I used to watch Hoarders whenever I needed a little motivation for cleaning/de-cluttering, but this time around I switched to the opposite end of the spectrum.

First I discovered Kallie of But First Coffee. She’s not extreme at all, in fact she is incredibly relatable. Her channel and blog is primarily lifestyle and parenting advice (but don’t worry non-parents, plenty of her stuff isn’t parenting specific). I love that she seems very authentic (ie not perfect).

Well, YouTube’s algorithms decided that this just wasn’t enough for me. Maybe they’ve seen the state of my house, who knows, but videos for The Minimal Mom started popping up for me. Dawn of The Minimal Mom is probably more extreme than I ever see myself going…buuuuut the way she she talks about de-cluttering and organizing still really resonates with me, even if I opt not take it as far as she does.

For example, this video kicked my butt into gear a few weekends ago:

I’ve read Marie Kondo’s book and found it semi-motivating, but Dawn’s method really clicked for me. I think both Marie and Dawn are ultimately getting after the same idea, but for me Dawn’s method of picking out your favorite items vs asking every item if it “sparked joy” made a lot more sense to me. I didn’t go quite as far as she did and set specific numbers for clothing items (I’m all about winging it) but I still cleared out a huge box of stuff from my closet! If you’re interested in capsule wardobes picking out your favorite pieces is also a great way to start figuring out a color scheme to work with too.

I’ve now been binge-watching organization and minimalism videos and have been going on a de-cluttering rampage. Luckily for Matt most of the excess stuff in the house is either mine or the kids so he is relatively unaffected. We’ll see what happens if I make it to the kitchen though…

So who’s with me for some spring* cleaning motivation? I’m going to try and share some of my favorite videos to kick off the weekends for hopefully all of May. We’ll see, I get easily distracted… I’ve got some house updates coming too, I just need to get photos. You’d think that would be easier with me working from home a lot of the time but no, no it’s not.

*I live in Minnesota–we’re lucky it’s not currently snowing