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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 ten 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.

Welcome to another episode of The Decluttered Mom Podcast. You guys, I am recording right now, really late in the evening, the night before 4th of July. So I just have to warn you that there probably will be fireworks in the background because it's 11:15 and they have been going on nonstop since about nine o'clock.

If you're a mom, you know, my pain with this, because it took my girls forever to fall asleep because they were scared with the sounds, and then I am sure I'm like, 90% sure, one of them will walk in here while I'm recording, because one will wake them up. So if you hear it in the background, I apologize, but I cannot. I need to get this recorded for you because I really wanna talk to you about this.

So here's the thing. I am always looking for ways to make my life easier and to make the lives of the women I work with easier because there are constantly things being put into our lives that make them harder. That makes them busier. That makes them just pile on the responsibilities and the to-do list in your busy daily life.

We already have so much that we have to think about. Right. And so if I can find little ways that takes some of that chaos in your mind and in your schedule and everything like that away, then I will do it. That's my mission. I'm constantly looking for new ways to do this. And there is something I believe it was three or four years ago, I just kind of started doing on accident.

And now it's like a core thing that I teach everyone, every woman I work with. And it's something that really helps me in my mornings and just my overall feeling of like more put together. I guess I could say when I'm getting ready in the morning. And what this is, is called a get-ready basket. Now it doesn't have to be a basket.

Um, in my old house, it used to be a drawer. So I called it the get-ready drawer. Now it's a basket, but it could be a bin. Like it doesn't really matter what the container is, we'll. We'll just call it a get-ready basket. But side note, I do have to say this, my house was built in like 97, 98, I believe. And for whatever reason, the builders hated drawers or something because we don't have drawers in our house.

And it drives me insane every day. We have three bathrooms with zero drawers, and then we have, we had a kitchen within the entire kitchen, I think three or four small drawers. Um, and it, I hate that it drives me crazy, and I don't know why anyone would build a house with so few drawers, because I think drawers are so much, um, easier to organize than like cabinets or lots of shelves or anything like that.

So I know that's totally a tangent, but if I ever get to build a house, you guys, I will put so many drawers in that thing. That whoever owns it after me will be like, probably saying the opposite. Like whoever built this house like they, they had an obsession with drawers. So anyway, so let's get back to the get-ready basket.

So the get-ready basket is essentially your one-stop shop for getting ready in the mornings. And what I mean by that is that it has everything you need to get ready in the morning. Whether that is spending the day with your kids going to work or wherever you're going, you know that everything in that basket is what you need to get ready.

You're not running around the house trying to find the curling iron, or where did you set your deodorant down or shoot? I can't find my contact solution, none of that. That's not what we're gonna do anymore because we are gonna have a get-ready basket. In my get-ready basket, I don't typically wear a lot of makeup.

Um, not because makeup is a bad thing, just because I have a, like, I'm not very good with makeup. And so, it frustrates me. Um, so I don't wear makeup most days. If I do wear makeup, it's like, light foundation, some blush, and like I'll fill in my brows, and that's pretty much it. That's pretty much all I'll do, but I put my makeup bag in my get-ready basket.

I put my deodorant in there. I put my toothbrush, my, um, toothpaste, my floss, my face lotion, my daily contacts. Anything I need to get ready in the morning goes in this basket, and then the basket lives underneath my sink in the cabinet. But that way, when I walk into the bathroom in the morning to get ready, all I have to do is open the cabinet, pull out the basket, set it on the counter, do all the things to get ready, use all the products.

When I'm done using them, they go right back into the basket. I, I literally like I'll put on my deodorant, and then instead of setting it on the counter, I'll set it back into the basket to eliminate that extra step. And then, when I'm done getting ready, everything is contained in the basket, and I set it back under the counter, and I'm good to go.

This does a couple of things. Number one, it helps me because I'm not looking for lost items. Before I did this, I always could, like I would, spend and waste so much time looking for things that I couldn't find. Even if it was on the counter, I would have so much stuff on the counter that it would get lost, and I'd be like rummaging through the piles, and then it would just frustrate me, and it would set my day off in a bad tone. I would get irritated, and I would also waste time. And then it would more likely make me late also.

And then the second useful thing for this is that we, it helps keep our counters clear. I know I, in the last episode or the episode before that, I talked about visual clutter, and anytime we have stuff all over a horizontal surface, like our bathroom countertop, our brain tells us it's like alarming, like, clutter clutter and clutter, and like it's raising those stress hormones. And so, if we can help keep our counter more cleared off, it's going to trick our brain into just being in a more peaceful state when we walk into that space. And at what other point in the day is it most beneficial to have that clear, peaceful space when we're starting our day?

Right? I would say when we're starting our day and when we're ending our day. So when we walk into our bathroom, and we see that clear countertop, and we know exactly where everything is because it's in that drawer or it's in that basket, you guys, this takes off so much unnecessary stuff in our brain that we can just operate better. We can make things easier. And that's the point, right?

Okay. So if you want to try this, a lot of times people will be like, oh Diana, this is a great idea, I'm gonna do it. And so they grab a basket, they just start throwing stuff in there and then they get frustrated because it didn't, they felt like it didn't work.

Here's the thing I want you to do kind of like reverse engineer this. So what I want you to do is I want you to pick a place on your countertop, which I know I just told you not to, or to have clear countertops. I realize that, but this is temporary and it's going to help you. So just keep that in mind.

So what you're gonna do is you're going to find a place on your countertop, and this is going to be your get-ready basket trial space. Okay. And you're gonna get ready for three days in a row. And when you get ready and you like pick up your face lotion and you put your face lotion on, and then you're done with it when you're done with it, set it down in this trial space.

So you're gonna set everything down in this trial space that you use to get ready for those three days. And if you can do like a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, if you, um, that would be perfect because you're getting two weekdays and one weekend day. So you're also getting kind of like potentially different types of things that you're doing during the day. So you might catch some other things that you use to get ready on different types of days.

At the end of the three days, you should have everything in that spot that, you know, you need to get ready for the day. Then you're gonna have a better idea of what space you need, because some people like don't wear any makeup, don't have any skincare and all they need is like toothbrush and toothpaste and deodorant.

And they're good to go. And that's a really small basket that they'll need. Right. And other people will have a lot of makeup and a lot like a full, like, seven-step skincare routine. And so, and neither one of those is good or bad. It's just different people have different types of things that they use to get ready in the morning, and so when you know better what types of items you have and how much space they're gonna take up, then you can pick the drawer or the basket, um, or the box or the bin that these are going to fit well in. And then you gotta just pick a home for it. So if it's a drawer that's already done, the home is where the drawer goes in.

But if it's a basket or a bin or a box, then you just have to find a place that's going to work well for you to grab it each day. It needs to be easily accessible. Otherwise, it will frustrate you, but probably the best place is just under the sink in that cabinet, if you have space in there. Um, and if you don't, then when you do declutter it, then you should have space in there, but you can just find a place that this will go, and every morning when you go get ready, you can just grab it, put it on the counter, use all the stuff, put 'em right back into the bin or the basket, and then put it away and you're done.

So I want you to give that a try. When you do, can you share on your Instagram stories or send me a DM? I would love, love, love to see it.

The other thing is that many people use the same types of things in their evening routine as they would in their morning routine when they're getting ready. So if that's the case, then you can just use the same basket. Or if you have a basket that's big enough to fit both of the items if there are separate items, then you can do that too for your like, you know your like evening routine. Because, um, even though it's a get-ready basket in the morning, it's getting ready for the day in the evening, it's getting ready for bed. You could do a separate am and PM, but I think you're overcomplicating it if you do that. So I would just focus on having one get-ready basket and put everything for the morning and everything in the evening.

You can always do the three-day trial for both morning and evening to make sure you're not missing anything if your routines are like drastically different.

The second place that having a basket can really help you just make things a little bit easier and save yourself time. Looking for lost items is to have a basket on your bedside table.

On my bedside table, I like to keep it pretty cleared off. So really, there's a lamp. And then there is this basket, and in the basket, I like to have everything that I need for last thing before I fall asleep at night. And then first thing in the morning before I get out of bed. So I have my TV remote in there. Yes. I watch TV in bed. I know that you're not supposed to do that, but that's my favorite place to watch TV. I also have my Kindle in there. I have my eye mask. I have my night splint that I wear for TMJ. Anything that I need right before I go to sleep or for sleep is in that basket. And then anything for the morning, right when I wake up also. So like, I have eye drops that I typically put in for really dry eyes. So that goes in that basket also. Um, if you have medicine that you need to take right before bed, or right before you wake up, obviously make sure it has like a child tampering thing on it so kids can't get into it, but, um, that's a place that I put that also.

So basically anything that you need right before you go to bed or right when you wake up because then you aren't going to lose it. And how many times have you lost like the one thing you need right before you go to bed or you wake up, and you can't find the one thing you need right when you wake up?

So this just takes out frustration. It takes out the time that you spend looking for these lost items. And again, it just makes your life a tiny bit easier, which is the entire point.

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 @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.