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Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017 I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Decluttered Mom podcast.

Diana Rene: 0:54

We are in full summer mode, full summer swing over here, and it's interesting because I have friends that live in other parts of the US where they are still in school, and some of them are still in school for another week, and we've been out for over a month already, and so we're like a third done with our summer, and I know many of you listening to this haven't even started your summer. So if you are in like the chaos of end of school season, I send you my love and support from afar. I know how insane that time of year is, but, like I said over here, we are just trying to survive the heat wave that we have going on. Raise your hand if it's been so hot out. I know there's all different parts of the US that have had really strange hot weather, like more than normal, and so the last two or three days we kind of hid inside our house as much as possible because it was too hot to be outside. But today I wanted to bring you kind of like a weird quirky episode, and it's basically like what I'm calling odd, but it works.

Diana Rene: 2:08

House rules and these are just little things that kind of are. I don't know if I want to say standards, because that sounds like so stuffy and official, but basically like, I guess, just rules that I have developed over the years based on what works best for us. And the reason I thought of this is because there was a like a cooking dish I really wanted to buy. It was really cute. We needed some some type of like casserole type dish, because I might've dropped and broke one, uh, and so I was looking at it and then I saw that it was not dishwasher safe and I was like, nope, put it right back on the shelf, I am not bringing that into my house. And that brings me right into rule number one.

Diana Rene: 2:52

If it cannot survive either the dishwasher or the washing machine for the clothes, it stays at the store. I am not, I just am not. I am not doing it. You guys.

Diana Rene: 3:03

I am not hand washing if I don't absolutely have to and I am not going to like air dry or have to take something to the dry cleaners. It's just something that I know I won't do. That's the thing. It's not because that I just don't want to do it. It's like with my brain and with how busy we are. I know that if I have a bunch of things that are hand wash only, I just won't ever use them or they will sit in the sink soaking for like a week because I just can't bring myself to do the hand washing. So if you don't have a dishwasher, you're probably listening to this like what a spoiled brat. But it's not like I said. It's just one of those things where I know myself and I know that it's not something that I will do right away. It'll mess with my systems, it will, um, it'll slow me down and we've had two yes, two kitchen floods in the last gosh.

Diana Rene: 4:07

What? Four years I think now five years, in different houses. We had one in our old house and I don't know if flood is the right word, but we had water in the kitchen that we ended up having to redo the kitchen and totally restore it and totally rem that kitchen. And then when we bought this house, our current house, about a year after owning it, we found out that we had mold, which I talk about in another episode, but we had to gut the kitchen here too. So I have gone way more time than I would like without, not only without a dishwasher, but without a kitchen in general. So, like I understand how frustrating it can be to not have a dishwasher, and I just, when I have a working dishwasher, I just want to use the dishwasher and I don't want to use anything else. So again, maybe that's like a spoiled thing, but I don't know. I just that's number one, okay, number two is we will always do a nightly at least nightly kitchen reset, which I call PM pickup for us. We will also do our dining room and our family room, because we have kind of like an open-ish concept house and all of that kind of flows into each other, and so it's just like it just has all got to be done.

Diana Rene: 5:32

When we first started this, it was just the kitchen and that was all we focused on, and that was also when we still had more stuff in our house before we really decluttered. Now that we just got rid of so much of our stuff over the years, then it's just easier because there's not as much to put away or deal with. And so we do it every night. We sometimes skip a night because maybe something crazy happened at work or maybe the whole family is sick. Right, there are nights like that. But I really, really, really, really try to never make it a habit, and in my brain that means more than one night. So occasionally I will skip a night. But if I skip that night then that means I must do it the next night. I can never not do two nights in a row, because then that starts a habit and that starts me out of routine and I don't like that. All right. So moving on to odd. But it works.

Diana Rene: 6:34

House rules number three Anyone that is home and awake is helping with PM pickup. So so anytime we are doing PM pickup, it changes throughout the year. It changes during different seasons what time of day, we will do it. But if someone is home and they are not already in bed for the night, then they are helping with PM pickup. It's just a hard and fast rule. It makes it so that nobody feels frustrated, nobody feels like they're doing more than somebody else, and it also just helps all of us to work as a team and just get it done faster. Right, because if we have four people helping versus two, it's going to get done faster, and so that's just like a hard and fast rule.

Diana Rene: 7:20

Okay, so for this next one, I had a hard time figuring out how to like phrase it, but basically we have toy caps, and what I mean by that is not that like. It's not like hey, you can only have seven toys and you must get rid of the eighth toy if that happens, right. We don't have a specific set number of toys or crafts or books or anything like that that my kids can have. But we do have max spaces, or I guess I should say like max capacity spaces. So my eight-year-old, for example, loves stuffed animals. I've talked about that before.

Diana Rene: 8:02

She loves stuffies. They don't. They're not just stuffies to her, they all have names, they have like entire life stories. They have friends, they have people that they have other stuffies they don't like, they don't get along with. They have favorite foods. They have lots of emotions Like they. They are like big to her right. So she has a stuffy hammock in her room and then she also can keep stuffies on her bed, and then she has like a stuffy basket in the basement in the playroom. So for her her max capacity spaces are those three areas for stuffies. If all of her stuffies do not fit comfortably in those spaces, then that's the time that she and I will go through her stuffies and decide which ones are going to go to a kid who doesn't have any stuffies or who maybe only has a couple stuffies.

Diana Rene: 8:57

And so that is something that's really, really helpful for my kids, for kids of students I've worked with in the past, is just having that specific space that a child can look at and they can see how much space it is. And then they have some. What is the word I'm trying to think of? They feel like they have power. That's not the word that I'm trying to think of. I will probably think of the word after I get off of this podcast but they feel like they have some power and some control over what is going on with their toys and with their spaces, right, and so it just really helps them to not only visually see it, have an actual space that they're working with, but then know that they have the ability to decide what goes in those spaces. So because they know if it's too many, then they'll have to have that conversation about letting go of some. This works for literally anything, and this is honestly not just for kids Like. This is a great concept even for adults who have a hard time with letting go of items or just maybe shop too much or just have a really hard time of letting go. Having those specific spaces can be really, really key for honestly anyone.

Diana Rene: 10:15

Okay, my rule number five is to do at least I have to do this at least monthly. Most often I do this weekly, though, and it is doing my on this day I wish you could see my air quotes on this day phone photo purge. So, basically, at least once a month, usually once a week, every now, and then it's every day I will go into my photos app on my phone. I will type in that date, not the day like, not Monday, but like the date June 21st and every photo or screenshot or video that has ever been taken on a June 21st whether that is 2025 or you had your phone back in 2013, and that video that you took in 2013 is going to pop up. And then I go through those and I delete all of the random, unnecessary screenshots that I have taken over the years of the most random things. I delete any photos that I just don't really need.

Diana Rene: 11:23

I, whenever I take photos, I take way too many. If I'm taking like a photo of my girls, I'll take like 17 photos at once, because somebody's always blinking or looking the wrong way or you know. You know how that goes. So I'll go through them and I will delete all the ones I don't need to keep and then I will put them into their correct album. So I have an album for each girl, I have an album for the girls together, I have an album for me and the girls, I have an album for. You know like it's just I have so many different albums, so that way I can categorize them into those albums.

Diana Rene: 11:55

I get through the whole day and, like I said, if I'm doing this monthly, then I would go through the whole month. I would just do it day by day. So I would do June 1st, june 2nd, june 3rd, and I just do it honestly, like when I'm laying in bed at night waiting for my kids to go to sleep, like bed at night waiting for my kids to go to sleep. It's not like something that I make an appointment with myself to do or anything. I just find little pockets of time to do it and it's just really helpful because we take so many photos and videos and it's so easy to let our phones just get kind of crazy and then it's hard to even find anything. So ever since I started doing this about, I want to say, almost two years ago it's just nice because each of these albums, like it's so much easier, it's so fun with the girls to like go back and look at like old videos and old photos of them when they were little, and it's so much easier to find those and just have them all in one place to be able to do that.

Diana Rene: 12:51

Okay, I think I lost track of how many rules we had. So I think we're on number six. Number six is for me and it is a daily 30-minute walk, rain or shine. I have to do it. I can't say I don't ever want to do it. There are many, many days I don't want to do it, but I just have made it this non-negotiable rule for myself. Um, because I know that I sleep better when I'm doing it consistently. I just feel better.

Diana Rene: 13:24

I, as much as possible, try to do it outside, because then it feels like, um, like I just in a better mood if I am outside, like like I'm just in a better mood if I am outside, like you know, connecting with nature and all of that. And so I used to have a walking pad which made this a lot easier in the winter. I had to get rid of it when we did have the mold issue and I still haven't gotten a new one. It's summer, so I'm just doing it outside, but I think this winter I think I'm going to get another walking pad because it does make it easier. However, there are a couple of YouTube channels I don't know their names because I'm not loyal to one specific channel, but there are a bunch of YouTube channels where they have indoor walking workouts. So they'll have them for Taylor Swift or different musical artists, or they'll have different themes and they make it fun. So you're essentially like walking in place, but it's just you feel like you're doing it with someone. It's kind of fun because it's, like you know, a little entertaining at the same time. So if the weather's really really bad and I can't get outside and I don't have the walking pad, then I'll do something like that, but I have to do 30 minutes.

Diana Rene: 14:34

All right, you guys, I think I'm actually going to call it for this, because I think I'm going to do a two-part episode, because I have a lot of these and I feel like it's too many. I think we're doing too many if we keep going. So I would love to hear what you think about these odd but it works house rules, and I would also love to hear what your odd but it works house rules are. If you can send me a dm on instagram at the dot decluttered dot mom, let me know what yours are, because I, if I get enough, I think it'd be fun to do another episode where I'm sharing your odd but it works house rules, because I think, like you, something that you tell me might spark an idea, or if someone DMs me and I share that on a podcast, then it might spark an idea for you, and so I think it just could be kind of fun. Are these weird? Maybe do they work absolutely, um, and do they work for everyone? Probably not, but uh, I I just think it's really nice to be able to have like specific things that you don't have to think about, that are just kind of rules in your house that are just kind of strange. So I hope this was a helpful episode for you.

Diana Rene: 15:42

Again, I'll do a part two next week, but in the meantime I would really, really, really really love it if you could follow me on the Apple podcast.

Diana Rene: 15:53

So when you're listening to the podcast on Apple podcast, you could just click the follow button in the top right corner. This tells Apple hey, I like this podcast. It will automatically download my episodes for you each week and, most importantly, it will make it so that The Decluttered Mom podcast will show up for more people. When they're searching for any home management, decluttering, anything like that, it'll pop up for them, and so that way it just will be easier to help more people by being a little bit more visible in the podcast app. So again, I hope that you will DM me and let me know what your Odd but it Works rules are, and we will see you next week.

Diana Rene: 16:36

Thanks for hanging out and listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at the.decluttered.mom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.