you been there? You, you’ve got a broken foot right now. You are healing. Ankle, sorry, ankle, yes. And that, can we just say, when you break a bone, when you break anything, it’s exhausting, right?

Deanna Day Young (00:46.21)

Oh, absolutely.

Deanna Day Young (00:50.318)

I’m glad to work an ankle. I am healing. Mm-hmm.

Deanna Day Young (01:01.287)

Oh, it is abs and for me, not being able to walk is worse. I mean, everybody has a this was the worst. This was the worst. But man, not being able to walk to me is just yeah, it’s pretty tough. So it does zap your energy both physically and mentally to have to go through those things. But I think also for the purpose of our conversation today, sometimes our energy is that because we put too many things into our schedules and we’re trying to do all the things when the holidays roll around. So hopefully we’ll give everybody 10 tips to try and help with that energy.

Kathi (01:30.201)

Yeah.

Kathi (01:38.915)

Well, it’s so true because we have our regular life, which does not stop. And then we’re trying to put this part-time plus job on top of it with holidays. So I wanna talk about this. Okay, so my number one tip is assign everyone a meal to cook for your celebrations. Now, this could be my son who doesn’t cook, this could be him bringing KFC for everybody. I do not care.

Deanna Day Young (01:44.118)

Absolutely.

Deanna Day Young (01:50.74)

Right.

Deanna Day Young (01:58.976)

Love it.

Deanna Day Young (02:09.759)

I love that, I love it.

Kathi (02:09.931)

Just get some food on the table. That’s what we need from you. Yeah, so, and let me be very, very clear here. I think that this is really important with all of the things we’re talking about to have a conversation with everybody in your household to say, this is what’s important to me for the holidays. I wanna hear what’s important for you to the holidays.

Deanna Day Young (02:15.391)

Right, right.

Kathi (02:40.247)

How can we work on this together? Because I’ll just say, I think it’s really important that everybody in the family participates. Even if Christmas isn’t as important to them as it is to you, they should be, as a family, this is what we do. As a family.

Deanna Day Young (02:59.522)

Mm-hmm.

Deanna Day Young (03:04.81)

And the book that you wrote, The Christmas Project Planner, I love, love that book. And one of the things that you say in there is what is the most important thing for you from a food perspective? Because you were trying to use all your energy to make all the things. And I think you used in that book that like Roger’s cranberry cheesecake or there was some kind of a particular thing that like.

Kathi (03:09.036)

Yeah.

Kathi (03:20.45)

Yeah.

Kathi (03:29.208)

Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (03:33.022)

everybody wanted, but maybe they didn’t want this other thing that you were spending your energy on.

Kathi (03:37.875)

Right. Well, and like, I remember thinking I needed to make homemade stuffing. Can I just say, StoveTop is my favorite food in the entire world. Why would, why mess with perfection? I love StoveTop.

Deanna Day Young (03:48.566)

We do the same. Add a little, yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. Let me tell you what I do. I do two things of stove, we have, I think there’s 13 of us, anyway. So I do two things of stove top stuffing. I put it in a baking pan. I take some chicken broth, I pour over it, and I bake it. No one knows that it’s not grandma’s recipe. I’ve never, only Roger and I know. Yep, nobody said a word and they all love it.

Kathi (04:09.591)

Yeah?

Kathi (04:15.839)

It’s so perfect!

Love it and you could do that without butter. You just put the chicken broth in there or do you put some butter in there, too?

Deanna Day Young (04:26.522)

I put a little bit of butter when I make it, like when you make it on the stove. Yes, yeah, I make it. Yeah, yeah.

Kathi (04:28.679)

Okay, oh, got it. You put the made, I understand now you put the prepared. Oh, okay. I’m gonna have to try that. Yes. Okay. So yeah, assign everybody. This is what I’m doing for our next thing. And because I will tell you, Deanna, I have a bunch of backseat chefs in my family who want to tell me how to make things. And I’m like, no, you get your butt up and you make

Deanna Day Young (04:53.794)

Oh.

Kathi (04:58.707)

Yeah, yeah, we’re not we’re not playing that game anymore. So everybody cooks and people love to cook their specialty. And okay, maybe not everybody cooks, but everybody provides. Pick up that bucket of KFC. It’s going to be great. I love it. Okay. Number two, Deanna, you’re talking about expectations here.

Deanna Day Young (04:58.722)

There you go.

Deanna Day Young (05:21.77)

Yes, to set realistic expectations. And in our last podcast, we talked a little bit about don’t try to make it the social media perfect Christmas. And I feel like it’s the same thing from your energy perspective. It doesn’t have to be a picture perfect holiday. Now, you may say, these are all the things I wanna try to do for Christmas, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Put it on a list, but prioritize that list.

Kathi (05:32.035)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Deanna Day Young (05:50.07)

Because when other things pop in that have to be done, you’ve got to prioritize lists to say, man, you know what, driving around and seeing Christmas lights was my priority. So that’s number one. I want to get that done, so let’s fit that into the list. But set those realistic expectations that maybe you can’t do everything every weekend that you wanted to do.

but what are those priorities? And ask your family or those that are involved what their priorities are as well so that together you set those realistic expectations as a family.

Kathi (06:27.891)

Yeah, Deanna, when we first started, you know, every year we go and look at Christmas lights and we had a seven passenger van which worked for our whole family. And it was so fun. I started off by making a big thing of hot chocolate and baking cookies, because you know, we wanted to do that. Now it’s just Roger, me and my mom who go and look at that. We drive through Starbucks. Like we

Deanna Day Young (06:36.727)

Yeah!

Deanna Day Young (06:52.647)

Yeah!

Kathi (06:54.771)

Yeah, I mean it’s more expensive but we can get a cookie we can get a coffee that we want it makes a real difference Okay number three decide in advance what you want your holidays to look like then everybody in the house takes a role So we already talked about that but I it is not up to mom. It is not up to wife Unless you’re single it is not solely up to you what your Christmas looks like. So, you know if somebody wants

Deanna Day Young (06:59.374)

That’s right.

Kathi (07:24.511)

And this is so important. Let me say this, Deanna. So the number of times that I’ve heard of women asking their husbands for help to get ready for a party, and like, you know, I need help dragging out the chairs, I need help setting up the tables, I need help cleaning off the patio, and the husband decides this is the time to repaint the house.

Deanna Day Young (07:50.321)

Yes.

Kathi (07:53.091)

or clean out the basement? No. Sometimes we have to be very, very specific about what the roles need to be. Okay, number four, Deanna.

Deanna Day Young (07:53.25)

Yes.

Deanna Day Young (08:06.57)

Number four, clean before you put up your Christmas decorations and then highlight clean. So.

Kathi (08:12.427)

Okay, I’ve never heard the term highlight clean before. What does that mean? I get an idea, but.

Deanna Day Young (08:15.634)

Oh, yeah. So I have done this for years. So you clean really good one day a month, like at the beginning of the month. I mean, really, really good. And then you kind of highlight clean is what I’m saying. So I’ll explain that to you because if, if you are hosting Thanksgiving as I do, I’m cleaning really good right before Thanksgiving. And then the day after we have our Thanksgiving celebration, I’m putting up my Christmas decorations.

So this is my tip based on that. But whatever your schedule is, I would recommend cleaning really good right before you put your Christmas decorations up, to where you feel like people are coming over and I want my house to be really clean. The highlight cleaning for me is I do, I have a schedule. I’ve done this literally for probably 10 years. I think I read it in the Fly Lady book years and years ago.

Kathi (09:10.208)

Okay.

Deanna Day Young (09:13.186)

And so anyway, Monday is mirror and glass. Tuesday is bathrooms. Wednesday is sweeping the carpet. Thursday is sweeping and mopping the tile. Friday is dusting and Saturday is cleaning out my vehicle, sweeping out the garage. You don’t have to do all those too, but it’s a highlight. So I go in and I say, oh my gosh, those mirrors from people brushing their teeth, I need to just wipe those off real quick. That’s a Monday chore.

Kathi (09:31.776)

Right.

Kathi (09:40.424)

Yeah.

Deanna Day Young (09:41.57)

Tuesday bathroom chore, just clean out your sinks and swish a little bit into the pot. It doesn’t mean you have to clean and wipe down the showers and scrub them through the whole month of December. It’s okay. Wipe them down, spray them off, keep a squeegee in the shower. Everybody can do their own as the time comes. With the carpet, maybe it’s just you’re only gonna sweep the living room where everybody is and the dining room doesn’t have to be swept that week. Thursday for the tile, maybe you don’t have to mop.

Maybe that mopping is only once every other week instead of every week. And then just dust the spots that you can see that aren’t decorated. It’s just a highlight dust. And then, you know, I don’t really like, I take everything out of my vehicle when I get out that’s garbage or doesn’t really belong or that needs to go. But that’s a good day to be able to like look and say, I’m gonna get stuff out of my vehicle just because as we go places, we don’t have all this junk in there. I gotta put gifts or I gotta highlight things in there.

Kathi (10:18.86)

Right.

Kathi (10:40.899)

Love it. I love it. Yes. It’s just a keeping up because you’ve got enough to do and if you put enough decorations on something You don’t have to clean it for a while. That’s that’s a Okay, here’s number five buy some of the food you’d normally prepare from scratch so I love I think it’s just as Lovely to buy something locally as it is to prepare it from scratch

Deanna Day Young (10:49.93)

That’s exactly right.

Kathi (11:09.759)

So we have an Apple Hill here that has like apple cider donuts and you know, apple cider, all these apple, apple things that our family loves. So why not just buy the apple cider donuts and call it a day instead of? And then it’s so interesting here. Do you have ACE Hardware’s where you’re at? Okay. I don’t know if they do this, but at our ACE Hardware’s.

Deanna Day Young (11:27.316)

Absolutely.

Deanna Day Young (11:33.343)

Yes.

Kathi (11:39.011)

they have freezers that have locally made pies. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? And so we recently bought a pie there that we’re gonna be using for Thanksgiving. And exactly, I love it. And then, you know, we have wineries here. Now we don’t make our own wine, but you know, those are great to give as gifts and things like that. Anything you can get locally.

Deanna Day Young (11:43.698)

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really go into our ACE Hardware. That is interesting.

Deanna Day Young (11:54.739)

That’s awesome.

Kathi (12:08.747)

Is real I consider that so thoughtful you’re supporting local Artesians and you are you’re making you know, and sometimes they can make stuff yummier than you. Okay We are going to take a quick break. We’re going to come back and then number six Talking about energy. Oh, you’re gonna go there. You’re gonna talk about okay. We’ll be right back

Deanna Day Young (12:08.779)

Right.

Deanna Day Young (12:20.587)

Yes.

Kathi (12:35.859)

Okay, we’re back with Deanna. She’s gonna tell us how to have more energy. Go ahead, Deanna. Be everybody’s health fit auntie.

Deanna Day Young (12:42.231)

Well, I just…

Deanna Day Young (12:46.13)

And it’s not that I am any picture perfect of health fit, but I have found these things over the year. Well, that’s true. That is true. And that is so very frustrating because I just started back up with a trainer and I only trained about two weeks. So anyway, it’s okay. We’re figuring it out as we go along. But so my suggestion for number six for us to have more energy is to really

Kathi (12:50.243)

Well, dude, you can’t walk right now, so we’re gonna give you a pass.

Kathi (13:05.059)

You’ll get there.

Deanna Day Young (13:12.194)

Stay active before you know that you’re gonna be eating more carbs and sugar during the holidays, even if it’s just for short walks. So, you know, maybe you say, oh my gosh, my day is just absolutely filled. Can you get up 15 minutes earlier and take a walk around the block or get on the treadmill a little bit? Something that really, and I think, I guess I shouldn’t say that I know that there’s scientific evidence behind this, but I think there is, that if you get something started in the morning, if you go for a walk,

it really does give you more energy.

And the other tip that I just think is so important, when we go, whether it’s at our home or whether it’s to an outing that you have at church, people go through the line and they pick up their food,

then they just go ahead and get their dessert then. Because you’re hungry and everything looks good and you get six pieces of dessert and then you feel bad and you don’t wanna throw them away so you eat them all. Just go through the line and get what you want for your meal. When you’re finished, sit for a few minutes and then go get your dessert. And things won’t look quite as tempting. It’s kinda like going to the grocery store hungry. It won’t look quite as tempting. And so then you’re eating less sugar, less carbs, which in turn gives you more energy.

Kathi (15:02.843)

Okay, okay. Can I tell you my pet peeve about buffets? And my s- okay. You know when you’re setting up the buffet and you put your plates at the front? Why do people put forks, knives and spoons and napkins at the front of the buffet? That- it- it makes me crazy! I need both-

Deanna Day Young (15:08.668)

Yes.

Deanna Day Young (15:18.316)

Mm-hmm.

Deanna Day Young (15:25.678)

Yeah, that’s true.

But you know what I do? Yeah, I set mine. So I set my table, like my dining room table. If it’s at my house, if I’m hosting, the dining room table is set with the napkins and the silverware. And so all they have to do is get the plates.

Kathi (15:32.555)

What do you mean? Okay.

Yeah, I-

Kathi (15:41.807)

Okay. So if you’re setting up a buffet and you’re putting the forks, knives, spoons, napkins on it, on the buffet table, put them at the end. We don’t need to be messing with those at the beginning. And especially if there’s a long line, we don’t want to have to cut in line to come back and get them. No, no, no. I need both hands for getting my food. I want my food. I want to be scooping, and I don’t want to be dropping my random spoon into the buffet.

Deanna Day Young (15:53.718)

That’s a good point.

I love that.

Deanna Day Young (16:02.626)

That’s good. Mm-hmm.

Deanna Day Young (16:10.125)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (16:11.663)

Put them at the end, rant over. Okay. Yeah, and so don’t ever buy one of those things that has like, it’s a holder for plates and forks and knives and spoons and napkin. No, you don’t need that. You don’t need that, especially if you’re trying to save space. Okay, number seven, hire help the day before and the day after. Remember, we’re talking about saving energy here, not money, because you have to figure out which of your resources you have the most of. If money is your struggle,

Deanna Day Young (16:14.721)

Good job.

Kathi (16:41.411)

then listen to next week’s podcast because we’re gonna talk about what if you’re low on money. But right now we’re talking about energy. So when I was a teenager, we would always have our holidays with another family, like an extended family, not our family, if they were across the street. And we went to a very fancy Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’m not sure, I can’t remember which one it was, in San Francisco,

with very rich people. And we would go, you know, we would usually just go across the street to their daughter’s house, but this was the fancy one. And they had somebody in a maid’s uniform, remember this was 40 years ago, doing all the dishes. Like they came in, helped set up and did all the dishes. And I thought, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life. That is genius.

So because we don’t celebrate on the holiday, we could actually do that. We could hire somebody to come in and do that. Or we hire somebody locally. She’s somebody who’s retired and she needs some supplemental income. We hire her when we have retreats to bake cakes for us. She needs the money, we need the help. Could you hire somebody to clean your house? There are…

places that will hang all your Christmas lights, if that’s important to you. There is a college student that could send out your Christmas cards for you. We have a local ravioli shop here, and so we’ll buy Christmas raviolis and make those, or tamales, you know, tamales is a great thing to do for Christmas. So if you have a little bit more money than time, hire somebody to do one of these projects for you. Okay.

Deanna Day Young (18:16.958)

Oh, good one.

Deanna Day Young (18:37.427)

I love that.

Kathi (18:38.619)

Yeah, yeah, and you’re helping people that you love who need some extra cash. Yeah Right Yeah, yes

Deanna Day Young (18:44.3)

And those college kids that are home that really can’t have a job at home during the holidays, perhaps. Yeah, that’s great. I love that idea. Good one.

Kathi (18:51.531)

Yeah Have them have them hang your lights do your you know frosty the snowman decorations do it all. I love it Okay number eight

Deanna Day Young (19:02.646)

Number eight is another kind of healthy one that I wanted us to think about is to drink plenty of water and don’t overdo the coffee and the caffeine drinks because we’re very tempted to do that when we are looking for more energy. But the problem is we may drink six cups of coffee when in reality we only drink one or two. That does make us feel good for the time, but then you crash. The same with energy drinks. You may only drink one a day, but you decide I’m gonna drink one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

So I can stay up till one o’clock in the morning. And that’s just, that’s not the way to do it. Fill yourself with water. I’m not saying don’t drink your coffee, don’t drink your energy drink, but I do think that if we can stay on top of like drinking more water and doing some of the things even like number six that I said about staying active, it’s gonna keep us from having that crash and it’s gonna keep our energy level where we want it.

Kathi (19:54.387)

I love it. Yes. I’ve got an alarm that is set to remind me to drink water throughout the day because I just don’t even think about it. OK. Number nine. Make ahead dishes and fancy paper plates. OK. Let me let me give my justification here. So like one of the things I will make ahead this year is my apple cake because it freezes so well. It’s so good. It’s so dense and so moist.

Deanna Day Young (20:01.829)

Oh, that’s good.

Deanna Day Young (20:19.898)

Mmm.

Kathi (20:22.775)

that it freezes well and you can unfreeze it and enjoy it. But I can make that in November to eat at Christmas time. And it’s gonna be great.

Deanna Day Young (20:32.716)

Oh, will it save that one because I would want to eat it. You might have to make two.

Kathi (20:35.791)

I know. Well, you can see you can chop it ahead and you can just eat all the corners because that’s my favorite part. Yeah, it’s really good. And then I’m not a paper plate user. I’m married to an environmentalist. He’s a deep environmentalist. But I also understand that Roger and I manage 33 acres of forest. So we are conservationists at the holidays. I’m going to use paper plates. So

Deanna Day Young (20:41.214)

Oh, there you go. Yeah, sounds awesome.

Deanna Day Young (21:01.902)

There you go.

Kathi (21:03.699)

Get some nice paper plates that don’t have to be we have one dishwasher like most people in America Lots of people don’t have a dishwasher Use the paper plates when you need to Because I don’t want you crashing after all of this So Costco has a set of paper plates that we tend to buy each year And we just decorate around those and they look great But what can you make ahead of time even if you’re not making your Christmas dishes ahead of time?

Deanna Day Young (21:15.766)

I like it.

Kathi (21:32.495)

Can you make the food you eat that week ahead of time? And that’s gonna make a huge difference. Yes, exactly. Okay, number 10, Dino, bring us home.

Deanna Day Young (21:36.566)

Yeah, right, right. It goes back to meal planning, kind of back to meal planning.

Deanna Day Young (21:45.354)

Number 10, keep your routines as much as possible. Like get to bed early. And I’m not saying earlier, but if your bedtime is typically 10, try to keep those routines as much as possible, especially if you have children, because it’s so very hard for children to get out of the routine, to lose their energy, become grouchy. So keep routines as much as possible, like getting to bed early, your quiet times in the morning for Bible study. Sometimes I think we get so, you know, involved in this time of year that we just don’t even take our quiet time as seriously if we have one of those, if we have quiet time. We don’t take it as seriously. So don’t lose what your routines are. So keep your routines as much as possible. And I think from that, your energy level will stay high.

Kathi (22:33.915)

I love it. Okay, you guys, this is all of our best ideas to if you’re just running low on energy, this holiday season, these are some things you can do to get through, but also keep yourself safe and healthy. That’s what we want most from you. Okay, friends, you’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy, I am Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you were always intended to live.

 

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