650 – The 5 Financial Habits You Should Build in 2025

Order Sabbath Soup here

How did you first realize you needed to change your approach to finances?

Share 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

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi Lipp (00:18.316)

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. Tonya, we’re gonna talk about money.

This is an area that I still struggle but feel like I’m doing better every day. What are your feelings towards money?

Tonya Kubo (00:45.396)

Well, I would like to have more of it always. like, you know, money is just numbers. It doesn’t really bother me to talk about money. I just would like more of it all the time. Right. Because there’s always something to buy, Kathi. I mean, hello, we are in clutter free Academy here.

Kathi Lipp (00:48.468)

Yes, of course.

Kathi Lipp (00:55.48)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yes. Right. Yes, yes. And I wonder, do you feel like cluttery people? You know, I always feel like I can’t remember what movie, you know, when will it be enough? Just a little bit more. I’m trying to remember. I can’t remember what movie it is, but, you know, when will it be enough? Just a little bit more. And I feel like I can feel that way about the stuff in my house.

Tonya Kubo (01:14.896)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:26.82)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:27.064)

course, I also want it to be less stuff in my house. I just want the right stuff, right? But also finances. you know, this year we’re kicking off, we’re talking about habits that we can develop in our lives in order to really approach the new year empowered. And I feel like especially with financial habits, that empowering is really, really important because we can feel like victims

Tonya Kubo (01:31.919)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (01:55.624)

Our not enough or we can feel like no, I’m super clever I can figure this out we can make this work and Roger and I have a ginormous bill to pay off like like ginormous like life-altering amount of money and You know, we knew what we were doing when we did that it was to make improvements to the home and things like that and worse we don’t regret doing it but

It does feel overwhelming and we’ve had to have a lot of financial discussions about how are we going to take those numbers and aim point, point those dollar bills in a powerful way. And so I wanted to talk about five things that I feel like have been very, very helpful for us and habits that we are getting into in order to gain some of that power back.

Tonya Kubo (02:27.706)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (02:36.772)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (02:50.544)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (02:50.924)

And the first thing I’m going to talk about is something that you and I both love. We are passionate about it. It’s the book Profit First. this, yes. Okay. Let me just start off by saying this is a business financial book. So if you’re not a business financial person, you might be like, but why? But Tonya, can you talk a little bit about the principles around Profit First and how they can apply to a home?

Tonya Kubo (02:54.842)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (02:58.659)

Yes!

Tonya Kubo (03:18.788)

Well, so for me, I mean, the biggest principle of Profit First that I think you can apply to a home is rather than taking what’s left for your family, take what you need for your family first and then alter the what’s left part. So for example, I think a lot of us are reactionary with our finances, right? Like, the power bill is twice what it was last month.

Kathi Lipp (03:28.501)

Right?

Kathi Lipp (03:34.04)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (03:47.344)

Okay, well, I guess I’m paying twice what it was. And then at the end, right, we say, I’ve got an extra $50 left over. I guess $50 goes in savings. Whereas, you know, with profit first, when you talk about, so you need to make sure that the very first cut you take is for yourself and then make sure everything else, all your expenses align. The first cut goes to savings because you’re never going to get off the financial hamster wheel.

Kathi Lipp (03:47.629)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (03:56.024)

Hmm

Kathi Lipp (04:04.642)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (04:11.266)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (04:14.672)

if you don’t start to build that up. And I know, you there was a time in our life where all we could do was say five to $10 a month and that was a huge win. But, you know, at the end of a year, having 120 to $150 set aside was the difference between having to put something on a credit card and being able to pay cash for it.

Kathi Lipp (04:14.7)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (04:22.968)

bright.

Kathi Lipp (04:38.028)

Yeah, there were I when we first started this there were months where we put things into savings and later that month have to take it right out and It felt like okay. This is ridiculous. But you know what it made such a difference and Here’s the other thing. It’s so funny. We just did a podcast about hiding food from our family So that they didn’t plow through it. Can we take that same principle and talk about money with?

Tonya Kubo (04:47.726)

Right back out, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (04:55.151)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:03.408)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (05:07.414)

Miss Kathi Lipp because if I see that it’s available I feel like we that’s just my brain right and I don’t want to be the wee person but one of the things that we did as a family for our business was set up different accounts so that we never saw the money that the money wasn’t there because the money had been Allotted for something different and that’s what we had to do it

Tonya Kubo (05:08.994)

Tonya Kubo (05:15.408)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:24.399)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:34.916)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (05:37.142)

So you guys the book profit first is on sale right now for like 11 bucks I don’t know what it will be when we you know broadcast this but It’s not a huge investment. It’s very easy and some people are like, well, isn’t this kind of like the envelope method? It is like the envelope method But it’s you we we’ve set up a number of different accounts and we could do that for free in our with our bank

Tonya Kubo (05:46.405)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:04.96)

And if we couldn’t, we might’ve switched banks. We’ve actually got some accounts that are at a totally different credit union, because that’s what makes sense for us. But you can absolutely transfer this. And guys, you’re recommending a finance book, Kathi. If finances are a struggle, I highly recommend this, because everybody I have recommended it to, they swear by it. They swear by it. It makes a lot of difference.

Tonya Kubo (06:13.264)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:27.738)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:32.95)

So yes, the savings first transfer. What are the other categories that you need to pay? Everybody has that weird category that other people don’t have, but you know, you can start to guess what your categories are gonna be. And Tonya, Roger and I, when we borrowed some money against our own house, I will say we were not as careful with that money as we needed to be.

Tonya Kubo (06:50.032)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (07:02.57)

Electric bill was insane insane and we were always too busy to figure out what was going on and We knew you know after doing that for too long We sat down and we had to figure out what is going on here and we did some investigation and not only Not only did we figure out turning the heater on for moose is costing us. I’m not even joking

Tonya Kubo (07:05.818)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:11.472)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:20.346)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (07:31.266)

hundreds of dollars a month. Like you guys, it was crazy. But also we found out that we qualified for a program through PG &E, our electric company, that drastically reduced our bill. And then we also qualified for another program where we’re going to get free Tesla backup batteries for our house because Roger’s on a CPAP.

Tonya Kubo (07:32.56)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:41.465)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:55.13)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (07:57.634)

Like until you start investigating these things, you don’t know. And when you’re not paying attention to your budget, it’s very easy to just keep paying, paying, paying and never get ahead. And guys, we want you to get ahead. We want this to be something that we want you to win. And so we want you to feel the squeeze. And when you start to say, okay, if I reduce this bill, I have a little bit more money to play with over here and making savings a priority.

Tonya Kubo (08:00.698)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:06.672)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:16.016)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:27.552)

Okay, number two, weekly budget check-in. Just are you somehow checking your budget to just see what is going on? Roger and I call this Monday Monies and Munchies, where we look forward to it because we’re gonna eat something amazing, but we also, know, money is a hard subject and…

Tonya Kubo (08:44.985)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:51.055)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:56.386)

You know, Roger and I don’t fight, but neither of us like dealing with the money. It’s not fun. So how do you check in on your budget, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (09:01.274)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (09:05.74)

Yeah, so I’m fully responsible for the finances in our house. So while I do try to sit down with Brian, because I think it’s important that he knows what we’re spending, how much we spend and what we spend it on, he has zero desire or interest in any of it. So I have to be really short, really to the point. I have a good friend though. She and her husband do a Costco date on Fridays.

Kathi Lipp (09:09.729)

Okay.

Kathi Lipp (09:16.33)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Kathi Lipp (09:24.504)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (09:32.176)

They just, don’t go to Costco to shop. They just go to the Costco food court. They each get hot dogs or a slice of pizza. And that’s when they do their finances. And I think that is brilliant at Costco.

Kathi Lipp (09:36.79)

Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Kathi Lipp (09:44.472)

At Costco. That’s wild. They bring their laptops? Or phones? Okay. Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (09:50.616)

No, she does everything in a notebook. And so she’s in charge of the family finances. They’re a single income household. Her job is being a good steward of his paycheck. Like that’s how they do it. And so she sits down and the way she looks at it is just like if she was a CFO and she’s meeting with the CEO, like this is what I’m doing with the money and this is what I think we should do. And these are some questions I have and that’s what they do. And it works really well for them. And she says, she’s like, don’t like, he doesn’t.

Kathi Lipp (10:01.282)

Got it, okay.

Kathi Lipp (10:08.782)

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (10:20.496)

really care what I do with his paycheck, as long as there are certain things that are important to him that he gets. She’s like, I could stockpile it all the way for Christmas and he’s not going to care. But I think it’s important to check in. Yeah. So I think it’s fascinating.

Kathi Lipp (10:25.421)

Right?

Kathi Lipp (10:31.118)

But he just wants, yeah. You know, as long as Roger has his favorite brand of salsa, we’re pretty much good to go, you know? But as soon as it dips below his favorite form of salsa, we’re gonna have a deep discussion, yeah. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (10:39.748)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (10:50.328)

Right, right. If you’ve got to go to off-brand salsa, you might have to dig deeper.

Kathi Lipp (10:54.158)

Times are desperate, right? Okay, guys, we’re gonna take a quick break and we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna talk about something that both Tonya and I are super passionate about when it comes to finances. So you’re not gonna wanna miss this. We’ll be right back.

Okay guys, we are back. We’ve talked about two financial habits. Read Profit First or listen to it on audio. I listen to it on audio about, I would say every 18 months and it gets me excited about it again. Number two, weekly budget check-in. Make sure that you know where that money is going. Number three, we both love this. You know it. It’s Low Buy July.

Tonya Kubo (11:23.152)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (11:37.858)

Tonya, talk a little bit about your passion behind Low by July.

Tonya Kubo (11:42.778)

Well, what I love about, I mean, for us, it started off like out of necessity, first of all, right? So I was going to, yeah. And I think what we can do is we can link a couple of episodes that are about Low Buy July in the show notes. But ultimately, the idea is to reduce your discretionary spending as much as possible. So we’re not talking about living in dark.

Kathi Lipp (11:48.288)

Right. Explain what it is. Explain what it… Okay. Okay, good. I want to make sure.

Kathi Lipp (11:57.634)

Yes. Right.

Tonya Kubo (12:10.724)

like and not turning on your lights because you’re not allowed to pay the power bill this month. We’re just talking about, can you minimize the impulse purchases? Can you spend an extra week before you go back to the grocery store? Can you fill up your tank one less time this month? you know, because you’re driving fewer places, that’s really what low by July is about. And what I, we initially started it out of necessity, like I said, because Brian didn’t used to get a paycheck in August.

Kathi Lipp (12:11.437)

Great.

Kathi Lipp (12:40.162)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (12:40.3)

And while I am an almost equal contributor to the household these days, there was a time where I was like, he was bringing in about three-fourths what I brought in, but we still needed his three-fourths a lot. So having that one check now come in was really tough. And so I needed to make July’s money stretch as long as possible. And that was how we did it. Now I like it cause it’s a reset because after Christmas,

Kathi Lipp (12:54.09)

Right? 100%. Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (13:02.017)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (13:07.021)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:07.972)

For us at least, Christmas feels like an excess. We are doing a ton of traveling. We’re very busy, so there’s a lot of eating out. And that carries over into January. We’ve got birthdays in January and then all the things. And then it’s usually around May where I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like there’s less going into savings than there used to be. Like all this stuff is happening. And so then in July, it’s an opportunity to reset. It’s an opportunity for us to go, okay, what do we really wanna be doing with our money?

Kathi Lipp (13:25.804)

Yes!

Kathi Lipp (13:30.06)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:37.804)

It’s an opportunity to be looking at where the money’s going. You know, are we spending more here than we used to? If that’s the case, where can we take that from? And what should be our financial priorities moving forward? I feel like in our household, it is hard to proactively talk about financial priorities in a month where it feels like we’re doing a lot of spending. So Low Buy July for us is a great time for that. How about you?

Kathi Lipp (14:00.268)

Right.

And it may you know what I love is You know our budget has historically had enough a little bit of room that we don’t have to It we can’t we do but we don’t have to look at the sales flyers. We don’t have to plan our meals around what’s on sale and July resets that

Tonya Kubo (14:22.01)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:27.888)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (14:31.384)

for me, I get out of good habits. And you know, so in July, I take Amazon off my phone. take, you know, I’m trying to eat down what we have in our pantry, which is a really good time for us because we want to make sure that the things we stocked up on last year are not hanging around too long.

Tonya Kubo (14:39.696)

Mm.

Tonya Kubo (14:57.741)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (14:58.81)

So, you know, that’s what we want to be able to do. And I notice that we start to save a lot more money in the fall because I’m out of that impulse habit. And again, with cluttery people, impulsivity is something that we know, it’s our best asset. It also can be our biggest struggle. And so, you know, Roger loves when I say

Tonya Kubo (15:20.91)

Right?

Kathi Lipp (15:24.344)

Hey, let’s drive to town and get a Starbucks and I probably do that twice a year. So it’s fun to be impulsive, but also, you know, we need to tame that because that’s not a sustainable way of living. And at some point we’re going to retire. At some point, we’re not going to have the income that we do. And I want to be able to enjoy my life without regrets. Okay. Number four, monthly subscription audit. Okay, Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (15:28.89)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:48.026)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (15:53.7)

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Kathi Lipp (15:53.742)

I’m very proud of myself. have gone, well, okay, I should be ashamed of how many monthly subscriptions I have let sneak into our house, our household budget, but I’m not gonna go with the shame. I’m gonna go with the victory that I, over the past two months, I’ve been auditing, like as things come up and I’m like, okay, we’re not watching Brit Box. Okay, we don’t need.

Tonya Kubo (16:04.688)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (16:09.487)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (16:16.89)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (16:23.464)

Apple we don’t need an Apple TV subscription year-round You know I ours so I have been canceling monthly subscriptions or yearly subscriptions But every month I’m doing an audit and seeing you know now a lot of companies are telling you hey this subscription is renewing in a week and So I’m being very proactive to go and cancel that I’m searching through

Tonya Kubo (16:28.048)

you

Tonya Kubo (16:46.608)

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (16:52.406)

are Wells Fargo statements and saying, is there anything else? I’m looking in places like Google Play or PayPal and saying, what’s coming out that I don’t really need for it to come out anymore. And you know, I love when there are some subscriptions I have and I love and I use, and I’m great with that.

But it’s the one that I’ve kind of fallen out of the habits on that is, it’s been great. And I just did a total. So I asked AI, here are all the subscriptions I have canceled. Tell me what my annual savings are. And for the subscriptions that I’ve canceled over the past several months, we are saving annually $670.

Tonya Kubo (17:30.661)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:47.982)

Nice.

Kathi Lipp (17:49.058)

That’s not a small, it’s not an insignificant amount of money. It’s a huge amount of money. And so, like I have a Costco membership, I have a Sam’s membership. I will always pay for the, well, don’t know if I’ll always, but for now, I have no problem paying for those, because I use them enough, it makes sense. But these little things that can creep in, they make a difference when they’re all adding up. Tonya, how do you,

Tonya Kubo (18:15.822)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (18:17.579)

Are you good about this stuff? Do you struggle? Do your kids have subscriptions?

Tonya Kubo (18:21.136)

Well, think, yeah, so I think for us, you know, as a household, like Brian is responsible for entertainment, right? So they’re like, oftentimes I’m just like, okay, so help me understand why we have Peacock and Apple and Hulu and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and he’ll say, well, know, Abby likes this show. It’s only on that channel. It’s only on that service, this service, that service.

Kathi Lipp (18:33.486)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (18:42.456)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:48.868)

But what I do find is the channels included with certain services change a lot. And so it’s worth always looking at that to say, hey, because I remember I cannot tell you what it is because it’s not a show I watch, but there was some show that we had a service and it was because that was the only way you could watch the show. But then that became available with like our cable subscription. And so we ended up knocking off like 30 bucks a month.

Kathi Lipp (18:55.63)

Hmm.

Kathi Lipp (19:13.911)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (19:17.98)

one year just by evaluating what services got access to which shows. And even if we decide, you know, we want to watch a show or pay to watch like a single show, it’s cheaper over the course of the year than it is to subscribe to these services. And I am, so I have to look quarterly because things sneak in. I’m like, I’m a big fan of,

Kathi Lipp (19:35.565)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (19:42.064)

client or a friend launches some low cost thing and it’s nine dollars a month. And that’s all I’m like, yeah, I’ll support you. But, you know, nine dollars a month times five suddenly is a forty five dollar a month thing. So I have to do that. And then this year, I’ve really been looking at my business expenses and seeing where I can cut there, because the less business expenses I have, the more profit I can take that I then put into my family’s account.

Kathi Lipp (19:52.961)

It’s so true.

Kathi Lipp (20:10.734)

100 % and we have to keep on top of those things. So do that audit. Then number five, a financial focus hour. So this is something that Roger and I are doing. Now we’ve talked about body doubling that I am much more focused when I know Roger is focusing on something adjacent to what I’m focusing on. So one thing that we’re doing now,

Tonya Kubo (20:15.62)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:37.103)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (20:40.366)

is Roger is spending that hour looking at more of our high-level finances. Like, do we need to move something around? It makes it sound very, do we need to move money around? You know, we’re not that bougie, but would it make sense? He’s, you know, one of the things he’s doing this week is checking with a financial advisor through work to see what we should be doing. Well, I’m doing more of the low-level stuff, like,

What’s a loss leader at Safeway this week? Yeah, but they’re both contributing to our financial future in our home. And so is there something that you could be doing? Now you say you are primarily responsible for finances in your house. How often do you check in on your finances?

Tonya Kubo (21:11.792)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (21:30.256)

So I check in twice a month. So I do a budget check weekly and then I’m checking in on other deeper dives about twice a month. Because there’s things that Brian subscribes to that I don’t know about and I have to ask questions and it’s just easier to ask questions when there’s two versus when there’s five.

Kathi Lipp (21:40.75)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (21:44.692)

Right. Yeah. Yes. Right. Absolutely. And now are when you are checking in on those things, is it because, you know, Brian gets paid twice a month or is it is there a reason behind it or it just works for you?

Tonya Kubo (22:03.564)

Yeah, so for us, so Brian only gets paid once a month. And I have to tell you, I miss my university days where we both got paid the same day. And then it was just a matter of making the money last. So part of why I check in is because it helps me understand how much I need to pay myself because I pay myself like every other week. That way that that’s like groceries and stuff like that. So it helps me go, OK, so, you know, where am I at? Because I do control

Kathi Lipp (22:11.905)

yeah.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (22:21.955)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:32.844)

my own income so that I can save money so that I can offset lean times. But there’s sometimes, like for instance, we had a phone bill that was double what we usually spend. Actually, no, was three times what we usually spend. know, and Brian can’t just suddenly like make that up. That’s just not the nature of his line of work. So it was nice for me to be able to say, okay, well, I have that in my backup that I can then pull over.

Kathi Lipp (22:34.904)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (22:39.137)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (22:46.85)

Wow.

Kathi Lipp (22:52.054)

Right? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (23:00.068)

But if I wasn’t checking, if I was only checking once a month, that would have, I would not have recognized that.

Kathi Lipp (23:00.206)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (23:06.668)

Yeah. Okay, guys, we’re gonna go over these financial habits again. Don’t try to implement everything at once, but think about what could you easily put into your lifestyle? Put it on your calendar so that it comes up and helps you. I want your financial freedom to be at the forefront of your mind because this is something we all need to be paying attention to. And I’ll tell you,

us cluttery people have a hard time with it. And I don’t want this to be a source of contention in your relationships or for you. I want you to take care of your future self. So number one, check out the book Profit First. We don’t earn commission from you doing this. We just want you to be financially healthy. Two, weekly budget check. This is to just check in, you know, do you…

Check into your accounts. Make sure you know where your money is going. Number three, join us for Low Buy July. You can do this over at Clutterfree Academy, Kathi Lipp’s Clutterfree Academy on Facebook. We do it every year. We would love to have you over there. Four, monthly subscription audit. See what you’re actually paying for over and over on repeat. They make it very easy for you to not see that being on repeat. And we want you to make the…

Tonya Kubo (24:25.232)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (24:27.946)

Invisible visible and it will help you take care of your finances and then finally Financial focus hour is is there somebody else you’re sharing finances with where you can each take a piece of it and do a deeper dive Because it’s gonna help you save money Tonya. This has been great and it’s been very unscary, which I really like Yay And friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Kathi lip now

Tonya Kubo (24:48.482)

Yay!

Kathi Lipp (24:57.708)

Go create the clutter free life you’ve always wanted to live.

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#656 When Opposites Attract: Managing Different Clutter Levels in Marriage

In this enlightening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp welcomes author Arlene Pellicane to discuss the delicate balance of managing different organizational styles within marriage. If you're struggling with a spouse who has different standards of tidiness,...

#649 The 5 Cleaning Habits You Should Build in 2025

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Dec 24, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

649 – The 5 Cleaning Habits You Should Build in 2025

Do you look at your home and feel overwhelmed by the mess, but the thought of a full-day cleaning marathon makes you want to hide under the covers?

Well, you’re not alone!

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo dive deep into practical, achievable cleaning strategies that work for real people with real lives. They break down five key habits that can transform how you approach home maintenance, proving that keeping a clean home doesn’t have to be overwhelming or impossible.

Listeners will discover:

The “patch cleaning” method: Cleaning small areas instead of waiting to do everything at once
How to implement a nightly kitchen reset
The room-by-room rotation cleaning approach
How to avoid the all-or-nothing cleaning mindset

Listeners will come away with actionable strategies to maintain a cleaner home without feeling stressed or overwhelmed. The episode is a refreshing take on home maintenance that prioritizes realistic, achievable goals over perfection.

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup here and sign up to receive your free ebook featuring four week’s worth of easy meal plans and delicious recipes.

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here.

Clutter Free Resources:

Order Sabbath Soup here

How do you balance cleaning with other life responsibilities?

Share 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

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi Lipp (00:19.512)

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. We are with our five daily habits for 2025 and it’s with Tonya Kubo. Hey Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (00:37.018)

Hey there, Kathi.

Kathi Lipp (00:38.638)

I know you have a very, very, very businessy podcast. How does it feel to do a very business podcast? And then we’re talking about how to clean toilets and how to organize your sock drawer. Like, do you feel like you get whiplash between your podcasts?

Tonya Kubo (00:56.859)

especially since the recording days are the same usually. But yeah, it’s kind of fun. It’s kind of fun to have such a difference.

Kathi Lipp (01:00.552)

no, I didn’t know that.

You get to use very, yeah, you get to use very different parts of your brain. Yeah. OK, well, we are back and we are talking about a subject that we don’t talk about very often, and that is cleaning. some people, people always tell me I have a cleaning podcast and I’m like, no, I do not have a cleaning podcast. That’s that’s not who I am. But I have a decluttering podcast and you have to get, you know.

Tonya Kubo (01:10.714)

That is true.

Tonya Kubo (01:27.683)

Ew.

Tonya Kubo (01:32.057)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:34.164)

It’s it’s great to declutter before you clean. So you actually have something to clean but I will be honest with you One i’m much better about cleaning than I used to be and two I do have somebody who comes twice a month that does like all the floors all the the you know, the big scrubs, you know, she’s the one who is Down on her hands and knees for the bathtub like that. That just is not my favorite thing. And so i’ve

Tonya Kubo (02:02.97)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (02:04.072)

I’ve decided to exchange a certain amount of money to not have to do that. And by the way, her name is Kelly and she is, she has become a wonderful friend and she loves to clean. Like she says, you know, every once in a while I just can’t sleep. So I get up and clean. I’m like, that has never ever happened to me. No, no. But here’s, here’s what I know. Two things. One.

Tonya Kubo (02:22.566)

Happened to me in my entire life, Kathi Lipp. Never.

Kathi Lipp (02:32.942)

Kelly is not here every day, which makes me very sad. I wish she was here every day. My life would be so much better if Kelly was here every day, but that is not our lives. Also, there are times when Kelly can’t come. We had a five month period this year where it was me and Roger, because she had some shoulder surgery, so it was up to us.

Tonya Kubo (02:37.904)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (03:00.972)

For most of my life, it’s been up to me. And so I’ve had to learn some things and I know that one of the things that really gets me, don’t, tell me if you play these mental games. First of all, one of my mental games when it comes to cleaning is, well, it’s not really dirty. I’m gonna wait till it’s really dirty, cause I’ll feel so much satisfaction when it’s clean. Has that, that, right? my goodness. my goodness. Then I also think,

Tonya Kubo (03:22.981)

Instant gratification!

Kathi Lipp (03:31.246)

it’s so dirty. It’s going to take so long. I don’t have enough time. And so I can’t do it. I swing wildly between those two things and have for years and am just now coming to terms with how to deal with it. And I feel like I had a massive breakthrough today that I I’m going to share with us on number two, but no, yes, number two. Yes. But let me do number one first.

Tonya Kubo (03:35.76)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (03:44.326)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (03:57.45)

I feel like this is the secret tip that we hear everybody talk about, but it really has made the biggest difference in my life. And that is making my bed. I know, okay, what’s your face, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (04:12.518)

no, I’m sorry. Yes, making your bed is not something we do here in the Kubo household. It is not, yeah.

Kathi Lipp (04:19.712)

Okay, that’s okay. Maybe it has a different psychological effect on different people. Here’s how I think about making my bed. One, I have just made at least a quarter of my room, like decluttered and clean in two minutes. So that makes me super happy. Two, Roger loves getting into a made bed. I like it. He loves it. And he is, I will say,

Tonya Kubo (04:26.533)

Ha ha ha.

Tonya Kubo (04:44.282)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (04:49.646)

Probably 50 % of the time the bedmaker in our house and was not that way when we got married so and then Three it’s a surface that I can fold clothes on It is a surface that I can do projects on for some reason that helps me but that two-minute win Clicks off my day. Is there something like that? That is like, okay if I do this I feel better about the rest of my house

Tonya Kubo (04:52.909)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:02.714)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (05:18.632)

yeah, for me it’s cleaning off the kitchen table. Like, Brian will tell you hands down, the state of the kitchen table has a direct correlation to my mental health.

Kathi Lipp (05:21.29)

Okay, yeah.

Kathi Lipp (05:29.926)

Interesting. Okay. Okay. It is the opposite for me. Like it has no correlation to my mental health. So that is fascinating. That is fascinating. So you know, whatever that is for you, that cleaning habit that feels like it kicks off all the other things. Make that happen. Okay, number two, this is where I feel like I had my big aha moment today.

Tonya Kubo (05:37.845)

Yeah, no, for me it’s the kitchen table.

Tonya Kubo (05:54.85)

Okay, we want to hear it, Kathi. We want to hear it.

Kathi Lipp (05:58.146)

patch at a time and Let me explain what that means because it means nothing to you right now So you’ve been in my upstairs bathroom. We did a beautiful remodel on that bathroom It makes me so happy every time I go in there the one thing that maybe if I could change on that remodel Would be the floor. I don’t know if you remember the floor it is it’s like

Tonya Kubo (06:02.47)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:20.571)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:24.76)

I just know it heats up and I love that about it.

Kathi Lipp (06:27.402)

Okay, yes, I’m sorry. I’m saying the wrong thing. That floor I love. It’s the shower floor that Yeah, so it is like a pebbly thing and it gets these spots on them and so I bought a tool that is basically a scrubber. It’s a it’s a scrubber that swirls around and it’s electric

Tonya Kubo (06:34.642)

okay.

Kathi Lipp (06:57.046)

So it’s almost like a mop, but it’s a scrubber. But I’m always telling myself I don’t have time to do the entire thing, right? So it just goes on with the spots and it just never looks exactly right. So this morning I’m like, I’m just gonna do six square inches. I’m just gonna do six square inches. And then tomorrow I can do another six square inches because I never seem to have a morning where it’s like,

Tonya Kubo (06:59.546)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:19.846)

you

Kathi Lipp (07:26.54)

wow, this is a morning where I have lots of time to clean. Like that morning has not materialized in my life. So I did the six square inches and I’m like, that was easier than I remember. So I did another six square inches and I did another and it took me about four whole minutes to clean the shower floor. But I was okay with just doing the six square inches today and then tomorrow doing another six square inches.

Tonya Kubo (07:40.693)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:55.183)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (07:55.82)

And we talked about this with decluttering on our last podcast that all or nothing feeling that all like I have to do the whole kitchen counter. Well, no, you don’t actually have to do the whole kitchen counter. You know, do you do you feel like you don’t clean because you feel like you have to do the kitchen sink, the kitchen counter, the stovetop? It all has to be done at once. And I have come more to a rotation theory like

Tonya Kubo (08:01.84)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:08.325)

No.

Tonya Kubo (08:18.896)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:26.146)

I can clean the sink after we do dishes at night and then that’ll be great. I can also do the counters after we do dishes, but maybe I’ll do the stovetop in the morning because I’ll have a little bit more time to do that. I think it’s okay. Not everything has to be clean all at the same time. You know, there are two days a year where that has to happen Christmas and Thanksgiving because you have people coming over. Everything else is optional.

Tonya Kubo (08:39.354)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:55.883)

Is there anything that you do by patches? know you do your kitchen counter decluttering by patches anything else like in the cleaning realm?

Tonya Kubo (09:01.584)

Mm-hmm.

Well, like my bathroom is always done in patches. Like I focus on one aspect of the bathroom every day. So, so like the bathroom sink only gets like cleaned once a week. You know, that’s like one example, like do I clear it off? Do I take a baby wipe and wipe it down sometimes? Sure. But there’s like one day a week where it’s like, okay, like yesterday was the day, which is why it’s fresh in my mind. I clean that.

Kathi Lipp (09:07.512)

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (09:11.182)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (09:17.97)

Mmm, okay, yeah.

Kathi Lipp (09:26.562)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (09:32.3)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (09:33.734)

the bathtub about once a week, once every other week, because we don’t take a lot of baths. So over there, tends to be the dust. But it’s just every day I go, what needs to be done here?

Kathi Lipp (09:38.179)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (09:41.9)

Yes, absolutely.

Kathi Lipp (09:46.838)

Right and you know, I hear these people online who talk about I just have my routine every day and I do the exact same thing So that my kitchen is always in perfect order that will never be me. It will never ever be me That is not the life I live And so i’m okay with that

Tonya Kubo (09:53.318)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (10:03.62)

Yeah, I think it just, it just depends. Like it depends on a lot, right? Like I know people who genuinely cannot fall asleep at night if they know there’s a dirty dish in their sink. There are a lot of things, Kathi, that keep me up at night. Dirty dishes in my sink is just not one of them.

Kathi Lipp (10:13.591)

Great.

Kathi Lipp (10:17.878)

Yes. Yes.

Kathi Lipp (10:24.138)

It’s not one of them. It is not one of them. so, and it’s okay if you’re that person like Kelly who cleans my house, that’s her. And she has skills that I do not have. I wish that I had been born with some of those skills. I just don’t have them. But you know, the reason you want to be clean, one is because yeah, we want it to look nice. We want it to feel nice. But two, we’re trying to keep people alive, you know? So like things that keep people alive.

Tonya Kubo (10:29.53)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (10:48.944)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (10:52.014)

You know, disinfecting the counters, disinfecting the sink. Like those things are important to me, but having a spotless refrigerator every day of the year is not as important to me. I do it on a, you know, at least once a month I’m going in there kind of cleaning things out. If there’s a spill, I’m cleaning it up. But I’m just trying to be realistic with the life I actually live and keeping on top of it. Okay. Number three.

Tonya Kubo (10:58.0)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:09.733)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (11:19.754)

A nightly kitchen reset. you know, we’ve talked about this before. Roger does the dishes. I, I clean the kitchen. And so I am just doing a spritz and swipe, you know, spritz, spritz, swipe it down spritz. It’s not like a deep cleaning on TikTok all the time. There are these videos of people going in with steam cleaners. like, what are you doing? Are you butchering in your kitchen? Like, why do you need that deep of a clean?

Tonya Kubo (11:32.07)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:36.229)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (11:50.094)

The other thing that I like to do is I am going back to number two patch at a time if there’s something on the floor I’m getting out the Swiffer mop and I’m just doing that spot and You know, it’s I’m not doing a full kitchen mop all the time. I we just don’t live that kind of life We did at one point, especially when we had two small kids in the golden retriever There was a lot of mopping going on. But now it’s more getting that

Tonya Kubo (11:55.108)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (12:02.223)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (12:08.048)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (12:14.703)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (12:19.086)

But the nightly kitchen reset is just putting things away It’s wiping things down and then maybe one extra thing like yesterday I noticed that the inside of the microwave was not great So it was wiping that down or maybe the front of the refrigerator. I don’t know I don’t know how it happens, but it’s usually after I’ve been cooking for a while I go to Open up the refrigerator. I’m like, why does that handle?

Tonya Kubo (12:33.712)

Hmm.

Kathi Lipp (12:48.61)

Feel crumbly like that’s not a good feeling so i’m just gonna do that But i’m not gonna do usually all of that at the same time So there is a bit of a reset, but it’s not a full reset every night So for you, it’s the kitchen table Do you have in your perfect world? Is the kitchen table completely cleared off or is there something on it? It’s it’s a flat surface that makes you

Tonya Kubo (12:50.406)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:00.846)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:05.007)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (13:10.02)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (13:13.59)

It is naked! I want a naked kitchen table.

Kathi Lipp (13:18.182)

I love it so much. Okay, we’re gonna take a quick break. We’re gonna come back with our last two things like, is one of these a habit that you could pull out for 2025? Because even if you can incorporate one of these things into your routine, it’s gonna make your life so much better. Okay, we’ll be right back.

Okay, we are back with our five habits for 2025. Okay, number four, a bathroom wipe down. So you said that you don’t like wipe down everything every night. I do tend to do that because we are dirty, filthy pigs, Tonya. I don’t know what it is, but the toothpaste, the grimy, I don’t know what it is. We’re just gross.

Tonya Kubo (13:51.974)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:03.47)

Yeah, so here’s my problem, right, with wiping things down is I’m the first person who goes to bed. I go to bed a good two hours before anybody else in my house. So I used to have a routine where I would wipe everything down. You know, I’d wipe down the kitchen, wipe down, because I don’t wash the dishes either. Let’s be very honest about this. Like that’s a Brian thing. But you know, I’d go in, wipe down the kitchen, wipe down the bathroom. But what would happen is I will wake up and there will be toothpaste

Kathi Lipp (14:13.527)

Wow.

Kathi Lipp (14:17.74)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:32.376)

like hanging off the edges of the sink because three people brushed their teeth after I went to bed and I got very grumpy waking up in the morning to a sink that did not look like it did when I went to bed that night.

Kathi Lipp (14:34.888)

Hahaha!

Kathi Lipp (14:41.342)

Right, right.

Kathi Lipp (14:50.208)

Right, right, right, right. We also have another issue that you have experienced. If I don’t wipe down that sink on a regular basis, it turns blue. And that’s not the color I want for my sink. We have copper and yeah, we’ve got something, I don’t know. It’s.

Tonya Kubo (15:07.876)

I was like, I would describe it as a teal, but let’s not have the blush versus bashful argument on the show. But it is, yeah, it’s kind of a pretty blue-green, but not really what you’re looking for with the house.

Kathi Lipp (15:11.085)

Yes.

Kathi Lipp (15:14.9)

Right, yeah, it’s not the color.

It’s beautiful. Not what I’m looking for. Yes, absolutely. So I do tend to wipe those things down and yeah, I do like to wake up to a clean sink too. Now it’s harder for you because you have four people in your bathroom. I just have Roger and Roger’s neater than me. Let’s just be honest.

Tonya Kubo (15:25.861)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:34.882)

Yes, four people, one bathroom.

Tonya Kubo (15:39.662)

And I will say one thing I do twice a day, right? Before I go to bed and then when I wake up in the morning is I pick up all the things that have been left on the floor in the bathroom and I put those in the dirty laundry. Cause most of it it’s like towels. Why can nobody put their pants and their underpants in the hamper? I don’t know, but I’m picking up everybody’s pants, putting them where they go.

Kathi Lipp (15:49.056)

Mm-hmm. Mm, yeah, smart.

Kathi Lipp (16:07.027)

bless their hearts, we love them. We love them so much.

Tonya Kubo (16:08.677)

We do love them. But, you know, I don’t want to trip over stuff.

Kathi Lipp (16:14.063)

Yep, I totally get it. Okay. Number five Is a room by room rotation So I don’t do this perfectly but I do it pretty much every day where i’m just going to go spend Five to 15 minutes cleaning something up now one thing I do have and some people might consider this a luxury. I consider it a necessity I have a set of cleaning supplies on each floor so

Tonya Kubo (16:22.63)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (16:41.762)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (16:43.686)

In upstairs, have all the toilet cleaner. Well, let’s be honest, in each bathroom, I have toilet bowl cleaner. I have the wipe down stuff. I have the shower cleaner. I also have on each floor of the house, my handy vac and a vacuum. And that makes a huge difference because if I had to take a vacuum up and down the stairs, nothing would ever happen. It would never happen. It just would not happen.

Tonya Kubo (16:51.354)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:07.568)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (17:11.872)

And so I have those supplies on each floor and I have supplies like we have a set of supplies in our bathroom and then in our other bathroom. And that makes a difference. But I just spend five to 15 minutes in a different room. Now we have a couple of rooms that we don’t use pretty regularly and I’ve closed those off. So I don’t really count those, but we have the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, our bedroom, my office, Roger’s office and all the bathrooms.

Tonya Kubo (17:21.274)

Hmm.

Kathi Lipp (17:41.71)

You know every day I’ll just pick a room that’s like making me a little insane and just spend five to fifteen minutes like Roger’s Office bathroom I can clean that whole thing in about five minutes. It’s it’s the world’s smallest bathroom. It doesn’t have a shower or anything like that. But you know my bathroom that’s gonna take you know I’m not gonna spend a half hour 45 minutes on it

Tonya Kubo (17:47.236)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:56.238)

Right. Yes. Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (18:08.386)

I’m just gonna do 15 minutes to get it back into fighting order. Now, if you’re cleaning your whole house and you have a huge house, you’re gonna need to dedicate more time to that. But Roger is very invested in the happy marriage and me and him, by the way, like every minute I’m cleaning, he would be cleaning too, because that’s just how our marriage works. And he doesn’t wanna spend all that time cleaning on Saturdays either.

Tonya Kubo (18:12.367)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (18:18.926)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:28.368)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:34.394)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (18:34.478)

That’s not what he wants to be doing either. And so we’ve decided this investment for us. And by the way, it’s a lot less expensive here than it is other parts of the country. I’m not going to lie. We’re very grateful. And we forced her to take raises because we’re like, you’re actually worth more than you’re charging. So Tonya, any cleaning things that are a habit for you that I, I should have mentioned, but I didn’t because I don’t know the secret life of Tonya Kubo.

Tonya Kubo (18:44.218)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:48.162)

Yeah

Tonya Kubo (19:01.99)

Well, I think so for me a lot of it has to do with splitting up the labor, which I think we’ve covered but I would just like to Yeah Well because they’re splitting up the labor between people but also between sessions I think a lot of us claim the way that we were taught and some of us were never taught anything, right? So So it’s this hodgepodge of things, but you don’t actually

Kathi Lipp (19:10.166)

We can never talk about it enough. We can never talk about it enough.

Kathi Lipp (19:22.688)

Mmm. Right. Right.

Tonya Kubo (19:30.874)

have to mop right after you sweep. You could sweep before bed and mop first thing in the morning.

Kathi Lipp (19:33.89)

That’s true. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. You just want to do it before the grime builds up.

Tonya Kubo (19:42.902)

Right. But I mean, that’s a possibility. There have been asked there have been times in my life because there’s been times in my life, like when I was in grad school and working full time and Abby was too, we had a housekeeper. But there have been times in my life where I could I had time to fill the mop bucket and I had time to like mop. But if I had to sweep before I did it, it wasn’t going to happen. So I have mopped a gross, dirty floor that has not been swept and just said, you know what?

Kathi Lipp (19:44.696)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (20:07.138)

Right.

Yeah, right?

Tonya Kubo (20:12.41)

Whatever ends up in the mop water ends up in the mop water. I’ll dump it out. I’ll sweep afterward. Like, you know, you just have to decide what the priority is. There are days I would prefer personally that we clean the entire fridge, that we empty out the fridge, clean it, wipe down all the shelves prior to going grocery shopping. That would be my perfect scenario. Sometimes, however, all we have time to do is like clear out the leftover containers.

Kathi Lipp (20:17.56)

Yeah?

Kathi Lipp (20:31.214)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:34.904)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (20:42.316)

Yeah, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (20:43.398)

And I only have time to wipe down the fridge maybe once a week, once a month, once every other month, who knows? So I think those are some things that we need to give ourselves grace to do what works for us right now. I know a lot of our Clutter Free for Life members, because we talk a little bit more about cleaning there, not because it’s a cleaning program, but just we just go deeper in that program. And I know a lot of members, hear like

Kathi Lipp (21:06.979)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (21:10.97)

They hear a parent voice in their head scolding them for being lazy, for being a slob, know, all these ugly names. And so I just think we need to be kind to ourselves and understand that going back to the beginning, right, waiting until it gets super grimy and where we can feel that satisfaction, that actually isn’t kind to ourselves.

Kathi Lipp (21:14.412)

Right.

Kathi Lipp (21:22.179)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (21:28.43)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (21:33.834)

It’s not. And you know what? You should listen to those voices if they’re coming over to your house to clean. If they’re showing up with their mop and bucket, go off clean. You can clean however you want. But also, this is why I don’t micromanage how Roger cleans, which is different than how I clean, because different things are important to him. I’m just grateful it’s getting done. I’m grateful. And he’s grateful it’s getting done when I do it. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Tonya Kubo (21:40.006)

Amen.

Tonya Kubo (21:46.548)

Hahaha

Tonya Kubo (21:53.232)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (22:03.266)

The last thing I’m going to say is when you are feeling really stressed and really behind the two things I would really encourage you to stay on top of if at all possible, it’s laundry and dishes. Like those are the things that are harder. They’re harder if you let them go. And so I, I want you to be able to come downstairs if you live upstairs, you know, and there is room to put dishes in your sink.

Tonya Kubo (22:10.618)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:16.261)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:21.008)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:28.208)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (22:32.184)

There is room to put dishes if you have a dishwasher. You don’t have to go hunting for clothes. So stay on top of those routines because a dirty floor takes kind of the same amount of time unless it’s really, really bad. But I just want you to be able to live in peace with the processes you have. Tonya, this has been so good. Thank you so much.

Tonya Kubo (22:39.735)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:56.934)

Thanks for having this conversation. This is a good one.

Kathi Lipp (23:00.074)

Yeah, I needed to hear it today too. And friends, thank you for being here. And if you’re feeling behind on cleaning, just know that you are going to be okay. Start to put some little routines into your life that are going to take care of your future self, because that’s what we’re about. 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.

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#656 When Opposites Attract: Managing Different Clutter Levels in Marriage

In this enlightening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp welcomes author Arlene Pellicane to discuss the delicate balance of managing different organizational styles within marriage. If you're struggling with a spouse who has different standards of tidiness,...

#648 The 5 Meal Prep Habits You Should Build in 2025

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Dec 17, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

648 – The 5 Meal Prep Habits You Should Build in 2025

Hey there, friends! Have you ever stared into your kitchen at 5 pm, wondering what on earth you’re going to make for dinner?

In this eye-opening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo dive deep into the world of meal preparation, offering listeners a lifeline to more organized and stress-free cooking. Drawing from their own experiences of kitchen chaos, they share seven transformative habits that can turn even the most overwhelmed home cook into a meal prep master.

Listener will discover:

Practical strategies for meal planning that actually work
Techniques to reduce dinnertime stress and save time and money
Insights for families with diverse dietary needs and preferences

Whether you’re a busy parent, a working professional, or someone who dreads cooking, this episode offers practical, achievable strategies to transform your kitchen experience.

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup here and sign up to receive your free ebook featuring four week’s worth of easy meal plans and delicious recipes.

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here.

Links Mentioned:

Garam Masala Spice

Butter Chicken, and thanks to twosleevers.com for this recipe!

Clutter Free Resources:

Order Sabbath Soup here

Can you share a simple meal prep technique for someone just starting?

Share 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

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi Lipp (00:29.174)

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 we are back today. We are trying to get some habits. And can I just say habits are hard for those of us on the cluttery spectrum, but we’re gonna try to do this gently and easily. And I am here with one of my best cluttery friends. It’s Tonya Kubo.

Tonya, are you a habit kind of person? Would you consider yourself a habit kind of person?

Tonya Kubo (01:03.981)

So here’s what I always say, right? We cluttery folks deeply resist and resent the habits and routines we so desperately need, right? And I am right there. I am right there with you, Kathi. It is hard. It’s just hard. But I need them.

Kathi Lipp (01:13.697)

It’s so true, right?

Kathi Lipp (01:20.234)

Yeah, think, yeah, I think our brains crave excitement. Would they crave variety and interest? And I know you’re like me, I’m always trying to find a better way to do things. I’m always looking for a process improvement. The hitch on that is you have to have a process in order to have an improvement. And so

Tonya Kubo (01:45.157)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:47.358)

Have been catches catch can for most of my life, but I’m trying to put habits into my life very gently not punishing myself not saying you’re a terrible person if you don’t do this on this day and Really trying to say okay Kathi you benefit so much if you can think ahead just a little bit if you can do a couple of things in advance you don’t have to do everything in advance, but when I I

Tonya Kubo (01:55.044)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (02:16.65)

I also need to take the moment when I do do the habits to say, your life just got a little bit easier. It just got a little bit better. And so we’ve talked about decluttering and we’re talking about cleaning and things like that. But I also want to talk about meal prep habits. And this has really come to fruition for me with publishing Sabbath soup and recognizing, okay, I do have some habits.

Tonya Kubo (02:24.187)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (02:43.439)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (02:43.648)

Like they were never really laid out But I did some things to take care of my future self and that’s really all we’re talking about in this series about habits Is how to take care of our future self? So I know you don’t do things like I do Tonya you have another cook in the house Roger can cook it is not his love language He but you know like today he

I made butter chicken over the weekend. By the way, I’m so mad at myself that I did not put that in Sabbath Soup because that is a, it’s easy and it’s a banging recipe. But absolutely, absolutely. You just have to have one ingredient that you might not have and I’ll never be able to say it. It’s the Marsala spice. How do you say the first word?

Tonya Kubo (03:14.363)

yum.

Tonya Kubo (03:19.908)

Hahaha

Tonya Kubo (03:24.379)

So you’re going to put that in the show notes, right, Kathi? Totally putting you on the spot.

Tonya Kubo (03:38.593)

it’s Garam Masala. There’s no R in the second word.

Kathi Lipp (03:42.272)

I knew Masala. Okay Marsala is like Italian Kathi. Okay, but I’ve never Yeah It’s And you know if you had said it to me I might have said I’ve never heard those words before but that’s like the only Unusual and everything else can will either be in your freezer or in your spice pantry. So

Tonya Kubo (03:48.229)

And I am sure somebody listening will say, that’s not how you say it, Tonya. And that’s okay, we wanna be corrected.

Kathi Lipp (04:08.8)

It’s a very easy recipe, you guys will like it. You do need heavy cream, but I have eaten it without the heavy cream and it’s still delicious. Okay, so I know we said five habits, but I’m gonna give you seven because I’ve done a few things recently that have kind of changed things for me and I wanna share about those too. Okay, so number one, weekly menu planning. So every Monday I make a meal plan. Now, let me tell you, there are points of entry.

Tonya Kubo (04:26.629)

Okay?

Kathi Lipp (04:36.994)

for the meal planning, okay? So if we are broke, the point of entering, and when I say broke, it’s like, okay, we’re just really trying to watch our funds and that’s our current top priority. So what I will do is I will get into the inventory. I’ll see what we have in our freezer. I’ll see what we have in our pantry. I’ll mostly see what might stand up and walk away in a week if we don’t use it. And I’ll plan around what we already have.

If time is a big issue, then probably what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna make a meal plan based mostly on prepared foods. So what can I do with a Costco chicken or, you know, let’s just do the katsu from Costco because yum. Like those are the things I’ll do. So there’s time and money and then energy.

If I know it’s going to be an especially stressful week or exhausting week, we’re going a lot of places, then it’s kind of the same thing as the time thing, but I will do things that have no prep needed. I don’t mind putting on like a pot of rice or throwing some baked potatoes, but I’m not doing anything like searing. If the recipe says chop an onion, it’s not happening on a low energy week.

Tonya Kubo (06:00.827)

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:01.228)

Like here’s a simple meal, first chop an onion. I’m out, I’m out, I’m out. Like I like to be able to just combine ingredients sometimes. And then the other thing for me is I know we talk about space, time, energy and money, but let’s instead of space, let’s talk about stress. Maybe you have some people in your family who are like, I only like buttered noodles. Like I’m going to live on butter noodles until I die.

Tonya Kubo (06:05.883)

Heh.

Tonya Kubo (06:20.635)

Mm.

Tonya Kubo (06:27.675)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:30.822)

What what can you do if you know it’s going to be a particularly stressful week? Maybe you have in-laws coming in Maybe you’re a teacher and it’s parent teacher like you may just need to cook for comfort or buy for comfort and so whatever weekly menu plan Accomplishes that make that happen. How do you plan for meals in your family Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (06:54.807)

Yeah, so for me it has to, I mean there is a whole process. So we start with inventorying. My goal is to go to the store as little as humanly possible. And ideally, Brian’s is to go as often as possible. So my second goal is to keep Brian out of the store as much as possible. So for me, like my ideal situation is grocery pickup every two weeks. We’re not there yet. The most we can do is like every week and a half because

Kathi Lipp (07:00.629)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (07:04.222)

Mm-hmm, and Brian’s is to go as much as possible.

mm-hmm okay

Kathi Lipp (07:19.927)

Mm-hmm. Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:23.321)

children as anybody listening can attest are fruit bats. That’s all they do. They like four pounds of strawberries, not enough strawberries to hold them through until tomorrow. It’s just how it is. So inventory first, then based on inventory is when I create my meal plan because I want to use up as much as I have. And then the shopping list comes last. It’s the staples that I need. So in our case, it’s a lot of fresh fruit and then it’s, you know, it’s fresh fruit. It’s milk usually.

Kathi Lipp (07:27.488)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (07:34.266)

my goodness.

Kathi Lipp (07:45.71)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (07:49.187)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (07:52.463)

That’s our two staples and eggs. My people eat a lot of eggs. And then from there, it is, you know, then we do our shopping list and we go from there. I do the meal. If meals are going to be planned, I have to do them. Brian is somebody who wants to decide at five o’clock what he wants to eat at 530. And in many cases, what he wants to eat won’t be ready until 730.

Kathi Lipp (07:52.93)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:02.744)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (08:06.606)

Okay.

Kathi Lipp (08:13.614)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:17.77)

Right, right.

Tonya Kubo (08:18.787)

So I try to do the planning ahead. Cause if I say, hey, tonight’s dinner is Korean beef, you need to start it at four o’clock. He will start the Korean Beef at four o’clock. But if I say tonight’s, yeah, but if I say tonight’s dinner is Korean Beef, he will not even think about starting it until he is too hungry.

Kathi Lipp (08:28.654)

Perfect. But you have to… Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (08:39.286)

Right, and can I just tell you, cooking while hungry, I want to be a nice person. I’m normally a nice person, I, yeah, or what I’ll do is I’ll snack the whole time that I’m cooking and then I couldn’t, yeah, yeah. Like right now, it’s not strawberries for us, but those big fatty blueberries right now, I could eat.

Tonya Kubo (08:49.957)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:56.261)

That’s what he does, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (09:04.877)

Mmm, yeah, those are tasty.

Kathi Lipp (09:06.79)

whole tray of those by myself and then who who needs Butter Chicken no thank you yeah so I planning your meals will save you so much mental stress and also keep from you you from being a snack monster or and there’s nothing wrong with snacking it’s just you don’t want to cook a whole meal and like I know thank you okay so monday I do the planning Tuesday

Tonya Kubo (09:12.762)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (09:22.885)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (09:36.23)

This is number two is the inventory and shopping list now if we’re trying to save money I’m doing my inventory first. I usually know what’s in the fridge I usually can kind of figure that out, but I am Tuesday is the day where it’s like, okay What do we actually what did I think we had and what do we actually have? And you know, is it still good that kind of thing? So I tend to do Sam’s cart

Tonya Kubo (09:45.423)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (09:57.775)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (10:04.27)

I also tend to do like a grocery store run for smaller, especially perishable things that we’re not gonna eat quite as much of. What’s your shopping strategy, Tonya? You do the order too, right?

Tonya Kubo (10:17.691)

Well, yeah, so there is, I don’t have a lot of options for grocery pickups. So there is a store in like halfway in between where Abby goes to school and where we live in a different town. And so I’ll try to do grocery pickup there, but I can only do it on Wednesdays because Wednesdays is the only time when there’s enough of a difference between when she gets out of school and when Lily gets out of school to be able to hit that sweet spot.

Kathi Lipp (10:28.642)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (10:40.782)

I love that strategy though. I love that. Yes.

Tonya Kubo (10:45.145)

Yeah. So it’s like pick up Abby from school, hit Walmart, pick up the groceries, go get Lily. And then I have two girls and groceries to put away.

Kathi Lipp (10:55.182)

But you know what? You know! You know, isn’t it nice that it’s been decided for you?

Tonya Kubo (11:01.507)

Right. And then if we need something, we have a grocery store that’s not even a quarter of a mile away. It’s just pricier, you know? And so that’s the trade off, right? It’s like, okay, we know what they have. We know we can run in and get something, but we also know we’ll leave like spending triple what we expected.

Kathi Lipp (11:07.958)

Right. Yes.

Kathi Lipp (11:19.156)

I love it. We shop on the same day. It’s, you know, I’ll be thinking of you next time. Okay. Thursday. This is number three. Have a prep day. So for me, this is the day where I prep wash and cut vegetables. Do I need to saute some meat? Do I need to get the meat off of a chicken? If I’m feeling extra saucy, do I need to spatchcock something?

Tonya Kubo (11:24.335)

Haha.

Kathi Lipp (11:48.718)

That is my day to prep the food because prep is to me is different than cooking Like and it may not be for everybody, but it’s so nice to go into cooking day where I’m like, okay I can just throw everything and I’ve I’m doing the lettuce for at least half the week You know if you get it nice and dry it could almost last an entire week. I’m washing the fruit for a week

Tonya Kubo (11:48.795)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:57.157)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (12:16.931)

I am chopping up veggies that I’m gonna throw into sautees and stuff for a week. Are you a prep and cook on the same night kind of person or what’s your deal?

Tonya Kubo (12:28.013)

Yeah, it just depends. So for me, if I’m going to do any prep, my only options for prep are Friday nights or Saturdays because my work week is so heavily scheduled. So I will do that. My family will not use prep prep stuff, though. That’s old to them. And because we have listeners, I’m just going to say big fat air quotes around old because we all know it’s not old. It’s perfectly fine. But they get to tell themselves whatever stories they want.

Kathi Lipp (12:38.045)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (12:45.115)

it…

Kathi Lipp (12:58.328)

They really should not eat in restaurants. Because I have worked in a restaurant and prep is really, really important. Yeah, anyway, well, you know what? I don’t have to live with them. that’s just fine. That’s just fine. Okay, so we’ve got through our first three. So weekly menu planning, do an inventory and shopping list, and then a prep day.

Tonya Kubo (13:01.25)

I know.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:08.709)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:20.411)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (13:26.198)

We’re going to take a quick break break and we’re going to come back and we’re going to talk about a little more prep that you can do to make Another habit that you can do to make your life a little bit easier. Okay, we’re going to take this quick break and we’ll come right back

Okay, we are back with number four, some meal prep habits to get you through your week. This is number four, breakfast prep. I now do something, and we’ll talk more about it. It’s, I call it my power hour, which, you know, I’m just trying to hype myself up. But every week I make a big pot of oatmeal that has whatever fruit is like,

You know, it’s time to use it up. It’s not bad. It’s not moldy. It’s not gross, but like the bananas my you know, there is a certain threshold where Roger will eat a banana and then 20 seconds later that threshold has been crossed Never to be seen again. So we make a big pot of oatmeal with blueberries and bananas and apricots To kind of throw all that in there. I also my mom was she good. She’s like

Tonya Kubo (14:20.667)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:24.987)

Yup.

Tonya Kubo (14:35.387)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (14:39.374)

you know, once every couple of weeks, she likes to have a little treat and go to McDonald’s and get a sausage biscuit. And she said, Kathi, that sausage biscuit was almost $6. And I said, mom, and we’re going there tonight. I’ll wake up tomorrow. I’m going to make that woman a homemade sausage biscuit. Because yeah, because we all enjoy a sausage biscuit every once in a while. But there are certain things you could prep ahead of time.

Tonya Kubo (14:56.037)

Whoa.

Tonya Kubo (15:00.571)

You

Kathi Lipp (15:04.524)

You know, for your kids, it’s like packing a lunch, but maybe it’s packing a breakfast instead. And I know that when my kids were younger, we often did breakfast in the car just because we had no other, nobody was sitting down to eat a breakfast at our house when my kids were in elementary, junior high and high school. That just, that, that did not happen. What, what do you do? Do you do anything to get ahead on breakfast at your house?

Tonya Kubo (15:13.648)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:18.927)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:28.759)

Yeah, so what I found is I need to at least have an idea because it doesn’t matter what I have. I could have like five boxes of cold cereal. I could have bagels. I could have frozen waffles except for Lily and for Ryan. So that leaves Abby, I guess. Abby’s expectation is I’m going to tell her what to eat and I’m going to prepare it for her. And they are a lot alike. So.

Kathi Lipp (15:33.707)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (15:45.739)

Yeah

Kathi Lipp (15:50.862)

Can I just tell you, Abby and Roger are so much alike.

Tonya Kubo (15:57.197)

You know, Lily likes to be self-sufficient, so she takes care of herself. Brian prefers these like Jimmy Dean frozen sandwiches, like McDonald’s frozen sandwiches, right? I used to make breakfast burritos that we froze that they could heat up. Nobody would eat them but me. I’ve tried the homemade biscuit things. Nobody eats those but me. So now what I say is before everybody goes to bed, say here are your three options for breakfast tomorrow. This is what you guys have.

Kathi Lipp (16:05.592)

Right, yeah, yeah.

Kathi Lipp (16:15.288)

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (16:25.39)

Mmm, nice!

Tonya Kubo (16:26.971)

So tomorrow, if I want them to eat cold cereal because I’ve got cold cereal to use or I have no other ideas, I put the cereal on the table. So they come in and it’s like, it’s a cinnamon toast crunch right in front of me. I should have that.

Kathi Lipp (16:34.958)

So smart.

Kathi Lipp (16:41.484)

Wait, hot sauce? Is that like, I’m excited?

Tonya Kubo (16:44.675)

No, sinuh- Huzzah.

Kathi Lipp (16:46.924)

Huzzah, I thought you said hot sauce. I’m like, is there some new slang I don’t know about? Got it. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (16:49.147)

I’m sorry. That’s all.

Kathi Lipp (16:54.318)

Huzzah, yes. Okay, yes, because if it, yes, Roger is the smartest man I know, helps around the house, but he would prefer that I just told him what to eat and then he pushes back a little bit on like, ooh, I need this little adjustment or I’d like the, really.

Tonya Kubo (17:04.123)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:09.453)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:14.083)

They are the same person. Abby wants you to tell her what to eat so that she can then suggest alternates. She likes veto power.

Kathi Lipp (17:21.844)

Right. Yes, we just did this thing where we were, I think I told you about it on one of our calls, we were doing a Roger wanted to watch football. I still don’t get it, but okay. But for Roger, an important part of football were are snacks that he thinks go with football. So we did a seven layer dip and he’s like, but I don’t, you know, I want you to do the seven layer dip, but I don’t really like the canned pinto beans.

Tonya Kubo (17:33.499)

haha

Tonya Kubo (17:37.371)

The snacks!

Tonya Kubo (17:49.603)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (17:49.814)

And so I told you, I took some bacon grease and I, by the way guys, this guy would swim across shark infested waters to get me a glass of lemonade. So if the man wants warmed up pinto beans, I am happy to do it because trust me, I’m getting the better end of this deal. But yes, he needed to let me know his mods. Yeah, this is the modification I need. Okay, Tonya, I have a very important question for you.

Tonya Kubo (18:04.731)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:12.246)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Kathi Lipp (18:19.628)

Are you a food house or are you an ingredient house? Do you know what I mean by that?

Tonya Kubo (18:24.407)

I prefer, yes, I prefer to be an ingredient house, but I think the nature of how we are, Brian commutes, Abby goes to school a half hour away, we have activities all the time. I do need to make sure there are some foods that we can lean on, but it’s hard, because I just, that’s not how I wanna operate.

Kathi Lipp (18:28.908)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (18:36.376)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (18:42.902)

Yeah, it is hard. Well, and it’s so interesting. Okay, and if you don’t know what we’re talking about, you’re like food and ingredients are the same thing. Food is more grab and go, whereas ingredients have to be assembled, prepared, that kind of thing. And I think you have to have a balance of both. You know, for a snack, I don’t wanna like…

Tonya Kubo (18:57.52)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (19:08.366)

cook the garbanzo beans and crush them into hummus. Like, no, I want the hummus there. Like, I’m not going to make a tortilla chip. You know, those are the kind of thing. But it’s been very interesting to me on social media recently, where I don’t think it’s the people who grew up in ingredient households. And I think ingredient households are usually people who are maybe,

Tonya Kubo (19:12.165)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (19:35.116)

whose families growing up struggled more financially and or are maybe a different ethnic background than the color of my palm or are super crunchy, super, super crunchy households. But on TikTok, you see all these grocery hauls.

Tonya Kubo (19:38.779)

Mm.

Tonya Kubo (19:52.837)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:00.997)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:01.304)

where it’s like, it’s $450 for one week’s worth of food, but it’s chips, soda, frozen pizzas, tortino, know, pizza rolls, that kind of thing. And I’m like, and somebody finally came on and said, it’s not that groceries are expensive because groceries are expensive, but you don’t know how to cook. Like that’s the problem. You don’t know how to cook. So.

Tonya Kubo (20:05.477)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:09.061)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:29.558)

Like I buy a lot. I do buy some prepared food I would say probably 25 of what we buy is prepared foods, but I also know I have to portion those things out if I go grab a bag of things. I can mindlessly eat and i’m not doing this for diet. I’m just doing it because I want to feel okay I mean i’m not doing it because I want to lose weight. I am doing it because of a food diet but

Tonya Kubo (20:41.541)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:52.347)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:59.47)

Portioning those things out saying okay, you know what? I’m gonna buy the little cups of hummus, but that has to last me a month So I know I’m gonna eat about three of those a week because that makes me happy Portioning Some of our treats into smaller things and it means like I may buy the big bag of chips But I’m gonna portion those into little ziplocks

Tonya Kubo (21:08.197)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (21:27.756)

Because to me that makes more sense than buying individual chips. You know what I mean? They’re mostly air. Yeah. Yeah. So do you do anything to portion out food or do you, do you buy portion to food? Like every answer is acceptable. I just, my frustration with TikTok is look how much this is costing and I’m buying

Tonya Kubo (21:36.089)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, the little like snack bags of chips.

Tonya Kubo (21:49.935)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (21:56.536)

highly convenient foods that I don’t need to touch.

Tonya Kubo (21:58.489)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so we have to do it a little differently here. So for my family, there is no difference between buying a bag of chips and a box of 40 snack bags. They’ll eat five snack bags in one sitting. So that’s like irrelevant. And there are certain things, right? I refuse to battle over food. I refuse to put padlocks on my pantry or anything. I have friends who do all that. I have friends who do it and it’s what they do and that’s fine for them, but I will not.

Kathi Lipp (22:12.712)

Mm-hmm. my gosh. Yeah, that makes sense, right.

Kathi Lipp (22:21.902)

Yes, 100%. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:30.905)

So it’s, buy this, you know, I buy what I buy and it lasts as long as it lasts. And if I don’t wanna go to the store, then you’re gonna wait until I go to the store or you’re gonna wait until I order groceries. You may have to go five days without snacks. You’ll live, we all live.

Kathi Lipp (22:35.468)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (22:40.716)

Yeah.

Right. No, that makes total sense. And yeah, there are definitely tiers of snacks, aren’t there? You know, it’s like…

Tonya Kubo (22:52.665)

Yeah, I will tell you one thing I do though. So I will buy extra and then I stash the backup. Like I have a back stock stash that goes, it’s on the top shelf of my closet. Nobody looks for food there.

Kathi Lipp (22:59.427)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (23:08.128)

Right, okay, I used to wrap things in aluminum foil and market liver and Nobody in my family ever Like we never ate liver the entire time they lived in our house and they still don’t know that Yeah, but you do what you have to do, right? We

Tonya Kubo (23:20.005)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (23:25.391)

Yeah. But I’m telling you, nobody gets more excited than when they thought there was no more Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Can you tell what Brian Kubo’s favorite cereal is? They haven’t seen any Cinnamon Toast Crunch for four days and suddenly they’re Cinnamon Toast Crunch out. I’m the hero.

Kathi Lipp (23:33.203)

Ooh, yes.

Kathi Lipp (23:38.754)

Yeah. Okay. I love that. You are the hero. Yeah. Roger. I have obtained hero status several times when I’m like, no, I know where that is. And you know, when we had kids in the house, there were two things like there was the liver trick and also there was Christmas box. think it was number five. We never had anything in Christmas box. Number five, except for the food that like

Tonya Kubo (23:50.777)

Haha.

Tonya Kubo (24:00.987)

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (24:06.678)

I didn’t I wanted to buy the big pack but I didn’t want to put it all out at one time because we had four teenagers, you know I mean Justin ate face cream one time like

Tonya Kubo (24:14.413)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (24:20.975)

haha

Kathi Lipp (24:25.802)

Okay, number six, leftover makeover Monday. So we have like our big kind of family meal on Saturday, but I always know that that’s going to be a loop meal on Monday. So if I roasted chicken, it’s going to be chicken tortilla soup or chicken tortilla salad or something like that. You know, so planning, we’ve talked about it before, loop meals, leftovers on purpose. And then number seven,

This is new, something new I’ve been doing. And can I just tell you, Tonya, I’m kind of a genius. I’m not gonna lie, not gonna lie. You know, I make a lot of dishes. Like I’ll make soups, I’ll make, you know, all these things. And then it’s like, I wish we had baked potatoes to put that on or I wish, so what I’ve started doing is once a week, it’s like my carb prep.

Tonya Kubo (24:59.971)

Okay?

Tonya Kubo (25:22.171)

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (25:24.296)

I will put, I’ll prep six baked potatoes and put them in the air fryer. I’ll do a big pot, or instant pot of rice. I do jasmine rice, that’s the one I do. I’ll do a batch of pasta on the stove. I’ll do my slow cooker with oats and fruit and bananas and spices, and I’ll do one batch of muffins.

And I can get all of that prepped in about 40 minutes. And we are set for the week. We don’t have to keep making rice or keep making. And so I do six air fryer baked potatoes because we take some to our neighbor. But also that gives us four that if we wanted to have a baked potato as a side dish, great. Or if I’m running out of ideas for lunches.

Tonya Kubo (26:21.711)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (26:21.784)

then I’m just gonna throw a baked potato and we’re gonna find what’s in the fridge and use it up and use what’s left over. I did fried rice the other day, because I channeled my inner Kubo and just did a bunch of stuff in there. This makes such a difference. I feel so much more prepped for the week. And all of these are relatively inexpensive to do.

Tonya Kubo (26:34.944)

Yeah

Tonya Kubo (26:42.235)

Mm.

Kathi Lipp (26:47.234)

but they make such a difference to getting dinner on the table or lunch on the table. I know you’re a big rice household. Do you do anything else to kind of prep for the week?

Tonya Kubo (26:53.019)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (26:58.943)

Yeah, so for us, I mean on Sundays I usually cook the equivalent of what would be two like big meals. With the idea is one’s gonna be Sunday dinner and then leftovers will get us lunches for a couple days and then the other one is going to be our like repurposed Monday and Tuesday night dinners. Because that’s sort of what we need to do. So for us, you know, like we’re probably making rice twice a week.

Kathi Lipp (27:07.575)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (27:18.02)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (27:21.475)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (27:25.645)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (27:26.055)

And then there’s very rarely leftover rice and if there is then that becomes fried rice. We will, so potatoes, my family doesn’t like leftover potatoes except Lily and I will eat cold potatoes for lunch. Like we’re weird like that. It’s kind of fun for us. And I will make a loaf of bread. So I make, I have an easy sourdough recipe. So I make a loaf of sourdough bread probably every other Saturday. And that’s something that can get us through.

Kathi Lipp (27:30.798)

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (27:35.352)

Hmm.

Kathi Lipp (27:38.754)

Yeah, I love that.

Mmm, yeah.

Kathi Lipp (27:50.424)

nice.

Tonya Kubo (27:53.883)

I think it’s helpful. Although the homemade sourdough bread is not quite like store-bought bread, right? It like just doesn’t quite last as long.

Kathi Lipp (28:00.738)

Okay. yeah. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah. Well, it’s so good to, you know, know what’s going to help your family get through and don’t make potatoes if your family’s not going to eat potatoes. You know, if they’re not muffin people don’t do a muffin. Yeah, Tonya, go for it.

Tonya Kubo (28:10.843)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (28:17.979)

one thing that I do love to make ahead. I love to hard boil eggs over the weekend because I like a hard boiled egg for breakfast. And so does Lily. She doesn’t like to take them in her school lunch because she thinks it just makes her whole backpack smell. She’s not wrong, but yeah, she’s not wrong. But you know, she’ll take a hard boiled egg. I’ll take a hard boiled egg. So that is something like I bought my Instant Pot purely for two reasons. One was to make hard boiled eggs in bulk.

Kathi Lipp (28:24.328)

yes, yes. Yes, yes.

Kathi Lipp (28:32.898)

They smell. It does. She’s not wrong.

Kathi Lipp (28:42.111)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (28:47.181)

and the other was to make my own beans.

Kathi Lipp (28:50.902)

Okay, you know what? You’ve just reminded me of something, because I want to start making beans along with the prep, but the eggs, I had forgotten. And you know, I love eggs on salad. Like that makes me super happy. And I also love egg salad because apparently I’m channeling my 95 year old Eunice, because it just makes me so happy. Okay, this is so great. So guys, don’t try to do all these things. Take one thing.

Tonya Kubo (28:56.699)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (29:03.963)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (29:10.989)

Yep!

Kathi Lipp (29:19.732)

Make it a habit and then build on that habit and you’re going to have a much easier time Tonya. This was so great Thank you i’ve got some ideas from you that I am going to i’m going to instigate and i’m so excited about it Eggs and beans are going on the list. I love it. Well 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’ve always wanted to live

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#656 When Opposites Attract: Managing Different Clutter Levels in Marriage

In this enlightening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp welcomes author Arlene Pellicane to discuss the delicate balance of managing different organizational styles within marriage. If you're struggling with a spouse who has different standards of tidiness,...

#645 Reclaiming Your Space: Your First Steps to a Clutter-Free Life

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Nov 26, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

645 – Reclaiming Your Space: Your First Steps to a Clutter-Free Life

Hey there, friends! Have you ever struggled with an overwhelming burden of household clutter?

There is hope!

In this episode of the Clutter Free Academy podcast, hosts Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo dive deep into the challenges of managing household clutter and offer practical solutions to help listeners reclaim their spaces and find peace. They discuss the emotional toll that clutter can take. They share personal stories of their own clutter battles, including Tonya’s experience of renting dumpsters multiple times per year to clear out excess items.

Listeners will discover:

Research that shows cluttered homes can contribute to chronic stress and depression in mothers.
The importance of “pre-deciding”
How to create clutter-busting routines
The difference between their free Clutter Free Academy community and the more intensive Clutter Free for Life membership

By the end of the episode, listeners will be inspired to take the first steps towards a clutter-free life, whether that means joining the Clutter Free for Life program or simply implementing 15-minute daily decluttering routines.

A big shout out to CF4L member Natasha Berridge for the before and after pics used in the title graphics!

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Join Clutter Free For Life

While Clutter Free for Life comes with a plan of action to keep you moving forward in your decluttering journey day after day, the true magic of this membership program is in the community. It’s a program FOR cluttery people BY cluttery people.

It’s a family of cluttery people who want better for themselves and for you. We all understand the emotional weight of clutter and the physical barriers it causes. Clutter Free for Life members have a team of experts who know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed as their guides. Want to see whether the membership is right for you? Check out our info page Clutter Free For Life.

What are some of the biggest triggers that tend to cause clutter build-up in your home?

Share 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

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi (00:01.794)

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 here with my co-clutter warrior, it’s Tonya Kubo. Hey, Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (00:15.794)

Hey, Kathi.

Kathi (00:17.95)

Okay, so this may sound like the basic of basic podcasts, but I think when people get overwhelmed by clutter, we do have to go back to the basics because you know that one of my pet peeves is somebody says, I’m gonna do your clutter program. I’m like, awesome, but I’m also doing Marie Kondo’s and I’m also doing the fly lady, and I’m also doing.

I’m like, please leave me out of this. Because what cluttery people tend to do is we tend to take the easiest part or the most attractive part from each system. Then we don’t understand why. Because let’s be honest, every system has their hard part.

Tonya Kubo (01:00.263)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:11.859)

Yes, that is 100 % true.

Kathi (01:15.584)

And so I wanna talk about why you may be completely overwhelmed right now when it comes to clutter. We’re recording this when Halloween is on its way out, Thanksgiving and Christmas are on their way in. I was just at, where was I? I was at Walmart and the amount of real estate that is dedicated to

Tonya Kubo (01:24.083)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (01:45.23)

I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t be surprised if we start to see Christmas in July.

Tonya Kubo (01:48.177)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:53.317)

Yeah, no, I have something to say about that because so we walked into Lowe’s like a week ago and Abby started cackling, and I was like, what? And she’s like, look at that, mom. And they had like an aisle of Halloween decorations. And of course, it’s Lowe’s, so it’s a lot of yard stuff. And it’s facing this whole section of Christmas. And it looks like Halloween is facing off with Christmas because it’s like,

Kathi (02:12.771)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (02:22.291)

a blow-up Santa, like an inflatable Santa, opposite an animatronic Grim Reaper. But it didn’t look like, my gosh, it looked like from like Lord of the Rings when they’re like facing off before the big war. And I had to take a picture of it because it was funny. I’ll have to post that to social. But yeah, Abby was just like, this is so funny. It’s like the war for Christmas.

Kathi (02:28.909)

my goodness.

Kathi (02:41.549)

Yeah.

Kathi (02:47.66)

Yeah, and fall is my favorite time of year. And I’m like, let me just enjoy fall. But the Christmas stuff is out. Well, I can’t even imagine what the temperature is where you’re at right now. But it’s still 100 degrees here. Yeah. Yeah, it’s just gross. Okay. But if we start to talk about Christmas and the holidays, there’s some anxiety over that. And you’re like, my house isn’t ready. And you want to do a deep dive.

Tonya Kubo (03:00.711)

yeah, same. Yeah, same.

Tonya Kubo (03:11.091)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (03:16.206)

on all the clutter in your house, but there just doesn’t feel like there’s time. So we’re gonna try a bunch of patch-it solutions. Like, I’m just gonna stick this pile of papers here for now. But I’ll totally remember where it is when I need to dig out that tax bill or whatever it is. And then, you know, we…

Tonya Kubo (03:28.839)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (03:34.064)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (03:38.9)

unearth all these memories, having to apologize for the state of our home, telling people don’t open that closet. For me, a long time, I felt like I had to take people out instead of having them over because my house wasn’t in a state where I could entertain people. But then when I take them out, because it was my idea, I felt like I had to pay. You know, there’s a real financial cost.

Tonya Kubo (03:54.087)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (04:04.327)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (04:08.056)

To clutter. Rebuying things. I don’t know if that’s ever been something you’ve had to do, Tonya, but I can’t find the cupcake liners that I bought two weeks ago, so I need to go buy more Valentine cupcake liners or Christmas.

Tonya Kubo (04:09.501)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (04:25.971)

That comes up, actually, that is a very acute common pain point in our Facebook group and Clutterfree Academy. Very common, both from a, I need this thing. I know I bought it. It’s somewhere around here. I can’t find it. I’m trying not to go out and buy it, right? To, holy cow, I thought I bought these things and now I just found where I stashed them.

Kathi (04:33.166)

Hmm

Tonya Kubo (04:54.713)

after I just bought them all over again.

Kathi (04:56.128)

Of course. Yes. I’m the person who will leave little notes for myself on my calendar. Like I leave breadcrumbs to say, this is where this thing is. And I leave, I leave also little hints in September. Do not buy Christmas wrap. You have plenty, Kathi. You know, do not buy tape or ribbons or

Tonya Kubo (05:02.3)

Yeah

Tonya Kubo (05:18.555)

Yes.

Kathi (05:23.35)

The little car like you don’t need any of that stuff. But also I know that one of the things that is the most clutter-producing are events and change. Tonya, you know, I live a pretty clutter-free life. We are not we are not by any means picture-perfect all the time. But this week I’m like, Roger, what has happened to our lives?

Tonya Kubo (05:33.511)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:41.213)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (05:50.808)

What has happened to our lives? Why is there so much stuff? Like our house was looking pretty good a week ago and kaboom. And he said, well, remember last week we had nine people living in our house. And I’m like, yeah, but I recovered from that. And he goes, yeah, but you launched a book on Tuesday. Like any time there’s this big event, even though it doesn’t feel like it should be so cluttery.

Tonya Kubo (05:57.203)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:03.687)

Right, you had to retreat.

Tonya Kubo (06:09.447)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (06:17.352)

things get left out, things get missed. Anytime that our patterns are interrupted, it’s harder and that is what the holidays are. Yes, so we talk about, know, how anything, have you had any of these things in your household in the past three months? Disaster, we’re recording this right about the time.

Tonya Kubo (06:26.213)

Mm-hmm. That is very true.

Kathi (06:41.588)

as we’ve just had major hurricanes go through a large part of the country. You we’ve had two. One specifically working its way through Florida right now. Sickness, the Kubo household, the plague befell you.

Tonya Kubo (06:47.187)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:55.013)

my gosh, it has been a year and then some. And you know, it’s not that far in the school year, but yes, plague.

Kathi (07:01.51)

Yes. A death in the family or close friends, you know, that is a major upheaval. Moving. I never want to move again. I want to be buried out in the North 40. Like I never want to move again. And then also we have a lot of our friends who are in Clutter-free for Life and Clutterfree Academy who deal with challenges with their mental health, whether it’s depression, ADHD,

Tonya Kubo (07:27.261)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (07:30.19)

We have a lot of people who are working through some of those challenges.

Tonya Kubo (07:33.585)

Yeah, well I would say actually, to be more accurate, it’s health issues. We see that all the time in Clutterfree Academy, the free group, right? When you join the group, you’re asked to answer several questions. And one is, what gets in the way of you and your decluttering goals? And one of the choices is health issues. And all the, like that gets picked probably five out of 10 times every single week. It’s health issues.

Kathi (07:38.988)

Yeah. Yes.

Kathi (07:49.646)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:01.489)

get in the way of my best efforts. And then we see a larger percentage of those individuals in Clutter Free for Life, a paid membership program, because quite honestly, they do not have the physical, mental or emotional bandwidth to decide what to do next. And so they join our paid program. So we do the decision-making for them. But yeah, I would say that those health issues, mental and physical, is a major barrier for our people. Major barrier.

Kathi (08:22.04)

Great.

Kathi (08:30.794)

So I want to give some really practical tools, whether it’s health issues, chaos in your family, sickness, whatever that is. What are some really practical things that we can do as we’re fighting clutter in our lives? And I think you just hit on such a huge one, that pre-deciding. Tell me, Tonya, how you’ve seen that live out in our groups that

Pre-deciding has helped them with this clutter battle.

Tonya Kubo (09:04.783)

Yeah, well, how many examples can I give you? Because I have a lot, Kathi, and this will help me prioritize in my brain. Say three, three. OK, I can do three. So the first one. So if you’ve been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that our clutter. Not it’s not 100 percent accurate, right, because context matters in many cases, but in general, the reasons behind our clutter fall into two areas.

Kathi (09:07.884)

Hahaha!

Kathi (09:12.206)

let’s say three. Three is good.

Tonya Kubo (09:34.637)

One is the acquisition of stuff, the amount of stuff that comes into our home. The other is in minimizing the stuff. You’re the one who taught me, Kathi, you must minimize before you organize, right? So that is getting the stuff out of the home. And I refer to that as managing the ebb and flow of stuff in our home or managing the ebb and flow of our possessions. And some people quite honestly struggle on both ends of that. I don’t know what you call that.

both ends of the relationship with clutter. And so in pre-deciding, one of the most powerful decisions I’ve seen made, and we’ve got one member and she has given me permission to talk about her publicly. Her name is Jackie. You know, she struggles with both sides. Yeah, both ends of the spectrum are hard for her, but she made a decision the first of this year that involved the acquisition of stuff. She was gonna really focus.

Kathi (10:05.261)

right.

Kathi (10:18.05)

We love Jackie. We love Jackie.

Tonya Kubo (10:30.931)

on minimizing how much came into her home. And one of those decisions meant that if she got a message from somebody, because she’s part of like by nothing groups and sort of these restoration groups, if somebody gave sent her a message of like, my gosh, there’s this incredible whatever over here on the side of the road, she was gonna say, you know what, I can’t think of anything to do with that. I’m gonna have to pass.

She pre-decided that, you know, she knows what days of the week people tend to put stuff out on the curb. She made, she pre-decided that she was not going to drive down certain streets on those days during those times of days because she knew early in the year, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to pass by certain things. She just knew it, right? Like if I pass by that, if I see a thing like that, it’s going in my truck.

Kathi (11:02.67)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (11:22.043)

and it’s going in my garage because in my mind, if I put it in my truck, I save it from a landfill. I don’t have the self-control to say no, but what I do have the self-control to do is not drive in that part of town on that day of the

Kathi (11:36.293)

my goodness, I had not heard this story. That is amazing. I’m so proud of her.

Tonya Kubo (11:41.095)

So, I am proud, Kathi, I could weep, and you know I’m not that emotional of a person, but I could weep daily over the growth that I see in our members because the thing is, is I remember it all. I remember them when they first joined. They don’t remember how far they’ve come. So the first thing I would say is, previous society, think of what Jackie did. Can you make a decision involving your routine?

Kathi (11:57.698)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (12:08.977)

that eliminates five other decisions. Because that’s a big one. The other thing I would say is, know, meal planning. It’s so funny. We are not a food group. We cannot sell you meal plans. don’t, well, we can sell you Sabbath soup, which has meal plans. But if you join Color Free Academy, I don’t have meal plans in there to sell you. I’m sorry. But, you know.

Kathi (12:13.614)

Yeah.

Kathi (12:25.656)

Yes, please.

Kathi (12:31.33)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (12:34.759)

The idea of a meal plan, of pre-deciding this is what we’re eating every day, prevents over buying a food, which prevents food waste. It does so much to save time at the end of the day when you’re tired and your energy is often at the lowest. And so by pre-deciding what you’re gonna eat, we’ve seen this in our house particularly. If I know what we’re having for dinner, I know exactly when to get started in the kitchen cooking and…

Because I’ve made so many mental decisions, I still have physical energy to clean up the kitchen after we eat.

Kathi (13:10.35)

Tonya, I really do think that meals need to become a bigger part of what we do in Clutterfree for Life. It’s just, it’s, you know, every day I spend about 15 minutes doing something towards my meal plan. You know, on Mondays I make my menu, on Tuesdays I make my shopping list and I order my groceries, on Wednesdays pick them up, Thursdays prep.

Tonya Kubo (13:20.101)

yes, definitely.

Tonya Kubo (13:28.761)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (13:39.63)

You know, doing all those vegetables, you know, everything that involves a quiz and art or I pre-ground some meat or something like that. then Friday and Saturday I cook. It makes such a so I spend about 15 minutes doing that and I spend about 15 minutes decluttering every day. And then I, you know, specific rooms, you know, Monday I’m doing my kitchen Tuesday, I’m doing my living room. And then I spent about 15 minutes doing some kind of cleaning.

Tonya Kubo (13:40.723)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:57.767)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (14:08.822)

That is a little above and beyond and just by making those three decisions and those decisions are Predecisions like this is what I’m doing and this is what I’m going to do It’s changed the rhythm of my home. It’s made such a difference Tonya, I want to come back And I want to talk to the women You know, we have some guys who are here. We’re welcome, but you know what? I’m just going to be honest

Tonya Kubo (14:11.059)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:24.409)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (14:39.086)

we are talking to women here because we have different kinds of pressures and different kinds of things we do and I want to talk about For the woman who feels perpetually behind Who just feels like she can’t catch up. We’re gonna come back and have some really practical solutions for you So stay tuned we’re gonna pay some bills and we’ll be right back

Tonya Kubo (14:51.495)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (15:03.104)

Okay, friends, we are back. I’m back with Tonya Kubo, who is not only our co-host, but the leader of all things clutter-free. And I just want to talk about what are the emotional tolls of clutter. You know that I often refer to this UCLA study that says, first of all, one in 11 Americans have so many possessions that they are currently paying for

storage space outside their home. Now this study is 10 years old at least 10 years old, and They haven’t stopped building storage units There are more storage unit businesses in the United States than there are McDonald’s and Subways combined that’s a lot. That is a lot and

Tonya Kubo (15:33.639)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:40.306)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:52.445)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:57.501)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (16:00.462)

In 2009, UCLA found that mothers who described their homes as cluttered, they self-described, they self-identified that their homes are cluttered, have a stress hormone profile indicative of chronic stress. And chronic stress, left untreated, turns into a chronic illness. That is the path. When you are constantly stressed, when you constantly feel your heart racing when you constantly feel

Tonya Kubo (16:09.127)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (16:30.612)

These things and these moms also tended to have more depressed moods throughout the day. Like clutter is affecting our mental health. It is making us sad and depressed. They’re more tired in the evenings. And I think about this. So, Tonya, I am no longer in the thick of it. I do not have kids at my house. When kids come to my house, what they do is they come by to steal food, steal wine.

Tonya Kubo (16:38.332)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (16:52.231)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (16:59.424)

and then go to their friends’ parties in Lake Tahoe. That’s what my kids do when they come to that. But you’re in the thick of it. Describe to me what your house feels like when it’s clear because you had a real clutter issue when your kids were little.

Tonya Kubo (16:59.795)

You

Tonya Kubo (17:08.519)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:18.355)

Yes, and because my kids are growing up, we still have clutter issues. They look different, right? I’ve I share this and I’ve been teaching in Clutter-Free for Life recently and I share this with them all the time. It’s like there is always one part of my house that I feel like is absolutely out of control. The difference is, is that in 2014, when I discovered Clutter-Free for Life, or actually 2015, it was my whole house, right? And so now

Kathi (17:23.924)

Right. Yeah.

Kathi (17:37.165)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (17:46.582)

Right. Right.

Tonya Kubo (17:48.207)

I have just accepted that in this phase of life, one part of the house being constantly chaotic is still growth and a win compared to where I used to be.

Kathi (17:59.182)

Tonya, Tonya, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is still growth?

Tonya Kubo (18:05.253)

It is still growth!

Kathi (18:07.522)

This is such a huge victory, friend. I know it may not feel as different, but what you have done for your kids and for your own mental health is indescribable. It’s huge.

Tonya Kubo (18:10.972)

you

Tonya Kubo (18:18.024)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:22.937)

Yes, and it is a victory, but like we say in clutter free, right? It’s not one and done. It never is, right? So many people think, like, if I could just take a whole week off of work and get my house completely decluttered, it’ll be fine. I’ll never have to do it again. And I just feel like it’s so important to point out that for some of us, the goal is to just be better than we were when we started and to be on the path to be better a year from now than where we are right now.

Kathi (18:27.991)

Right, 100%.

Tonya Kubo (18:51.827)

constant state of improvement.

Kathi (18:51.98)

So Tonya, when you were first working the clutter free program, how often were you renting a dumpster?

Tonya Kubo (18:57.704)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (19:02.609)

Well, I had never rented one before we started, but that was like when we recognized we had no space. So we rented one, we could get one. I remember we could get one at a special deal once every three months. And so that’s what we did. The first year was four times. The second year was three times. And then we went to twice a year for a good chunk of years, maybe three years, until we bought this house.

Kathi (19:06.371)

Right?

Yeah.

Kathi (19:25.87)

For a long time, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (19:29.383)

We bought this house and we got one and that’s when they doubled the price. I was not happy, Kathi, at all. They doubled the price. We got one and then we kind of looked and we were like, we had enough for one dump because the way that our town had done it at the time is you would rent it for a month or four empties. And so initially we were filling it four times and then it went to where we’d fill it only like two to three.

Kathi (19:35.498)

I agree.

Kathi (19:48.941)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (19:53.004)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (19:56.775)

but that last time we actually did not have enough stuff to fill it once. It was still worthwhile because I still truly appreciate having the immediate free space, but it was huge progress. But what I want to also say is, you when we talk about stress and clutter, if you hear nothing else in this episode, this is what you need to hear. Yes, clutter causes stress and stress causes clutter.

Kathi (20:01.87)

That’s amazing.

Kathi (20:07.874)

Yes.

Kathi (20:24.42)

Yes, ex- go-

Tonya Kubo (20:25.507)

It goes both ways. I don’t want anybody listening to be like, well I’m stressed out because I’m failing at my decluttering because it is the most vicious cycle ever. And it’s one that I am living right now. Now it’s not throughout my whole house, but it’s my desk. So I am in a period of travel, which I don’t love doing during the school year. And when I cannot contain all that I have to do, I start writing everything on sticky notes and color coding them. And I,

I stick the sticky notes all around my, I kid you not, 27 inch monitor. And then when I have filled the edges of my monitor, I start just sticking them in random places all over my desk. And there was a point in time last week where you couldn’t see my desk because there were so many sticky notes of things. Now I will tell you this week, super empowering to be able to get rid of a stack of sticky notes every single day before I go to bed.

Kathi (21:12.504)

Yeah.

Kathi (21:20.258)

Nice So Tonya here’s what I would say too because I don’t want anybody to join us in the free group or potentially be in the clutter free for life group and think This is how I get my house perfect because let me be honest with you I Would still like ten more minutes before somebody comes over like I but but I don’t need

Tonya Kubo (21:45.299)

Amen. Brian would like 10 to 14 business days if you could arrange that for him. That would be his preference.

Kathi (21:55.384)

But here’s the thing, Tonya, and we’ve had this happen before, where friends have been in crisis and they need a place to sleep. And I say, come on down. And we can do that. You can’t do that because you have no room in your house.

Tonya Kubo (22:03.581)

Mm-hmm. Yup.

Tonya Kubo (22:09.381)

I was gonna say I only have as many beds as I have people in this house and well that oftentimes one of us is on the couch.

Kathi (22:17.452)

Yeah, but if somebody needs to come over and grab something to make their dinner, you could let them into your house and you can do that. And that’s the big difference, my friends, you know, that I live in a space that doesn’t stress me out every time I come downstairs. And I, you know, right now my garage is organized like, you know, miracles abound friend. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (22:21.139)

Mm-hmm.

yeah. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:34.973)

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:41.405)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (22:49.27)

You know, we’ve talked a little bit about Clutterfree Academy, which is our free group that everybody is welcome into. You have to answer a few questions so we know that you’re not trying to one, try to teach other people because you were born organized and you know how to do it because we reject you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Tonya Kubo (23:08.347)

I will say this one more time, we are the kindest quarter of the internet except for that particular type of person.

Kathi (23:14.4)

Yes, yes. But also, we have our Clutter Free for Life group. here’s something I’ve been thinking about recently, Tonya, and a way I’m going to start teaching it in Clutter Free for Life. There are a lot of organization programs out there. And those programs are like

trimming your rose bushes, trimming your plants, like they may look good for a while, but you’re not getting to the root of the problem. And yeah, yeah. No.

Tonya Kubo (23:58.557)

Well, that’s the ultimate issue, isn’t it, Kathi? Please continue. But I mean, that really is the heart of it, is so many initiatives we have tried to solve our problem of clutter is bandaging a deeply infected wound.

Kathi (24:14.966)

Yeah. Yes. And what I want to do is I want you to get to the root of this problem. I want you to get to the place where you are pulling that rose bush that is not producing great roses anymore, but you keep trimming it and hoping it’ll come back and no, we’re just going to pull it out by the roots. And that’s what clutter free for life does, because what we want you to do is we want you to spend

Tonya Kubo (24:39.111)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (24:45.526)

Few minutes 15 minutes every day getting to the root of the issue and that means getting the stuff out of your house getting it out of your space because if You get it out. You never have to deal with that particular item again But if you keep it and organize it and put it into a folder or buy a plastic tub for it You’re gonna have to reorganize it and reorganize it and reorganize it

Tonya Kubo (24:55.324)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (25:04.167)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (25:15.65)

Dozens of times and if you’re not going to use it, it’s time to remove it

Tonya Kubo (25:21.091)

Mm-hmm. 100%.

Kathi (25:22.766)

So, Tonya, can you explain a little bit of the difference between Clutter-Free Academy, our free group, and Clutter-Free for Life, which is our paid group? And let’s just be honest, we’re doing this podcast because we want to introduce, some of you just need the band-aid every once in a while. But most of the people who are searching out, decluttering, those kind of terms,

Tonya Kubo (25:30.685)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (25:52.65)

on Facebook looking for that kind of help often need deeper help and that’s what clutter free for life does.

Tonya Kubo (25:56.903)

Mm-hmm.

Okay, well, I could fill four episodes with everything that is involved in our Clutterfree Academy program and our Clutterfree for Life membership program. But here’s what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna give you some differences from the perspective of Grace Church. She is the community manager of our Clutterfree for Life, our membership program. And she just says it so well.

First things first, the free group is huge, depending on your relation with size. But it’s inching up towards 16,000 members now. And so it’s huge. So if you are the type of person that really feels like you are all alone in the world, you are the only person who has clutter, you’re the only person who hasn’t figured out how to get on top of your stuff, please by all means come into the free group and see that you have.

roughly about 15,900 close personal friends who also think they’re the only person in the world. If you need to know you’re in good company, by all means go there. If you are somebody who likes a big, busy group, lots of activity, talking about all sorts of different things, all that fall within the spectrum of clutter, Clutterfree Academy is a great place for you. And if you have just like one or two questions about clutter,

Kathi (26:59.977)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (27:21.841)

Like, my gosh, my mom just passed away. We’ve got this milk glass and we have no idea what one does with milk glass. Who here knows? We’re pretty good resource for that kind of thing, too. Excellent resource. However, if you are somebody who prefers a smaller, more intimate group that is action oriented because our free group has people, some people actually don’t believe they have any issue with clutter and they come into the group to prove

Kathi (27:31.381)

Excellent resource.

Tonya Kubo (27:51.461)

somebody in their life wrong, right? Somebody told them they were cluttering. They’re like, I’m not cluttering. I’m gonna go join this cluttering group and prove to you how uncluttery I am. Those folks are in there. Some folks are in there just because their clutter is situational. We get a lot of teachers, for instance, who are changing classrooms, changing jobs, and they’re just in there for some help in getting rid of some of the stuff that they’ve stockpiled. Clutter-free for life is for the person on a mission, right?

They know they have a clutter problem. nobody joins Clutter Free for Life because they’re curious on whether they have a clutter problem. They join because they know what? They have a problem. They want to be in company with other people doing, with the same shared goal, I should say, because not everybody is working on the same thing at the same time, but they all have the same mission. And they like more direct help.

Kathi (28:21.934)

Mm-hmm, right.

Tonya Kubo (28:42.577)

Some of our folks in Clutterfree Academy love the information we share. They binge this podcast. They go through, they pour through the website, but they are not ready to be visible yet, right? They don’t want Kathi to know what they look like. They don’t want Kathi to know them by name. Nobody’s scared of me. Everybody’s happy knowing me by name, but you know, Kathi, they really look to you as a mentor and as an expert. And so in Clutterfree for life is when they’re ready to be seen. We meet on zoom every single week.

Kathi (28:53.485)

Yeah.

You

Kathi (29:09.976)

Yeah.

every single week.

Tonya Kubo (29:12.741)

and we talk through these issues. Now there was a time where the calls on Zoom were just Q &A’s like, come and give us your clutter problems and we’ll answer. And what we have discovered is our people do not appreciate that. They come, they want us to pre-decide, they want us to look at what’s going on, what the theme is, and let them know what’s most important for them to know to take immediate action, and then support them in whatever obstacles are along the way. And so to do all that,

We have a calendar with a day-to-day decluttering plan for you. We do separate it in monthly themes because we have been at this long enough, Kathi Lipp has been at this longer than me, but we’ve been at this longer enough to know those rhythms and routines of where clutter rears its ugly head most often. And honestly, we’re just the nicest stinking people you could ever hope to be with our members. Like I get emotional every time I lead one of our weekly calls.

because they are so generous and so kind and so giving. And there is nobody who will ever answer your question with a, well, what you gotta do is, because all of us are aware that we are no more of an expert on the solution than you are, but we are experts on the journey.

Kathi (30:31.02)

Yes. And it is a journey. It takes time. This is not, like you said, a one and done. This is constantly keeping up on it and reframing how you think about your stuff. That’s a lot of what we do is help you reframe how you think about the things. Because many of us were raised by parents that if you give it away, that means you’re wasteful. Or, you know, that we have these tapes in our head.

that we don’t need to keep. And so we really try to give every, we lend each other our bravery to be able to say, you can get rid of it, it’s gonna be okay. Or, hey, you may need to hold onto that for another three months until you are ready to get rid of it. But in the meantime, here are the other things you can do. So friends, Clutter Free for Life, you can join it any time of the year. It’s 299.

Tonya Kubo (31:25.043)

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (31:27.63)

for the entire year or $24.99 per month or right now we’ve got a sale going on and we do this because we want you to be able to try this out and you guys it’s such a good sale it’s $118 for the entire year which is is pretty stunning

Tonya Kubo (31:30.163)

or $24.99 per month.

Kathi (31:55.022)

And you get all the same things that you get when you join at full price But I will say there is a limit to this because we have to hand process each of those ones So we are only offering this price through December 10th 2024 and You will be let into the group. You will get immediate access to our resources in there You’ll be able to look at all the past teaching. So if you’re like

I don’t have a lot going on for Christmas, then what you can do is you can start watching the videos. You can start being a part of the discussions. And can I just tell you this clutter free Academy is the kindest corner of the Internet. Clutter free for life is the kindest corner of the kindest corner of the Internet. You will never be shamed. You will never be said, you know, told, that’s what your house looks like because we’ve all been there.

Tonya and I were both raised by hoarders. My dad was a hoarder. Yeah, Tonya’s, my dad was a hoarder. Tonya’s mom was a hoarder. We get it, friends. We get that this, this is really hard, but we want you to be a part of it. So if you want to be a part of Clutter Free for Life, all you have to do is go to the show notes. We have a link there. It’s kathi.link/CFL and

Tonya Kubo (32:55.539)

Yeah, nothing ever surprises me. Nope.

Kathi (33:21.567)

You will get all the information you need. We would love for you to come and join. You can bring your clutter burdens to us. We will talk about it. Plus, you’re going to have hundreds of other people in there who have been through this journey and can give you the advice you need, not just the advice, the encouragement. So I want you to come check it out because it is a pretty spectacular place to be. Tonya, any final words of encouragement for our friends here?

Tonya Kubo (33:52.173)

You know what? It is not a personal failing to need help with your clutter. When I think back to a lot of our new members or a lot of the conversations I have with people in the free group who are thinking about joining the membership, what I hear a lot of is like, I should be able to do this, right? And I’m like, I’ve got a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a whole lot of life experience and I need help.

Even if I wasn’t on the team, I’d be paying to be part of this group because I need the plan. I need to know what the next step is and I need support in getting there and it’s okay if you do too.

Kathi (34:31.63)

We need support from each other. We just need support from each other to continue on the journey. Tonya, thank you so much for your wisdom today. Friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to ClutterFree Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter free life you’ve always wanted to live.

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#656 When Opposites Attract: Managing Different Clutter Levels in Marriage

In this enlightening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp welcomes author Arlene Pellicane to discuss the delicate balance of managing different organizational styles within marriage. If you're struggling with a spouse who has different standards of tidiness,...

USDA website Shelf Stable Food information

#644 Meet the TikTok Star Making Saving Money on Food Cool Again

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Nov 19, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

644 – Meet the TikTok Star Making Saving Money on Food Cool Again

Hey friends!

You know how we’re always looking for ways to make our homes work better for us without breaking the bank?

We have a treat for you!

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp interviews Lauren, a TikTok sensation known for her creative approaches to saving money on groceries. With a quarter million followers, Lauren shares her journey of feeding a family of seven while maintaining a tight grocery budget, as well as personal stories from her grandmother’s Depression-era cooking wisdom. She discusses how she manages to create meals using pantry cleanout items and creative substitutions.

Listeners will discover:

Lauren’s seven strategies for reducing grocery costs
The truth about expiration dates and food safety
How to effectively use Buy Nothing groups
Strategies for stretching ingredients
How to work around food allergies while staying on budget

Whether you’re dealing with a tight budget, wanting to waste less food, or just trying to be a better steward of what God’s given us, you’re going to love Lauren’s practical, down-to-earth approach.

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup here and sign up to receive your free ebook featuring four weeks’ worth of easy meal plans and delicious recipes.

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here.

Links Mentioned:

Ready for Anything by Kathi Lipp

Ibotta

Find Lauren on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@totesma_gotes

Clutter Free Resources:

Order Sabbath Soup here and sign up to receive your free ebook featuring four weeks’ worth of easy meal plans and delicious recipes.

What are your top tips for someone who wants to start stretching their grocery budget?

Share 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

Lauren

Lauren is a TikTok creator with over 250,000 followers. She started making TikTok videos, primarily sharing her home-cooked meals and budget-friendly recipes, as a hobby rather than a career. Her straightforward, relatable video style and willingness to show the “outtakes” have resonated with her large audience.

Find her on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@totesma_gotes

Transcript

Kathi (00:02.168)

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. Guys, you know, okay, I’m gonna sound like a fangirl here. You guys have heard me interview celebrities. You have heard me interview famous, famous authors.

But I am interviewing Lauren today and she’s going to get really embarrassed here. You guys, feel like I’m interviewing one of my friends, but she doesn’t know me. So here’s how I know Lauren. As you guys know, I kind of love me a little TikTok. It’s kind of my wind down every night after a busy day of content creation and writing. And Lauren is one of the first people who comes up, which, okay, I have to say,

Lauren (00:37.737)

Thank

Kathi (01:02.392)

One of the reasons she’s one of the first that comes up is she actually accepted a friend request one time. And I don’t do that. I don’t do that. So how I first started following Lauren is we have an epic battle in our house, my husband Roger and I, about use by and sell by dates. This is a battle to the death. I live on the edge. Like if it smells good and it tastes good, it is good.

Lauren (01:51.561)

Yes.

Kathi (01:56.574)

And Roger thinks that if a can of peaches is one day past its expiration date, that that may cause him botulism and he may die right here as I’m serving him peach cobbler. So I started watching you and I’m like, yes, somebody who is saying about this. And I started following your videos and they’re just delightful. They’re delightful. So I’m going to stop talking and I’m going to ask Lauren to talk.

Lauren (02:09.845)

Poor guy.

Lauren (02:17.691)

Thank

Kathi (02:25.365)

Lauren, welcome to Clutterfree Academy.

Lauren (02:27.841)

Thank you, Kathi.

Kathi (02:29.8)

And this is your first time ever on a podcast, even though you have a quarter of a million followers on TikTok. This is your first time on a podcast, right?

Lauren (02:38.055)

Yeah, I’m actually not big on social media. TikTok is pretty much the only social media I do. It just kind of happened.

Kathi (02:44.884)

Okay, let’s be clear, you’re huge on social media, you just have one form of it. So I’m just gonna, I am going to do a different podcast with you to talk about your TikTok journey, because I find that fascinating. But today, what I want to talk to you about is how you you are extreme when it comes to I think you’re extreme when it comes to saving money on your budget.

Would you call yourself extreme? Are you okay with that term?

Lauren (03:15.081)

I I feel I don’t feel like I’m extreme, but realistically, I probably am.

Kathi (03:19.768)

I was going to say, as the population goes, I would say you’re in the top 10 % of saving money on your budget. You are always looking for ways to save money on your budget. And so I tried to think out how many ways I have seen you save money on TikTok. And I just want to go over these because there’s about, I guess there’s seven that I have noticed.

Lauren (03:27.999)

Probably.

Kathi (03:46.748)

and I may be missing something. But I think the first video I ever saw was you using some ground beef that you traded for concrete work, right?

Lauren (03:59.488)

Yeah, I mean it was it wasn’t a straight-across trade, but it was a good portion of it. Yes

Kathi (04:05.022)

Okay, so you actually, your husband has a concrete company. And so what you did is you guys did this concrete work and part of the payment, was it a full cow? Was it half a cow? What was it?

Lauren (04:19.699)

It was a quarter cow, we traded for our labor portion.

Kathi (04:23.082)

Okay. And by the way, you have stretched that cow. Holy cow. Like you’ve made, I’ve seen you use that quite a bit. You’ve been able to use it quite a bit. So trading, have you ever done trades like that before? Is this your first time?

Lauren (04:38.365)

Not necessarily for the business, but we do trades all the time. You know, like my neighbors, we trade produce in the summer and she’ll leave me a big bouquet of flowers because I can’t grow flowers or, you know, we trade our land. People put their bees on it and they trade us honey for use of our land. We have all kinds of stuff like that.

Kathi (04:57.292)

That’s amazing. here’s a question, because I think people might feel awkward about asking, you know, would you be willing to trade? Can you give us just an idea of how you approach the subject or do you just hang out with people where this is kind of a way of life?

Lauren (05:14.837)

pretty normal in our community. We’re pretty rural. So a lot of us have more, you know, like food items than we do money. So plenty of us trade and it’s not a big deal. but we also, you know, if there’s something we’re super interested in sometimes just say, how would you feel about, know, we deduct a portion of this in exchange for this? And usually people are very open to it.

Kathi (05:22.54)

Yeah.

Kathi (05:36.386)

Yeah, and even if they can’t at that time, they may be open to it later on. For us, you know, we’ve done some trades and what I’ve noticed is the first thing to trade is something of small value if you’re like just kind of sussing out if somebody wants to do something. So like if we had extra chicken eggs, seeing if they might want to trade for some honey or something like that, and you know, getting your feet wet. But yeah, when you know you have something, especially when

Kathi (06:05.716)

egg prices were going through the roof, we could have traded them for bars of gold. It would not have mattered. Not that we could do anything with bars of gold, but yeah. Okay. So that was the first time I met you was finding out about the trade. But the reason I hung with you is the buy-nothing groups. So can you tell me a little bit about how you use buy nothing? And let’s talk a little bit about the extremes of your buy-nothing.

Lauren (06:10.209)

We kind of traded stuff off on that so come back.

Kathi (06:35.478)

Because you kind of don’t, when people do pantry cleanouts, you kind of don’t care. Well, you explain it, please.

Lauren (06:43.861)

The buy-nothing group is amazing. They’re actually all over the place and they’re specifically to Facebook. Well, I think they have a website that’s not, but they are everywhere. Some towns don’t have them, but people can create their own. There’s just a website. It’s, I think it’s like buy nothing.org that tells you kind of what they expect. So it’s sort of across the board. So it’s not like a need-based website. What it is is everybody has the exact same opportunity. If there’s stuff that you don’t want or aren’t going to use, you post it up there.

And you just let it sit for a day or two and let everybody that’s interested get a chance to say, Hey, I’m interested. You don’t really volunteer extra information. Like I could use this for, or I really need this because you just, I’m interested. And then they just randomly choose whoever they’re interested in gifting it to. So it’s cool. Cause everybody has the exact same opportunity. Nobody feels put on the spot. Nobody feels strange about it. And there’s a lot of things. mean, there’s clothes, there’s food items, there’s anything, anything in your house you would give to Goodwill. It goes on by nothing.

Kathi (07:43.04)

Okay, so I’m already finding out I did it wrong because I, we just had a big order at Sam’s and they, my husband went to pick it up and they accidentally included five gallons of two and a half percent milk, a bunch of Lunchables and some Romaine lettuce. And literally I just picked up 2 % milk and Romaine lettuce and I’m not a big Lunchables fan.

Lauren (07:59.777)

Wow.

Kathi (08:11.286)

So I put it up on our community group, because we live in such a small town, we don’t have a buy-nothing group. And I just gave it to the first person, but it was our school. So I feel good about that. But you’re kind of supposed to let a bunch of people leave it up for a couple of days and then pick somebody. Is that kind of the standard? Or can you give it away right away? Is that OK to do?

Lauren (08:30.606)

You can.

Lauren (08:35.421)

You can, yeah. People put like flash gift and like for example, last summer somebody cleaned out their freezer because they needed room and they had a picture of a bag on their porch with frozen stuff in it and just said, Hey, I cleaned out the freezer. Whoever can get here first can have it. And literally nobody commented on it, but me. So I ended up getting a big paper bag full of random, like the spinach I used in the spinach artichoke dip and peas and all kinds of stuff.

Kathi (09:01.058)

That’s amazing, I love it. Okay, so why are those pantry cleanouts so controversial? Because you get some pushback on them.

Lauren (09:09.757)

I get a lot of people that are really angry about the pantry pickups. Like there are so many people that are so angry, but I don’t know. I think it’s maybe the thought that like people think that I’m taking from somebody who needs it more. But like I explained, the buy-nothing group is everybody has the exact same chance and you just get randomly selected.

Kathi (09:12.812)

They’re mad at you, Lauren. How dare you? There are a couple of reasons, right? Yes.

Lauren (09:33.057)

But in our town, also have multiple, I think we’ve got like four churches that do food drives every single week. We’ve got our school that has a pantry twice a week. We’ve got a food bank. We’ve got so many resources in our community that nobody is lacking.

Kathi (09:48.46)

Yeah, and as somebody who gives things away when I don’t need them, we have a business here and we have to buy lots of food sometimes and sometimes there’s extra. And I just want what’s going to be convenient for me as I’m hosting all these people. Like we’ve got too much stuff. I just need the first person who could come here. And so there are lots of opportunities for people who are needs-based to get free food in our community.

Kathi (10:16.652)

but I’m just trying to manage my resources and get it out the door. The other reason that people get upset with you is because you take things past their expiration date and they think you’re going to die, right?

Lauren (10:31.297)

Yeah, a lot of the things that we get in pantry cleanouts are opened, which some things I feel comfortable using because I might know the people or I just, I don’t know, just get a wild hair and think it’s fine and use it. Anyway, a lot of people are like, aren’t you going to get poised? Yeah.

Kathi (10:44.072)

and you’re still here to talk about it. You are still here to talk about it.

Lauren (10:49.025)

Yeah, most people are good. They’re not out there trying to poison somebody randomly. I mean, they’re good-hearted enough to give away their extra. They’re probably not trying to kill you. And then the rest of it is just expired. Our food pantry can take up to a year, I think expired or maybe it’s six months past. It’s not very long, but everything else they just can’t give away to food pantries. And like we just used a can of soup from 2017 the other day, which freaked Devin out. He’s like, you try it first.

Kathi (10:57.942)

Right.

Kathi (11:17.367)

You

Lauren (11:18.45)

BOOF!

Kathi (11:19.926)

You’re the king’s food taster. I love that.

Lauren (11:22.305)

But you know, like I said in a million of my videos, mean, shelf stable foods are made to last. The USDA website even has a thing on it. I mean, it’s indefinite. The food is indefinite. It’s not going to stay tasting great, but it’s not going to kill you.

Kathi (11:40.396)

Well, Lauren, I wrote a book several years ago called Ready for Anything about being prepared for disasters and things like that. And that’s when I found out canned food almost doesn’t expire. It might lose a little of its flavor, but you’ve been trying to educate people on this. they’re staunch like if it’s a day past it on the box, I’m throwing it out. And I found out something really interesting.

You live north of me, I’m in California. And they are going to radically change the food date system in California. You heard about this, huh?

Lauren (12:21.217)

Well, I actually heard about Canada changing their food. They’re taking off the Best Buy dates.

Kathi (12:26.786)

Yes, because there’s so much food waste for people not sniffing or tasting, but just saying it’s a day past, I’m throwing it out. And the estimate is that Americans waste about 40 % of their food that they purchase. It’s crazy.

Lauren (12:43.133)

which is crazy. There are so many Americans that are hungry every day that don’t need to be because this stuff doesn’t need to be thrown away.

Kathi (12:49.674)

It does not need to be thrown away. Okay, the fourth way I’ve noticed that you are saving money on your food is gardening. say you can’t grow flowers. I’m very sad.

Lauren (13:04.863)

No, I am not a flower person or an indoor plant person.

Kathi (13:07.223)

Okay, that’s a hey, it’s good to know our strengths, right? It’s good to know what we’re able to do. But what do you grow that you feel like makes the biggest impact on your grocery bill?

Lauren (13:13.153)

Thanks.

Lauren (13:20.641)

the berries 100%. My kids, we have five boys. They, they just want berries. So we do strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries. I mean, if it’s a fruit, we probably grow it. So that makes the biggest impact.

Kathi (13:32.728)

I’m surprised you didn’t say blackberries. Do you have blackberries on your land?

Lauren (13:38.323)

We do have blackberries. just, it’s not something you really try to grow in Oregon. They just kind of do their own thing and you try to rip them out constantly.

Kathi (13:44.696)

Yes. I was going to say we have a constant supply of blackberries, not necessarily ones we want, but yeah. Okay, so the berries are making the biggest, I think that’s really interesting. So, but you also grow a really big variety. I’ve seen beans and jalapenos and things like that. So what do you grow that adds the best flavor to your food? Like that you get excited about?

Lauren (14:12.885)

The potatoes are my favorite. I know they’re not a flavor item, but they’re my favorite. They’re so versatile.

Kathi (14:16.16)

Yes, because I tell people how you grow them.

Lauren (14:20.777)

Well, I’m actually I’m doing a video on it now, but I won’t post it until I’ve got like showing how it actually does. But so you use layering method. It’s really awesome. We do it in buckets. You put a potato in the very bottom and just cover the top of the potato with dirt. And when it starts to sprout its little leaves, you cover those and then you just keep on repeating. So you hit the top of the bucket and wait till the leaves die and then you harvest.

Kathi (14:41.496)

Okay, I am 100 % gonna try that. I can’t wait for that video. You guys, I’m obsessed with her. She probably thinks I’m creepy at this point. You guys know I’m not creepy. can I just tell you, because I live rurally, and most people are not going to adopt all seven of your practices. Do you love that I’ve just said, here are your seven practices, Lauren? But so many of these,

Lauren (14:44.347)

It’s so easy.

Kathi (15:10.253)

I vibe with because it’s just we can’t get to the store but once a week. And so you start off almost all of your cooking videos. Can you give us the line?

Lauren (15:23.137)

It’s time to make dinner using what we have on hand. That we’re not going to the store, we’re not going out to eat. Yep.

Kathi (15:26.678)

Right.

Yes, because I can only cook from what I have on hand. There’s no going to Chipotle. So this makes me so happy when I’m able to see. Here’s my question. How did you get to be such a creative cook? Was it necessity? Your grandma. So tell me about her.

Lauren (15:43.553)

That would be my grandma.

Lauren (15:48.507)

she was obviously part of the great depression because she’s my grandma and that was the age, but she, her pantry was, I don’t think I ever ate food that was actually in date ever at her house. And she was just to keep it until it’s gone. Cause you used it person. She’s the one who taught me how to sniff and smell and you know what I mean? Make sure everything’s kosher, but she did, she just made what she had. So it was a lot of random. can see her pantry just stacked with like.

Kathi (16:00.384)

Okay.

Kathi (16:05.176)

Mm-hmm.

Lauren (16:17.633)

200 cans of random stuff and she’d throw it together because she’d say hey this looks good and I think this would go with this and this would go and she just had something.

Kathi (16:26.024)

That’s amazing. Okay, we’re gonna take a quick break, pay some bills, and when we come back, I wanna talk a little bit about how I see you stretching your food. Because I think that’s where you really shine. So we’re gonna take a quick break and come right back.

Lauren (16:37.449)

Okay.

Kathi (16:47.424)

Okay, friends, we are back with Lauren who is an extreme cooker, food buyer. She lowers her bills in such an amazing way. And I find it fascinating how you stretch what you have. So for those who listen, a lot of us have problems with clutter. My dad was a hoarder. We tend to collect, but don’t always use.

Kathi (17:16.352)

And so we may want to grab all those things from a buy nothing, but then they’ll sit in our pantry until they’re 10 years out of date and nobody in our family will touch them. How do you get yourself to be like, I’ve got this can of, don’t know, let’s, I’m trying to think of an ingredient.

Lauren (17:39.774)

Okay.

Kathi (17:41.298)

canned potatoes, because I’ve seen those before. I’ve never actually used them. But you would do something with those. How? What’s your thought process for? I’ve got this thing that I may have never used before, and I’m going to do something with it. How do you go? How do you approach that?

Lauren (17:58.764)

I tried to just figure out what the main ingredient that would be that could go with it like those hearts of palm that’s something I’ve never had before but I googled it like what are these because I didn’t know and it said it was similar to artichoke so I was like okay so we can just treat it like artichoke so hence the dip that was born

Kathi (18:08.662)

Right.

Kathi (18:17.782)

Yeah. Okay, so you’re kind of reverse engineering it instead of approaching it recipe first, you’re approaching it ingredient first and then googling or looking, you know, on recipe sites to figure out what you can do with it. Really.

Lauren (18:32.705)

pretty much or like the clams like what do do with this clam chowder? I didn’t make a dip but I will because I have more clams but I made a chowder just because it sounded the best and I had the closest ingredients to what I thought it would need on hand. Okay and the rest we win.

Kathi (18:35.988)

Yes, and you made a clam dip with those, right?

Kathi (18:51.028)

Okay, that’s okay. That’s, I love that. And if you’re saying, well, that’s easy for Lauren, but you know, we have food allergies, would please tell about your special circumstances.

Lauren (19:01.333)

We have food allergies. We have food allergies too. We, one of our children has a really severe peanut allergy. So we have to be careful with cross-contamination, which is big in dinner, obviously, but things like Asian dishes that use peanut sauces, you know, you got to watch. but I am gluten-free. The rest of my family is not. So I just have to be careful. but that even includes like these cream of soups or, know, like a tomato soup and I put in the meatloaf or those things all have.

Kathi (19:28.417)

It’s in everything.

Lauren (19:29.951)

wheat. Yeah. And some of the seasonings. some stuff I get a really unpleasant surprise once I’ve made it. I’m like, I feel like crap. And some stuff we just kinda, you know, I’ll make the recipe like it’s supposed to be. And then maybe I use gluten-free flour instead of regular flour, or I set off a little portion of my gluten-free noodles or my gluten-free sauce on the side and just kind of do it deconstructed. There’s ways around it.

Kathi (19:37.569)

Yes.

Kathi (19:52.978)

I love it. When you do those pantry cleanouts and there’s like a gluten-free cake mix or something, I’m so happy for you. It makes me so happy for you. Okay, another part of what you do is you shop the sales. I am on the constant lookout for the bacon deal at Safeway because of you. tell us your approach to shopping the sales.

Lauren (20:20.645)

so a lot of stores like Safeway specifically, they’re really expensive. I would not normally shop there, but they have loss leaders. So every week they post like just a couple things that are way below what they should be to drag you into the store. So you get the rest of this stuff while you’re there. We don’t do that. We, we have to drive 20 minutes to get groceries anyway, which is pretty normal. But if we’re going to trip, we hit Safeway for its little deals. And then we hop over to the Kroger store, Fred Meyer for its little deals. And you just kind of bundle it in. There’s a grocery outlet up there.

Kathi (20:24.972)

there. Yeah.

Lauren (20:51.041)

do, or like Fred Meyer started doing their weekend freebie this weekend, Saturday and Sunday it’s free bacon. So I was going to take my mom grocery shopping today, but if I literally just wait until tomorrow, cause she’s going to spend more than $35, she gets a free pack of bacon. So there’s no point not waiting.

Kathi (21:07.832)

Perfect. And I’m so jealous of your store selection. We have Safeway, which by the way, we have a child who works at Safeway and his girlfriend. so I was trying to shop the sales there and I was like, guys, it’s so confusing sometimes with their deals and things like that. And my son’s girlfriend says, yeah, they should offer a Duolingo course.

Kathi (21:35.988)

on how to read the Safeway ads. They work there, it’s confusing to them. But Fred Myers and all these croakers, you have some really good options over there. So you’re just kind of, you’re spending a little bit more time going to different places, but getting the things on sale that you know your family will use. Is that correct?

Lauren (21:57.313)

Yeah, and for me it makes sense because they’re all close together. So it’s not extra gas or really extra time. I mean, I’m spending the exact same amount of time and the same amount of gas. So, but it doesn’t make sense if they’re all spread out. Before we go, we look at, I look at the Safeway ad and the Fred Meyer ad and see what I want to do that’s on my list. I write it all down and then I check Ibotta, which is a, like a rebate app on your phone. See if anything matches there. Basically we just kind of hop around the coupons.

Kathi (22:25.272)

So you feel like Ibotta’s worth it?

Lauren (22:28.412)

I know a lot of people don’t, but I like it.

Kathi (22:30.38)

No, no, I’m just curious. I’ve never really used it. So I’m going to check if Lauren says check it out. I’m going to check it out. That’s what I’m going to do.

Lauren (22:38.468)

It’s worth it if you’re buying those items already. Like don’t go out of your way to buy something that they’re rebate. It’s not worth it that way, but if you’re already buying it, it’s just extra.

Kathi (22:43.671)

Right.

I love it. Stretching your cooking. You do such an amazing job stretching your cooking. I’ve seen you when you have a protein that you’re using instead of using a ton of that protein, adding beans and things like that to it to make it stretch. Give me a couple of ideas of some of your favorite stretching techniques because like you said,

you’re feeding five boys plus the two at seven people. And I remember having teenage boys and a couple of teenage girls that if it was on the table, it was being eaten. Like there was no end in sight. So I’d love to hear a couple of ways that you’ve found that you can really stretch that meal.

Lauren (23:34.613)

Rice is the cheapest, best stretcher that we have ever found. It is such a good filler. We do do mashed potatoes, but sometimes the kids aren’t super into those. So rice seems to be the go-to. Beans are really, really good one. It makes everybody super full. They don’t even know it’s there because we usually cook it in with like the taco meat or the soup or whatever. And it just, doubles your meat volume without actually changing what’s in it.

Kathi (23:39.927)

Yeah.

Kathi (24:00.02)

my goodness, I love it. And then the seventh way that I’ve noticed is substituting. You substitute all the time. You’re not going, I have never heard you say, like, I can’t make this because I don’t have X, Y, Z. You are constantly substituting. How do you get a sense of what to substitute? How do you know it?

Lauren (24:13.473)

Yeah.

you say like…

Kathi (24:29.588)

Is it just a sixth sense that none of us can really learn or how did you learn to substitute so well?

Lauren (24:37.63)

I actually just made a lot of stuff that tasted really bad and learned that that was not gonna work. Do it again!

Kathi (24:42.922)

I love it. It really is trial and error, right?

Lauren (24:47.585)

Yeah, it’s not some crazy sixth sense. just, you know, it’s like, this sounds like a good idea. And sometimes it is. And sometimes it’s really not.

Kathi (24:55.638)

Whenever I’m experimenting, I always tell my husband, and there’s a frozen pizza in the freezer if this is terrible. Like we have that back. Top Ramen, there you go, right? Because yeah, that’s the gold standard. Okay, is there any strategy that I haven’t mentioned that you feel like really helps with that grocery budget?

Lauren (25:17.71)

As silly as it sounds, I do the can collecting. I haven’t done a video in a very long time, but we live really so we live kind of by a park. And so there’s a ton of people that throw beer cans and things out their window, which is disgusting and a terrible habit. But I walk the road sometimes more frequently in the summer, but get exercise. You’re picking up the cans. Every bag is like seven bucks. It adds up over time.

Kathi (25:44.312)

And you’re helping the environment too. You’re helping to keep your community a place that people want to be. I love that. Okay.

Lauren (25:52.863)

You look like a weirdo, but it’s okay. I do it at at my son’s football game that we were just at I was picking up a couple that were under the bleachers and he was just like mom. my god

Kathi (26:01.813)

Mom. Yeah, but you know what? Here’s the beautiful thing. You’re not gonna have to take care of me in my old age because I’m in debt for the grocery bills of raising five boys. Yeah, you know what? If that’s the weirdest thing about you, mom, I think we’re good to go. Lauren, this has been so great. I’m gonna put your TikTok handle.

Lauren (26:14.657)

because I’ll be that little weirdo out the parking lot collecting cans, yep.

Kathi (26:26.424)

in the notes so that people can go find you. But I just think if you’re going to spend a few minutes on social media, spend them with Lauren. She is not controversial unless you’re weirded out by expiration date. She’s not controversial. You’re so encouraging to people. And I love that you’re helping us think about our food differently. Thank you so much for being on today.

Lauren (26:35.083)

for it.

Lauren (26:39.521)

I’ll play it twice.

Lauren (26:50.057)

today. Thank you, Kathi. This is really fun.

Kathi (26:52.998)

my goodness. And friends, thank you for being here. 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.

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#656 When Opposites Attract: Managing Different Clutter Levels in Marriage

In this enlightening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp welcomes author Arlene Pellicane to discuss the delicate balance of managing different organizational styles within marriage. If you're struggling with a spouse who has different standards of tidiness,...

#643 Before It’s Too Late: Why Now is the Time to Deal with Your Clutter

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Nov 12, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 1 comment

Listen Now

643 – Before It’s Too Late: Why Now is the Time to Deal with Your Clutter

Have you ever looked around your home and felt that knot in your stomach, thinking, “I don’t want to leave this mess for my kids.”

In this poignant episode, Kathi Lipp welcomes literary agent and editor Kathleen Kerr to share her experience cleaning out her great aunt’s home. After her great aunt’s passing, Kathleen and her family faced the overwhelming task of sorting through decades of accumulated items in a historic Maine farmhouse where nothing had left since the 1930s. Kathleen discusses how her family approached this daunting project, working in teams to tackle different rooms while processing their grief and complex emotions.

Listeners will discover:

How to navigate family dynamics when dealing with heirlooms
The importance of asking for help before situations become unmanageable
How this experience has changed Kathleen’s own approach to keeping family mementos.

The episode offers practical advice for listeners who might face similar situations, while also providing a compassionate look at how hoarding affects both the individual and their loved ones.

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup here and sign up to receive your free ebook featuring four week’s worth of easy meal plans and delicious recipes.

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

An “old-school” family bathroom where even the littlest family members had their own special spot. Just one of the many treasures Kathleen’s family discovered after going through her great aunt’s possessions.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here.

Clutter Free Resources:

Order Sabbath Soup here and sign up for your free ebook featuring four weeks’ worth of easy meal plans and delicious recipes.

Have you ever experienced the emotional weight of sorting through someone else’s lifetime of belongings?

Share 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 Guests

Kathleen Kerr

Kathleen Kerr is an agent with Alive Literary. Before joining Alive, Kathleen served as an acquisitions editor at Zondervan and Harvest House Publishers. She works with bestselling, debut, and award-winning authors, helping to refine their messages, build their careers, and partner in their ministries

Connect with Alive Literacy at www.aliveliterary.com.

Transcript

Kathi (00:01.484)

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 today I wanna introduce you to an old friend of mine, but a new friend to the Clutter-Free side of podcasting. It’s Kathleen Kerr. Kathleen, welcome to the podcast.

Kathleen (00:20.924)

Thanks so much for having me today, Kathi.

Kathi (00:22.764)

Well, thank you for being here. Now, if people know you and me, they’d say you’re on the wrong podcast girl. Because as we also know, I have the writing at the Red House podcast where we talk all things writing. And Kathleen, in addition to being my agent, was my editor for years and years and years. And so we have had many a book conversation, many a writing conversation, many a marketing conversation. But

Kathleen (00:30.606)

You

Kathi (00:51.166)

You recently took a trip out east where you and I are both on the West Coast, all in the name of decluttering. And so this is your aunt who had passed away, correct? And your great aunt. Okay, so tell me a little bit about the situation. Why you?

Kathleen (01:06.248)

This is my great aunt. Yes.

Kathi (01:17.746)

What did you know you were getting into and what were you surprised that you were getting into?

Kathleen (01:23.336)

Cool, Glory. So this is my great aunt. And she had inherited a house from her parents. And nothing that came into that house since that family got the land in the 30s ever left the house. So my great aunt passed away. Her intention had been to leave it to my mother. My mother had passed away before her, so it went to my father instead.

When she passed away, we knew that we were going to have to clean out the house. And we had been there many times. I grew up every summer spending a few weeks on that property, spending a few weeks with her. And it was a dear, dear part of my childhood, very formative for me. This is land that my grandmother had grown up on, that my great-grandmother had lived and died on. It’s a really very, I mean, it’s sacred ground for me, for my family.

Kathi (02:20.046)

You’re right.

Kathleen (02:22.37)

And we knew that the house was bad. We could see the clutter growing over the years, but there were doors that always remained closed. When she died in May, I went into the house after her funeral and opened some of those doors and was swiftly overcome by a biological need to put on a mask and get out of there because I realized just how bad it was.

Kathi (02:33.25)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (02:48.398)

you

Kathleen (02:51.304)

at that point. Well, I think I realized about 75 % of how bad it was. So this past summer, I took my daughters out east, we went back to Maine, and I joined my father and a brother and his wife, some aunts and uncles, some cousins, just a whole crew of people that were all going to go through the house together. And we were beyond overwhelmed, all of us knowing how bad it was.

Kathi (02:57.282)

Hmm.

Kathleen (03:19.036)

We were overwhelmed by truly how unspeakable it was and really, truly overcome by grief again, grief that she had lived like that for so long, that she had not allowed any beauty into her life, that her private spaces were so full of junk. It felt self-punishing to me. It was truly hard to see it.

Kathi (03:28.622)

night.

Kathi (03:42.414)

Hmm.

Kathleen (03:46.012)

But our task in that week was just to go through enough of the clutter that we could be confident that we had everything that we could possibly save that we would want, family history, postcards, that we had everything so that we could just hire junk removal. It took a lot of dumpsters to get to that point.

Kathi (04:06.122)

Wow. Wow. it feels so completely overwhelming. And like you said, it feels sad that, you know, I’ve got some people in my life and, that want to make changes right before they sell the house. And I’m like, but I want you to be comfortable now. I want you to have, you know,

be surrounded by things that make you happy now. And I think that, you know, it’s so hard to help people see that that’s a possibility. How do you think your aunt got to that place? I know you’re not a psychologist, I know, but I’m just wondering, do you know how it got to be like that?

Kathleen (05:00.698)

It was little bit over a little bit over time and she kept closing off more doors. She couldn’t, and I do think this is generational as well because it wasn’t just once her parents died and she had the run of the house, the problem started. The problem had started before that. And certainly there’s some of the depression mentality that I’m sure you’ve talked about in this space, but it was far beyond that. was every piece of paper, every envelope, nothing, nothing.

Kathi (05:05.836)

Yeah.

Kathi (05:16.726)

Right. Yeah.

Kathi (05:22.124)

Yes, we have.

Kathleen (05:30.46)

was thrown out. had, you we found, I’m sure people have, these stories won’t surprise you, but we found, you know, those little cups of applesauce that you can get the little plastic containers. We found stacks of those cups that were in the pantry. Alongside really beautiful heirlooms, this place used to be a dairy farm and I found glass pint jars that were stamped with, you know, one pint in the name of the farm, the family name. That’s a treasure to me at that

Kathi (05:30.648)

Mm.

Kathi (05:36.878)

Yeah.

Kathi (05:58.102)

Right, of course.

Kathleen (05:59.964)

But it got to the point that we realized she hadn’t taken care of anything for so long that I couldn’t start. There was so little I could take. And even as I was throwing things away, I’m throwing away dumpsters full of items, much of which I think is would have value to someone, would have monetary value, has intrinsic value. And I’m tossing it all because I couldn’t start caring.

Kathi (06:21.185)

Right?

Kathleen (06:28.646)

when she hadn’t taken care of it for six decades.

Kathi (06:30.924)

Yeah, right. Yeah, I think that there is this idea that I can’t do it, so I’ll leave it for the next generation. And but I’m also going to judge how you take care of it or how you dispose of it or how you give it away. And we have to break those expectations because, you know, yes, there may have been.

depression, may have been other psychological factors going in, but I cannot care more than you did. I just can’t. And so we have to be able to say, you know, these things were not this person. And yes, it’s great if we can keep a few things that bring back beautiful memories of that person, but we can’t be responsible for categorizing a person’s entire life in those situations.

So I wanna get really practical here, Kathleen. You know what, actually, I wanna take a quick break. We’re gonna go pay some bills. And when we come back, I wanna get to the practical side of how you and your family approach this overwhelming task and how you were able to break it down. So we’re gonna go do that and we’ll be back in just a moment.

Hey there, we’re back here on Clutterfree Academy with Kathleen Kerr, my agent, but also the survivor.

of somebody who has had to deal with a hoarder’s house. I mean, that’s really where we are right now. So Kathleen, let’s get, because many of us are gonna have to face this. If it’s not our parents, it may be a sibling, it may be a child, it might be a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, but many of us, as we start to lose family members are going to be the, or the family member has to transition into assisted living or something like that.

We are going to be the ones who have to make sense of all of this. And so can you give me, you said you felt overwhelmed. You felt like, you know, that this was just too big of a task. So tell us how you even started to approach it and how did your plan change as you got into it.

Kathleen (08:51.88)

Oof. So yeah, the organization, just the brainstorming, how can we manage all of this? And I don’t have the luxury, my whole family doesn’t have the luxury of this is just across town or this is an hour drive away. This is a seven-hour plane ride for me to get to this space. and the closest other relatives who are involved in all of this are a 12-hour drive away. So this is not.

Kathi (09:08.696)

Yeah.

Kathleen (09:17.828)

A simple, can do this over a year on the odd weekend. Someone can just run over. This was, we have a finite period of time. We are all here for a week. We need to get done what we can get done in a week. So this was the first get-in and do-the-triage kind of time. So we went in and we split up into teams. We called them Team One and Team A.

Kathi (09:26.478)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (09:41.802)

Hahaha!

Kathleen (09:43.376)

of splitting up teams into Team One and team A may tell you something about the competitive nature of my family. But that kind of devolved into, we sort of split up into just groups of two. And it was, let’s pick a room and let’s get these rooms in some kind of order. Let’s go through, let’s just get this one room first of all. Let’s get this clean so that this is someplace that we can have.

Kathi (09:49.109)

Absolutely.

Kathleen (10:09.222)

We can set things up. can not really stage things, but we can set up a few things for someone from an estate sale to come in just to make some evaluations. We stationed the younger, stronger guys by the dumpster so they could be tossing things in. There were people who were like, OK, I’m really eager to see what’s up in that front attic. And that was a place of horror, let me tell you. That’s where we found all the Nazi memorabilia. And that was.

Kathi (10:37.577)

lean.

Kathleen (10:38.524)

We’re assuming that this was a war trophy from a great uncle of some kind, but there was a lot of Nazi stuff in there. Anyway, well, we had some bingo parts about who’s gonna find the most racist thing that used to be considered charmingly folksy.

Kathi (10:47.854)

Kathi (10:54.742)

Kathleen my grandfather, was part of The Hitler Youth so we all have those relatives, right? We all have those Yeah

Kathleen (11:03.176)

We all have the relatives. I’ve got them too. My maiden name is Schmidt. You can tell that we, yep, Yep, yep. So yeah, we split up and it was actually, I’m just gonna say, one of the better times I’ve ever spent with my extended family. It was so hard, but it was so good to have a project to work on with these people. Because frequently, I mean, for the last, what, 15 years,

Kathi (11:08.066)

Yeah, Von Campen, I get it.

Kathi (11:27.064)

Yeah.

Kathleen (11:30.544)

My aunts and uncles and cousins, I live on the opposite coast from them. They’re in a different country, actually. So I see them at weddings and funerals quickly, briefly catching up. But to have an actual project to work on, and it’s not just, hey, how’s it going, but how are we going to solve this problem together was a great bonding experience. So yeah.

Kathi (11:39.553)

Yeah.

Kathi (11:52.28)

Kathleen, let me ask, how did you handle it when you disagreed about how to handle something?

Kathleen (11:58.708)

good grief. We had those moments. I am, and a lot of my other family members are extremely practical about this stuff. I knew it was going to be a problem walking into, you know, going into the space. There was going to be so much that I saw that would look like a treasure. And I knew I wouldn’t have time to curate. And my whole methodology as I was going in was touch it once, make a decision about it, touch it once. And then it’s going in the bag to the dumpster.

Kathi (12:24.332)

Yeah.

Kathleen (12:27.746)

or it’s going in, my daughter was there, my nine-year-old daughter was there, so she had a pile of treasures that she was making. So it goes in her treasure pile or it goes to the dumpster. Those are the only two options. There were other family members there who had a very different approach. And for them, it was touch it and hold it and think about it and think about the person and think about the history and then be overwhelmed by love for that history and not be able to put it in any of the piles.

Kathi (12:56.429)

Right.

Kathleen (12:57.18)

And there were some big disagreements. And there were times that we would just defer to each other. If you care about it that much, it’s gonna go to your home. You can have that. We did find there were a few items. I mean, this was sweet. There’s my great -grandparents marriage certificate was framed and hung up above their marriage bed. I thought it was lovely. And I was like, I kinda like to have that. And my dad too was like, I’ve always wanted to have that.

Kathi (13:18.958)

Awwww.

Kathleen (13:25.978)

And ultimately my aunt mentioned as well, I really kind of love to have that. And, or she didn’t even say it that boldly. I think it was just, I always remember looking at that and thinking how nice it was. And she was the one who actually remembered both of those great-grandparents. So it went to her. So I think we were all in the end really good about just being deferential about those things. was so much that everyone could get something.

Kathi (13:40.942)

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Right. you know, I think about it, there are, you if you think about a bullseye, you know, there are people who are closer to that center of the bullseye who have had those life experiences with the great grandparents with, and yeah, it makes sense that, you know, the people who are closest to the center get a little bit more weight in some of those decisions as long as they’re willing to follow that up.

You know, it’s not like, this is really important, Kathleen, you need to take it home. None of that can be allowed. But if it’s really important, they can take it home or they can say, no, we don’t need that. So I love that you deferred to certain people in there. And you know, my brother has already told my mom, yeah, I’m just backing up a U-Haul and taking everything straight to the dump.

And my mom says, and that’s why you don’t have keys to my house. And so.

Kathi (14:55.138)

But, yeah.

Kathleen (14:55.208)

And, you know, it’s acknowledging everyone grieves in different ways. And for me, the space I’ve gotten to, having lost many other relatives, no object, no finite object was worth the relationship. It is not worth continued bitterness. It’s not worth someone seeing that I’m wearing a ring 10 years later and thinking, that should have been mine. No object is worth that. If I really want a ring, I can go buy a ring.

Kathi (14:59.213)

Yes.

Kathi (15:08.888)

Right? Yes.

Kathleen (15:25.126)

Right? And that’s where I come from. Having grown up seeing this house, that’s the context I come from. I’ve chosen to live a very different way. And everyone is grappling with their own grief in different ways. And cleaning out this house for all of us was a deeply emotional experience. You know, if we’re talking just practically, one of the very practical things that I ended up needing to do was create some space.

Kathi (15:34.371)

Right.

Kathi (15:45.335)

you

Kathleen (15:55.096)

you know, when I was getting into my great aunt’s bedroom in particular, that was the worst. That was the space where there was the least beauty, where she had just piled up. There were load-bearing bags of trash. And I’m not exaggerating there load-bearing trash. she had chucked every shoe she’d ever owned just in a corner. There were Christmas gifts that she had been given that were just chucked in a corner. Every purse just chucked over there. Every article of clothing, every jar of deodorant was everything.

Kathi (16:24.182)

Wow.

Kathleen (16:25.154)

Everything was there. And it was so hard to see the way that she had lived. Someone I loved so desperately. And to see the extent of that illness. That was one of those doors that was always closed. And I could be in there for a bit. And then I needed to leave. And I needed to give myself time to walk around the fields that are there. It’s a beautiful piece of farmland. And I needed to go remind myself what was beautiful and get a little bit of distance from all of that.

Kathi (16:37.336)

Yeah.

Kathi (16:53.622)

Yeah, yeah. Obviously, there was probably some mental illness. There was definitely some, some, you know, some issues that she had. I, I have a lot of people who are listening right now, who probably are not in that extreme of a circumstance, but are embarrassed. And they don’t want their family to come over because they don’t want them to see it.

Kathi (17:26.36)

two questions for you. How do you feel about your aunt after seeing that? your feelings towards her change? Did your affection for her change? And I know we should obviously say no, of course not, because that’s the good and right thing for people to say. But I think people need to hear, were you able to stay in a place of compassion?

If there was one thing that your aunt could have done differently, one small thing, whether it was saying, hey, this thing is important, pay attention to it, or I don’t know. What do you wish your aunt knew?

Kathleen (18:00.551)

Yeah.

Kathleen (18:17.64)

I am able to get back to a place of compassion now. There were times when there was real anger when I was going through her room when I was going through her pantry, and there’s a whole barn that’s attached to the space as well that’s just full. There was anger. There was confusion. There was gratitude to God for not letting the whole place go up. There was…

Kathi (18:39.118)

Yeah.

Kathleen (18:46.108)

We found every printer she’d ever owned, every computer, and everything was still plugged into everything else. And I’m like, how did this place not go up? But there really was, there had been a sense of this property is such a gift, you know, that’s coming to my family. And it was not a gift. Going through all of that, that was not a gift. That was hard work. That was sacrifice. And I love her so much. I still love her. And

Kathi (19:01.71)

Hmm.

Kathi (19:12.972)

Yeah.

Kathleen (19:16.232)

I wanted my children to be able to go there and experience it and see what I had loved about that property. And instead I actually needed to send them away. They were there for about an hour and it was like, they shouldn’t be here. This isn’t good for them to see psychologically, biologically, this isn’t good for them. So they were out with my sister-in-law for a large part of this. It was such an overwhelming sense of, why didn’t you let me help? Did you not trust me with this?

Kathi (19:33.09)

Yeah.

Kathi (19:45.89)

Yeah.

Kathleen (19:45.916)

Did you think I would have loved you less if you had let me help with this? And I understand there was probably never a tipping point when there was never any impetus for her to say, I need the help here. But I wish she had. It was this, the last act of love that I could give her was taking that embarrassment for her.

Kathi (20:00.301)

Yeah.

Kathi (20:06.721)

Right. Right.

Kathleen (20:08.506)

I wish I could have done that for her. wish more than I can express that I could have said, okay, please just go away. I’m going to send you on a two-week vacation somewhere. Everyone who loves you, we’re going to help you out with this. Let us help. And sure, it would have been embarrassing. It’s always embarrassing to say I need help. But she just festered away in this house that was rotting around her.

Kathi (20:26.72)

Yes. Right.

Kathleen (20:35.688)

not caring for any of it, so now I can’t care for any of it. Now everything becomes trash. I was seeing things that were absolute treasures. I found a tin of three-by-five cards, and she had been a teacher for 30 some years. And on these three-by-five cards were nursery rhymes that she had written out. And they were all divided into, this is good for cleanup time, or these are fun songs to sing in the classroom while we’re waiting for lunch.

And I wanted to keep every one of them, but unfortunately I found that tin underneath a used adult diaper that had just been discarded. So I couldn’t keep any of it. So yeah, there was anger, there was compassion. It was all mixed together. And when it got to be too much, then I went for a walk.

Kathi (21:11.459)

Yeah.

Kathi (21:15.266)

Yeah.

Kathi (21:18.838)

Yeah. Yeah.

I think what I take away from this is to ask for the help sooner rather than later. And right now, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, right now is the sooner because it’s not going to get better on its own. It’s just not. And most of us have people in our lives who love us, who don’t want to see us living in squalor.

Kathleen (21:32.075)

yes.

Kathi (21:53.304)

who don’t, and here’s the thing, know, clutter is not a big issue for me anymore, but I have that tendency and all it takes is a hurt ankle or a change in circumstances. know, this has nothing to do with what you’ve been talking about with your aunt, but like three things at our house have died all at once, right?

Kathleen (22:07.574)

Yeah.

Kathi (22:22.804)

a light in our garage, our microwave, like everything. And so our lives are totally disjointed at this moment. You wouldn’t think that that would be enough to kind of throw things into a tailspin, but it really is. You know, when you’ve got the contents for your garage out on your driveway, it, it, and it just takes a few of those things to just feel like you’re not going to catch your breath again.

Kathleen (22:34.551)

You

Kathi (22:50.97)

and to say this is when I need the help before those dominoes completely fall. Kathleen, have you taken away anything from this about how you, I know you’re not a cluttery person. I’ve known you long enough to know that, but have you taken anything away from this where you’re like, this is something in my life I’m going to do differently because of this experience I’ve had in my great aunt’s home?

Kathleen (22:59.249)

Absolutely.

Kathleen (23:19.004)

Yes, I have a few items that I kept that are really, really special from in my direct line. I am the oldest woman in my family and I have a piece of kitchen equipment from all these other women. So those are in my China cabinet. Those were up in my China cabinet. So I would see them all the time. And okay, this is going to make me sound like I don’t like I don’t care about the family too much or I don’t care about this group, but.

Kathi (23:31.566)

Got it.

Kathi (23:47.178)

No, no.

Kathleen (23:48.974)

I realized I don’t want to be confronted with that memory and that grief every time I walk into my dining room. I don’t need to see that every time. So I have decided now that those go into my Christmas box. Those are things that I bring out in December. And once a year I can, this is also what I do with my, the family jewelry that I have. It’s not something I wear. You know, I don’t wear a lot of jewelry and,

Kathi (23:57.614)

Hmm.

Kathi (24:01.005)

Yeah.

Kathi (24:07.766)

Yes.

Kathi (24:17.219)

Right.

Kathleen (24:18.896)

just not really me, but I have all of this family jewelry. So I always put it on my Christmas tree to add a little bit of sparkle and bling. And these kitchen items that I have can, those can be part of a holiday centerpiece. I can bring those out. That’s a fun thing to look at, but I don’t need it all the time. My house doesn’t need to absorb someone else’s house.

Kathi (24:24.194)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (24:31.959)

Right.

Kathi (24:40.278)

Yes, it’s so true. You know, it’s so interesting. My best example of this is Susie Flory, who you know, gave me these handmade Native American dolls that I just love. I love them. I love them. But there’s not really like a place for them. So I put them with my fall decor. You know, like I have a little one box for each season. And every time I pull those out, they make me so happy.

But oftentimes when you have things out 24 seven 365, they just become part of the background noise. And when I pull those out, I think, gosh, I love Susie. I’m so grateful for her friendship. And she got me these specifically because they’re from a native American tribe in the area that she and I both live in. And so they’re really, you know, they have a story behind them and they’re meaningful to me. And

Kathleen (25:31.452)

Hmm.

Kathi (25:37.408)

I think about them every year instead of never. And I love that you’re saying there’s going to be a day each year where I pull those out. I think about the women in my family. you know, and knowing you, I thank God for their legacy and what they’ve sewn into me and your daughters and your sister. It’s, beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful.

I think we have been tricked into thinking that if we love somebody, we keep their stuff around for the rest of our lives. you know, those dishes may be important to one of your girls when they get older, and they may not be. And both of those answers are okay. Both of those answers are okay because, you know, my daughters are not stuffed people.

Kathleen (26:14.119)

Yes.

Kathleen (26:27.996)

Right.

Kathi (26:34.466)

They don’t want all those things. My sons are definitely not stuffed people. And I’m okay with that. And so for our hearts to be settled to say we don’t need to keep all those things, and yet it doesn’t diminish our love for that person is bucking against society, but it is so true. It is so true.

Kathleen (26:58.428)

Yes.

Kathi (27:00.558)

Can I ask you, what’s the plan for the house now? Are you guys selling it to somebody local? Like, what’s the hope?

Kathleen (27:06.728)

It’s very much in my dad’s hands. So that is kind of a to be determined. The one thing that is certain is that the house needs to be demolished. Because again, she didn’t take care of it. She wasn’t capable of taking care of it. was too much house, was too much property. She had never been trained to. She grew up in a time when the men are doing the hard work and the light bulb goes out in the barn and she’s not gonna get on the ladder to fix it.

Kathi (27:13.464)

Yeah.

Kathi (27:18.956)

Yeah.

Yeah, right, right, absolutely.

Kathi (27:27.555)

Bye.

Kathi (27:34.423)

Yeah.

Kathleen (27:35.314)

You know, especially in the later years, she didn’t know what to do about the mold that was taking over. All of those things. So the house now is, I mean, it was never in fabulous shape, but now it’s the rats and the mice. And I think I told you that the mouse traps had been put out, but then the rats moved in and they stole the mouse traps, which I believe means that the mice have been enslaved by the rats. You could hear them.

Kathi (27:40.13)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (27:47.361)

Right.

Kathi (27:51.895)

Yeah.

Kathleen (28:05.38)

everywhere. It’s the house needs to be demolished. So there’s I see so much in there. And there’s so much history that I can’t there’s there’s a grinding stone. It’s massive. It’s beautiful. It looks like a museum piece. It would be so cool to have I look at that. These old farm tools that my great grandfather and his sons all used. I would love to have them.

Kathi (28:05.637)

my god.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (28:20.547)

Yeah.

Kathi (28:26.978)

Yeah.

Kathi (28:34.68)

Yeah. Right. Right.

Kathleen (28:34.834)

there’s no place in my house for this. What would I do with that? The one piece, the one piece I really want. I think, I don’t know if I showed you a photo of this. I can text you a photo of this for your show notes is that the indoor plumbing was installed in the sixties. And before then there’s a three-holer that’s out in the back that everyone would just use. There’s one hole that’s a little bit smaller. I think that’s for the baby butts and they’re the normal adult size. So, you know,

Kathi (28:47.277)

Yes, please.

Kathi (28:52.152)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (28:56.331)

No!

Kathi (29:00.77)

Yes. Right. I love the board. Yes.

Kathleen (29:04.764)

And I really want, I want that board. I want the board with the three holes in them. I want to hang that up in my bathroom. I want that so bad, Kathi. So that’s the one piece before the house is demolished that I would like to hold onto. But other than that, it’s all going. And that would have made my great aunt so sad. And she was thinking this could be donated to a historical society. We talked to a variety of historical societies and about all the great farm tools that were authentic and vintage. And they said,

Kathi (29:19.533)

Yeah.

Kathleen (29:34.866)

There are a lot of old farms. We have all of this. We’re good. Thank you so much. And to know that so much of this that she was so, that she put so much weight and identity on ended up in a dumpster in the rain. And it was all going to be ground up and then put in a landfill, all of it.

Kathi (29:37.346)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (29:50.796)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (29:57.27)

I think to me the big lesson for this is ask for help sooner rather than later. And you know, it really is to know what you have. Because here on the West Coast, something that is that old is very rare. But on the East Coast, not so much. And so to know that is really, really interesting. And I know that

Kathleen (30:03.048)

Yes.

Kathleen (30:15.868)

Yes.

Kathi (30:27.018)

your husband’s job. Explain just really briefly what he does.

Kathleen (30:32.272)

Right, my husband is a historian, an architectural historian. So he works specifically with the national parks to do cultural resource surveys. But he is trained in fixing houses like this, period houses with the period tools and all the architecture of that.

Kathi (30:51.778)

Yeah, I was just gonna say anything you wanna bring home, he’d probably be okay with. Yeah, exactly. And he would know what to do with it, but he’s like the one person in my circle of people who would actually know what to do with it. The rest of us would be, we’d hang it on the wall and be done with it. But to ask for help, to ask for input, to ask for, is this actually worth something? Or is there somebody who would actually like this?

Kathleen (30:56.32)

he’d love it.

Kathleen (31:11.077)

Exactly.

Kathi (31:20.972)

Because I know your aunt didn’t want to leave you with a burden, but because she didn’t ask for help, she had no choice.

Kathleen (31:27.27)

No.

Mm.

Nor could she, I’m convinced, really process how much of a burden it would be. I don’t think she really knew how much of that, just how much she had. And if I could go back and tell her anything and show her anything, and I’m not sure how this would have been received or could have been received, it was so hard to do that work. was logistically, it is hard for me to get across the continent. Logistically, it is hard for me to take my kiddos with me.

Kathi (31:37.772)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (31:49.356)

Right, sure.

Kathleen (32:02.376)

logistically and expensive, you know, that’s a big trip. It’s hard to figure out the Airbnb where we’re going to be staying. It’s hard just to take the week off work. It’s just hard. I wouldn’t give up that time for anything. The time that I spent nurturing new relationships with my cousins and my cousin’s fiance and seeing my kids and seeing the family grow and not being stuck in the past of what the family was in 1950.

Kathi (32:17.912)

Yeah.

Kathleen (32:31.624)

But seeing the family as it is in 2024 was an immense gift to me. It was a blessing to me, even when it hurt, even when it was hard. I wouldn’t give that up for anything. I wish I could have had that and given her the gift of a beautiful space to live at the same time.

Kathi (32:48.578)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathleen, this is such a good reminder to not let your life become small. To ask for the help to change the light bulb, to take care of the mold the first time you see it, or ask somebody, how do I do this? This big, beautiful house became smaller and smaller because she didn’t know what to do.

Kathleen (32:57.288)

Hmm.

Kathi (33:15.114)

And it’s okay that you don’t know what to do. Roger and I are the world’s living example of like, we don’t know what to do. Like living in this big house and you know, what do you do? And so to get comfortable asking for help, get comfortable asking for help from your family, from friends, because people love you and they wanna help out. Kathleen, this has been a precious time. Thanks so much for spending it with me.

Kathleen (33:23.006)

I’m

Kathleen (33:43.56)

Thanks for making the space for it, Kathi.

Kathi (33:46.082)

Friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutterfree Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you’ve always wanted to live.

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#656 When Opposites Attract: Managing Different Clutter Levels in Marriage

In this enlightening episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp welcomes author Arlene Pellicane to discuss the delicate balance of managing different organizational styles within marriage. If you're struggling with a spouse who has different standards of tidiness,...