134: Clutterbug: Your Organizing Style with Cas
What’s your organizing style? Are you a bee, ladybug, cricket, or butterfly? Find out in today’s episode as professional organizer, Cassandra Aarssen explains how to tidy and organize according to your natural organizational style. Cas is a self-proclaimed “recovering super slob” on a mission to help other families who struggle with disorganization and clutter. Join us!
Show Highlights:
Cas’s journey to Chief Clutterbug status
Four organizational types, according to how you naturally sort and store your everyday things:
Butterfly: You are a visual person who wants simple, quick, and easy organizational systems.
Bee: You love visual and organizational abundance and are meticulous and detail-oriented, preferring to see your everyday items instead of hiding them away.
Cricket: You love visual simplicity and organizational abundance, wanting to hide items out of sight, but you are detail-oriented and methodical.
Ladybug: You love visual and organizational simplicity and prefer all your items hidden out of view with fast, easy solutions.
Find your balance between wanting to put things away easily and wanting to find things easily. (You can’t have it both ways!)
Parenting challenges in helping your kids learn to organize
Cas’s best organizing advice for butterflies: Use plastic bins, baskets, buckets, and labels.
Consider your “valuable real estate” from waist to eye level.
Establish a “drop zone” in your home.
Best tips from Cas and KC for keeping and organizing all the kids’ papers and artwork
Cas’s best organizing advice for bees: Use clear, stacking bins and pegboards for meticulous organization. (Fun fact: Most hoarders are actually bees!)
Cas’s best organizing advice for crickets: Use lots of styles for traditional organization.
Cas’s best organizing advice for ladybugs: Use drawer dividers, bins, and baskets (with no lids).
Resources and Links:
Connect with Cas: Website (and Resources)
Preorder my new book: Struggle Care Website, Amazon, and Bookshop
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
-
KC Davis 0:00
Hi friends. Before we get started, I want to let you know that my new book, who deserves your love is now available for pre order. It'll be out on Tuesday, May 6, and the subtitle is how to create boundaries to start strengthen or end any relationship. And yeah, I do mean any. This is for family relationships, platonic relationships, romantic relationships. It's sensible, it's practical. It's going to help you think through why you might be experiencing issues in your relationships. It has a decision tree that helps you make important relationship decisions, and there's a new take on boundaries. It's going to help you make those value based decisions and carry them out. Is love conditional? How do you navigate a relationship where someone's best efforts are hurting you. When should you step away? It's plain spoken. It's powerful. We're going to talk about vulnerability, trauma, disability, personal history, boundaries, and how to conflict well, and how to emotionally regulate, and all of these things packed into a little punch of a book. So check out who deserves your love. You can pre order on bookshop.org, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Hello. You sent to get balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle. Care. I'm your host, Casey Davis, and today we are with Cass from clutterbug. Some of you might know clutterbug. It is all about how to tidy and organize your space according to your type, as in, we're all different, as in, not everything works for everyone. And I've heard a little bit about clutterbug Through the years, people will often kind of comment on my stuff and say, like, oh, this reminds me of clutterbug. Or like, oh, you would love clutterbug. So I'm just so glad to have you here, Cass and thank you so much. Give us a little intro about how you became clutterbug.
Cas 1:44
Ah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited. I'm actually a huge fan. I just I find you like a breath of fresh air. So a little bit about me. I'm a recovering super slob. I feel like I don't know what else to call myself, like I, in my core, will always be a messy person. And I don't know if anyone understands this, but that's okay.
KC Davis 2:03
I do
Cas 2:06
like all the practice in the world. It I can create new habits and I can create muscle memory, but at my core, I am messy. I'm a disaster. I have ADHD and I lived in a home for the majority of my adult life that was wrecked. Let's just get real. I was always cleaning and tidying, and I felt like, by the next day, it was trashed again, and I'm I was like, am I a stupid person? Why is this so hard for me? This shouldn't be this hard, but I really cued in. For me, it came from I had to go with a less organized approach to organization. I can't do filing cabinets. I can't do lots of details. I have to toss my things away like it's a basketball and have it go into a labeled bin. And when I started doing this, my kids were young. I was running a daycare. Things started staying tidy, and then I was like, I'm a genius. So I started helping friends and family who were chronically disorganized with this less organized approach. I used dish pans from the dollar store, if I'm being honest, because this was a million years ago, and I was real broke, and that's what was available. And then it started growing. And I thought, could I organize people's homes for a living, so I started doing this part time, and that's when I realized that there wasn't just two ways to organize, that some people were actually really visual too, and the normal way to organize is put everything behind closed doors, shove it in drawers, in cabinets, have everything Perfect and not seen. And if you're a visual person, this is impossible for you, because out of sight, out of mind, you will literally forget you own things. But also subconsciously, you're leaving things out because it's more convenient you want to use it again later, today or tomorrow. So the traditional way to organize actually doesn't work for the majority of people, so I gave them, like, cute bug names, you know, I call it clutter bug, and there's like, butterflies and bees and crickets and and ladybugs. But you know what the truth is? What really matters is that you know how you manage your own belongings and that you set up your home to catch it. Yeah,
KC Davis 4:23
I love how you've stylized your approach with, like, the different little bugs, because early on in making cleaning content, I would have people be like, Casey. I think you're a butterfly. You should go over to clutterbug and check it out. I love that you have a quiz. And I just it's so there's something that, like, it scratches something in my brain, like, I've always been a big, like, personality quiz girl, like, I love the, you know, the MBTI, or whatever it is. Like, I'm an ENFJ I've taken all that, like, who doesn't love just like talking about themselves in a quiz. And I think that there's something so validate. Thing about seeing yourself in a profile and going, Oh, I'm not broken, I'm not behind the curve. I'm just this other type. And I think that, I think as someone who has that kind of pattern recognition brain that is always kind of sorting things into categories. It's just such a genius approach, and I've never seen anyone else really do that in the cleaning space, like, there's lots of people offering lots of tips that can be helpful. But this idea of, it's like the morally neutral hack of, like, no, look at all of these different like types. So can you take us through the types and sort of tell us about each one.
Cas 5:43
Yes, I would love to, but I first want to say how I know this works. So I started doing my little business on the side. And my marketing tagline was very I have ADHD. I'm like, You know what would be so great is if I tell people, if it doesn't stay organized for 30 days, I'll come back and do it for free. And that was I put it on everything. I put it on all my posters I was doing. And guess what? People called me back and I had to go back and do it for free. So I had to adapt and figure out why the why? Why is this working for Susan and not for Janine? What is different about these people? So basically, your organizing style comes down to a combination of how you naturally sort and how you naturally store your everyday things. And so are you a really detailed person, not in your brain? Usually it goes with both.
KC Davis 6:39
I was gonna say it's funny, because sometimes when you ask those questions, like, the way that I am about information is totally different than the way I am about objects.
Cas 6:49
Yes, so it's about like, objects are you a detailed person in that you don't mind taking the time to put something away in a detail, you'll lift a lid, you'll you want to find it again quickly next time, so you'll stop and take the time to put it away in a detailed way. Or do you just need to put it away fast? You don't mind taking time later to dig through a bin. You got to put it away real quick. So I call it like detailed and non detailed. But don't confuse that with how your brain works, because you might be like all up in your perfectionist but not when it comes to your home and managing your belongings. So there's a big difference there. So that's the one half, and then the other side is how you naturally store your belongings. So are you a person who prefers to store out of sight, you want to hide your things away, or are you like super visual, out of sight, out of mind? This does not mean you like clutter. Nobody likes clutter and to see their stuff. This means do you want the things you touch every day to be easily accessible out and you want to see it so you don't forget reminders, important documents, but also maybe your everyday bathroom products. It's more convenient to leave them out. So this combination makes up your styles. So you are a butterfly, I watch your content, and I'm like screaming on my phone, you're a butterfly, which means you're really visual. You want to see your things. You need to see your everyday things, but also you're not a detailed person when it comes to putting things away, it's you need quick, easy, simple solutions. A bee is someone who is very visual, but also very meticulous, very detailed when it comes to their things. And we think about the bug a bee, and we've never seen their hives, they're like, they're methodical up in there. So that is the B organizer. Then we have a cricket who is someone that wants to hide their things. And they're very detailed, though. And I chose the cricket bug because you never really see crickets, but you hear them. And did you know when they rub their legs together? It's mathematical perfection.
KC Davis 9:01
Oh, I did not know that. Yes, it's like the part.
Cas 9:05
So when I think of perfection detailed someone who's very methodical but also doesn't want to see things, that's a cricket. And last we have a ladybug. So a ladybug, if you think about the actual insect, is like, pretty and shiny and perfect on the outside, but when they open up their wings, have you, it's like it was like a hot mess under there.
KC Davis 9:31
They're so cute to me. And the first time, my kids were like, I was like, they're so sweet, but then you actually look at them open and I was like, Oh, that's a little terrifying.
Cas 9:38
That's a mess. And that's basically a ladybug organizing style as well. So non detailed, laid back. They don't want to see their things, but they toss it away quickly. So usually drawers, closets are like but on the outside you're like this. She has her life together. She does not, she does not. She's hiding it. Out of sight, and so knowing this about yourself helps you set up your home with systems that complement how your brain organizes your things. But it's also important to understand other people who live in the home and their organizing style so that we can compromise so it works for everyone.
KC Davis 10:20
I love that. And I remember, like, some of these kind of coming to some of these conclusions when trying to look at MySpace and when you talk about, like, being detail oriented and putting things away and taking things out. I remember the day it occurred to me that most of the organizational systems that I had tried or that were sold to me are high effort, put away, low effort, take out. So, like, I remember buying, like, all of the clear shoe boxes, I mean, like, 100 clear shoe boxes. And it was like, This is so great. I'll put every shoe in a clear shoe box so I can see them all. And then I just had to take it out. And it wasn't until I put it wasn't until I put it together that I realized, like, Wait, if I'm taking one out from the bottom, like, I have to take it all the way out, I have to open it up, I have to do all this and but putting it away. And so I had, like, even with like, shoe, I went to, like, a shoe, you know, I noticed that we were all taking our shoes off by, like, the front door. So it's like, oh, we need a shoe shelf, right? Like, everyone's getting those shoe shelves. But even then, it was like, none of us were using it, they were still piled on the floor. So it wasn't until I went to baskets by our front door. And so we have three baskets, one for me, one for my husband, and one for our kids. And I was telling people about this online, of like, this works for us. It's actually a funny story, not even by our door. It's actually in the middle of not like the dead center, but it's in our living room, because, for some reason, that's where everybody was going to take was going to take their shoes off, but it's also equidistant from all of the outside doors, so everyone can kind of just keep their shoes on until they get there. And I remember people commenting, this is silly, like, now you have to dig through the basket to get out a shoe from the bottom. And I remember, like, trying to explain it to people, and finally, being like, but I'm willing to do that like. I am willing like, and I think there's probably a lot of people with ADHD that might relate to this aspect of it, like, because our motivation systems are different, and we're not motivated by priority and things like that. We're motivated by urgency. When I need to go, I need to find the shoe, and there is no problem initiating the movement and to, you know, look through the shoe basket. But when I'm coming home and I need to take my shoes off, I am in the middle of being motivated to do something else, right? I'm coming home to feed lunch to my kids. I'm coming home and I've got groceries and so I don't it's such a burden to me in that moment to, like, interrupt my attention to go and do something else. So I need that low effort put away, just like, toss it into the basket, because I know about myself that I never have a problem motivating myself or even being bothered by looking through it. And you know it when people started saying, like, I'm the opposite, I'm the opposite. And I think that's why what you do is so genius, because it is just different types. Like some people want to be able to they would say, well, when I'm walking out the door, I want to be able to grab my shoes because I'm thinking about something else. And thinking about something else. And it's like, sure, but I have to like, if the other option is the other thing is about like options. When I'm coming home and taking my shoes off, the options are, toss them to the side, which is easy, or put them away nicely, which just has more effort. When I want to go somewhere, the option is put your shoes on and go, or don't go at all. So, like, that's just an easier thing for me to, like, motivate myself to do, you
Cas 13:47
know what I love that you're describing, like, exactly how butterflies should organize and how ladybugs organize, but they would actually put it in a closet, right, and kick their shoes in. And it is really hard for people who have their brain works the opposite to understand. It's hard for me to understand too, but when you get it, I love that you just intuitively know yourself, because what you're describing is exactly the butterfly philosophy, which is like a laid back organizer their brain has already moved on. It's not like we're purposely making this decision, oh, it'd be too much work to put our shoes on the shelf. I'm just gonna kick them. What are you talking about? We're not even thinking about our shoes. We're not thinking about anything. We're done with something our brain has moved on. So we need to just catch that stuff so we can go back and get it later. The problem with a lot of butterflies and ladybugs like me is when we don't have those systems, like the basket in place, now we're just putting it, we're dropping it everywhere, and everything's a disaster, and we we have to hunt for it to find it. So the real genius in organization is the bins in the baskets to catch we're. Where you're putting things. Keep things separate from other things, so we can find it as quickly as possible. So yeah, do you want to put it away fast, or do you want to find it fast? And often, people will say, I want to do both. I'm like, sorry, babes, you can't have both. You can't, you can't, wouldn't
KC Davis 15:15
we all love that. Let me ask you this. I found that you know, like you have always been a messy person, and I've always been like a butterfly type, and things didn't become unmanageable for me until I had children. And I don't know if that's just universal, or if other types, you know, maybe feel different about that, or maybe there's just unique challenges for each type, because kids are naturally butterflies, right? Like they all start as butterflies, just toss it, leave it, throw it, whatever. And, you know, so it's me going around doing that. And now when my kids start to walk, now they're doing that. And it's like, okay, I used to be able to do no pickup all week long. And then, you know, roll up my sleeves on a Sunday morning for an hour and kind of put everything back in place. But now suddenly, you know, the cycle of how long it takes my space to become unusable when there's more of us doing that is like 24 hours, but I still don't have the skills or systems in place to do it more frequently. And so now it's like, it's livable for a day, and then we're going six days right of just stress before we get it livable again. And I'm curious if you've had that experience with your clients, like is for people that have kids, like, is that kind of a pinch point, or a turning point, or like is that is a landmark that kind of pushes people towards you, of like that, becoming unmanageable.
Cas 16:43
Yeah, absolutely. Because not only now do you have way more stuff, but now you have other little people who are putting things down, not how you're putting things down. So you, I think, as a even butterflies and ladybugs, like, we're, yes, we're naturally messy, but we adapt. We adapt. We're like, it's a pain point. Oh, I can't find my keys. I can't find my keys. Okay, eventually we'll have like, a bowl or a hook or something. And so we kind of adapt our space to catch it a little bit, which makes it more manageable. But now we have, like, all these little creatures who are not able to come up with systems to drop their stuff, and also, now we're in charge of knowing how they naturally put their things down. And like, of course it's chaos. Of course it's chaos because there aren't systems in place, and that is so tough, especially as a new mom, like I had postpartum depression, and I was running a daycare. At one point, I had nine children in my house. It was just Toys R Us, vomited everywhere, and I would cry myself to sleep every night, like I'm working so hard and I can't keep up. But when I started thinking, Okay, I just need to catch their mess too, in a way that their brain works in a butterfly way, and it literally we just lined up like these bins on the floor. We put picture labels on them so children as young as 18 months can recognize balls go in the ball bin, dolls go in the doll bin, and then, like, magically, it was I didn't have to pick up toys, like I could adapt my home. So even little ones were subconsciously picking up after themselves. I mean, we had to be like, Okay, it's tidy up time. But they could do it without me very young, because we had the right butterfly systems in place. So it makes sense that you were super struggling. And I wish, like, I could help all new moms make it a little bit easier and just like, hey, man, try this. Works well, and there's hard enough, there's
KC Davis 18:42
so much kind of romanticized about having a baby that the other thing is, you know, we end up hyper fixating on what the nursery looks like, and all the cute organizational pieces and hanging every little piece and and I think that makes it harder. It's like we kind of romanticize and organize and nest and do this, but if you don't do that according to your type, it's like all of a sudden, now I'm doing laundry, and none of these little onesies are getting hung up again, and now I feel like a failure, absolutely.
Cas 19:09
Yeah, I remember being pregnant like folding and refolding all the little all the little onesies and pairing all the socks, no zipper, zipper onesies from head to toe and chuck them in a bin beside the beside the change table. But you you know, there's a there's expectations that are unrealistic. And again, if you're looking at this beautiful Pinterest poster, following someone on Instagram who organizes the opposite of you, it's hard enough to create new habits and new systems. Trying to set one up that goes against how your brain works makes it impossible. So
KC Davis 19:48
if I'm a butterfly and I'm looking at my space and I want to put in some like organizational things, like, what do I need in my spaces? It's. So
Cas 20:00
right off the bat, for butterflies, I say ditch the dresser. Dressers do not work for butterflies because you need to be able to toss your clothing away quickly. Most butterflies, I would also encourage not to fold. I think that's a friction and barrier from just putting stuff away. So I like going with cube shelving. Calyx is great for IKEA. It's really inexpensive. So many of those, my gosh, you see, you intuitively, know, and then great inserts
KC Davis 20:27
too. Like they're and they're getting better and better. We use them for kids. We use the tro fast bins in a lot of the account stuff. We they're, they make now, like, inserts to half them, inserts to put files in them. And like, there's just so great you
Cas 20:42
could put legs on them to make them look nicer, and stuff like, there is, there's so many great options. And I would say, like, stay away from the fabric Canvas bins, because those just bend and warp when you're you know, go with something like hard and plastic. And then if you have little ones labels, I know everyone's like, I don't want my house to look like a kindergarten classroom. I'm like, Well, do you want it to look like it's wrecked? Because, you know, there is something really magical about picture label for children, because it and even for grown ups. I'm sorry, a lot of people are anti labels. It like without you thinking, because, as ADHD ers, our brain is thinking about all these other things, but the label, we're seeing it in the corner of our eye, and we're actually putting things in the right component, instead of setting it on top or tossing it just anywhere when there's a label. So right off the bat, I would say that the other thing is, it's really important to look around and let your clutter tell you where you're naturally putting things down and put the system there. So if you are always throwing your dirty clothes in the same spot on the floor, that's where you put a laundry hamper with no lid, right there. Don't try to force yourself to put it in the closet or somewhere else. And the same thing is like the clutter on your counter. If you're coming in and you have bills and mail that you have to go through and you're dumping it. That's where your kitchen command center should be. That's where you should have the spot where you're dumping in your papers to go through. And I love hooks on the walls. I love bucket systems, especially in the bathroom. So you're getting things off the counter, but you're still keeping it really visual, and it's just as easy to put it down, but now when you have to actually clean. You don't have to move anything. So,
KC Davis 22:23
yeah, you also mentioned to me one time about it being eye level, which I thought, which I thought was interesting.
Cas 22:29
Yeah. So we call that the valuable real estate. So anything from waist to eye level is the most important spots in your home. And so you need to store things you use every day in those spots. And when I go into a client's home and I look around, what I see a lot of the times is like, things they never use are in their valuable real estate, and then the things they use all the time don't have a spot to go in that valuable real estate, so they're kind of left out as clutters. Oh, that's so
KC Davis 22:57
true. Like, I have a coffee pot sitting on our like, coffee bar. I haven't made coffee in nine months. Like, we're, that's, we're just not a big, like, pot of coffee, people. And I'm constantly, it's like, that's the space where I'm constantly dropping things in my kitchen that are not kitchen related, the mail, you know, that's where I'm charging the iPad, like, that's where I'm doing this. And it just occurred to me, like, how much of that real estate I'm using with, like, my coffee pot, because we also have a Keurig, because it was, like, my husband and I will do the one shot, just because I just drank one cup of coffee a day. But we have guests. And then, you know, the few times a year we had guests, we wanted the coffee pot. And now I'm just thinking, like, how silly that the coffee pot is still taking up that real estate in that prime area, especially
Cas 23:40
that's your drop zone. You have your brain is like, that's my drop zone, and it should be a drop zone. It has decided. It has decided. The other thing that butterflies do and visual organizers do is they spread. So they're like, making piles, and they're spreading on surfaces, but a shelf is also a surface, and so I would actually encourage you to get more shelving on the walls. I've seen, like, in your dining area, behind your table, there's nothing is it's bare knit, and I look at it of like, get some shelving friend, because if we're putting them in bins and baskets, it can still look neat and tidy. We can get, like, a bin and basket on there, but it gives you the ability to have, like, easy reach, access to the things that you're probably setting on the kitchen table, so now you can set there. And the other thing that I especially I know you have kids, anyone who has kids, what's so important is a memory catcher right somewhere in your drop zone, somewhere when you come in the house, because we all probably have places for long term memories, hopefully, like report cards and things like that. But it is a it's a fuck. We got to make an effort to put it there. So a memory catcher is a one stop drop for photos, for little trophies, for the report cards, for the drawing. Is that your kids come home with from school that you're like, do I keep this? Do I not? We toss it all into one bin, and then once a year we go through and we intentionally, like, save the best stuff in a long term place. Yeah, I'm
KC Davis 25:13
so glad you said that, because I have intuitively done that. That's like, one thing I've done. We have a little like, mud kitchen esque built in by one of our doors. And there's like, one shelf of it that I just started tossing the girls, like, the stuff they come home with, the pictures and the worksheets and things like that. And what I started doing, because people would ask me all the time, like, what do I do with all of the like, paper clutter when it comes to my kids, all their artwork, all their this and that, that, whatever. And I did find a few solutions that have really worked for me. One is that we have four of those frames, the storage frames, where you can have one picture showing through the frame, but you can open the frame up and it's like a thick kind of box behind it to keep a bunch of stuff. So we're always doing that for like, four things at a time. But the other thing is that we are kind of throwing everything into that little spot, and then once a year, I take it out. We go through it, we throw away things that are kind of like obvious things, right? And I have my kids pick out along with me, like the ones we want to keep and save, and I take a picture of every single thing that they are proud of, that they like, and I upload those pictures to a digital frame that sits in our kitchen. So we have two digital frames because I had, I one was given to me as a gift, and then I got another one like from the company. And at the time, I was like, well, I already have one. And then I had this idea of, okay, well, I'm putting pictures in one like photographs, the other one is displaying artwork. And so it would go through that artwork, and then I would take some of those pictures. And I've been making a book every year. So, like every year for Christmas, my kids get a photo book that goes month by month, and there are some pick photographs in it, and there are their artwork is in it, and just like a line or two about, maybe, like things about that month. So it is simple, right? It's like we went on this vacation. You were this for, for whatever, and then I pick, like, maybe six pieces of physical artwork to keep, and I have an accordion file folder for every grade, and I throw all the rest of it away. And I know that kind of sounds like a lot, but when you do it once a year, it's not. And it was perfect, because my kids always feel like I'm proud of them, because their stuff is always being displayed digitally through the thing, or there's like four of them in the frame. They are getting a book every year that commemorates, you know, dozens of pictures they've done. And I feel like as like, as an adult who has now received some of her like, childhood stuff, it really gives you perspective about like, how much you actually want to look at like, if my parents were to give me a box of my like stuff, like artwork, but my dad, one time gave me a file folder of like, 12 things I had done before the age of nine. And I was like, This is great. This is exactly the amount of things that I want to look back on. So now there's just, like a tiny bit of physical stuff that they can kind of have when they're older. But anyways, it just makes me so happy to hear you say that, because I was like, Oh, I nailed that one. You
Cas 28:31
did you? I mean, you're nailing it. And that, I think, is, as a mom, we're like, oh, I should be doing all this. But when we say to ourselves, we only have to do it one day a year. You know what? We could toss it all in one bin, and then one day a year, that's our intentional day to, like, do something special. And I'm you're way more extra than me. I'm so lazy. Here's what I do. I have one bin, like a big Rubbermaid tote per family member and their names on it, and then anything that's like worthy of the memory bin, I say we I literally toss it in. I don't, it's not, it's like a mess in there, but I call them my the memory treasure bins, and I was throwing them in the basement, but then I'm like, no, wait a minute, this is like, our bestest and most treasured things. So I moved they. I decluttered a bunch of stuff. I move them into a clutter closet in my office, my kids go through these bins all the time. They're just like, they'll drag it out. They'll open it up. There's like, pictures mixed with report cards mixed with, you know, their first outfit they wore home, and little trophies. But it's almost nice to have this, like, Discovery kind of bin where you go through and pull out all these beautiful memories, but it also makes it really easy to add to it. You just toss it in like a basketball so it feels, it feels like I'm doing something great, but I'm not having to put forth effort, and then feel like a failure when I am missing a few years and not keeping up with things. It's like. You know,
KC Davis 30:00
yeah, totally.
So let's talk then about bees. What do bees need that might be slightly different,
Cas 30:15
so just like a butterfly, they need lots of visual storage, but they are a little bit more meticulous, so they want to take the time to put things. So you talked about those clear shoe boxes that stack bees should be kind of maximizing space a little bit more and getting a little Jenga. So go ahead and opt for clear stacking bins. Pegboards work really good for bees, because they're like, this is where the scissors go in this, especially in crafting areas. You know, they want to take advantage of the wall space, but they want to have it meticulous. So pegboards really, really work. The big challenge for bees is that this sounds like really awful, but I feel like they need to practice doing things. Can I swear shitty. They need to honestly practice, like letting go a little bit, because the biggest issue that bees and crickets have is I'm gonna pile till later. So even though they're detailed and they're perfectionist and they're meticulous, they still have a mess, because they're like, I'm gonna get to that when I can do it right, when I can set up this perfect system. So what I would challenge bees to do is, like, in really embrace good enough, knowing that when everything has a home, you can go back and get micro and detailed and get your little be on then, but not wait until. Yeah, the perfect time.
KC Davis 31:38
So I'm a kid who, starting in probably about high school, like, got really, really bad grades. And even before then, I never did homework or anything like that. And I remember the first time someone said to me, oh, you're a perfectionist. And I was like, Oh no, no, no, I don't, I don't try at anything. And then being like, yeah, that's a lot of perfectionists. And they did this thing where, and I don't know if this is totally accurate, but it was a helpful way to think about it. And they said, you know, perfectionists and Idealists are similar, she said, but the difference is, a perfectionist won't stop. They will keep going and going and going and going and going on in the search of it being perfect, an idealist also wants things to be perfect, but is so overwhelmed by the idea of it being perfect, they just won't start. So they were, like, an idealist won't start something because it won't be perfect, and a perfectionist won't stop it until it is perfect. Like both of them are in pursuit of perfection. And it really struck me, and it wasn't until I was older and I was able to do some deep reflection where I was, like, that is why I didn't try hard in a lot of school. Like, some of it was the ADHD in the organization, but some of it was, if I don't try and I'm failing, I still get to tell myself at the end of the day that I'm smart and that I would have succeeded if I would have tried, whereas if I try really hard and fail, well then maybe I'm just not smart. Maybe I'm just not good. And I feel like that is so true in our spaces, like, when you mentioned, like, okay, the organization needs to be perfect. So in the meantime, I'll just pile it up here, you know. Or
Cas 33:12
if I'm not totally done with something, I'm gonna leave it out till I'm 100% done with that project before I pack up all the supplies. And one of the huge, like, the biggest challenges for a bee is that perfectionist, Idealist mindset also tends to like they will buy every craft supply they want to do, all the things they or they want to be woodworkers, or they want to do new hobbies, or, if they're working out, they're buying every piece of exercise equipment. And so they have a lot of stuff, and they really struggle to let go, because visual organizers have more of an emotional attachment when they see things. I don't know why this is bizarre, but if you're a visual person, you see something, it evokes like memories. It evokes like an emotional response, and also that logical perfectionist brain is saying, I could turn this into this. Well, it would be this much to replace it. Well, what if, and and your brain is like overthinking, and now you don't want to get rid of anything. So most hoarders are actually bees, which is really fascinating to me to have, like this perfectionist, detailed, logical, practical brain filling their home where they can't even use rooms in their home. It
KC Davis 34:27
actually makes sense, because when you were talking about some of those things, that's what I began to think of like when we look at people with hoarding disorder, one of the things that that kind of dominates a lot of people's thought process is, I can't get rid of that. I'm going to sell it later. I can't get rid of that. I'll put it in a memory book later. I can't get rid of that. That's something that I might be able to use if I ever get this thing over here done. And so, like, that's a really common so it makes sense that they would be aligned like that. So what kind. So you met, okay, so you mentioned pegboards. You mentioned things like that. What's the talk about crickets, our little musically perfect organizers tell me about them. So
Cas 35:09
crickets, like a bee, tend to pile till later. So the even though they don't want to see their stuff, they're like little perfectionist, Idealist brain does kind of override that sometimes, so you'll see, like, neat, stacky piles I'm gonna get to later. But unlike a bee, they will not let it overwhelm their home, because they still like, realize this stresses me out and causes me a lot of anxieties. I always look like, like, oh, you're a cricket. That sounds so bad. But like, they genuinely are a traditional organizer. They are adaptable. They can use lots of styles. Marie Kondo is a classic cricket. Crickets generally really don't struggle with organization or a lot of excess, except when it comes to paper. Most crickets struggle the most with paperwork because they really want to micro it down and get these, like, detailed, insane systems, and that is very time consuming. So they'll pile that till later, or something specific, like tools or something they have an excess of that they want in a really meticulous way, but clothing all those other things they tend to be like, you know, they have a pretty good handle on it. Kids
KC Davis 36:21
artwork, I bet is one, yes, it's like the kryptonite for a cricket, right? Because it's like, meaningful and sentimental, and you could keep all of it, and you could organize all of it into very specific
Cas 36:32
and I should probably scrapbook, or I should probably set up this really insane system. And what if my kids are gonna, like, think of a bad parent one day? Yeah. So for sure, things that like require time, and you can get real in the weeds, in the details, that's definitely a struggle for
KC Davis 36:49
crickets, okay? And then ladybugs. Did you mention you're a ladybug? Yeah, I'm a ladybug. Okay, tell me about ladybugs and what they need. So ladybugs
Cas 36:58
get really stressed out by seeing a lot of things. They're really visual, and they also are not detailed. They need fast, easy, simple solutions. You know, you're a ladybug. If you are hiding everything, if your family's like, wait, I just put that glass down. I wasn't even done drinking. And you're like, you're thrown in the sink. Or, you know, you come home with the bills, and your spouse will, like, put them and you're shoving them in a drawer where you know, because you're like, don't want to see the pile, but you have no idea tomorrow where those bills are. They could be check every drawer in the house. They could be anywhere. So the struggle for a ladybug is it's like this Heidi hoarder cycle. So they will shove things in all the hidden spots, but then when they need something, they have to pull everything out to make a mess and then shove it back again, which is extremely time consuming. So what we do for ladybugs is we just use like drawer dividers so you can still toss it but it's divided lots of bins and baskets behind closed doors, no lids, no stacking, as big as you can get, so you can still shove and hide, but it's going into a like segregated home. And what I suggest for paper for you too, listen, hold on to your hats. You're gonna hate this, okay, but I'm just gonna say it anyways. It's like a basket that says paid bills, 2025 you know, or paper, 2025 and you literally shove all the paper in there and here's and before you shot is like, Oh, that's horrible. Listen, it's kind of filing because the bottom is January, and then February, and then March, and then April. You know, I'm saying, if you really need something, you can go through. But the truth is, 90% of the paper we don't need to keep, but we're not sure. So one day a year, at tax time you go through and sort it then and deal with the paper. So I only Touch Paper one day a year, and that works very well for butterflies and ladybugs. Bees and crickets are dying there right now. They're like the shock, and that would be like a nightmare for them. So we do set up, you know, a less simplified, a little more detailed system for them. But again, I want to encourage bees and crickets to let go of the extreme detailedness and kind of like, relax, chill, chill a little bit bro. Chill a little bit bro. So
KC Davis 39:16
fascinating. The you know, they that that phrase, like Great minds think alike, like the core of kind of like discovering how our brains work best. And I just love the way that you have organized it, and the way that you have packaged it, and the way that you talk about it. And you have quite a few resources on your website where you tell people, kind of like, if they're listening and they're going, oh my gosh, this seems super helpful to me. Like, what kinds of things do you offer that might be helpful for their next step? Yeah,
Cas 39:44
so you can go to clutterbug.com and you can take the quiz to identify your organizing style. I would just suggest we're not taking the quiz based on fantasy selves, okay? Like real life right now, answer it not how you want to be. About how you are, and you don't have to enter your email or anything. It'll tell you what your organizing style is. And then there's so many examples. I have a free like ebook you can download that gives you, like Pinterest boards, full of different organized examples that work specifically for you, and also how to combine styles, because that's tough, right? So all free on the website, and then I have a lot of videos that show me making over spaces on YouTube, it's just at clutterbug, and show you exactly how to set up systems for different organizing styles.
KC Davis 40:34
Well, Cass, thank you so much. I super appreciate your time, and I just think that my audience is going to get so much out of your resources. Thank
Cas 40:43
you so much for having me. You.