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A hoarder's home.

Sometimes, it simply starts with one pile. Some receipts, pay stubs, and bills. Then another pile forms—a shirt you meant to hang up, some workout gear. The piles begin to multiply, and before you know it, they've erupted like tiny volcanoes spewing lava (and junk) around your home. If you don’t even know where to begin in terms of clean-up, you're not alone.

cleaning, clutter, piles, hoarding, hoarderCleaning Hoarding GIF by 60 Second DocsGiphy

Mai Zimmy, on the TikTok page Mom Life & Cleaning, knows this feeling all too well. With over 400,000 followers and 9.1 million likes, she's living proof that an inability to organize is more common than one might think. In one post, she confesses that she was once a hoarder while showing screenshots of her cluttered house in 2020. Her voiceover exclaims, "I was literally drowning in clutter" as the camera pans over a junk-filled bathtub she dubs the "trash tub."

Now, just a few years later, she has helpful tips on how to remedy the situation. She mentions, right off the bat, that she learned the fundamental methods from "Queen" Marie Kondo. Questions like "Does it spark joy? Have you used/worked with it in the last year? Remove duplicates" and more, made famous by Kondo, help her begin. This leads to the truthful realization, "You can't clean clutter."

The first step, she says, is to "Learn to let go." Per Kondo, she shows how to put things into categories and work through them one step at a time.

@maizimmy

Ok. Maybe I was 1% of the problem 😆😅 people ask me all the time how I got my house in order when it was SO FAR GONE. The decluttering and cleaning schedule was HUGE. But even more than that was how my life has changed and just gotten easier over time. The babies aren’t helpless babies forever. It gets easier there for sure one they are in grade school. Plus, the obvious elephant in the room 😅 being a divorced mom in MY situation is about 100 times easier than what I was going through as a “married single mom”. I by no means want to promote divorce, but I do want to promote healthy marriages. No marriage counselor would have ever said my marriage was healthy and that is abundantly clear with how stress free life feels after leaving. #momlife #motherhood #cleantok #cleaningmotivation #cleanwithme #declutter @Procter & Gamble @Clorox

Step two is to "Implement a cleaning schedule." The idea is for that decluttering becomes an actual habit, etched into your mind. She urges people to "find cleaning schedules that work for you." She writes over a cleaning video, "I personally aim to do a nightly reset of the kitchen and living room before bed because these are the most-used parts of my home." She adds, "Then I have my weekly 1.5-hour reset and the occasional 'panic clean' before people come over lol."

Zimmy tells us that the third step is the most important to remember: "Give yourself some grace." She confesses, "When my home was at its worst, I was a 'married single mom' of three kids, two and under." She further relays that she had a full-time job, only to come home "to the second shift of taking care of everything for everyone." She then, adorably, throws some clothes into drawers, writing she still believes in the #NoFoldMethod.

She stresses the idea that "sometimes we're just in the thick of it. Things won't be so crazy forever, and to make the effort to do what you can in the free moments you have." She jokes, "As kids grow and life sorts itself out, you'll realize you were never the problem. Everyone else was." (She then notes in her TikTok description, "Okay, maybe I was ONE percent of the problem.")

Many in the comments seemed to really connect to her use of the phrase "married single mom." Zimmy also writes, "I by no means want to promote divorce, but I do want to promote healthy marriages. No marriage counselor would have ever said my marriage was healthy, and that is abundantly clear with how stress-free life feels after leaving."

In Zimmy's vulnerability, she gets to the root of what was or wasn’t working for her without vilifying anyone. Decluttering is so much more than tidying up, and many therapists explain what it can do to lift depression and anxiety. In her piece "The Many Mental Benefits of Decluttering" for Psychology Today, Diane Roberts Stoler, Ed.D. writes, "Excessive clutter often leads to feelings of shame, hopelessness, and guilt. The feelings can spiral, making it difficult to find the motivation to address the clutter. If someone is already suffering from depression, a cluttered home can worsen that depression. It is often a cycle. The more depressed you get, the harder it is to clean and organize."

Big and small changes, with a game plan and grace for yourself, can help break the shame spiral and get your living space actually "livable" again.

Babysitting grandpa has the internet in stitches.

Good grandparents really are an important asset to young families just starting out. They can show you the ropes of parenthood, help entertain their grandkids, and probably most importantly, they know when you need a break because you're their baby and they can always tell when something's up with their child.

But sometimes, grandparents can be a little...uh...needy, even when they're the best grandparents in every other aspect. Technology has changed so much over the decades since they were raising children, and sometimes they need a little extra help with things that might seem simple. Soon-to-be mom of two, Molly Madfis, took to TikTok to share what happened when her 75-year-old dad, John, was babysitting her 5-year-old, Arlo, for a few days while she was on a "babymoon" with her husband.


In the viral TikTok, Madfis is seen with her husband with a text overlay that reads, "how to have a relaxing babymoon—don't ask your dad to babysit." Before you think Madfis is being mean to her sweet dad, you can clearly see through the text exchange that they love each other very much and her post seems to be in good fun.

"Arlo worships my dad, but I was a little nervous about leaving them alone together. My dad is pretty co-dependent—like, he’ll go to CVS and then call me eight times with different questions,” Madfis told Today.com.

The text exchanges that Madfis shared are pretty adorable, though I'm sure receiving them while you're trying to relax may have taken the cute factor down a notch. But let's be completely honest—do we think a nervous mom would've relaxed had grandpa not been sending random texts that let you know things are still going well? Probably not.

In the short clip, you see the door cam video that shows John, whom Arlo lovingly calls "Poppy," leaving to take the little guy to school without his backpack...and 30 minutes late. Then comes the text, "Hi, how do you toast," which John sent along with a picture of the options shown on the machine. Clearly, or at least clearly to his daughter and viewers, there was a picture of a piece of bread indicating the toasting option. When Madfis explained where the bread icon was located, there was still confusion, but he made it work.

"The one that looks like pizza worked," the grandpa replied.

@almostmakesperfect

never again #fyp

The texts continue to get more comical as they go on. At one point, he asked if he should refrigerate the leftover pizza, complete with a photo of a half-empty pizza box. But the kicker was when Madfis asked for a picture of her child. John's response was a classic dad move: "Why? You already know what he looks like."

The comment section was filled with people relating and laughing at the video.

"I asked my FIL [father-in-law] for a pic of my baby so he sent me the pic that I sent him of her last week," one mom commented.

"Love how he didn't mind sending you pictures of the toaster and pizza but was confused on why you wanted one of the kid," another person wrote, complete with a crying laughing emoji.

Others commented that the little boy probably had the best week of his life with his Poppy. Listen, even people who take their kids to school every day forget backpacks sometimes, so we can cut grandpa some slack there. As for the rest of it—keep being you, Poppy. Memories are certainly being made.


This article originally appeared on 3.17.23

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Creator shares strange animal facts, weirds people out with jacana bird

Sometimes we see things that simply cannot be unseen. TikTok creator Mamadou Ndiaye who goes by the screen name mndiaye_97, has made his career out of educating people about weird animal facts that he finds fascinating. In most of his videos people walk away feeling more knowledgable on what animals to stay away from and which are actually as cuddly as they look.

But sometimes his videos makes the internet collectively gasp as they hear these untold facts. Recently, Ndiaye shared a video about the Jacana bird, who at first glance looks like an average bird with abnormally large feet. Viewers quickly realize the video is taking an hilariously uncomfortable turn when the next fact he drops involves a picture of the bird appearing to have eight sets of legs. Or maybe claws? No matter what it resembles, it's what nightmares are made of.

One viewer called it, "Birdie Kruger," and they're not wrong because the facts about this bird just kept getting more disturbing.


The multiple legs seen dangling from the bird don't actually belong to that bird. Those smaller legs belong to the babies that are somehow tightly tucked under the feathers of this creature nicknamed the "Jesus Bird" for it's ability to walk on water. The bird holding all of those babies is actually the male Jacana bird because the female birds leave after laying eggs. Though as the video goes on, viewers quickly realize the mama bird leaving is probably the best thing she could ever do for the chicks left behind.

While Ndiaye apologized at the start of the video before traumatizing his audience, the viewers rejected his sorrows, demanding to return to a life where they didn't know this bird existed.

"I would like to go back to the person I was 3 min ago," someone says.

"I'm forwarding you my therapy bill this week, and I expect it paid on time," another jokes.

"There is a world where I didn't see this. I wanna be the one living there," a commenter cries.

"I accept your apology for showing me the satan of birds," someone else laughs.

Well, you've been thoroughly warned. Watch the video below at your own risk.

@mndiaye_97

I really hope that proud family joke doesnt go under the radar #birds#nature#moreyouknow#learnontiktok

Woman accidentally bear hugs stranger at the grocery store.

Everyone's done it at least once. You recognize someone, so you shout, wave or playfully give them a tap, and sometimes you embarrass yourself when you realize it wasn't someone you knew at all. One woman had that experience and it resulted in a giggle-filled retelling shared on social media, because she didn't just accidentally wave to a stranger, she picked them up from behind.

Corey Engmann, a dog trainer out of Kansas City, uploaded a video to social media of her sitting in her car attempting to explain what she just experienced. The mom of three said she was in the checkout line when she noticed her friend from behind and decided to scoop her up in a playful joke.

Except the person she picked up was not her friend at all, it was an older woman. Engmann physically lifted an unsuspecting stranger off their feet while they were minding their business at the grocery store. During the entire video recounting the event, the dog trainer was in the midst of a full giggle fit.


Engmann laughed and wiped tears as she explained what she did when she saw her "friend" in the checkout line. "I gave her a big bear hug from behind and I picked her up off the ground and I went 'BOO!' and she screams so loud and I was laughing. And I put her down and she turned around, and it wasn't my friend."

The two women had a good laugh while in the grocery store but it was when Engmann attempted to make it right that she realized her error caused a problem. After offering to buy the older woman's groceries, the woman declined and informed her she needed new pants because she wet herself from the surprise bear hug.

It's so much better to hear Engmann tell it. Watch the video below:

@mustlovedogskc

This is what happens when you’re a hugger! #Mybad #whoopsieDaisies #comedy #laughing #fyp