5 Mantras Organisers Live By

Hello and welcome I am Bonnie, and I am Lily and this is Little Home Organised, the PodCast dedicated to helping you declutter, get organised, and reclaim time for the things you love.  

BONNIE: And I brought it home and I was showing it to my husband, and he just looked at me and was like, so what are you getting rid off.  

LILY: Good point, so what are you getting rid off?

LILY: You want to rip that bag off and pop it on the ground, and she was like, put it straight into your room, don’t put it down.

BONNIE: I always got picked up or dropped off so I never had to do the sweaty walk in the Australian hot summer heat though.

MUSIC 

BONNIE: Hello and welcome. This week on the podcast Lily and I are talking about the 5 Top Mantras that organisers live by, if you haven’t seen us on Tiktok already you can go and check out our 10 mantras that organisers live by but just for today’s itty bitty bite sized episode we are just doing our top 5.  

LILY: If you haven’t been tuning into the podcast for a while you may have missed a very excited announcement and that is Little Home Organised. That’s us, we have released a brand new course

BONNIE/LILY: Yeah 

LILY: The Organised Wardrobe, that’s right a course solely dedicated to getting that wardrobe in tiptop condition. Bonnie, what can people expect?  

BONNIE: So if you are a time poor person and you find that getting dressed in the morning is just giving you such a headache the Organised Wardrobe is the course for you.  We will help you zone your wardrobe, we will help you let go of the items that are no longer serving you, and we will help you organise your wardrobe to within an inch of its life. So that in the morning it takes you less than 5 minutes to get dressed and you walk out the door feeling fabulous.  

LILY: Ah doesn’t that sound good, but the thing I love of course Bonnie is that our courses are DIY which means that you can jump on, online anytime, log in, do a module, try it at home, and do it at your own pace which is fabulous for the busy time-poor parent 

BONNIE: Because life does get in the way sometimes and it is great to know that you can just come back and pick up from where you left off.  

LILY: And as long as this course is offered you will have access to it, so if that sounds like something that you want to incorporate in your life, you want to get your wardrobe looking spic and span and loving it every time you open that door this is for you, head to littlehomeorganised.com.au and check out the Organised Wardrobe. 

MUSIC 

LILY: Well hello there Bonnie, how are you today? 

BONNIE: I am quite well thanks Lillian, how are you?

LILY: Oh gosh I am great Bonnitta, considering we are using names that neither of us have.

BONNIE: Someone in a family chat the other day did a really bad misspell and my name came out as Bonty so that is my new nickname.  

LILY: Oh, ohhh my gosh I love it so much,. Okay, Bonty so we are talking about mantras today, and I think these are some of the most underrated sayings that professional organisers and organised people use, and so we just wanted to highlight them today on our bite-sized episode, so let’s dive right into it.  What is one of your top mantras?

BONNIE: My absolute favourite is “Don’t put it down, put it away”.

LILY: Yes I feel this in my soul, don’t put it down, put it away, don’t put it down, put it away

BONNIE: I feel like I say it a lot to my kids because there is a lot of them talking to me and then absentmindedly putting the toy that they were playing with just down randomly, and I am like ah ah ah ahh don’t put it down, put it away and they look at me like what!! Huh!!!

LILY: How does she know, but also do you, I have clear memories of mum saying that to us growing up as well.  Like you would come in the door from like a full on day of like high school with your huge heavy backpack on with all your textbooks in it, and the first thing you want to do because your back is sweaty from walking home with this heavy bag on in the middle of Australia’s summer heat and you want to rip that bag off and pop it on the ground and she is like, put is straight in your room, don’t put it down.

BONNIE: You know what I can’t related to the sweaty back because unlike you, I went to a different high school and I had to catch the bus there and couldn’t walk home from the bus stop so I always got picked up or dropped off so I never had to do the sweaty walk in the Australian hot summer heat like you and our brother did, so …

LILY: I just don’t think you have lived unless you have been able to you know sweat through a blouse on your way home, it  truly is a lovely experience. 

BONNIE: Or get swooped by the magpies.  

LILY: Exactly right, but that is why I was like so in shape in high school is I did so much walking because 

BONNIE: And running away from the birds 

LILY: And running away from the birds kept me in shape, but don’t put it down, put it away is such a simple mantra but it is something that is really great to instil for yourself or if you have kids, it is a really really simple one.  It is this idea that we are really intentional when as soon as I touch an object and I am holding that object where does that object then go, is it going to do the dance where it shuffles from place to place to place, or do I learn the habit of when I pick something up, I just don’t pop it back down on the next available flat surface, I put it away in its rightful home.  So it is a great one.

BONNIE: Yeah I really like it.  What is your favourite?

LILY: One that I would love to throw forward is “Never leave a room empty handed.” and it is something that I just absolutely live by. This idea that every time I am walking out of  a room in one direction I will look around and I will actually see if there is anything that I can take with me as I leave, and it is just, it is like most of the time I don’t even notice that I do it, it has become such a good habit, but this idea that when we leave one room, if you are already heading downstairs to the laundry, to the kitchen, to a bathroom are  you going to be so close to that bedroom where that random hat is from that you may as well pick it up off the dining table when you walk past, of course it makes sense, saves you time and so I love that saying.  

BONNIE: And you know what is really funny is if you live by the first mantra of don’t put it down, put it away, you actually don’t need so much the second one of never leave a room empty handed because generally speaking there shouldn’t be these stray items just hanging around, they should all be in their homes but what I like about the never leave a room empty handed is that it teaches us to look behind us before we go to the next thing and that is a really key habit and life skill to have, like even if you have been sitting at say the bus stop and you have unpacked a bag and repacked it and then you have then gotten up and gotten on a bus that habit of turning around and looking behind you to check, did I leave anything behind, did anything fall out. You know sometimes I have looked behind me and there is rubbish on the ground and I am like horrified that somehow that rubbish has fallen out of a bag because I am very conscious about that stuff, and so that habit of being able to reflect and look behind you and make sure that I have not lost anything, I have totally finished packing up from that task before I head onto this next activity or whatever it might be, I feel like that is a really important life skill that everybody needs.  

LILY: Yeah I agree and I think you are right, being able to like turn around and like also know the impact that you kind of have in your environment, you know going through spaces with a real sense of consideration I think is really important.  Another one that I really love, so number 3 is the rule when you are decluttering and like buying new things is the “One in and one out”, and while it is a really arbitrary number like you know there are going to be times in your life where you may not be able to one out, or you may be able to like get rid of 10 things and only bring in one thing, like it is an arbitrary number but the idea is cool because it is intentional.  It is saying every time I go to the shops and I buy something, when I bring that into my home I need to think and be mindful and go okay what in this space can go, can anything go, and bringing in a new sweater, but is it a sweater that I have brought in because I don’t have a sweater like this or you know, and I have actually got 10 sweaters sitting in there, it is a really cool way to be like really intentional rather than mindlessly purchasing right.  

BONNIE: It is so funny that you mentioned jumpers because we are just at the end of winter here down in the Southern Hemisphere and I have really gotten back into op shopping in the last couple of months I don’t know what it is, I feel like I am nesting more now that I have had my baby rather than while I was pregnant and I am really enjoying living on the Sunshine Coast having a new set of op shops to go to and explore and I just feel like one of the things that I have kind of bought a lot of recently are like jumper or you know cardigan type items, and it is so funny because I bought this really cool jacket that is like quite thick and warm but has a bit of like water proofing so it is perfect for like the times where we go to like the Brisbane Air Show for example and it gets really cold at night or when we go to Toowoomba or out camping out somewhere and it is just like, it is brand new and I got it for such a great price. And I brought it home and I was showing it to my husband and he just looked at me and he was like so what are you getting rid of, and I was like oh I have trained you way too well.  

LILY: He has a point, so what are you getting rid of?  

BONNIE: Yeah I actually like looked through all of my jackets and because there was one in particular that I was umming and ahhing about and I thought yeah I can probably get rid of that and I tried it on and I was like oh no I am actually losing some of the baby weight and this actually fits me much better than it did before I was pregnant so I was like I can’t get rid of this because I have always loved it and I have had it for you know 5 or 7 years or something. So at the moment nothing has actually left the house

LILY: And you know I think that is actually okay because I know you well and I know that you literally have a minimalist wardrobe anyway, like literally Courtney Carver would be so proud.  So what is another mantra Bonnie, no 4.

BONNIE: I love the “If it takes less than one minute, do it now”.  I actually say that one to myself multiple times a day, and usually it is for something simple like filling up a water bottle because we have a soda stream in our house and so we go through quite a lot of you know water that we have filled from the filter and then we go and fizz it when we want to drink it, and because they are only like 1 litre bottles they tend to get used up pretty quickly and for some reason the filter tap that we have at our house is ridiculously slow.

LILY: Oh it is so slow 

BONNIE: Yeah like it drives me 

LILY: It’s like you set it up and you could leave and like watch a full feature length film and come back and it would still be filling  

BONNIE: It is so slow and it is really dead quiet, like the amount of times on a daily basis I get caught out because I do that exact thing, I set it up and I walk away, and then I come back like a few minutes later and it is overflowing, oh and I didn’t hear it because it is just so quiet, so that is one thing that I am constantly saying to myself, it takes less than one minute to fill up a bottle, let’s just put it in there and get it going, so yeah I love the one minute mantra.  It is great.  

LILY: Yeah I love that too because it actually ties into what is going to be point no 5 and it is this idea of thinking about yourself in the future because if it takes less than a minute, if I just do it now then it is done, like it’s, it’s out of the way. If I come in and I see that there is chaos everywhere, or you know like I think about like the daily reset right at the end of the day where you like spend the amount of time that you need to, to get everything square back to you know back to square one and you know that is more than a minute but like if you chip away at things throughout the day, if it is less than a minute you just do it when you go to do a daily reset at the end of the day and you are really really tired and you just want to sit down and like read a book, have a bath, watch a show, spend time with someone, go out, whatever you want to do, go to the gym, you feel so good knowing that like it is not gonna take you very long to do that reset and keep everything systematic and keep the house organised because you have taken those opportunities throughout the day where it has just been a minute here and a minute there and you have done those things, so it hasn’t built up and become this big overwhelming problem and as we know life is very overwhelming at the moment, so absolutely , love that one.  Which ties into point no 5 and that is to “Be kind to your future self,” and I love this mantra because if I am standing in a room and I am going to make a decision I think be kind to your future self, so that could be choosing to declutter that item now because it makes me feel really bad when I wear it even though I am convinced that I need to keep that shirt because it fits or what have you, like just being like be kind to yourself, do you feel good in this? Do you love yourself in this, if you don’t need it, use it, love it, that is another great one isn’t it.

BONNIE: Yeah 

LILY: So many good mantras, you know then you ditch it, like being kind to your future self is that choice where you like I could not be bothered cleaning the kitchen tonight, I just want to sit down at the end of the day but when you are kind to your future self you do it so that when you wake up in the morning you do have the clean slate.  

BONNIE: Mmm yeah and I think of it in terms of like washing for example, because now that we live so close to the beach, there is a lot of swimming that happens and now that you know our parents have moved to a unit complex that has a magnesium pool, we have already started swimming in that now that the weather is getting a bit warmer 

LILY: Oh that pool, we swam in it and I tasted it and having grown up as someone who swims a lot it, didn’t taste like chlorine and I was like oh this pool is rank, what is wrong with it, they must, it must be going stale because it should taste like chemicals and it doesn’t and then to find out it was magnesium I felt so much better, like I had my son it in and I was like get him out of the water and it turns out it is like perfectly fine anyway I totally like railroaded your train of thought there

BONNIE: No, no no and so you know you come back from swimming and like with 3 or 4 kids and me swimming that is a lot of togs and a lot of towels that need a rinse off or a wash or whatever when we get back and if I just leave those sitting in the bag, then by the time I go to do something with them the next day it is pretty rank and it is pretty gross so it does actually take less than one minute to stick all that stuff into the washing machine and put it on a rinse cycle or a quick wash, and that means that I am being kind to my future self and even though I might have a baby who is crying for attention or a 3 year old who is chucking a tantrum because he is tired and it is the end of the day, if I do that small little thing of putting that washing on straight away when I get in, it actually makes it so much easier for me in the future and I think that is where that mantra resonates so much with me because I look back on it when the kids are finally settled and eating dinner or they are in bed, I can look back and go okay now I can hang this washing out or put it into the dryer and I feel good that even though I have just had a crazy 20 or 30 minutes, I have actually done something really productive as part of that and that has actually helped me get to that place of rest and relaxation and kid free time a lot faster.  

LILY: Yes I hear that, and I think there is some like key moments in our everyday and in our life throughout the year, there are these key moments where these mantras are really really important, and you were just touching on it there where you were talking about coming back from swimming that is a good example, I think another one is when people go away and they come back. Like right now as you are listening to Bonnie and I talk are you the person when you come back from holidays where you unpack everything immediately and you put all the fridge goods back in the fridge and you get the washing machine going, and everyone unpacks their bags and you know you sweep out the car and you vacuum it out or what have you ,or maybe you are the kind of person who comes home from holiday and you are like I am not done holidaying I don’t want to, I am going to pretend that bag has got nothing in it for a week, you know I am going to come home I am going to chill out and I am going to sit down, or maybe you are like a mixture of the two and that is like a really good opportunity to like pause and to think, am I being kind to my future self right now, you know, am I chucking this bag down rather than putting it away. And I can fully confess that yesterday my husband and I came back from our first weekend away since having our child who is now 20 months and it was lovely but this is a total role reversal, he immediately unpacked the bag, all of his stuff, put it away, everything in the wash and I have avoided that bag like the plague I don’t know why. It is sitting on our bedroom floor, I have done every other job and chore, I vacuumed, like I have don’t all this other stuff that needs to be done in the house but I have just left that bag sitting there with like stuff that needs to be done and I don’t know why we do this to ourselves, that is an example of what not to do, but it is so true, like we, you know are going to put it away and be kind to your future self.  

BONNIE: Yeah you know it’s funny, the first time I actually hear that theory about people wanting to extend the holiday and that’s what it meant when they didn’t unpack their suitcases, I thought oh that’s so interesting and like so true, I just always thought it was just you know pure laziness but I am definitely one of those people that I have to unpack straight away and like two nights ago we stayed in Brisbane for the weekend because we were visiting family and helping out with a few things and we got home you know probably 7:30 on Sunday night and like everybody is tired, you know there that’s 4 kids who have been away for 2 nights, we pretty much left straight from school on Friday, you know it is an hour and 20 minute drive to get back up to the Sunshine Coast where we live now, and I couldn’t get settled and start relaxing after the kids were in bed asleep until everything had been unpacked, and it is so funny because my husband was helping me unpack stuff and then he obviously got over it and felt like he didn’t want to do anymore and he went and sat down and was watching tv or something and I just kept you know pottering around and doing it and he was like are you going to come and sit down, and I was lot no, no, no I can’t like I just want to get this stuff done

LILY: Because then you can unwind

BONNIE: Yeah 

LILY: The week begins again 

BONNIE: Yeah I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and be like oh my gosh I wish I had done that stuff yesterday 

LILY: You don’t want to wake up the next day and already feel behind 

BONNIE: Yeah, yes chasing your tail and that is why whenever we actually go away somewhere, one of the first things that I do to help us settle into wherever that apartment is, is to actually unpack, put the toiletry bag in the bathroom, you know find a spot to put all my clothes and if we are staying say at a beach resort you know put all the togs and the towels together so that the next morning when the kids wake up early and they want to go for a swim I can say oh that is where that stuff is rather than I don’t know  rifle around in a bag and find it.  We are just all interesting like that aren’t we you know a little bit different.  

LILY: And like another scenario that I can think off where like these mantras really come into play is like us saying like with the daily reset at night, so if you are someone who does do the daily reset, this probably resonates but if you are someone who doesn’t really know what that is, it is the idea that at the end of the day that you take time be it 10 minutes, 15, 20 to just reset the house back to square one so beyond the bare minimum of making sure it is hygienic and you have washed the dishes it’is like you know maybe emptying the bin, wiping the benches, putting the toys away, putting the clothes away, finishing the washing cycles, all that kind of thing, and I think that is really where this idea of you know never leaving a room empty handed throughout the day and not putting it down, putting it away, like all of that stuff really comes into play at the end of the day, you will see the success of all these mantras throughout the day when it comes to that time.  Habits, they are so underrated but they, trust us they are amazing.  Yeah so I don’t know which one of these mantras personally resonates to you guys who are listening right now but feel free to share, send us a DM and let us know what mantras you love to use in your household to help you stay organised. Maybe one that your partner loves or one that you love to use with the kids, we would like to hear it and of course if you are in our community group you can give a shout out in there as well.  

BONNIE: Yes come on over and join us in the Facebook group Little Home Organised Community, a thriving group with lots of people in there sharing lots of ideas and inspiration.  Thanks for listening, thanks for joining us and lending us your ears.  

LILY: Yes this has been a fun little bite sized episode and we are looking forward to being in your ears again soon.  We have a special guest next week, and we can’t wait for you to hear that episode.  

BONNIE: And remember PROGRESS NOT PERFECTION.  

LILY: But for now see you later.

BONNIE: Bye.

We would love to see the conversation continue, head over to the Little Home Organised Community group on Facebook, ask questions, find motivation and share your before and afters, and if you enjoyed the show please help us keep it going by hitting subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you listen.  It is free and ensures you do not miss an episode but if you really want to share the love leave us a rating and review.  Trust me it makes all the difference in the world.