 Hey and good afternoon. I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. It is also, believe it or not, the Clutter Corner. And so today I am streaming to you from both of those sites because I wanted to share with you some information about my move. Now, I'm sharing this with you today because truthfully, well, my guest of the day canceled. We're supposed to do a Clutter Corner show today and when I got a call from Sally who puts together the Clutter Corner show, she said, your guest canceled for today. And my first thought, and I hate to admit this, was like, hooray! I have no show. And then I said, actually, I can still spend some time with you today, and I wanted to share with you my move. Okay, so as I'm moving, and this is really interesting, this is a book that I'm following. Now, it also happens to be a book that I wrote. And the reason that I'm sharing it with you today is because it is a step-by-step, room-by-room guide on how to get your house ready to move, okay? Now, if you've been following the Clutter Corner show for a while, and I'm actually streaming both to two audiences today, the Clutter Corner and the Ask a House Cleaner show. So thank you for joining me. If you're joining me from Ask a House Cleaner, that's at Angela Brown Cleaning on YouTube. And if you're following me on the Clutter Corner show, that's hoarding world on YouTube. So I'm on both of those channels. We have two different shows. The Ask a House Cleaner show is primarily for cleaning business owners on how to clean the hoarding world Clutter Corner show. We work really closely with professional organizers. And so that's that show. All right, so as we're streaming live today to both of those channels, I wanted to cover a couple of things and answer some of your questions. So I want to say jump in, ask me the questions, and I'm here to answer them today. All right, I want to preface this first by saying, before we talk about moving and why we're moving, no one is making us move. No one is making us. We did not get transferred for our jobs. We did not run out of house. We did not dislike our house for any reason. We just decided that at some point during our lives, we would downsize and now's the time. And so we're moving from a house that's just shy of 6,000 square feet to a house that's like 3,000 square feet. So we're going to cut the space in half. All right, so I have a collection of everything that I've learned on the Clutter Corner show. And so I have the benefit of using any of those tactics to help me move. Now, if you've been following the Clutter Corner show, we've been talking about moving for a while. And my husband's been thinking about it and toying around with the idea for about four years. So I never took him seriously. And in the back of my mind, I started to declutter and I started to get rid of some stuff, but I never took him seriously. Like, let's pack up the house and move. Okay. I just said, I know one day I will move. So in the back of my head, I started doing a process I call the three ends. Now, next and never. Okay. Do I need this item now as in, if I were going on a trip, it would go inside my suitcase. If I'm going to the gym, I would put it in my gym bag today and I'm going to use it today like my toothbrush, my comb, my mascara, things like that. Those are the things I use now. Then there are things that I use next and the next is going to be the next house that I live in. And so I've got some party platters. Maybe I'm not having any more parties between now and the time that I'm moving, but I will use them at my next house. So that can go in a storage unit because I will use that at my next home. I don't need it now, but I need it at the next home. All right. Then the never category falls into, am I never going to use it again? And the answer is if I'm never going to use it again, can I go ahead and get rid of it now and discard it or donate it or sell it? Okay. So if I'm never going to use it again, those are the conditions. Can I get rid of it? Can I donate it or can I sell it? So as I walked around my house and I'll tell you why we're moving now. We've been talking about it. We've been thinking about it. And then one day, my husband said, okay, yes, I'll give you a deposit. When you put a deposit on the home, that's a pretty serious signal that now it's time to move. Okay. That's when Angela goes into high gear because I've run a business for 30 years. So I know all about managing details of a large project like moving. Okay. I don't move every day and I haven't sold a home in 15 years. And so I don't do this project every day, but I have a lot of skills that I've built over the course of my life that are kind of like get out of my way. I am coming through. I know how to manage this project. All right. So the first thing that I want to talk about is the book. Now this is a book for homeowners. This is not for professional house cleaners. And this is weird because everything that I do is for professional house cleaners. This is a step by step guide that I created to save homeowners a whole bunch of money. And it takes you step by step, every room of your house. And in every room of your house, all of the cleaning supplies, you will need to do a move out clean. And it's going to walk you through, oh, you're thinking about selling your home. Here's what you need to start doing now. And there's another step. Okay. Now your house is staging, meaning it's got to always kind of look nice because anybody at any moment could be coming through your house, right? If you're getting ready to stage your house and show it. Okay. Then we have the process of it's on the market and people are going to come in and you get a call from the realtor that says get out of your house. We're coming in 10 minutes. And you're like, whoa, I got to grab my one little bucket of stuff and I got to go. Okay. Cool. Then the next thing is when the home has sold. And so there are several phases of the move out process. One of the biggest mistakes that homeowners make when they move is they think, oh, I'm going to move everything out. Then I'm going to hire a cleaning company to come in and just kind of tidy it up. That's not how it works. And that's going to be enormously expensive. And so if you'll do a little bit as you go, it will reduce the burden and it will reduce the stress and it will save you money when you finally have that big clean at the end. Because you will have been cleaning as you go. Okay. The next thing that's really cool is I listed all the cleaning supplies you're going to need because every room has a little bit different cleaning process. And then every room has its own risks. So for example, if I'm cleaning an oven, I might need a face mask where I may not need a face mask if I'm dusting or just tidying up a dining room. Right. But if I'm using heavy fumes and I'm trying to clean out the oven, it's going to require different personal protective equipment. All right. So in the very beginning, if you know what's on the checklist, then what you can do is you can say, what do I already have? Right. I don't want you to spend money and go out and buy a whole bunch of cleaning supplies because you're going to move. And so if you're not going to use them or you already have some of those, I don't want you to then be left with half a can of chemicals that you got to figure out what to do with. Why? Because a lot of moving companies, if you're moving out of state, for example, they do not move cleaning chemicals and they do not move paint. And so you got to leave those at your current location or you got to take them to the landfill. So I don't want you to buy stuff that you're not going to use. So let's take inventory of what you already have. Right. Oh, this is so much fun. I want to stop for just a minute and I want to say hey to everybody that joined us. I'm so glad you're here. Lynn says, hello. Hello, Lynn. How are you? Yarning for a smile says hello and happy Thursday. I'm hello and happy Thursday back to you. I'm so glad that you showed up and I'm so glad we got to spend this time together. She says, I'm looking to move from chemicals to more natural routine and we have cats and dogs inside. All the ones with essential oil scare me because of the pets thoughts. Yes, I want to get back to that in just a second, but there are a lot of eco-friendly, very neutralized type of cleaning chemicals on the market and they are pet friendly and they are not going to harm people, plants or pets. So I love that. And if I don't get back with specifics, I will leave those in the links below after this is over because I love that question and yes, I would love for you to not use toxic chemicals if you can help it. Lynn GMB says, I have a question that's important to me and I've asked before and no answer back from people. Can I ask you? Yes, you can. And I don't know if I have an answer either, but you're welcome to ask and we'll see how far we can go. Please, yes. Muppet929 has three smiles. I want to say thank you for your smiles. I appreciate that. Appreciate you joining me here. Yarning for a smile says moving is such a great time to really purge all things. Yes, it is. And I'm going to talk about that in just a second. Peggy says, keep coming in and out. Anyone else have technical issues? Yeah, I don't know. I think we're good on my end, but I don't know. It could be across the country. I know some of our buddies across the country right now are out of power, which is why our guests today canceled. So I hate that. What is the best motive to start cleaning? That's a great question. So mine was moving and moving because it all has to be done. And the sooner you start, the easier the process, but everybody has different motives. Some people get transferred for a job and that's why they do a move out clean. Some people decide they're going to downsize for no other reason than they want to go be near their grandkids or it's just too much house. For us specifically, the catch for us specifically and our motive was when I bought the house, I tricked my husband because we got like an acre of property and it was a beautiful piece of property. And I told him that I would do all of the landscaping and I would do all of the house cleaning and we could take the money that we would have spent outsourcing that and we could put that into the mortgage so we could get a bigger house with a bigger yard and wouldn't that be awesome? And at the time, I was 15 years younger and I kept to my promise. And so I did all the landscaping and all the house cleaning and all the things until the moment the pandemic hit. And then being a trainer for house cleaners and maids, I got slammed and my business just 10X to that year. I've never been busier in my life, literally working 16 to 20 hours a day with cleaning chemical companies that we're trying to produce products that would help sanitize cleaning and disinfecting and working with product manufacturers and working with cleaning business owners and working with homeowners and then a whole bunch of other associations and organizations like churches and schools and airlines wanting to know how do we sanitize and disinfect. And so my business just skyrocketed and I turned to my husband and I said, I lied. I wasn't prepared for this. And so although I've been doing the landscaping and the house cleaning until now, at this moment, I need to outsource it. I don't have the bandwidth to do it anymore. And I think that's one of the keys that we have to be aware of in the moving process is what can you do? And what do you need to outsource? And so my husband said, well, I'll take over the yard work. And I was like, yay, because he does a really great job and he loves doing it. But it became overwhelming. His two days a week, which he has off, he works at a car dealership. And the two days a week that he has off are absolutely swamped with yard work. And he's done an impeccable and amazing job. So I want to give him, you know, kudos for doing that, but it was a lot of work. So he says, this is just too much yard work. And in the fall, we have this beautiful forest behind our house. And there are a lot of leaves, like every day they come up to your knees. And you got to get out there with a blower and blown to the back of the property. And then you got to get a big truck and scoop them up and haul them away. It's just it's a lot of stuff. So when we decided to move, the key for us is to remember nobody is making us do this. We're doing this of our own choice. And so moving has been proven to be one of the most stressful things that people do. Right. And so if you are super stressed, is it because your job? Is it because there's an internal change? Is it because somebody died and left you a house? Or because somebody died and you got to move out of the house? Is it because a whole host of things? It might be that your kids moved away and now you're empty nested and you have too much house. I mean, there are reasons people move, but usually it's a super stressful time. And I want to back up to that moment for a minute, because when my husband said, yes, let's do this and he put a deposit down, that was a key to me. Okay, now he's serious. He's been talking about it for about four years, but now he's serious. All right. So in that serious moment, what can I do? So I love the fact that I had the book. The book came out in March of 2023. And so I pulled it out and I said, let's do this. And it walks you room by room of every single step. And I love it because it tells you exactly what to do when you get inside this room. Here's what I want you to do. And so if you do all these little things, it's really easy. So the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to make the process as easy on yourself as possible because there's already this other stress. And I didn't tell you this, but when you buy a new house, it's also very expensive. They want a big chunk of money upfront that says, hey, we're not going to build your new house until you show us that you're serious enough, you're going to give us a big chunk of money. So after you've paid all this money, suddenly you've parted with your money, and that means you can't use that money for anything else. And so if there's an emergency, if you have a family issue, if you have a medical emergency, you don't get to use that money for anything else. You just made a commitment and that can be stressful. So now you have money tied up and now you have the process of the home tied up and now you have to move and you're going to start your life kind of all over again with all the attachments we have to our home and our stuff and our landscaping and our comfort zone. So I'm going into this going, okay, everything's about to change brace for impact. And I think that's a really important lesson is brace for impact as you do this. So my husband put a deposit down, he says he's serious and he wants to move. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy for him. So how can I make this easy for him? So the first thing that I do is I say, okay, well, everything's got to go because we've got the now, the next and the never process already in motion. And so if you've been following me on the clutter corner show, I've been going through everything slowly behind the scenes so that he didn't know that I've already pulled out all of our small kitchen appliances. And we already got rid of those that we're not using. And those went to the never pile. I might never use these again, things like a panini maker and a waffle maker and things like that. I might never use them again. Let's get rid of those now. So I kind of got rid of a lot of that stuff. Last summer, and we've been talking about it. So one day it's going to happen. But there were things that we once used when I was doing the landscaping. And one of them was an aerating machine. And I drive around my acre of property and I did all the aeration and planting all the seeds so that the grass would come in and it would be lush and all these things. My husband's like, I'm not doing that. I'm going to hire somebody to do the aeration. So we had this aeration machine taking up all this space in our third car garage. So I said, are you ever going to use that again? And he said, probably not. That's the key. Is this a never item? And if the answer is yes, can I get rid of it now? So you want to get rid of the never items the minute that you realize it's a never item. So it makes it really easy for one day down the road when life is complicated and you might be in a rush to move. So I said, how about this? And how about this? And I'll share a secret with you. I did not ask him while he was in the garage. Do you remember the clutter corner where we take an item and we take it out of the space that it's in and we detach it from its emotional connections to we go in that space and it makes us feel a certain way and there's a smell in the air and we just we feel this nostalgia in this room. You take that item out of the space to somewhere else like a plain corner of your house on a plain table with nothing else on it. And all of a sudden you've cut off the emotional attachments. Now it's just this weird object in a box and you're like, I don't know, is it now next or never? And then you say, it's probably a never item. And I reversed my process. So as I was going through items in a box, instead of saying, what are the things that I don't want anymore? I said, what are the things that are now items? And I started picking out the now items saying, is there anything in there that's a next item or is it all never? Oh, good. It's all never. And I would pack up the box and either throw it away or send it to the Goodwill or the Salvation Army or the veterans outlet, any of those places, right? And so I started just only looking at the now items. Do I need this right now? Then I played a game with myself. And if you're moving, here's a fun game to play. What do I have in my house that I can use as a tote? And I'm not going to get any moving boxes. And I'm not going to use any packing boxes from Amazon. I'm only going to use the totes and the bins that are already in my house to move. Okay, now that's a challenge because that means I got to get rid of everything that doesn't fit in those containers, right? So I'm playing these weird games with myself. But what I did was this, because remember, I want to reduce the stress. So in order to reduce the stress, what I did was I started with the things we can't see. And this is key because we want to live in the space as long as we can and kind of get used to the idea that we're moving. But the new mantra, the new ideas that we keep playing in our head over and over again is we don't live here anymore. And we have to start emotionally and physically detaching from the home that we live in while we're preparing to move. So what happens is, and in the book, you will find this, what happens is you create a timeline. When do we want to be moved out of the house and for what reasons? Now, if you have children, you might say, well, we want to be out by the school, the school time before school starts. And I know a lot of people will move in the wintertime so that their kids can kind of adjust to the school system before the next school year starts. And then there are people that will wait until the school year ends. And then they want to move during the summer when everybody's out of school. And then they want to start over again at the new school year. So there are kind of two schools of thought. But we decided right now, because right now is not a good time to sell your home, but we decided right now there's not a lot of inventory on the market. And so we live in a great school zone. Now is going to probably be a really good time to sell because there's no competition. If I wait three more months, there are going to be seven to ten homes in my neighborhood that are going to be up for sale. And I don't think I want to compete with that. So I'll probably get a better chance of selling my house right now if I sell it right now. So there you go. I hope that answered the question as far as what is the motivation. I kind of went on a tangent there, but there you go. All right. So what I did was I picked a realtor and I said to the realtor, can you help me sell my home? And the realtor said, yes, I have a timeline of my own. Now I want to pay really close attention to the fact that I've been decluttering over the last year, but I don't sell houses very often. I haven't sold a home in 15 years. So during the process of selling my home, I went to an expert. And I say an expert because there are a lot of things that a realtor knows about my market, about selling homes my size, about my particular neighborhood, and about the timeline that you should be on if you're going to sell a home in a certain period of time. There are things that she knows that I don't know. She is the expert. And so what I have to do is I have to go to her and say, hey, will you help me sell my home and then trust her decision? So there were some things she said and I was like, uh-uh, no way, I'm not doing that. And I'm thinking that in my head and I'm like, stop, you asked for her help. So if you're delegating this to her, then get out of her way and let her put the timeline in motion. Because if you delegate this to her and then you're like, uh-uh, no way, I'm not doing that. All you're going to do is getting a fight with the realtor. So don't do that. I was like, okay, I got this. And my husband's like, uh-uh, no way, we're not doing that. So for my husband, you tell me, I'm running point on this, on this home sale. Okay, I'm running point. I will be the foreman of the job. I'm going to talk to the realtor. She and I will coordinate the things that need to be done. She will outsource some things to other people and I will let her manage the things that she's managing. So in my head, that's the process. And so when you talk about move and move out cleaning, it's not just about cleaning. Okay, what we want to do is we want to put together a system in place so that it's going to be easy and effortless for everybody involved. So my husband started getting a little bit fussy. And if you don't know my husband, he is not a fussy person at all. He's like the best decision I ever made in my whole life. He's a super cool guy. He's very stoic all of the time. Nothing ruffles his feathers. He's just easy peasy Patrick. Yay. And now he's like fussy and he's on edge and I'm like, whoa. So I'm like, don't let the realtor see the fuss. Okay, because I don't want her to get stressed out and I don't want her to lose confidence that we're going to be able to sell our home. I want her to go to bat for us and try to get as much money for the house and give us all the wisdom without her trying to play therapist to us because we've put ourselves in a stressful situation. Does that make sense? So I want to make sure that we're the best clients we possibly can be. All right, so what we did in the timeline is she said, for you guys I want you to go ahead and tidy up your house and I'm going to send a stager in. And the stager is going to go through your house and she's going to tell you all the furniture of yours that she doesn't like. We're like, whoa. And she said, don't be offended. She does this for a living. Okay. We're really attached to all of our stuff and we think it's really cool. And she's like, don't get attached to it, but I'll tell you this. If you've had it for 15 years, it's probably dated. And we're like, it's dated, but it's still cool. And she's like, get over it already. Okay. So the stager's coming in and then you have a couple of weeks to get all of your stuff out and then leave some of the stuff that you want to keep or that she wants to use. And she's going to bring in a whole bunch of new stuff and decorate your house. And we said, okay. And then she said, on this particular date, which is going to be like February 8th, an aerial photographer is going to come by and take photos of the outside of the property. So you got to have your yard all put together and make it look really nice and pretty and make sure the house is all up to speed so that it's, you know, and then the following day we'll do like a coming soon. And then we'll put it on the market as a coming soon when we'll start setting appointments. And then on the 12th of February, then the stager will come in and she'll put in the new rugs and the new furniture and all the things and make it look beautiful. And then on that weekend, we'll have the open houses and we'll sell your house. And I said, okay, that sounds good. So the stager came to the house and we worked really hard before the stager came. We went through a whole bunch of stuff. We got rid of a bunch of stuff. We moved a bunch of stuff to a storage unit. We were just, it looked amazing and we've never been more proud of our house. Now I want to share with you that in the process of moving, you've got the stress of uprooting your life. You have the stress of the finances of investing in a new home. You're unsure about the finances of you selling the home because what if somebody doesn't want to pay what you have to offer or what you're asking for your house? And then you also have the issue of how do we get everything out in a timely manner? Anyway, the house looked amazing. I was really proud of it. And then the stager lady came in and she's just like very poker face, not delighted to see what we had put together. She wasn't angry or anything. She's just like, okay, here's a list. All this stuff has to go. And I really honestly thought I was going to cry. I was like, oh my goodness, the house looks amazing. And she's like, nope, take down all the light fixtures. Those aren't going to work. Take this out, take that out, move this furniture, make this disappear and get rid of all those cool looking rugs. None of that works. And we're like, oh my goodness, that's our stuff. And I remember the realtor telling me, don't get offended, right? Because if I get offended and I'm still really emotionally attached to my stuff, what I'm doing is I'm creating a block on the process. And it's like a domino effect. And if I'm pulling dominoes out of that lineup, when something hits, it's just going to land. And the rest of the stuff doesn't happen. So in the process of moving, you have to get out of your own way. And it's one of the hardest things that people do. It's one of truly one of the most stressful things people go through. Now I want to back up this for just a second by saying, again, nobody's making us do this. We made ourselves do this. We're downsizing on purpose. My business is hugely busy right now. And if I have some free time, I would like to have just a moment to enjoy life instead of spending it maintaining an acre of property. And the new place that we're going, they promise to do with the HOA, they promise to do all the landscaping. And I said, yes, let's do that. So by putting a plan in place and then putting deadlines on each of those things, what it did is it allowed me to then start hiring people. And there are a couple of glitches that I want us to pay attention to, because if you're not aware, there are some things that can happen. And so I want to make sure that we are keenly aware that there are things that have to happen first. For example, the guy that washes the carpets that does the carpet cleaning, he said, make sure all of the sparkling and painting is done before I get there. And we said, okay, so we did. Then when he came in, he did the washing of the carpets. What happened was all of the baseboards that we have, and I didn't know this, but it wasn't real wood. It was like a compressed or a prefab wood. And so the steam from his steamer, this is a professional steamer. When it hit some of those baseboards, it warped them. And then coming in, it's like, wait a second, I can't sell a house with these warped baseboards. This is awful. We've got to replace these now. So now I had more sparkling and more painting and more people I had to call in. There was a roofing guy that came and did some pressure washing for us. And I think I have a picture here of him doing the pressure washing. So he brought this big ladder and he came with all the equipment and he started spraying the outside of our home. And here's the carpet cleaning guy. But what happened was when he started doing the pressure washing of the house and he was doing the roof, some of the stuff leaked off and onto the windows that had just been cleaned. So I had to have the windows rewashed. So there's, there are a lot of little tiny things that if you don't know the process and you don't, you don't pay attention to what are the next steps, you're going to end up doing a couple of things like us. And some of the things that I didn't even know were going to happen. Like I totally didn't know. And it was my fault. I didn't know that the baseboards weren't real wood. How would you know that you knock on them? They sound like wood. They look like wood. They're not real wood. They're like compressed wood. And so then we had several places in the house that had to have the baseboards replaced. So there are things like that that if you don't know, and this is a mistake that homeowners get into, they don't save enough time in the process to do that. So you don't want to put your home up for sale and beyond someone else's deadline with a realtor, a stager or whatever, then suddenly you realize, wait a second, we've got to replace all the baseboards. And the handymen that are coming to do that can't come in for another two weeks. So in the process of moving, what we want to do is we want to do segment by segment so that we know exactly what we're doing. And if there is a glitch, you have time to fix it. Okay, so what we did is we started inside our kitchen. And we've got a whole bunch of cupboards. And what I did is I went through this stuff we can't see yet. So my husband doesn't go in and open up all the cupboards every day. But he has four or five cupboards that he gets stuff out of regularly. I left those things in those four or five cupboards. And I moved everything out of all the other cupboards. Is this an item I use now? Is this an item I'm going to use in my next house? Or is this an item I'm never going to use again? And I have some spice racks that we're like, I don't know, 30 years old, I just keep replacing the spices, but the racks are kind of old. I'm like, I'm never going to use this again at my new house. I'm going to get new spice racks. So I got rid of it. There are a couple of things like old wooden spoons and stuff that I've had forever. Okay, I'm going to get some that are designer that like totally match at my new place. I'm going to get rid of those. And I'm not going to cook anything between now and the time we move in the next two or three weeks. So let me get rid of all that stuff. So I started packing up stuff. This is a next house. I'm going to pack up all my pots and pans. I'm going to pack up all my crock pots. I'm going to pack up everything. And I got a storage unit that's about three miles from my house. And right around the corner from the storage unit is a goodwill drop off. And so I would go to the storage unit. And before I took stuff inside the storage unit, I would look at it one more time and I would say, are you sure this is a now a next or a never item? And there are times that I got to the storage item thinking it was a next item. I said, you know what, I think that's a never item. Leave that in the car and take that to the goodwill on your way home. And so lots of the stuff that I thought was going to be a next house item. When I got to the storage unit, I was like, I actually think I'm done with this. And then I got rid of it. Okay, so what's interesting is it's been a couple of weeks since I started taking stuff to the storage unit. And I'm over there every day, because I'm taking more stuff over there every day as I'm finishing cleaning up the house. There are a few things like four things that I goofed. And I was like, actually, that's a now thing. Like I really should have still left that at the house. Well, no harm no foul, I can bring it back. And so I just put it back in the car and I bring it back. And, you know, no one was the wiser. But for the most part, most of the stuff, we haven't missed at all. And there's this moment where you're like, there was something there in that space. What was there? And it's kind of funny because I asked my husband, what was there? He's like, I don't know, something was there. We've become house blind to a lot of our stuff. Not only did we not use it, but now that the space is vacant, he can't tell you to save his life. What was in that space? He knows something was there, but he doesn't know what it is. Did we need it? Probably not. Right. So there's a lot of stuff in our homes that maybe, maybe we don't need. So as we're going through everything, I've taken all the items that we're not using. And I have been very, very keen on, let me get rid of this right now. So if I can sell it, I've put an ad on nextdoor, nextdoor.com. And I've taken a picture of it. And I've said, here's my item, here's the price, and here's why I'm selling it. And there are a lot of items I've given away for free. And I tell you about the garage situation where when I took my husband away from the garage, we were out walking one day, and I said, can I get rid of some of the stuff that's in the garage? And he said yes. It was like the clutter corner, but for the garage, I took him away from the garage where he wasn't looking at the things, but he knew what they were. Are you going to use them? And he's like, I think that's a never item. And I said, can I get rid of it? And he said, sure. As soon as he got in the car to go to work and he rounded the corner, I opened the garage doors and I moved everything out into the driveway. And I got on nextdoor.com and I took a picture of everything. I said, I'm having a free yard sale today. Everything is free. Come get it. And I kid you not, within about two hours, everything in my driveway was gone. I pulled out all kinds of stuff that I was using when I was doing the landscaping. But I knew that it was not a next item. And for me, it was never. And now that my husband said it was a never item, I was able to get rid of it. So slowly we've been decluttering. And now here's like the big push. So I went through all the cupboards first, then I went through all the closets, then I went through all of the underneath the bathroom cupboards, and I went through all of the drawers in the house. So everything that you couldn't readily see. Then I started pulling out pieces of furniture and just moving it to the middle of the room. Now, the reason I did that is because when you see something like a sofa, and it's now not in its sofa place, and it's moved across the room and it's turned sideways, it gives you this feeling of, oh, no, something is shifting. But you haven't said goodbye to it yet. So it's kind of like, do you remember the newscasters? When the newscasters will stand there in a storm and the wind is blowing and, you know, a tree is going to fall on their head at any moment. And you're like, why are you out in that weather? And they're like, hey, a hurricane is coming, brace for impact. And you're like, okay, what do I do? There's this moment of unrest where you know that something's going to happen and you have to make a move. The move is going to be you putting sandbags around the side of your house so that your house doesn't flood, or maybe you have to barricade your windows with boards or something like that so that the hurricane doesn't bust the windows of your home. There's something you have to do. And there's this moment of, oh, no, what are we going to do? But it's not totally like, you don't go from nice weather to, bam, your house just got hit with a hurricane. There's a little bit of moment of warning in between. And our bodies kick into that fight or flight mode, kind of like, I'm supposed to do something. Do I drop? Do I run? Do I freeze? What do I do? And so by moving all of your furniture to kind of like the middle of the room, it puts us in that state of, oh, no, something's about to happen. It didn't actually happen yet. Something's about to happen. So we quietly removed everything we couldn't see from all of the drawers and the closets and the cupboards. And now we're moving the furniture to a place where we normally don't see it. And so now the levels of stress start rising. Okay, so this is kind of a calculated stress if you will. And again, my husband starts getting very fussy, like, oh, things are different. They are different. And that's okay. And my job as the foreman of the job is to make sure that we're on time as far as the plan that we created with the realtor and the stager and the measuring guy and the aerial photography guy and all of the different contractors that have come to work on the property. Now the stager said, I don't like your lighting. So we had to have an electrician come in and rewire the lighting and do some new lighting for us. And so we had to have that outside of the house pressure washed and we had to have the roof washed. And we had some landscaping stuff that had to be done. We had to have pallets of mulch like four great big pallets of mulch delivered for our property. And we had to have somebody pressure wash the all the different things, right carpet cleaning. And we had to have somebody come do painting and caulking and repair and stuff on the outside of the house and just lots and lots of contractors that have been at the house. And so for every time that somebody comes, that's more money. That's a scheduling issue that you have to navigate. And remember, I'm still working. Like right now I'm having this conversation with you. And right now there are two repairmen outside my house. And we're inside my studio right now. There's a little sign on the door that says on air, which means you got to be quiet because Angela's recording right now. So there's a lot of weird negotiations and navigation stuff that has to happen in order for you to be able to pull off a move. And so my husband wants to get in the thicket of it. And I'm like, don't try to micromanage any of the landscapers or any of the repair guys because I'm in charge of that project, right? And having been a business owner, there are a couple of things that I know about running a business. And so when I hire somebody, this would be akin to me being the house cleaner and going to someone else's house. There's no time for chitty chat. If I'm chitty chatting with them, they're not getting their work done. And I'm paying them to do a job. So I need to make sure the expectations are clear. I need to make sure they understand what the finished job looks like. I need them to understand if I'm in charge or if my husband's in charge of a job, which means if I'm running point on a job and my husband drives up, which he did the other day, and he started giving different directives to the guy that was outside painting, the guy that was outside painting says, Hey, wait a second, who's my boss? And I said, I'm authorizing him to give you new directives, but I will pay you. Okay. So if he makes a change and you agree to it, that's okay. I'm going to say that's okay. And I will pay you for the changes. And so let's just agree right now that he can give you some, you know, suggestions or ideas or whatever, because there are things that he knows need to be done that maybe I don't know about. And the guy said, sure, that's fine. Okay, great. As long as we're all on the same page. And then I went to my husband and I said, don't do that again. Don't go around me and start unraveling or giving new directives to somebody. If I've already hired them for a job, and I've already set the expectations. Okay, that's where it gets extra stressful is like there are too many chefs in the kitchen, there are too many people running point on the job, and the poor repair guy, like what the heck, who's in charge here? Right. So if there's a plan, and if everybody's on the same page, it's going to reduce the stress. And the cleaning process is as you go clean as you go. And as you're tidying up and as you're repairing stuff, you're going to not only see what needs to be repaired, but you're also going to be able to clean it in a deep cleaning sort of way. So as we cleaned out all of the cupboards, for example, I got out all my cleaning supplies, I've got these bare naked bear cupboards. So I cleaned out all the insides of them, then I cleaned out all the outsides of them. And guess what? I don't have to go back now in a deep clean and do all the cupboards again. So as we're approaching deadlines, hey, the cupboards are done. Yay. And so what I did is I created a checklist. And the checklist is inside the book. There's a checklist for every single room of the book. And it tells you exactly how to do every single job. And the book is the ultimate guide to move in, move out cleaning. But what's really cool about the book is this. You can, and we did do this, you can take the items on the checklist inside the book. And you can add them to a Google Keep file. And if you don't know about Google Keep, let me tell you really quickly. Those of you that have access to Google, and I think now everybody does on every platform, if you go to Google up in the top right hand corner, there is a little keypad with nine dots. If you click on that keypad, a little window opens up in their whole bunch of Google apps, and they're absolutely free. There's a little yellow icon that has a little light bulb on it. And that is Google Keep. And if you haven't participated with Google Keep, when we're done here, go over to YouTube and watch a video on how Google Keep works. But basically it's a checklist. And you can add someone else to your checklist by adding their email at the bottom. So for me, I created a moving checklist that was going to be everything that needed to be done on my house for sale. And so, then I added my husband at the bottom, and then I added the realtor, and then I added the stager. And then if there was an area where I needed a particular, let's say, a contractor to work on something, I could add him and say, this is your part of it. And you have like a little area where you can just say, okay, this is going to be for the roofing guy. And these are the supplies that we need. And as he does the job, he can check it off, and it goes to the bottom of the list, which is so awesome for this reason. I don't have to micromanage anybody. I can be doing my work, and I can look at my phone or my computer or a tablet. You get Google anywhere you get Google, right? And so you look at it, and you're like, ah, the repair guy is, oh, he's in the process of doing this particular thing right now. He's doing the caulking part of the roofing area. Okay, great. Now, you know exactly where he is on the job. So there's no my husband texting me saying, hey, did the roofing guy show up? Or no, none of that stuff. And so everybody's on the same page, and when somebody's done with the project, we sign them off, and we remove them from the keep file. So they're no longer part of the keep file that is done. And it's just at the bottom of the list, it's a running tally of everything. What's really cool about the Google keep file is you can also do before and after pictures. So if there's an issue, like one of the guys got up on a ladder and he's up near the roof, and he found like a little hole where a woodpecker pecked a hole. So he needed to fix that. And so instead of texting me and me texting my husband and back and forth, he adds a picture of it to the Google keep file. And then boom, it pops up on both of us have access to that, right? And so then both of us can go, oh, look, there's this hole where a woodpecker pecked a little hole at the top of the roof. And so now we can see exactly that process. So I love the process of having everybody on the same page. But when you're working off of checklists, you can plan as you go, so that you're not overwhelming yourself. And so that you're not getting caught up in the stress and the fussiness that comes naturally from this process. Now I will tell you, there are a couple of things, and this is not in the book. Okay, this is not in the book. This is not in the business end of moving. This is not something the realtor will tell you. But I want to share this with you from me to you, okay? Because I care about you as a business owner. I care about you as a homeowner. And I really want to make sure that you're taking care of your home is a good experience for you. So I'm going to tell you this. In the process of moving, there's this element of when I get the house ready for the market, then I will be happy. And there's an element of when I get in the new house, then I will be happy. And there's an element of when I get new furniture or when I sell this old furniture or any of those things, then I will be happy. The happiness is in the process. And so today, instead of me being angry, and I was really angry this morning when I got up this morning, my first thought was, I'm just going to keep my distance, because the fossiness is really getting to me. And we've reached overwhelm on the project. And my thought was, instead of being overwhelmed and trying to run away from this, this is a chance for me to lean into it. I'm not the only one that's frustrated here. I'm not the only one that has that rug ripped out from underneath us, if you will. I'm not the only one that's experiencing change here. And so if I can be understanding, and I can be compassionate, and we can make jokes, and we can have fun in the process of moving, and we can do projects together, because right now I've been having us do projects outside, paths outside, I'm inside so that the foss levels are balanced out, and we're not all over each other. But I say to myself, if we can create some memories, and we can have some fun in the process of doing this, it's the process that we will look back on. We will remember, yes, the stress, but we will remember laughing and having fun as we do it. I will remember the mornings that we got up and we're racing the rain to hurry and unload the car and the storage unit so that all of our stuff doesn't get wet. Those are the memories that we're creating right now. And in order for me to be my best version of myself in this move, because right now there's a lot of people that are depending on my attitude. And it's all of my contractors. It's everybody that's coming to my house. It's my realtor. It's the stager. We still have a lot of people that are in the process of making the sale of our house happen. And if I'm to do that, I have to be the best version of myself. And so even though I might be a little tired or maybe my back hurts because I've been up on a ladder or some of those things, what's important to me is number one that I eat right and that I sleep right and that I still exercise every day. Because if I'm prioritizing my health and my attitude, when I go through this process of decluttering and cleaning out my house and doing the deep clean and doing the move out clean and making sure that, oh no, look, something just malfunctioned. And now we have extra repairs that we weren't planning on. I'm going to respond in a different sort of way than when somebody fusses at me and I fuss back. And if there's a contractor that's like, oh, I'm not able to get those supplies and it's going to be two weeks after your house goes on the market that I can get you those windows, replacement windows or whatever. Instead of me getting angry and upset, what it's going to do is it's going to allow me to be the best version of myself in the negotiation of whatever that is. So the move in move out cleaning, it is one of the hardest jobs that I think is possible. And as a house cleaner, when we have been hired over the years to do a move in move out clean, it's also one of the most frustrating cleans we've ever done. And I'm not a fan of it for this reason. When you're a professional house cleaner and you're hired to go in and do a move in move out clean with a job, I'm just going to call it a job, you have to be very clear. Are you talking to the homeowner? Are they paying you to do the job? Is it the seller? Is it the buyer that's buying the home that's having you do the clean? Is it the buyer's realtor that's paying for it? Or is it the seller's realtor that's paying for it? So they're like four possible bosses that you can have. And nobody wants to pay thousands of dollars for a move in move out clean. Everybody's trying to save the most amount of money, and it's a really stressful time for everyone. And they usually wait until the last minute, then they'll call a cleaning company and they say, hey, we're selling a house, can you come in? All this angst and all this stress that's been built up for this process gets thrown at the house cleaner. And the house cleaners like, sure, let me come in and try to make it work. Then they come in at the last minute. And if you have a homeowner that is not navigating their emotions, what happens is you get caught up in the thicket of that. And you come in and what's supposed to take like an eight hour job takes 24 hours to do because the family that's moving out wasn't fully moved out. And they didn't clean as they went. So everything's been left until the furniture's been moved. And then you see big things on the baseboards and the walls and it can't just be washed up. It's got to be repainted or spackled or whatever. And so it doesn't look that great even when the house cleaner is done. And sometimes the house cleaner gets there and there's no power or there's no water running. I mean, all kind of stuff, right? And so that can also be really stressful for a house cleaner. And so if you are the best version of yourself and you're navigating all of these things, whether you're dealing with a cleaning company, whether you're dealing with a contractor, whether you're dealing with a spouse, or whether you're dealing with your own emotions, you're going to be in a much better place to make the process go smoothly. But there has to be a plan and there has to be a schedule and you have to know what you need and you have to know what to do. And then you have to be able to budget it in to everything that comes next. For example, if our aerial photography guy is coming on February 8th and I have three or four projects that are huge that have to be done, the job then goes to the outside project first because what happens on the inside is not going to be the top priority. I've got three more days to do the inside project once the aerial photography has been done, right? So you got to start budgeting it in terms of what must be done next. So it's a really interesting process, move in, move out cleaning. And I don't really wish it on anybody, but it's a really, really big part of the moving process. And it's a really big part of every real estate deal. And so no real estate is purchased or sold unless there's some kind of a clean. And if it's a new construction, you have new construction cleaning. And so that comes with a whole new set of personal protective equipment. It comes with a whole new set of cleaning, not PPE but cleaning equipment, like you might need on, what do you call it, a post construction clean, you're going to need like a wet dry vac, which maybe you don't on a move and move out clean. But when you're talking about new dust that has settled, sanding, repairs, stuff like that, you need a wet dry vac. So there are a couple of things on a move and move out clean, you're going to need like a doka pole where it goes up two stories and you're able to get cobwebs and you're able to get all kinds of window cleaning that's up on a two story. There might be a ledge up there that you might have lights that you have to replace, there's a whole series of things that can be done. And so if you know what the supplies are and you know what your personal protective equipment is, you can make sure that you are, as the house cleaner, you're in alignment with that. And I'm going to give you a secret, if you are a professional company that has been hired to come in on the move and move out clean, I'm going to recommend that you bring a couple of things with you that are not part of the job. And those are empty boxes because I can't tell you how many jobs I've gone on, where I get to the customer's house and they're supposed to be all moved out and they're not. So you get there and they ran out of boxes and there are things like socks and toys and dishes and just weird random stuff that was hiding under sofas or beds or behind, you know, cushions of couches or whatever. The furniture got moved and there was all these weird little pieces of things. If you bring boxes, you can pack that up and give it back to the homeowner or ask them if they want it tossed. Another thing that I bring with me on every move out clean is a roll of garbage bags because inevitably there will always be some hidden garbage, things that was meant to be taken or tossed and it wasn't. And then another thing that I bring is packing tape because if you have boxes that you're packing last minute stuff up in and there are usually, I don't know why, there are usually rooms and I've got a couple pictures here, but there are usually rooms where, let me see if I can make that big, you'll walk in and there will be something like this and the whole room is vacant, the whole room is moved out but there are light bulbs and light fixture things and you're like, oh my goodness, what is happening here? Why didn't they take this? Well, there are no more boxes so then you got to pack them up and so there are rooms like you're going for a move out clean and there will be something like this and you're like, whoa, look, there's a whole piece of furniture here. Who's going to get that? And there are a couple of plants. You're like, this is crazy, everything's supposed to be gone. Why is the stuff still here? And you can't do your move and move out clean until it's gone. And so one of the things that's really important is to find out from the homeowner what is supposed to happen to the remnants of the stuff that's there. And so I always bring a magic marker with me as well so that if I pack stuff up, I can label it and say these are lamp shades from the dining room, for example. And that way the homeowner can get them and if they want to resell them or if they want to put them in storage or whatever and you can stack those either in the garage or on, if there's like a staging area in this particular house, it would be like near the front door. So there are different things that you can do and if you have a standard operating procedure of how you handle that situation, then you make it less stress for the homeowner. And then also if you, as a professional cleaning company, if you have a Google Keep file that you've kept your homeowner in the loop, you can tell exactly what it is. You can take a picture of the before and after pictures, you can take a picture of all of those lamp shades, for example. You can take a picture of if you are there and like the carpet cleaning guy comes while you're there and this happens a lot. You'll get a carpet cleaning guy while you're there, you'll get window washing guys while you're there. Sometimes there'll be pressure washer guys that are pressure washing the patio and usually a lot of contractors are there at the same time doing their jobs while you're trying to do your job. And that can be kind of difficult if they're coming and going from the house and they're dirtying stuff that you've already cleaned. And that has happened on a lot of occasions. So just navigating that is a challenge, but you can manage it if you are aware that it can happen. So anyway, I just wanted to jump in today and I wanted to share some of this with you, but you know kind of what's going on on our end and some of the things that I've learned and the reasons that I wrote the book and there are reasons that I'm following it step by step. And I've actually learned a couple of things that I didn't see coming like the baseboard thing and like the guy that cleaned the roof and then it leaked all over the clean windows. And it wasn't something that was supposed to happen. And we called the company and they're like, yeah, this never happened to us before. Like, okay, well it's an issue now, we got to resolve it now, right? So every situation can have some unknown things. And if you give yourself enough time when it happens, you still have time to recover. I had a repair guy that was up doing something right above the roof. I tell you there's a little woodpecker that woodpecked some stuff. He dropped some paint and it hit the front door, but we didn't see it until after it was after he got off the ladder and the front door had to be repainted. But that's okay, we had plenty of time because we had budgeted the time based on the schedule. So there are things like that that happen and then you make it work, right? But if you're taking care of yourself and you're your best version of yourself, when the chaos hits, you can create happy memories instead of just stress and like, oh my goodness, this is crazy, right? Because in the end, nobody's making us move, we're just doing it because we're downsizing and this is a good time for us to do that. So move in, move out, cleaning. I'm curious to know what your tips are. I'm curious to know what your questions are and I'm going to jump into the comments below as soon as we're done here and I'm going to answer as many of the questions as I can. I just want to say hello to everybody again. Thank you for joining me. Peggy says sometimes there's a lag caused by above starting the software of the YouTube app. Refresh and reloading usually always cleans, clean, visual and audible issues. So thank you for that. I appreciate that and I did not know that was the solution. And I've got, France says, hi from Arizona. Deb says, don't forget that it's okay to ask for help. Yes, Deb, thank you so much. And I want to give a shout out to Deb because Deb is one of those people I have asked for help. And I know Deb from the YMCA, where in the morning when I go to work out, she is a bright light in my day that has just brought lots of cheer and happiness to my day during a time that is very stressful. So again, take care of yourself and ask for help if you need it because we all need help, don't we? Alrighty, that's it for today. I really appreciate you guys tuning in. I want to say thanks again for all of the contractors that have helped me on my project. And I want to say thanks to all of you that have tuned in. And I will see you guys at the same time, same place next week on the clutter corner. Take care and have a great week. Bye-bye.