51-year-old empty nester who struggled to declutter her house shares 8 tips that finally worked
"Shoes are put away immediately upon walking in the house."
Mom and empty nester shares her tips for decluttering her home.
Deep cleaning and decluttering a home is a daunting task—especially for empty nesters. After spending a lifetime creating memories and living together under one roof, doing a big declutter can take an emotional toll.
It's a milestone that many empty nesters know the sting of. And in a cleaning community on Reddit, a 51-year-old mom and recent empty nester shared her experience cleaning and decluttering her home after entering this new phase of life.
"In my entire life, my house has always been messy. I mean, I didn’t have a disaster-level situation going on, but if someone dropped by unannounced, it would’ve been super embarrassing," she shared. "When my kids were younger, we had a housekeeper because I just couldn’t keep up. Now that we’re empty nesters, I realized I never really learned how to keep house."
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She explained that the book Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess played an integral part in helping her declutter—and offered eight helpful tips to fellow empty nesters looking to organize their new lives.
1. Put stuff away, not down.
Her first tip is the key to decluttering.
"Whatever you have goes right back where it’s supposed to go when I’m done with it," she notes.
2. Do laundry every day.
And she doesn't just wash and dry her laundry when doing it.
"Just one load, start to finish. Wash, dry, fold, and put away," she shares. "Also, no chair or floor laundry. It gets put in the hamper or hung back up. No clothes are ever out."
3. I make the bed every day.
The benefits keep on giving by doing this, she notes.
"It just makes my bedroom look cleaner and I smile every time I come in my room," she writes. "Plus we aren’t fighting over the covers when we get in because the bed is straightened out."
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4. Do a quick daily clean-up of commonly used spaces.
She cleans the places that she and her husband use frequently.
"I keep a stack of cleaning rags in my master bath because it’s the only bathroom that’s used every single day. Every night, I spray the counter, wipe everything down, put everything back (that my husband leaves out), and wipe the mirror," she explains. "I also wipe down the toilet. I find that I don’t need a huge, big cleaning of this space because I’m keeping it up daily. Same goes for the kitchen."
5. Dishes are always put away, cabinet or dishwasher.
No dishes in the sink or stuck in the dishwasher.
"Dishes are finished in the dishwasher? It’s emptied and dirty ones are placed inside while waiting for the dishwasher to get full," she notes.
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6. Don't neglect your shoes.
When she takes them off, they get put away.
"Shoes are put away immediately upon walking in the house," she shares.
7. Knock out small tasks.
There is no time to waste.
"If it takes less than 5 minutes clean it while you’re waiting for something else to get done," she writes.
8. Take no days off.
Rather than assign certain days for cleaning, she is constantly doing it throughout the week.
"Lastly, I do not have scheduled cleaning days. I just do something all the time," she explains. "My life is kind of unpredictable, we love traveling or going out for the day so my so called cleaning schedule would be shot to hell every time. It’s better this way, because now I never feel behind."




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Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
in 2016, a video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best for her to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their job.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
It evoked shame and sympathy.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is. They combed through more than 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006 and counted the number of comments that violated their comment policy and were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So, what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
This article originally appeared nine years ago.