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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 Renee, 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. I'm excited for this episode of the decluttered mom podcast because I have Delancey here, who please tell me I said your name correct.

DeLancey Carson: 0:59 

It is, it is.

Diana Rene: 1:01 

Okay perfect. I always. It's like you know she's a friend from Instagram and it's like, if you don't, they're not in real life person friends. So you have this idea of what their name is and how you pronounce it.

DeLancey Carson: 1:12 

I have such a like. I used to be Delancey Danzler and people thought it was like a stage name and so I answer to anything but yeah, it is Delancey, that's awesome.

Diana Rene: 1:23 

So Delancey is all about relatable DIY, and I found her a couple of years ago now when she blew up on Instagram, seemingly overnight, with like this reel. That went super viral. Delancey, can you tell us that story?

DeLancey Carson: 1:40 

It was so crazy. I just been to this conference and this girl was talking about how she had done a get to know me reel just like this is my kind of life and she had blown up. And so all of us left that conference and we were all like, okay, we're going to make this reel. And so I made the reel and it was just about like hey, I have a regular house, I'm a regular mom, like I've got kiddos, like, but I want to make my house like, I want to teach you how to make your house into your dream house. And so I posted that reel.

DeLancey Carson: 2:05 

And then my husband had it was our anniversary, we were, he had a cruise for the first time. We were going on a cruise. We were so excited. And as we're on this cruise, suddenly my numbers start skyrocketing. My husband thought I had been hacked, like. He thought I like how about this malware? Like it was getting.

DeLancey Carson: 2:22 

I think I went up, I think it was almost half a million followers in like yeah, it was something ridiculous that like. Like my husband didn't believe it at first. And then, like good morning America was like hi, we'd like to interview you for our digital good morning America. I'm like me, yeah, like normal me. So, yeah, it was kind of crazy.

DeLancey Carson: 2:45 

And because I've been sharing, I'm sharing DIYs online for years, for years and years and nobody cared. I mean some people. I've got some followers that have been with me since, you know, the beginning, when I was doing these like $20 little things, because that's all the money I had. Yeah, the house was the $20. So it's just, it's kind of it's just interesting. I, you know, I didn't set out to be like an influencer. I just wanted to share what I was doing and learn from other people, because a lot of times, the people in your life that are like right beside you, maybe they're not doing the exact same thing, but there is this huge community of women who want to get their hands dirty, who want to learn how to tile, who want to learn how to switch out their light switches. And the internet lets us come together, which I love.

Diana Rene: 3:32 

Yeah, I love that too. It's so fun and I like joke that I don't have like a handy bone in my body because I've tried things and it just doesn't. It doesn't turn out well. So I will watch your videos sometimes and I'll be like I'll like hype myself up and like go to Lowe's and I'm like I'm probably going to get injured. I'm going to try this.

DeLancey Carson: 3:53 

We'll FaceTime next time and I will teach you how to do whatever. But I think what I'm thinking, too, is that, like, some people want to jump into they want to jump into, you know, gutting a bathroom and you're like whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah, let's make up a piece of furniture. Right, like let's, because you do have to build the skills, and I think a lot of people which you know, I'm guilty of this in other areas of life you want to be amazing at something. The first time you do it, yeah, exactly, which is just not life. That's just not life. And so I'm.

DeLancey Carson: 4:23 

You know, when people see my videos, they're like how on earth, how on earth did you learn how to do that? I'm like, I watched YouTube tutorials, but trial and error is how you learn stuff. Yeah, that's why you start with making a piece of furniture, and if you mess it up, you donate and you get another new piece of furniture. Or you buy extra wood because you're going to cut some of the wood wrong, so you buy extra. You know, like the trial and error is really how we learn things.

Diana Rene: 4:48 

Yeah, that makes sense. In our we moved like a year and a half ago and in our old house we had a water leak so it went under all the cabinets and the flooring in our kitchen so we had to gut it and then it was early 2022. So, like it was impossible to find contractors and cabinets were back ordered forever. I was asking everyone in my Instagram audience for ideas for design. So should I do this countertop or this countertop? Because I'm not great with that and I love getting feedback, but of course, it's always like 50-50. It was like literally every poll was 50-50. But the amount of DMs I had that told me I can tile, do the backsplash myself, and I was like you guys, this is not the project to start with the main focal point of the house.

DeLancey Carson: 5:39 

I think that's fine too, because a lot of things like I'll hire an electrician to come because I didn't want to climb in the attic.

Diana Rene: 5:44 

Can I climb in the attic? Can I do that or?

DeLancey Carson: 5:47 

something. Sure, but I hired an electrician. So I think that's the thing and that's what's so freeing about DIY is you don't have to. You don't have to do anything. If you want to, you can tile your backsplash, but if you don't want to, you don't have to.

Diana Rene: 6:02 

Exactly so okay, so how did you get into DIY? What made you start exploring this? Or is it something you've always done?

DeLancey Carson: 6:11 

Well, when we first got married, which was almost 12 years ago, we had no money, we had zero dollars, and so I was trying to decorate our house on a negative budget. Basically, okay, everything was goodwill furniture and what I could make it over. When we were dating, I convinced my husband that we were going to reupholster his couch. I was like I can't be to reupholster a couch. It was not great. I mean, it looked better than it did before. I think the frugleness of my you know the way I grew up like I wanted to see what I could make for basically nothing, and so that kind of turned into making over furniture and then painting and that kind of thing. And then it was suddenly like, oh, actually, you can, you know, if this part of the wall looks weird, let's, let's learn how to tile, let's learn how to, and then it kind of just kind of ballooned more and more and more into.

DeLancey Carson: 7:12 

I think people also don't realize that your house is basically, especially here in America, just sticks. It's just sticks Paper board holding the sticks together, that's comforting, right Wires and plumbing. So like when you start opening up a wall and you're like, huh, this, this is all that's in my walls. Okay, I get comments so many times from like people in Europe and they're like are you're all of your walls just empty? And I'm like I mean exterior walls hopefully have some sort of insulation, but yeah, inside walls are just empty. So I think people overestimate how well their house is built and also, like I think, sometimes people I try to encourage people to reverse engineer how their house was built so like, let's say, you wanted to switch out of faucet.

DeLancey Carson: 8:05 

If you have no idea how to switch out of faucet, it sounds very hard, right, you're like, oh, I want to switch out of faucet. The water is coming in off, to turn off water at the street. But then I have to. I want to be like, okay, think about how your house was built. Your house wasn't built with faucets. Right, like there has to be some sort of something in your bathroom to pause the water so that then the builders could add the vanity, then the builders could add it and then they could hook it up. And I think when you like deconstruct your house almost in that kind of way, it becomes less scary because you're like these builders did it. These builders, who may or may not have had a college education, may have not had a high school education, like they figured it out, and I think it's freeing in a way.

DeLancey Carson: 8:47 

But also it just goes back to the trial and error. I hate plumbing. Plumbing is my most hated thing because I always have the wrong size of whatever pipe or whatever connector it is. So my rule is I can only start a plumbing job when Home Depot is open. I'm going to go there. It's an average of four times per plumbing project there's so many little and you're like I just need this one and you just you have to go back. But even contractors are at Home Depot every single day because they don't have all the stuff they need.

Diana Rene: 9:21 

So that's so true. I know I can't count the number of times that we've had someone in our house and they're like I have to run to Home Depot or Lowe's to grab whatever part you know Exactly.

DeLancey Carson: 9:32 

And it's like when we do it, it's like Bad, no, yeah, we're failing. Yeah, exactly.

Diana Rene: 9:38 

I know Just when you're speaking about. That reminded me at our last house we had like a bathroom sink that was backing up. Like every time we turned the water on it would fill up within a minute. And we were like, well, let's call Plummer, and it was at a point where I was like sick and tired. I was just so sick and tired of our house and like scheduling appointments with plumbers and contractors and I was like I'm just going to YouTube and see if it's like super hard. And I realized it was not super hard and I just had to like unscrew a couple of things under the sink, make sure the water was off. And I was able to open it up and like get all the girls hair out of the sink, but somehow got on there. But it was like. It was like an empowering thing that when you are able to figure something out.

DeLancey Carson: 10:25 

I know that's not DIY, but no, it totally is, because I had the same thing in our first apartment the garbage, the compactor, whatever's in the sink, whatever is garbage disposal. It stopped working, it hummed and I was like, oh no, and this was like early on in our marriage, so I had very, very, very. I had no plumbing skills, but I was like I was like, great, we're gonna have to call the manager and then they'll come in three days and blah, blah, blah. And then I just YouTubeed it and it was like, great, turn this one thing. I turned the one thing and it fixed and I was like, oh, this is like opens up a whole new possibility of what you can learn.

DeLancey Carson: 11:08 

And I think a lot of people that I have I get questions sometimes of where did you go to school to learn this? Who, like, were you, you know, apprenticed by? And I'm like that's great. If you want to go that route like that, obviously you know, if you want to go be an actual electrician, yes, you probably need to go, but a lot of stuff in your house you can learn from these great professionals on YouTube, but also you can learn from just regular people who have figured it out, and I also think sometimes DIYers explain things in more normal terms than some of the professionals on YouTube. Right, sometimes people are so knowledgeable that they forget how to explain things in a very basic way.

DeLancey Carson: 11:50 

I remember one of the first times I was trying to use the miter saw, which is just like very easy, very up and down. It's a very beginner basic tool. Learn how to use right, as long as you keep your hands out, like away from the blade, you're fine, you'll be safe, and I it was locked and I couldn't figure out how to get it unlocked. Yeah and no, I couldn't Google how do I get it unlocked Because none of the YouTube videos were that basic.

DeLancey Carson: 12:15 

Does that make sense? Yeah, none of them brought themselves back to a part where they didn't know how to unlock a saw, and so I think that's what I try to show in my DIYs is like from the very, very, very start to the more intermediate and like getting towards advanced, because all started at the beginner and I think a lot of people assume that men grew up knowing how to use power tools and something. Maybe they did, maybe they had a grandfather that taught them how to, but not, it's not like A knowledge we're born with. Everyone had to learn how to use a power tool. Everyone had to learn how to paint a room. It's not innate knowledge, I think once you realize that it's free because anyone can learn anything If you just put in the hours.

Diana Rene: 12:58 

That's my philosophy, Definitely. I love following you on Instagram because I remember there was one video specifically where you, instead of using the tech, you introduced it as a technical term, but then you were like it's the one that is shaped like a hexagon? And I was like, oh, that makes more sense to me than like the actual technical term.

DeLancey Carson: 13:19 

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a time and place to learn the technical term, but, like also, you could just like describe it in a way that everyone could understand it Definitely OK.

Diana Rene: 13:31 

so I asked my audience if they had questions for you, and one of the most asked questions was what was your favorite and least favorite DIY project?

DeLancey Carson: 13:41 

Oh man, that is a hard question. Least favorite is always anything plumbing. Yeah, plumbing, it's so. I like electrical because it either works or it doesn't. You either wired it right into the lights run, but plumbing it's like you know you could get leaks, but like favorite big project To see. This is the problem. I love all of my projects.

Diana Rene: 14:04 

I guess that's a good problem to have right With your work, because I love.

DeLancey Carson: 14:08 

I think my favorite would have to be because I love beautiful, but I also love functional, right, Because I have three kids and function is a huge. So it's probably the pantry that I made over. It used to be a laundry closet closet in our kitchen and then I moved to the laundry closet closet off the living room and so I was able to turn the old laundry into a pantry like a walk-in pantry. It's beautiful and fun. And it's like my, I think it probably wins for being my favorite project I've got.

Diana Rene: 14:37 

Yeah, that might be my favorite project that you've done that I've seen too.

DeLancey Carson: 14:40 

It's just so pretty, it just it's so functional Like get up and like pack their snack for school for the day and then, like you know, pack and they can make breakfast. There's like a little mini fridge where they can get their milk. Like it's so functional. And I had a lot of people worried when I didn't put doors on it. They were worried it was going to be like a huge, like it was just going to get super messy, because I am not naturally like a very tidy person, but actually it has remained fairly picked up because everything has a place and I think in like my kitchen I feel like the same way, everything has a place and I'm trying to get to that level of I don't know if it's organization, but it's also like we're just, everything is functional and everything has a home and I'm not there for, like, my bedroom in my closet is just chaos.

DeLancey Carson: 15:33 

It's just chaos and I feel like that's that's my goal this year is to work on like okay, how can I make our house, our 1800 square foot house, work the best for the five of us? Yeah, because you know we bought our house a couple years ago, so we have like a low mortgage rate, so we could never leave, right. Yeah, okay, we are here for a good while. Yeah, what can we do to make this house the most functional and work the best for our family?

Diana Rene: 15:58 

Yeah, absolutely, and I think everything having a home is one of those crucial things to maintain a home that feels like it's functioning properly. And you know, because a lot of people come to me and they'll be like I feel like I pick up all the time, like that's all I do when I'm home is pick up and the house still looks like a disaster. And most of the time that's because, like, decluttering hasn't happened to Ruthless enough level number one. But then number two, know, habit systems or routines have been put in place where it's like okay, this is where the stuffies live, like this is their home. They don't live in four different areas. You know they're not just everything. Everything in the home has a home and you can't do that if you have too many things. Exactly.

DeLancey Carson: 16:47 

There's just. I heard someone once say that like everybody knows where the forks are supposed to be. Yeah, like there's no question, if you see a fork, you know where it's home is. And I think that's my problem right now in my bedroom, especially because it's like my bedroom and my office and a random election of like clothes that don't fit anymore and like my husband's tuba from high school and like you know, stuff doesn't have a home and it's just it like and my like walking treadmill, like it all, just it all compounds. And so that's my goal this year is to figure out. Obviously I need to start with, you know, being more ruthless and decluttering and Because, yeah, there's at this point, everything cannot have a home because our house is not big enough.

Diana Rene: 17:34 

Yeah, yeah, and that and that's the hard part is when there is a smaller space to work with, you do have to be extra ruthless. And it's kind of funny that you're saying that, because I notice often it's guest rooms like people will use a guest room that Serves a several functions, so it's like an office and a guest room and a workout room, which is fine. But the problem is then when someone brings something home and then they have to go put it away, they're like, well, I don't know where to put this, so it goes in the gut, like I call it like the throwaway room, because it's kind of like People just put stuff in there if they don't know what to do with it and then the next thing they know it's like four feet high of stuff that they don't know where to go.

DeLancey Carson: 18:18 

Yeah, I, totally us, because and I think it's hard because obviously, especially in a family, everybody has different philosophies on when stuff, what is it like? My husband is the one who loves every box, every box from every electronic he wants to keep you know, whereas like we don't need that, but then I'll keep other random stuff. My garage you can barely walk in because I want to keep every single little piece of wood and every single little either like, yeah, yeah, definitely, you know, having the family and different people, having different opinions on what needs to go, what needs to stay, and different levels of you know how picked up is picked up enough, you know. But like a thing we've been implemented with our kids is that we do a seven o'clock clean each night. Our Google comes on and says at seven o'clock it's time to clean. Everybody pick up for ten minutes. Um, everyone picks up and at least the like living room, dining room, kitchen is like Picked up every single night and that has helped so much.

DeLancey Carson: 19:14 

I mean, my kids are older now, they're 10, 7 and 5, because we lived through those, the chaos of the toddler years and just feeling like you're drowning in stuff, right, and just looking at be like we have too many items in this house. Our house cannot support this many items, and so we've tried to be. You know, I think we've gotten better About being a little bit more ruthless and like okay, these are the toys y'all actually play with, these are the ones we'll keep. We're not gonna keep, you know, but we're definitely still not there. But are you ever there? Is there ever a goal, or is it always a journey?

Diana Rene: 19:50 

That's a great question and I think it's not to be a cop out, but I think it's both. Like I think that you do get to I know disappointment. You get to a point where you I think it ebbs and flows. Maybe that's a better answer. So, like in my program we talk about like going into maintenance mode, basically once you've gone through the entire home and if you are able to here's my barometer. Basically, if I start to feel like it's taking too long for our PM pickup, that's like a strong indicator that we've let too many things back into the house. So I'll do like a full maintenance sweep of the whole home which only takes about two hours, because once you like have done it, like you're really just going through and you're you kind of like built that muscle. So I think it's both. I think you can be at the place of being done, as long as you're having those habits and systems and routines, that because you know people live in the house.

DeLancey Carson: 21:00 

So yeah, that's kind of why I went to DIY, I think, because once you remodel a kitchen, it's remodeled, it's done. You don't have to do it again. It's not like laundry or dishes you have to do it again and again every single day. It's probably, you know, undiagnosed ADHD, but like I want to do a project and only do it one time. I want to organize my closet and then it's just organized. But I think I need to get my brain more into the thing of this is like a maintenance, like you have to keep, I guess, getting the systems in place.

Diana Rene: 21:37 

Yeah, and like the 7pm pickup, like that's a perfect example of a great system to have. And the thing is, is that, no matter what, you have to maintain your home, right? So like you have to do laundry either way, but what if you like to have to do less laundry to maintain? That's a win for me, that's a win in my books, yeah, okay. So one more question for you If someone was just starting with DIY and they really wanted to get into it but they were really nervous about it, like what is a good starter project or does it depend on their specific home?

DeLancey Carson: 22:12 

I love a good starter project. I think if you want to redo furniture redo furniture from like Goodwill or a thrift store or makeover of dresser you already have Love that because you can build some of the skills that you'll need, like painting, sanding. If you want to add a new wood top, right, you could, you know, use a power saw, that kind of thing. I also love a good accent wall.

DeLancey Carson: 22:34 

The board and batten wall that I just recently did is such a great beginner project because you could do it without power tools. You could do it with, like, a hand saw and a miter box. You could totally do it without power saw. It's definitely easier if you have power tools, yeah. But so I would say an accent wall or a remake over a piece of furniture is a great place to start and we'll have a huge, I guess, an accent wall more. We'll have a huge impact on your space. You need that first project you do for it to be fairly quick, to give you that boost of like. Look what I just did. I just accent wall and look how good it looks, right. So that's probably my recommendation for a first project.

Diana Rene: 23:13 

Okay, I like that. We have a very, very bare powder room that I have thought about trying that in, and so I've watched that video you have a couple of times, and I'm trying to hide myself.

DeLancey Carson: 23:26 

I feel like a powder room. You can go bolder because it's small space. So like go like crazy with like wallpaper or like painted a funky color or rich color. I love a good powder.

Diana Rene: 23:38 

Yeah, so I wanted to. What is it called batten board, board and batten?

DeLancey Carson: 23:42 

Board and batten. Technically it's just battens. Technically, the wall is the board part. You Google board and batten, it's what will come up.

Diana Rene: 23:52 

Okay, so I want to do that like you know, like the perimeter of it on the bottom and paint it like a dark color and then do like a really like the sounds kind of crazy, but like a really dark floral, and then do like gold yes, like a gold faucet or something.

DeLancey Carson: 24:12 

Wallpaper or something, the ceiling or something. Yes, yeah, you go crazy. Facetime me and we'll, if you go to the board.

DeLancey Carson: 24:19 

I'll walk you through it. That's so fun and you have to make sure you take a before picture, because you forget how much it changes and, like, once you've done it, like you forget how much work it was to do it. It's kind of like childbirth where, like you know, you forget how terrible it was in the like. You know, in the crazy time, yeah, you just like, oh, look, it's done now, yeah, so, yeah, definitely take a before picture so that you can look at it afterwards. I did this.

Diana Rene: 24:46 

I did this, I wanted to make this happen and I did it with my own two hands Right, I know if I had, if I felt so empowered by unclogging a sink, I could only imagine doing a whole bathroom.

DeLancey Carson: 24:58 

And you get to look at it every day. You don't have to do it again, it's done. You get to enjoy your whatever you did, your project, you get to enjoy it every day because it's done.

Diana Rene: 25:08 

Right, Okay, Actually I have one more quick question, because that that reminds me. Do you? What are your thoughts or feelings about peel and stick wallpaper?

DeLancey Carson: 25:17 

I've done both. I have wallpaper in my son's room and then I did regular wallpaper in my girl's room. Okay, I think they're both great for different places. Obviously, renters do peel and stick, right. It was harder to match up the seams on peel and stick, okay. So it would probably be easier for just one wall Okay, just a one accent wall, like you know behind your bed or you know something like that. Just one wall or a small space like a powder room, like a top half of the powder room. I think you can get away with doing peel and stick, the traditional one with the glue. You can kind of smush it and kind of like get it closer so that all the things match up perfectly. So, but it obviously was messier because you have to like roll the glue and such. So each one works and if you don't like one you might like the other better. So it's not like if you want to hate it, it's not like I'm never doing wallpaper, you just be like oh man, that's not the other one this time.

DeLancey Carson: 26:10 

But just personal preference, exactly, yeah, but each one works and they both look good. And I haven't seen I mean, now they have such good peel and stick wallpaper too that like it's going to last a while and a lot of the renter friendly ones don't even leave a residue Like it's such a great. I mean I did one on one of our apartments. I like did it on the kitchen cabinets because the cabinets were so ugly, yeah, and so I did peel and stick wallpaper on those and it worked great. It was a great option.

Diana Rene: 26:38 

Okay, cool. Well, maybe I'll try that then I feel like that feels a little less intimidating to start it totally is and you can like get such.

DeLancey Carson: 26:46 

I mean you get it at a target. You know like you can just walk up, and because sometimes you have to order it from a website and it's like $700 worth of wallpaper, whereas like target you'd be like, let's try $30 worth, let's see what I could do for $30. It's definitely less intimidating to like dip your toe in, but it is a little trickier to try to get the same smetcha. But you're probably the only one looking at your seams super cute too. So you know, give yourself some grace.

Diana Rene: 27:12 

Maybe I'll start it in like the girls closet or something.

DeLancey Carson: 27:15 

That's that. Oh, I love a good wallpapered closet. Yeah, yeah.

Diana Rene: 27:19 

Okay, I'll do that. I'll send you a message when I decide to have the courage. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I had so much fun. And if you're listening to this and you have any questions for Delancey, delancey, can you give us how people can find you?

DeLancey Carson: 27:37 

Yeah, I'm on all the things as Delancey DIY, so come find me Great, awesome.

Diana Rene: 27:44 

Well, thank you so much, Awesome thanks. 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.