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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. You guys, I got a new mic and I kind of love it, and I hope you do too. I think it sounds so much better. I'm still, you know, it still has a little bit of tweaks I need to work on where to put it and all of that but it's a little higher quality than my last one and it comes with a mic stand, so I don't have to hold it while I'm talking, which that sounds really lazy, but it just feels better to be able to talk with my hands, because that's how I normally talk, and so I'm just excited about my new mic. But anyway, today I wanted to talk about something that we have started doing with our PM pickup. If you don't know what I'm talking about with PM pickup, I have done several podcast episodes on this. One system and we will link those in the show notes. One system and we will link those in the show notes, but essentially it is just a pickup that we do in a specific way each night and anyone that's home does the pickup. So if you're home, you're doing the pickup. There's no other choice, and it's something that it's just really helped to reset the home every evening so that we can wake up and the home is not a disaster, right?

Diana Rene: 2:06

But here's the thing Sometimes it can be a challenge, especially with kids, because, like I just said, anyone that's home is doing the PM pickup. And for adults, sometimes adults don't even want to do it, but kids definitely. Sometimes kids do not want to do it, even if they know that it makes the home feel better, even for them, or it helps them not lose their toys or books or anything. More often they still don't love doing it, right? So there's something that I started testing I don't even know how long ago now. I always want to test things for a while before I bring them to you, because I don't want to give you an idea that I haven't personally done myself and then have it be a terrible idea, right, or have it be something that actually takes more effort or more time or anything like that.

Diana Rene: 2:58

And so this is an idea that I have been putting into practice and has really, really been helpful for the PM pickup. And what I did is I got six pop-up laundry hampers, you know, like the ones that, like you bought for your college dorm, that you could pop up and put your clothes in and then, when you're done doing the laundry, carrying it back and forth to the laundry room, you'd pop it closed and you could, like stick it in a small space. Those except these ones are not vertical, they're horizontal, so like they lay down horizontal and that the long side is, I don't think that really matters. I think it just is a little more helpful for this specific situation. But I honestly don't think it has to be pop-up laundry hampers to begin with. It could just be like six laundry baskets, if you have the space to store those, or boxes, if you have the space to store those.

Diana Rene: 4:01

I wanted to do these pop-up hampers, because then every night after we're done using them, I could easily just pop them shut and stick them in this one little crevice in my office on the first floor of our house, so they would just be out of the way, because I don't really have anywhere on the first floor of my home that's accessible that I could stick six hard big laundry baskets. So that's just what's working for us. But you could really do anything. Okay, I got them in different colors and if I didn't have them in different colors I would label them in some way. But it was pretty easy for us to for everyone to remember what the different colors meant, and when we first started using it, occasionally one of the girls would have to be like wait, which one is? Blah, blah, blah. But for the most part everyone was able to remember pretty quickly.

Diana Rene: 4:54

So one of them is for my room, one is for my eight-year-old's room, one is for my 11-year-old's room, one is for my home office, one is for the basement and one is for the laundry room. That's six, right? One, two, three, four, five, six, yes, okay, good, and what those essentially represent is where those laundry baskets are going at the end of PM pickup for things to be put away. So that way when my kids are going through all the stuff that has built up on the dining table throughout the day, they're able to take my 11 year old's book and toss it into her laundry basket and then grab my uh, I don't know my stapler that I left on the kitchen counter and put it into my office laundry basket and take the stuffy that needs to go to my eight-year-old's room and put it in her basket, and so it drastically cuts down on the trips up and down stairs, up and down stairs. It also drastically cuts down on the procrastination.

Diana Rene: 6:09

Like sometimes my kids would take one thing and take it to their room and come back down, and because then they kind of got out of like doing the pickup you know cause they're putting stuff away Um, but it was taking forever, and so this way they they and me are able to basically pick up the entire first floor quickly, put everything in those baskets, and then we would all take a basket and go put it away. So like I would take the office stuff and take it to my office and put it all away, while my 11 year old is putting all the stuff in her room away. My eight-year-old is putting all the stuff in her room away, and then we would come back and we would each take another basket, and I would go do put the clothes in the laundry room and my 11-year-old would take the things down to the basement that needed to go. And then what am I forgetting? Oh, my room. I was like trying to remember the sixth one, and then so I would take it to my room. You get the idea right, like you get what I'm trying to say, and so that's part of it. Though we have to follow through, because if we just put it all in the basket and then it just sits in the basket, that doesn't really help, right? So that's part of it is. Then everybody is responsible for taking the baskets to those spaces and putting the things in their home, not just dumping it in the middle of the floor, but actually putting the items into their home.

Diana Rene: 7:35

Here's why I think this works so well. Number one I think it breaks down a lot of overwhelm Instead of like just a sea of random mess. Everything has a place. So it kind of when, especially for my kids, when they're like looking at the family room before, it was like, oh, that's so much stuff to put away. And now it's like almost like there's like a number assigned to each thing that needs to be put into each basket, right, and so I think it helps you mentally break it down and look at something that feels more overwhelming and make it less so, right.

Diana Rene: 8:12

Number two I think it really gives kids clear instructions. Telling your kids to clean up is super vague, but go find all of the laundry or all of the clothes and put it in the laundry basket. That's actionable, right. It gives them a very specific and clear instruction on what to do. Number three it builds momentum. Right. There's no bottleneck. Everyone can help at the same time and you can see the progress as the baskets are filling up, so you kind of feel like an achievement, right.

Diana Rene: 8:47

Number four it's fun. Like. I didn't really set this out to make it a game, but kids naturally love a challenge and they turned it into a race without me asking, and so suddenly pickup felt less like a chore and more like a team win, and there's a lot of other things that I've talked about that we do. That tries to make PM pickup feel fun, and maybe this will lose its appeal over some time, you know, and we might have to try something different. But, like I said, we've been testing it for a while and it's continued to be very productive and very effective and I think, even if it starts to wear off, I think it'll stick because I think everyone involved can see how much easier it makes the process. And, like I said before, no one loves PM pickup. It's not something that we like look forward to. I'm not, you know, like working and thinking like, oh, I can't wait until pm pickup tonight. Nobody loves it. And so if it's something that can make it easier and less of a stressful or time consuming or frustrating process, thumbs up all the better. Right. And I think, obviously for the kids same, if they can see a system that's helping it move faster and it makes it easier for them, then it's just a better experience for everyone involved. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this is something that you'll consider trying.

Diana Rene: 10:20

I got the baskets on Amazon. They were relatively inexpensive. I don't know exactly. I want to say they were like $30 or $35 for all six, but I could totally be making that up. But here's the thing If you want to try this, try it with just like baskets, like Amazon boxes, and label them and just try it for like a week and make sure that it's something that is productive and is effective for you and your family before buying the items, because if you just give it a try with the laundry baskets you have or boxes that you have, and it does help, then it will feel a little easier to spend the money on it and, plus, then you're just not wasting money.

Diana Rene: 11:06

If you did buy the laundry baskets and then it just didn't work for your family for whatever reason, right, because everybody's different. So let me know, though Send me a DM on Instagram if you have tried this or if you're going to try it. I would love to hear about it and we will see you on next week's episode. 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 thedeclutteredmom 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.