The LIES You're Being Sold About Home Organization // decluttering, minimalism, and saving money

so you've watched all the organizing videos and tried every home organization hack Under the Sun and yet somehow your home is still a mess what's up with that what if I told you that a lot of the popular home organization tips and products that you see online are not only a big fat lie but in some cases might even be holding you back from creating the clutter-free home of your dreams hi there friend and welcome back to my channel my name is Marissa and this is a to in life where we talk about the a

toz of simplifying your way to a home and a life you love and today I wanted to chat with you about something that's been weighing heavily on my mind recently which is all of the myths and downright lies about home organization that I see Brands and influencers pushing on social media that not only don't solve our clutter problems but sometimes even end up making them worse especially on apps like Tik Tok and Instagram it's easy to fall down an endless Rabbit Hole of trendy storage hacks and exciting refrigerator restocking videos that not only encourage overc

consumption but also give us unrealistic and sometimes even toxic expectations about home organization so the reason that this has been on my mind is because we recently moved into a new home and I've been doing a lot of organizing and reorganizing myself lately so as a decluttering expert and minimalist of 8 years today I want to take you along with me as I debunk some of the biggest and most outrageous lies about home organiz oration starting with number one on this list which is that home organization is the cure to all your clutter problems let

me ask you how many times have you heard that this insert whatever Miracle product name here is the solution to all your problems if I had a dime for every time I heard a brand or influencer make that claim considering that the home organization industry is collectively worth over 12 billion dollar and growing I definit be a billionaire by now whenever I see an influencer or brand promoting a cool new organizing hack or product I always approach it with a healthy dose of skepticism organization is definitely important but for most of us it's more like

the icing on the cake instead of the end all be all and a much better place to start is a getting rid of excess clutter instead of trying to organize it and B trying to figure out which habits or breakdowns in your system are the root cause of your clutter problems another big lie about home organization is that it needs to be done as fast as possible have you ever noticed how many Brands and products are bending over backwards to promise you quick fixes and fast results like how many of you watching this video are

old enough to remember 8 Minute Abs I remember when I was in college how I would go over to my best friend's house and lie down on the shag carpet floor of her living room to do 8 Minute Abs with her and her sister and then I would leave and go to McDonald's and order three double cheeseburgers two large fries and a large chocolate milkshake and wonder why the heck I didn't have chisel dabs du you think this is a case for the FBI the idea of fast and easy results is intoxicating and downright addictive

and when we see titles like 34 Quick Fix products that'll make your home look way better or learn how to organize paper clutter in just 5 minutes a day over and over again we get brainwashed into thinking that quick and easy is the way to go but just like they say Rome wasn't built in a day your clutter didn't just accumulate in 5 minutes so why would we think that it would only Take 5 minutes to get rid of it and a lot of times we end up on this hamster wheel of instant gratification buying

the hottest new organizing products to try only to end up disappointed when the thing that we bought with so much hope didn't deliver on its big promises to us yet again now I'm not saying that going fast is all bad because when it comes to decluttering and organizing your home there's a time and a place for everything and sometimes you want to Sprint and sometimes it's going to be a marathon and it's up for you to figure out which is the correct speed for you at any given time but I would caution you against making

670,000 m per hour your default setting because sometimes haste makes waste which actually brings us to the next lie on this list which is the lie that it's so cheap so why not buy it a lot of home organization products and products in general get marketed as being a cheap and easy fix and encourage you to just give it a try because it's so cheap it's totally worth it right what do you have to lose but the problem with this mindset is that it often results in a lot of waste and I'm not just talking

about wasted money because spending money on cheap products that are poor quality or don't work doesn't just waste your money it also wastes your time and energy having to get rid of the stuff that was supposedly supposed to solve your problems and didn't and then on top of that having to deal with the guilt that you probably feel spending money yet again on something that didn't work and only ended up adding to the Clutter problem in your home next up we have the lie that home organization has to be aesthetic and pleasing to the eye

this is honestly probably one of my biggest pet peeves about home organization because they're honestly out here trying to brainwash us into believing that decanting your laundry detergent and color coding all of the food in your refrigerator into neat little plastic containers is normal it's not and sometimes home organization trends go so far over the top that they even become borderline dysfunctional like have you seen the the fridge scaping Trend that people have been sharing lately on social media it's like Landscaping but for your fridge anyway after this super impractical trend went viral apparently it's

actually started to seep into to people's homes in real life to the point where husbands were posting about it on Reddit to complain about how impractical high maintenance and frustrating it was for them to do something as simple as try to take food out of the refrigerator after their wife had finished fridge escaping it remember organization is supposed to make your life easier not harder and it doesn't matter how good the inside of your refrigerator looks if it doesn't function as a refrigerator should and is a p to use cleaning an organization videos might be

good eye candy but you know what's even better having a clean and tidy kitchen that's actually functional and works for you in real life next up we have the idea that flat surface should be clear of visual clutter at all times it's almost like visual clutter has become Public Enemy Number One especially in the minimalism Community however there are times that it might make sense to leave something out on your kitchen counter for example maybe it doesn't make sense for you to hide your bulky espresso machine every time you're done making coffee and maybe you

want your paper towels out in the open where you can easily access them if there are certain things that you want to have out around your house but you don't like the way that they look when they're just lying around there are organization tricks that you can use for that such as using small trays to kind of Corral things on your kitchen countertops so that it's more visually appealing to your eyes or say creating a coffee station with a cute little bar cart or something where you can make and enjoy your morning coffee in the

morning that's a great way to keep things that you want to have out and accessible still looking tidy and organized organizing line number six is that there's always one right answer to any question that you might have about organizing this is actually something that popped up for me recently after I shared a video about how I went about extreme cleaning decluttering and organizing for us to move into our new home which was a huge thing and in the video which was over 60 Minutes long and I'll share up here for you and down in the

description box below in case you're interested in checking it out I was showing how and where I was putting things away in my kitchen and there's a tall cabinet that I decided to use to store my white plates and bowls basically the flat wear that we eat off of and not just one person but multiple people actually commented asking me why I didn't choose a cabinet that was closer to the dishwasher so that when I was getting things out of the dishwasher that I could just put them right away in the cupboards and one of

the things that I've spoken before here on my channel is that minimal ism is deeply personal to each of us so it's up for each of us to decide what minimalism is going to look like and how much stuff we want to own so for me someone who hates handwashing dishes I like to own 12 sets of flat wear and silverware so that I can handwash dishes as few times as possible and I can just throw them into the dishwasher and the ones that I chose while being high quality are a little bit heavy and

I was afraid that our cabinets which are a bit on the older side might not hold up to the weight of those plates so well if I was to stack all 12 sets inside of them and so because I have a large kitchen with more storage than I could ever fill up as a minimalist I decided that I'd much rather carry them the extra few steps over to that cabinet where I could beautifully stack them with each category taking up a single shelf instead of trying to cram it all into one cabinet so that was

the solution that I came up with to fit our kitchen and our lifestyle and our particular needs but I can totally understand if that's not the right choice for someone else but what I'm trying to say is that when it comes to organizing there's not really a one siiz fits all solution sometimes I joke that it's a little bit like a game of Tetris where you're kind of trying to shift things around to see how they fit best and finally the last organizing lie on this list is that organization and minimalism are the exact same

thing this always drives me me crazy when I see it in articles because invariably when somebody is talking about Marie condo they'll always talk about how she's a minimalist and Marie condo has over and over again flat out said in interviews and even written entire blog posts about how she is not a minimalist minimalism and home organization are really two completely separate topics although there is some overlap between them they are not the same thing and of course I'm probably more than a little bit biased in saying that minimal ism is really really helpful when

you're trying to create a clutter-free and organized home by all means if you don't want to become a minimalist but you still want that go for it however I will also say that the thing about minimalism is that it's not black and white in and of itself either there's all sorts of degrees of minimalism you have people who are minimalishious and you have cozy minimalists who want to create a calm and clutter-free home and that's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned over the past eight years is that minimalism is really a spectrum and

it's also a tool that we can use to improve our lives however we see fit and if you want to hear more about that make sure to go check out one of these videos that YouTube thinks that you'll like or I'll see you next week until then take care bye-bye