Creative Ideas to Add Storage | With Brittany B. Moore

Brittany Moore of B. Moore Organized joins the show.  We discuss thinking creatively to add more storage to your living space, the benefits of customizing your storage and to avoid the trap of getting organized only to accumulate more things. 

 

Troy: Welcome back to Real Estate Insights with Troy Schlicker. Today I am joined by Brittany Moore of B. Moore Organized. How's it going today, Brittany?

Brittany: Good. Thank you. It's good to be back.

Troy: Yeah, it's been a hard to believe that it's already the end of the first quarter. We're recording this March 31st. Obviously it'll come out a little bit later here, but 2023 is already flying by.

Brittany: It is, I feel like we're, I had a client the day already ask us about booking appointment for Christmas setup and I'm like, are we there yet? Or we're already there. But I think just Easter coming up and people already starting to think about traveling and holidays and then that's makes you think about back to school and then you're already thinking about Christmas and everything.

So yeah, the days really are long, but the years really are short.

Troy: Yeah. And it depends on different, on certain things, like especially Christmas organization I'm sure is a peak time of year that you guys get a lot of calls and a lot of inquiries. So that type, that time of year fills up and people want it at a very specific time. It's not oh, a week after Christmas no big deal.

No family's coming for Christmas, so we need this done by Christmas. And when you have. Hard deadlines like that. Setting something up as early as possible can be a good thing.

Brittany: No, and it's limited, right? Our appointments for those things are limited. There's only So many days in November and December, a lot of our clients even are like day after Thanksgiving or like some, I have, we have two clients that love their Christmas decorations to be up before Thanksgiving.

It just makes them feel more calm, that now they're set for the next two months. It's like a great, I don't have to do anything and the house just feels warm and cozy a bit longer. And then, We have clients who want their Christmas decor taken down before New Year's, cuz they have a big annual New Year's party.

Or we have clients who are like, no, I want it up as long as possible. Can you come the last week in January and what kind of tree do you have? That thing's gotta be like catching on fire soon.

Troy: Yeah, that was, yeah, no, that was one of the things I was always, I've still never really understood, like we wanna have we'll have Christmas music, like the day after Halloween nowadays, or even by Halloween. It's that's way too early for my, my, my book. But then the day after Christmas, no, it's got, we gotta turn the page and it's like, why not enjoy?

Can we enjoy Christmas, around Christmas for a week beforehand and afterwards, like that was at that, that at heart. But everyone has their

Brittany: No.

Troy: Preferences.

Brittany: The music is a hard one. We have a rule cuz we play a lot of music when we're on site at clients and we have a rule that we will not start playing Christmas music until after Thanksgiving just because we end up wanting to play it all the time. And then you really do get sick of it so

Troy: 1000%. Oh my gosh. There's I. I've

Brittany: a love that quickly

Troy: I've had radio stations that I'll not listen to all year round because they start playing Christmas music too early. And I'm like, nowadays you don't have to listen to radio stations cuz everything's, Pandora and Spotify and all that kind of stuff.

But I'm like, no, if you're starting to play Christmas music that early in the year, you're, I'm boycotting you for the entire year. That's just not how that's gonna work. So

Brittany: And it's just it's general stores too. Like you walk into, it feels target or anywhere. And it's not just Christmas music. It's like Christmas decorations and like signage for buy your loved one gifts or something. Like they do,

Troy: Yeah, that I like. No, again, I don't like that, but it, that's a little bit more, in my opinion, probably psychological as far as trying to get people to spend money. Oh, it's time to start buying gifts and stuff. And so I still don't like it, but I get it at that level a little bit more.

That's just part of their marketing strategy is to be like, Hey, it's Christmas time. It's time to start thinking about buying a gift. Please don't leave our store without buying something. So I can at least respect that one a little bit, but I, I like hope. I hopefully try to have Christmas joy most of the year, but I don't need to listen to Christmas carols to have that joy so I can wait till after Thanksgiving.

Brittany: I think it ties into the idea that like, not only then I don't know, are you just like buying gift? One, I get all my Christmas shopping done like by November for sure. I'm like, I'm not dealing with stuff, being outta stock or. I don't know, just not being able to find something or the stores get busier, everything gets busier, shipping delays, all the things.

So I'm very organized with I have my Christmas list every, year saved on my phone. And I'm just a very, like I'm, my love language is totally acts as like service and gifts. So I like note little things throughout the year in my notes on my phone through like for those people oh, they said that, or, Ooh, I think my mom needs a new perfume, or whatever it is.

So then I already have my. Shopping list almost built. So it's really easy for me to go online and just click, buy. But it is interesting. So with, I think with decor, and I think Target does unfortunately just a really good job at this, especially in their dollar section, but people buy.

So much holiday decor. We see it. We primarily do set up and take down for Christmas, but obviously we do holidays set up and take down for other holidays as well as clients wish. But the amount of. Holiday decor that our clients typically build year over year is just so extensive. And the hard thing about holiday decor is a lot of times clients feel such a sentimental attachment.

Oh, this was the. Baby's first Christmas, or my grandma gave me this, or I got this from a friend as a hostess gift from a holiday party I hosted five years ago. Or I don't know. Or the crafts. The crafts are the worst. The crafts that the kids make or the crafts that your grandma makes you that you're like, I hate it.

It's so ugly. I don't wanna put it up in my house, but I like can't get rid of it. So the accumulation of holiday decor is insane, I think. We read a statistic that like 1.9 billion is spent on Easter decorations or was spent on Easter decorations in 2021. Like we spend a lot of money. That's Easter.

I don't, I'm curious what we spend on Christmas.

Troy: Oh, it's gotta be easily five to 10 times that, if not potentially more.

Brittany: no, there's so much more emotion in attached to Christmas and then even wrapping in Hanukkah.

Troy: Like you, you do it for at least a month for most people, and for some people even more. Where for Easter, it's oh yeah, it's Easter in a week. Okay, maybe two weeks for people with Easter. But it's not, doesn't compare as far as the timeframe of people being invested into it, like Christmases.

Brittany: And I think like you used to see, like it used to be more common for you just to have one tree in your house and now it's so much more common for people to have a main tree or some of our clients who have really large homes, they have multiple trees in different like living spaces. And then there's like a mini tree.

In the playroom, there might be mini trees in like the kids' rooms. And so just the decor becomes a lot to manage. And I think like anything that we talk about in terms of quantity of items, whether you're talking about a closet and you're talking about shoes or you're talking about kitchen and you're talking about appliances when any category in your home starts to just build up, it really starts to cause you a.

A great deal of stress and anxiety, and if you don't have systems in place for managing those items, not only are you probably buying duplicate items and thus wasting money, but you're gonna have so many things year over year that you don't even use that are just totally taking up space in your home.

So having good storage in your home is really important, and I don't think you can ever have too much of it.

Troy: You definitely cannot. It's one of the primary things that I'll talk to homeowners when they're looking at a home is check out what the pantry looks like, what the garage looks like. A lot of people because I get to help a lot of times, I'd say younger people that are moving to Austin for new jobs.

That way. And if they're moving from California or New York, they're moving to a much bigger space. And so it feels oh, I've got all this space, but I'm like, you still wanna be cognizant of what the actual storage space is like versus just the total space because you're gonna fill it with more things.

Say if you suddenly decide that you want two Christmas trees, that those two Christmas trees, if they're fake or just the decorations that go on the Christmas trees, have to sit somewhere for. 10 months, 11 months outta the year when you're not using them. And yeah, that's not, the decorations aren't the primary thing that I focus on that way, but just the stuff that we accumulate in life, are you gonna have enough storage for all that?

And is it gonna be Something that you're gonna be able to keep up with because you're going to accumulate it? We don't do a good job of not, we're obviously, we spend 2 billion on Easter gifts. We obviously do not do a good job of our spending in general. Yeah. Just decor

Brittany: aor, not even Easter Baskets

Troy: But, and so if you're spending that on just that very specific thing, you're obviously we spend a ton of money on all kinds of other things as well too. And so are you gonna be able to manage that all? And the more, I've never ever had a client after they've been in a home for a year be like, you know what, Troy, I think we just, we got a space with too much storage.

It's just, we don't have, we have way too much storage. That has never happened in all my years of real

Brittany: So I, we've obviously worked with all walks of life clients all sizes of homes, all of it, and. We've had to work with some really challenging spaces that had no attic space or my, I dunno about you, but my biggest pet peeve with builders like, don't ever build a garage like this is when you build a garage, single car or double car.

And there's no space on the sides. Like you can just barely fit a car or two cars in it. There's no room for like garage racks or anything on the sides of the garage. And then it's even worse when it's a low ceiling. So I can't even do ceiling mounted racks. And so I'm like, so there's no garage storage, there's no attic.

There's typically very small. Closets or, just like a small hall closet. I'm like, where am I gonna store this stuff? And in some cases we've ended up. Like building some kind of like custom storage unit on the side of the house or buying something for that. But I can only imagine in your industry that's gotta hit hard for resale value if you don't have storage space that's well thought out or built out in your home.

If I was walking into a home and looking at a home and I'm like, where am I gonna put my stuff? I wouldn't wanna buy it.

Troy: It? So with homes they tend to be, because the way developments work is that, homes, subdivisions and neighborhoods tend to get developed at the same point in time. So usually if one home doesn't have that, Option doesn't have great storage. A lot of the other homes in that neighborhood don't, because they were built in the 1970s where that wasn't a big thing, wasn't to have a bunch

Brittany: didn't accumulate so

Troy: space in the garage.

Yeah. Cause you didn't accumulate near as many things. Or nowadays I say, so nowadays, newer homes, that is a more cognizant thing that builders do. But on the flip side, because in newer developments they're trying to maximize every. Every home they can build. A lot of times the lots are pretty small and so then that sometimes does limit a little bit of the garage space, like you're talking about that side side to side of the garage, there's usually a little bit of space maybe up above and it's not as tight, but yeah, if you go into neighborhoods like Allendale or Northwest Hills even the older homes in Tarrytown, again, obviously a lot of those homes have been torn down and they're building huge homes there, which have plenty of storage, but a lot of those homes, because of how old they were, just, it wasn't a thing to be like, oh, I've gotta fit two cars.

Cuz back, back in the seventies, not a lot of people even had two cars in their home. But now I've gotta fit two cars and a bunch of extra storage. That wasn't something that was even on their radar at that point in time. But now that it is for someone moving into that neighborhood, it's something you have to consider.

Like, how am I gonna deal with the storage aspect?

Brittany: Yeah. No, definitely. And honestly, I, that's probably one of my favorite parts is it's a challenging part, but it's a fun challenge of walking into a space that either. Doesn't have good storage and really trying to think about how are we gonna maximize this clients, just to use even a pantry as an example.

Clients are always really good about filling up their horizontal space and so I, I train my team that when we walk into any space, a fridge, a pantry, a closet, garage, just any space, Don't look at the environment for what it is. Don't solely limit yourself to using the environment as what is presented in front of you.

Change it, customize it, rip out a shelf, add to new shelves like. You can do anything with the environment in front of you that you want to, and a lot of times for even low cost one of my biggest pet peeves and best ways of finding storage, and you can typically do this in any closet, is builders always build two, two pain points.

The shelf that is above your rod in standard closets, one, they build the trim on that shelf. Usually like a certain depth, maybe a 14 inch or 16 inch depth. But then they almost always give you an 11 inch shelf. Why? Why give me the 14 or six inch or 16 inch shelf like so I do that a ton. I will have one of my handyman come in, rip that 11 inch shelf out and throw in a brand new 1416 inch shelf and paint it white and it looks totally.

It doesn't look like an afterthought. It looks like it was built as a part of the home, but that can allow me to put bigger and larger bins on those shelves to again, just maximize the storage. And then second pain point. And this is just standard. I've never seen a builder do this. Every single home that I walk into, not only the short shelf, but also there's three to six feet above that shelf to the ceiling where I'm like, there's just a big empty wall up there.

I could do all kinds of stuff with that. I'll add a new custom pull down rod so that the client has more hanging space. I'll add a 20 inch shelf or two of 'em up there so that we can fit again, yeah, storage, whether it's like off season ski clothes or maybe again, you don't have any garage space or attic space, so I'm gonna use.

I'm gonna have to use that for your seasonal decor or your memorabilia, but it's always looking at spaces and environments and like, how can we maximize this and not just utilize what we have in front of us? And I think a lot of times people just naturally get stuck into okay, this is what I have, this is what I have to work with.

And honestly, one of the biggest examples is fridges. Very few clients. Ever change their fridge shelving, which is all adjustable, or just take out a shelf. Like I'll walk into client's homes and they'll have like their orange juice bottle like laying down sideways on a shelf. They're like there's just no tall space in our fridge.

And I'm like, and I'm just gonna pull the shelf out. So it's training our eye that like, you can do anything with this space, how to maximize it.

Troy: Yeah.

Brittany: And that's just so important that.

Troy: No. The interesting thing on the closet thing is I think part of it, right? Obviously there's companies out there that do custom closet design and so there obviously you can get generally probably better results, but that's really expensive. I think part of the problem is. Like again, historically your closet was a just face the wall, pull two doors and that's the space that you had.

So you maybe even though it was 16 inches deep or maybe 24 inches deep, you didn't want a 16 inch shelf. Cause it'd be hard to put stuff up on that shelf. And so that's probably part of why it was that Kinded 11, 12 inches, cuz it would still allow you to put some stuff up there and you can. Older homes.

Also, the ceiling height is seven or eight feet, maybe eight feet, and so you didn't have all that space up there. And so those standard products that have been hit, this is what we make because this is how the homes were made. Now when you have the, these homes that have a little bit bigger closets or walk-in closets we don't necessarily have standard shelving that's gonna be.

More apt to take advantage of those spaces. It's, Hey, this is the show we've always had. Let's put it up here and great. It's 11 inches instead of 16 inches for some storage space.

Brittany: And this is exactly why I wanna start working with builders. That is like literally one of my goals for this year and next year is I'm like, okay, we gotta shake this up. There is, there are better ways to build homes even when you're doing. It. I think on a just, cheaper subdivision level or you're building a ton of little town homes and you're building like 50 of 'em or whatever, there are ways to think through just small tweaks and how we build homes so that we don't have to buy so many products on the backend.

We can just build some of those customizations into the home. And I think for really inexpensive, like a really good example is Like a silverware drawer for me to bring my handyman in and for him to just build the couple of little pc the pieces of wood into that drawer. So that is a custom built in silverware drawer is like 50 bucks.

It's really not expensive, but for me to go out and buy the silverware tray is about 35, $40. So it's I just think there's more roi to your point. If someone's walking through a house to, to buy this home and they're opened up some cabinets and opened up some drawers and they see systems that are built into the home that's gonna make their life easier and more organized, where they don't even have to necessarily go out and buy or and.

Hire someone like me. It's just set up for them. It's set up for success. And gosh, I just, I'm so passionate about that. I really wanna start building homes. I'm like, men, I just don't think should build homes. I think women should build homes. So I'm like, I need to get in there.

Troy: And I definitely would agree that, I would say, I'm sure again at the high end custom level, it maybe is a little bit better, but even there, say it's definitely still more of a. Of a basic, engineering problem. Ver and obviously some livability, like we're not, they're not just building homes just to make them, they're still design philosophies as far as how kitchens should be laid out and some things of that nature.

But yeah the small parts of it are not thought of quite as much. And that would be, it'd be interesting in talking to builders to see how. You know how receptive they would be to something like that? Partially because, right? Like you're trying to build a house that could be appealing to anybody.

And so some, in a lot of cases, they don't want to get too specific on stuff. Now, again, every, everyone has silverware of some sort, even if it's chopsticks, like you have silverware, but most people have silverware. And So it shouldn't be that wild and crazy to think ooh, a kind of a customized silverware drawer could be beneficial.

But yeah, it would be interesting kind, it would be interesting to see the adding in more of the functionality living component to it instead of just the kind of industrial living component to it that most builders have.

Brittany: No, definitely. One of my other big pet peeves especially with a large, beautiful brand new custom home is we see this a lot recently is everyone's moving to drawers in their bathrooms, or a lot of people are. And problem is they're not, again, builders are thinking about kind of a utility design.

They're not thinking about the functional design of how that client. Or most clients will use it like, okay Most clients have mouthwash or hairspray or a gel, product. And it's about average, at least this high. You built me this high drawers. I can't stand up a single product. I a really high-end client out in Fredericksburg like super high-end client and I just feel so bad for them.

They built the tiniest little drawers and each of their vanities is like 10. Tiny drawers and it looks beautiful. It's a very like French look. And I'm like, I have to lay down every single product that she has, which takes up so much more space and it makes it really hard to make it look super aesthetically pleasing and just be able to fit all of one like category into one drawer.

So it makes it really hard to have the proper functional lifestyle organization that we'd love to create for clients. So really Thinking through some of those hard designs in that process I think would be just so key for yeah, for builders to do. But even just thinking about general storage in a home, there's, so I.

There's so many even financial benefits to that because if you don't have good garage storage or you haven't thought through good pantry storage or good closet storage really any inventory, any category, right? Because we all have different things. Some people are just all about their holiday and have.

Extra amounts. Some people are all about their shoes and I have seen clients go get extra storage units just for seasonal clothes cuz maybe they're a blogger or some kind of influencer, right? Like we see clients get storage units for all reasons. And I think if we were able to build better storage into homes or just bring in someone like myself who can look at your space with a fresh set of eyes and say, okay.

I think we could do this here. Do this here. We can maximize this empty space here. It would save a lot of money in the long run of people going out and then buying storage units to store those things. Because really I think when people get into that storage unit mindset, it is really hard to get a client to then go clean out that storage unit and get all of that.

Back on site. It's it's a domino effect of you're gonna then be signing up for 50 bucks a month or whatever it is for the next 20 years probably. I'd be really curious the amount of people who have storage units and have had them for a decade.

Troy: yeah. No, again, really it's storage units that say are one of the. Especially down here in, in Texas so again, growing up north, they weren't near as common, but you had basements and so you could use basements,

Unfinished basements for storage things where that's not an option in Austin because of the way homes get built and the fact that it's not real economical to build basements at all.

But yeah, no, you, one of the first things you'll see as subdivisions, as. As plays are getting developed out, whether it's out towards Spicewood or up towards Leander and stuff, is a storage company coming in and buying some land and building units because they know that people are gonna do that.

And they say, if you've gotten to the point, unless there's something very specific, right? If you have, say, a boat that you just can't really store at home or something, something larger that just makes some sense for in that case. But if you've gotten to the point where you just have so many things that you can't.

Store them at home. Like it's gonna be really hard to, we to, once you have that storage unit, to wheel it back to not only am I gonna get rid of this storage unit, but I'm also gonna get organized enough at home to make this all work together. So it's,

uh, again they definitely, but it's definitely say a snowball effect, dominant effect.

Yep.

Brittany: Yeah, no, for sure. So I think there's a lot of benefit to clients putting money into their homes and even if it's a little expensive or building a new closet in your master closet or whether, we three tiers for even like a garage. A garage update. We can use one of our vendors who we love is Garage Monkeys, and they'll come in and do just a full-blown custom new garage, like the epoxy your floor.

We'll do like nice big white cabinets, so everything's hidden behind, but labeled. So it's still really easy to find, but it's lovely when you come into your garage and you're not just crippled by 600,000 items staring at you where they're hiding behind. Things. And that's another reason why we really don't like to use clear bins.

We love using just a black or a gray or a white bin and then just having a really good label on it. And then even micro categories categorizing under that primary label if needed. Cause when you don't have to look at everything and your eye can go from 600 items to like. I don't know, 20 bins.

It's just a lot more calming and a lot more, more relaxing. So anyway, number one, we love a full-blown costume solution. Cabinetry, garage monkeys is great for that. For the clients that want, can afford that and want that. Another Look and feel that we love is, I really have a rule. My team knows this, that like nothing on the floor, closets, garages as much as we can.

We want everything up off the floor hanging on a shelf like an actual home for that thing, not just like we shove it on the floor. And so we love utilizing Alpha Decor. They have a really great wall mounted system that really won't. Break the bank. And what I love about alpha decor, especially for a family, is it's something that's so easily adjustable that it can really change and grow with you as your kids get older or just as your needs change.

And then on just a really basic level depending on your budget, I would say just going out and buying garage racks. And then there's two types of racks we use. We use the floor racks or we use the ceiling mounted racks. For floor racks, I always recommend either the white, the gray, or the black.

You can buy the white or black inner metro line at the container Store, again, won't break the bank. And then we buy matching bins to match the rack so that it just has a very monotone clean look. Or you can go to Target and buy their gray bins. And then we go to Costco and by their big, heavy duty gray racks, so that again, it's just all clean and monotone.

If and when we're going to use the ceiling mounted racks, we always go all white, so that just really blends into the ceiling and you don't see it. It's not a big I pop or ice. Sore and I love Flexi Mount or Gladiator Garage, which is available at Home Depot or Amazon. And then again, I would do all white bins up there.

And typically for a ceiling mounted system, I would recommend that to be like memorabilia or something that you're really not touching very often, so that it's just up and away. But. At minimum, even in those really difficult garages where they don't give you that side space and you can't do those garage racks, you can't do a good system on your wall because your garage space is so tight.

A lot of times you can still do some type of ceiling mounted rack cuz those are totally adjustable and height. You could do it down to 20 inches or down to 24 inches in height. So just depending on the height of your garage. But that's another really good way to just get some extra storage.

Anything to avoid getting a storage unit

Troy: One of the things that you mentioned, memorabilia and stuff up in those high, obviously you wanna put stuff, you don't have to get very often up in the higher racks, but.

Brittany: right.

Troy: Always to tell clients there is, in, especially in Texas, your garage is gonna get hot, so you wanna be careful to some degree what you put in there.

So if it's memorabilia that could, warp or if, if a hundred, cause

if it's gonna be a hundred degrees inside, it's prob might get to 120 in your garage. And so if it's, you just wanna be careful about the extreme weather that you can get in a garage and make sure that whatever you're storing in there wouldn't be affected by that.

Brittany: A big one that I think a lot of people don't know is actually paint. Paint should never be stored in the attic for that exact reason, cuz it can expand and our handyman were just telling us the other day about a client that had been storing paint in the attic and it like, Popped and then leaked all the way through their ceiling and their drywall and into their kitchen, and it was just this whole

Troy: Yeah. At, yeah. Addicts are, addicts get even hotter like addicts are worse in that regard than garage spaces are. And so addicts you definitely wanna be careful. A lot of times in Texas. It definitely depends on the house. There's nothing in my attic like I don't even consider it a storage space at all.

But for other people, you wanna be very cognizant of what you're putting up there and that it is. Something that if it, if it spills, if there were an issue, that it's just that item that you can throw away and it's not gonna be a either huge sentimental or financial loss, or that it's not somehow gonna do damage to other things that are up there or to your home in general.

Cause you don't want, they say you don't want a bunch of paint ruining all the insulation in your attic because it exploded everywhere. That's not gonna

Brittany: Yeah, no, I think it ended up being a really big, costly project, so that's a big no-no. But yeah, so on that same idea of I think just investing in good quality storage and just saving up for that and at whatever tier or level you can afford a full custom. California Closets or inspired Closets closet system or whether you wanna go with something from Alpha or whether you're just gonna have a handyman install a couple of extra shelves.

I think investing in that financial piece so that it, I think from your industry, it's it. It'll add more resale value to your home. From my industry. It's gonna create a lot less stress in your life when you have functional space, functional storage space. And really that financial investment dominoes straight into mental health.

And just, I think a lot of times people start to get full in their homes and stressed out with the amount of stuff they have, whether it's holiday decor or anything. And then that's where they go to that storage unit concept. Okay, we just gotta get out of the house. But I don't find that the clients who have storage units.

Feel any different really than the clients who have full packed homes where they're like, Brittany, come help me declutter. Because it's,

Troy: it's a very temporary solution. It's because at that point you

Brittany: still a guilt trip.

Troy: Guilt trip, but you also haven't changed the behavior, right? What led you to get to that point, right? And so you're not really, if you ha like it might give you a temporary release of that stress because for a little bit of, for a moment in time, things seem more organized, but you're more than likely gonna fall right back into being disorganized, starting to.

Starting to, okay, so then the next time you're taking more stuff to the storage unit. Now the storage unit's starting to get packed, and that's gonna be a little challenging to put more stuff in there. How does that go? And so

Brittany: And you don't have the time to do it. Yeah.

Troy: very, it's a very, it's a very short term fix in a lot of cases.

Not that all of 'em, sometimes it can be it. There are situations I've seen where it's the right thing to do, but yeah. But usually that investment in the home, one you can potentially get You potentially make some of that investment or maybe all of that investment back when you resell.

Now again, it's you're maybe not making, if you're spending a $30,000 on a garage organizational system, you might not make that back specifically. But when you have to sell in your neighbor's houses for sale and your house looks like it has this organizational stuff that's gonna give you a leg up.

Over other homes in your neighborhood, but if it's also you say, mentioned even the less expensive option of some shelving and bins, guess what? Now you have a system you can actually take with you and start your next home up for success by using that, those same things that you already have. So it's really a long-term investment that you get to take advantage of going forward.

Brittany: 100%. And we say that a lot with clients, with our products. The products that we choose is, there are certain products that we use just like religiously in certain spaces and there is such an ROI and a benefit to that. There is pretty much like one product we use underneath kitchen sinks. And what's great is, to your point, There's a lot of cost upfront cost in getting organized.

There really is. Especially in the amount of products that are typically needed to keep things categorized, to keep things and create homes for things. And we'll always work with clients budgets and spread out that cost and spread out those appointments however they need. But We buy quality products and we buy certain products for certain spaces because again, we want, we believe that we want this to be something that's a part of your life for a long time, that if you move or something happens, you can take it with you and it transitions well with you 100%.

And so I loved what you mentioned earlier about just like habit. For, there's a couple of categories of clients. There's the cat, the clients that we come into their home and there's some type of transition in their life that has led them to be disorganized. Whether it was like a new baby, a new job.

They got married, they got divorced, they just moved. Something happened in their life that. They couldn't get caught up. And then it's dominoing. Those clients are usually pretty simple. Once we get them decluttered, we get them the right products, we get things labeled. They're gonna maintain those new systems pretty well on their own.

We're gonna stop back every quarter, half, every six months or once a year, whatever they need for their lifestyle to check back in with them and help keep them decluttered ongoing, because we just have. So much stuff that walks through our door every day. You need us as sometimes an accountability partner to be like, okay, great time to declutter the house.

We haven't done it in a year. I'm sure there's some stuff that you don't need lying around. But then there's the client who, you know, whether it's, maybe they struggle with some A, d, maybe they're crippled by decision making. Maybe their plate is just so full and they struggle with time management or just whatever it is, right?

We all have our things or they just. Just life's crazy, right? Those clients, we love to work with them a little bit more closely. We're gonna try to, to your point, it, they need us to be truly that accountability partner to help them make those habit changes in their life. And so we'll come in and spread out those appointments and maybe just do one appointment a month or something to really work with them slowly in each space.

Because that client typically does have a lot to declutter and they can't make that many decisions in one at once. So we'll work room by room. Let's just focus on kitchen this month. We'll get you new products, we'll get you decluttered in there. And they're gonna need time to like process. Even though it's gonna feel good that they decluttered a lot, it's still gonna be like, A grief transition for them.

Oh my gosh, I just got rid of all those things. Like I got rid of my grandma's like favorite mixing bowl, even though I hated it and I was never gonna use it. It was still like her mixing bowl. They're gonna have some like grief to like process. And so I've really found over time that when we work with those types of clients more closely and more frequently over time, it is amazing the lifestyle change that happens.

Like they will lose weight, they will start saving money, they really will stop going crazy on Amazon Prime Day or who is it? The, they won't be one of the 1.9 billion that are spent on Easter decorations. Like they'll make better decisions. And so to your point, I think we've all just gotten a little lazy maybe with not thinking about things before we buy them of Do I really already have this?

Do I really need this? Yeah, it's pretty, and it's shiny and it makes me feel good to buy it, but is it gonna make me feel bad later when I don't have a good place to put it or store it? Or when I get home and I realize that I already had a ton of this category. So it's. It's being more mindful and then being more mindful can lead to better habits.

And then, so if you're more mindful, if have an accountability partner, if you can get to better habits, if you can set up a process where you're consistently decluttering, and then I think invest in the right storage solutions for your space and at whatever tier you can afford to invest in those.

I mean that, that is 100% a recipe for success in your home.

Troy: Yeah, no. And everyone who isn't everyone who first started some, right? So if you're not good at organization, everyone who started on that journey? Wasn't good to start with either. Some people weren't good when, say for someone like yourself, yeah, you started, you really loved organizing, so you started doing that when you were really young, and so it seems like you've done it forever, but even yourself, when you're a kid, you don't know how to ride a bike.

Most people who are adults know how to ride bikes. It's not that you. Just because you're an adult, you know how to ride a bike. It's no, because you started it at a really young age and you got good at it. Same thing with organization or health and fitness or manage your money. Anything like no one is just automatically naturally gifted with HA knowing how to do that.

Some people might have not have the H D problem. Some people might. Get a passion for it. So it makes it easier to spend the time to get good at it, but you still, even if you enjoy something, have to go through the difficult process of slowly getting better. Some people get better a little faster than others and get to the point where it's something that is a strong either a strong point of yours or something that you can at least manage because you know it's important and it is gonna have those big impacts like you've mentioned on the rest of your life.

Brittany: No, it really does. I think a statistic that we talked about a couple months ago don't totally quote me, but it was Princeton University and another university that got together and it was like, I think they said that. and people who have homes that are cluttered. I think there's, it was like 76 or 75% more likely to be overweight.

That statistic alone has a domino effect. I know you're really into health and fitness. And if like after the holidays, we all feel like we've gained a couple of pounds. That affects us. It affects our energy level, it affects our mental clarity. That can just become a total domino effect.

Whether it's clutter, gaining weight, mental, all of that is 100% tied together, and that's where I really believe in decluttering. When you declutter your home and you feel like there's more just space for everything to breathe and there's just less stuff and that you have to look at and less things that you have to move or clean or make sense of, you really do have more space in your life.

More space for more life to take on new hobbies, to do other things. And you're just gonna have more mental clarity and I really think that'll lead to so many other healthier just habits for you and your family.

Troy: Yeah. No, that's all good stuff.

Brittany: Like we could talk about this forever.

Troy: But we got other things we gotta do, unfortunately, so I appreciate you always, as always, jumping on and doing this episode of the podcast and look forward to doing it again soon.

Brittany: Yeah, no, I think we might, I think the idea of talking about, I think on our next episode we should chat about travel, right? Travel's upcoming this summer and people probably need some ideas around how to best prepare for all the travel and storage of all those things.

Troy: to reduce stress while traveling, by being organized. There

Brittany: yeah, so little sneak peek. We'll talk about some travel stuff next time.

Troy: Awesome. Appreciate it again.

Brittany: All right, you too. See you soon.