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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.

Diana Rene: 0:50

Welcome to another episode of The Decluttered Mom podcast. We are struggling a little bit over here with audio today, so I'm just giving you a heads up. Hopefully it's not too terrible, but my microphone decided to break right before I started recording and I have a cold. Those two things are not a great combination, but I still wanted to make sure that I got a great episode out to you this week, and it's not going to be a super long one. It's going to be just about something that you can do in your kitchen today or this weekend, whenever you just have a little bit of a chunk of a time. It doesn't have to be like hours and hours Bonus points.

Diana Rene: 1:30

If you can get other people involved in your household. This is a great one of those examples where kids really want to be helpful. They enjoy doing things with mom, so I think that you could get your kids involved Absolutely Basically. Anyone that's home can help you with this. It can go much faster that way. But, as always, like I always mentioned, you can put on a podcast that you really like to listen to. You can listen to music that you really enjoy. Try to make it somewhat enjoyable, so it's not just something that you are dreading. But again, this is not meant to be some really big project. It's just a quick thing that will help you to just feel a little bit better in your kitchen, where you probably spend a lot of your time. We're in back to school season. You're probably in there even more making school lunches, making sure that everything is ready for the day ahead, and so all you're going to do this is very simple. This is very much a no brainer thing, but sometimes we just need to be reminded to do it is to go through your pantry or anywhere that you have food in your home and just get rid of expired stuff. So often we like get new groceries and we just kind of stuff it into the fridge, we stuff it into the pantry and the stuff behind it gets lost and it just sits there and it expires and it's gross and it takes up space and we can instantly free up room in our kitchen, in all of the areas that we have food, when we simply just get rid of the stuff that you can't even eat anyway.

Diana Rene: 3:09

I remember when I first did like my first really big declutter in 2017, when my entire journey into the world of like living with less began. And the spices with less began. And the spices, you guys, the year on the spices amazed me. I was like I haven't used the spice clearly in a very long time and evidently it's been years because of the expiration date. And I know that my mom had a similar experience when she was packing her house up in Michigan to move to Colorado a few years ago and she like found some that were like decades old, because it's just easy to lose track of, especially with things that you just aren't using very often like spices Even if you cook a lot, there's going to be like a spice that you buy for one recipe and then you don't use it again for a long time, and so it's really easy to just forget and let it just sit there and take up space.

Diana Rene: 4:09

And then you think about how you don't have any space in your kitchen and you get stressed out and things end up just sitting on your countertop because you don't have any space. So this is a very easy way to just get rid of the stuff that you can't even use, even if you wanted to, because it's expired. Don't do that. Don't eat expired food, right? So just go through it, start with something small, start with the spices and then, if you still feel like you have energy and it didn't take you very long pick the next size thing. Right, like size up slowly.

Diana Rene: 4:41

You probably don't want to pick the space in your kitchen that has the most amount of food to begin with, because sometimes that gets us into a very big project. You don't have to take every single thing out if you don't want to. What I like to? I like to take everything out and just put it on the counter, and as I'm taking it out. If it's expired, I throw it away, okay.

Diana Rene: 5:01

So again, this is obviously a very short episode. This is a very to the point episode and it's one of those things where it's like well, duh, but we forget. It's a very to the point episode and it's one of those things where it's like well duh, but we forget. It's really easy to forget and sometimes we just need a reminder to go do this very simple thing and I think anytime a season changes it's a great reminder. I just like, quarterly, to do this, to just get through all of the old stuff, make space and have that room in your kitchen that you are hoping to have, just by eliminating the stuff that you can't even eat in the first place.

Diana Rene: 5:40

I remember when I first did this, when I included my girls with this when they were pretty little, and it was kind of fun too to just show them like. It was like a lesson in reading labels and checking for expiration date and I like I get paranoid about food safety and so I'm constantly checking expiration dates, but it was a good way for me to show them this is, you know, explain to them food has expiration date, why, and so it was kind of like a fun lesson at the same time. You don't have to do that, but it's just kind of a fun part of it also. So get everyone involved, get people in your home involved, help you out, get through this as quick as you can and you will instantly feel just a little bit of a boost in your kitchen. It's going to just set your day on a little bit of a better foot than it was when you first listened to this episode.

Diana Rene: 6:32

And let me know in Instagram DMs if you do this Again. This is an obvious thing, but it's just something that we forget to do and it builds up over time and if you just go do it, you will be surprised at how just great your kitchen feels from doing that one little thing. 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.