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The Life of And podcast is for high-achieving women and working parents who are ready to stop living a life of “have to” and start designing a life they actually want. It’s a space where we talk honestly about the things we’re often afraid to admit — even to ourselves. The exhaustion. The ambition. The loneliness. The joy. The tension of wanting more without losing yourself in the process.
If you’re in the thick of it — feeling stretched, tired, hopeful, driven — this is your invitation to take a breath, get real, and find your way back to your own Life of And.
[00:00:00] Tiffany Sauder: One empty drawer, one empty shelf, one empty container. That's it. That is the single mantra that has kept our house from descending into complete chaos for the last 10 years. And it's one of four tips I'm sharing with you in this week's episode to help you keep your house tidy. When the space is crazy, my brain is crazy.
[00:00:19] Tiffany Sauder: When the space is tidy, my brain can be tidy. And I know in the summer season, the house can get a bit wild with everybody home. So I hope this episode helps you get sort of on top of the space in this wild and fun season that we call summer
[00:00:34] Tiffany Sauder: I'm Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom, to four girls and a woman figuring it out just like you. Come on, let's go build your Life of And
[00:00:45] Tiffany Sauder: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Life of And podcast. I am Tiffany Sauder. And if you caught my summer planning episode back in April, you heard me say that working moms who actually enjoy the summer are the ones who plan it, and that only you can make yourself a customer of your summer.
[00:01:04] Tiffany Sauder: Well, this next few weeks, this is me taking my own advice, and one of my priorities this summer is to be present for my family. And so I'm gonna take a few weeks away from the recording studio. So for the next few weeks, instead of new episodes, I'm going to be bringing back the ones that you've told me have made a real difference.
[00:01:21] Tiffany Sauder: So while these episodes were recorded during a specific season of my life, some of the details may have changed just a bit. But the tools, the underlying frameworks, they definitely have not. And that's why I picked them. If the frameworks are still holding up in my life, I know that they'll hold up for your life too.
[00:01:39] Tiffany Sauder: All right, let's get into it, and I hope you're loving your summer
[00:01:41] Tiffany Sauder: I am always looking for ways to make everything easier, simpler, more streamlined, just require less brain power from me to get stuff done. I'm like, Ruled by those things. I'm also an Enneagram three. And I think efficiency is like a big part of an Enneagram three. If I have that wrong, you can let me know.
[00:02:01] Tiffany Sauder: But I think that's true. I think it's like very much a thing. So today I want to talk about, I'm calling this episode, for working mom, like house hacks. I don't know if that's the right title, but it's four things that I do in our house that make some plate things that can sometimes just have like, I don't know space clutter create some, like, tension around, like, where do things go?
[00:02:26] Tiffany Sauder: how do we use our space? How do we all operate together in a way that, like, we've got 4 kids in 4 different stages and and I still need, , some peaceful space in our house. So, I'm going to talk about 4 ways that we kind of use our space and things that I've done. So, okay, here we go. Get to it.
[00:02:41] Tiffany Sauder: Tiffany, you may have heard me say this, but it's 1 of my favorite things. One empty drawer, one empty shelf, one empty container. So, if you have a dresser, there should be one drawer that is empty. If you have a closet, there should be one shelf that is empty. In our garage, I want there to be one shelf that is empty.
[00:03:03] Tiffany Sauder: If there's six containers, one of them should be empty. And the reason is kind of this forcing function of if we are not careful. We somehow have the exact amount of contents as the space that we have to fill and that feels like a little too serendipitous. So I oftentimes, again, things creep back in.
[00:03:26] Tiffany Sauder: And so that empty drawer, that empty shelf, that empty container ends up being filled almost always. But when we're going through A seasonal purge, when we're going through and kind of like cleaning out a space, I will tell my girls, one empty drawer, one empty shelf, one empty container. And the idea is we are going to have more stuff that walks into this house with birthdays and Valentine's day and Easter and all of the things that happen.
[00:03:49] Tiffany Sauder: And when all your crap comes home after the last day of school. And so if we have some space, then we'll have a place to put those things. Otherwise the first thing that is added into your house suddenly doesn't have a place to go And that is how crap starts to accumulate and it ends up on a counter somewhere.
[00:04:07] Tiffany Sauder: And then something else gets stacked on top of that. And then suddenly everywhere in your house, it's like cluttery. So this to me is like a real, a one to live by for me, one empty drawer, one empty shelf, one empty container.
[00:04:29] Tiffany Sauder: Okay, another thing that I have is on our main floor, which I'm sure your house is like ours in our kitchen, living room, dining room, sitting area area.
[00:04:30] Tiffany Sauder: That is where we do 80 plus percent of our day. We're like, all there always. And so it's a high traffic area. It's also a high activity area. So my little girls, especially. They want to play where we are. I understand that they're not always good at going up to the room or going to the basement. They want to be where we are.
[00:04:50] Tiffany Sauder: So every kid has a treasure drawer, which is not very big, but this is where they can put the things that they're like loving the most right now that they want to have out like stuff out in the main area without it having to stay out. Does that make sense? So like It can be their Polly pockets. It can be, a little treasure bag that they got at a birthday party.
[00:05:13] Tiffany Sauder: It could be Play Doh. It could be a puzzle. It could be their favorite book that they're reading right now. It could be, some little trinkets that I want to throw away from a parade that we were at. I don't know what it's going to be, but it's something that I probably don't place a super high value on.
[00:05:29] Tiffany Sauder: And they can put those things in their treasure drawer. And so that way on our main floor, there is a place that a few toys can go away. That makes sense. Like they can put them in a drawer and they can easily access them. If that's something that they're like super into right now, they can get it out every single day.
[00:05:47] Tiffany Sauder: And it's like, when we do our pick and put at the end of the day, it can go away and be put back So if that treasure drawer starts to get really full and it doesn't want to close or it gets stuck when you try to open it, then I'll say, hey, go through your treasure drawer and you need to pick what the things are that you're most excited about playing with right now.
[00:06:06] Tiffany Sauder: And the things that you're not into, we'll go put those kind of where they go. In the closet in your room and the basement where the toys go, but that way, there do have a compartment of stuff that is really accessible to them. Maybe a project they're working on. It might be new coloring pencils. They got, I don't know what it's going to be, but that way they do have space and our main living area where they can have some stuff that's easy for them to access without having to go all the way upstairs or all the way downstairs and without things having to be permanently on the counter.
[00:06:36] Tiffany Sauder: So that's kind of the concept of this treasure drawer. That we have done for years, like, don't know, I think since we've been in this house, like 10 years. So this one is very aged for us and it has grown. Even my big girls, if they're reading some books or have some homework, they're working on, it's a place that they can put it away in our main living area without having to go upstairs or downstairs.
[00:07:02] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey. Behind the Microphone, Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life.
[00:07:16] Tiffany Sauder: So, whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic and impactful.
[00:07:24]
[00:07:26] Tiffany Sauder: third thing is our memory boxes. I don't do scrapbooks. That probably does not surprise you. I hardly print off pictures.but I don't do scrapbooks and I'm not a super nostalgic person. So what I have done is we have these like pretty big collapsible. Well, don't collapse that, but that's how they started.
[00:07:47] Tiffany Sauder: I got them. They are sold flat at Ikea. It's probably a two foot by 18 inch box, you know, like a good size they're white boxes and we have 4 of them in our basement storage room and literally . The kids name is written on the outside of it. And so when they get, a book that they write at school, or even they're like, little footprints from when they came home from the hospital.
[00:08:13] Tiffany Sauder: I know I'm such a savage. That's like literally how their memory box starts is I just throw it in the box. And if they have a special paper that comes home, or they have like a cute letter that they write me that I think like someday they might want to see it. Or they go through seasons where they literally write the word mom on everything.
[00:08:32] Tiffany Sauder: So I'll throw a few of those into the memory boxes. And so that's what they have when they leave the house, they'll take the memory box. Aubrey's 15. She's kind of saying that maybe she needs a second one. I'm like, I don't know. I think everybody gets one memory box. But that's how I do scrapbooking at our house, is you have a box.
[00:08:50] Tiffany Sauder: It's white. It has a lid on it. It has your name in like the Black permanent marker on the outside of it. And when you have something special that you want to save for your future self to see, go throw it into the memory box. I think a couple of them have like little dresses, maybe a craft that they made with my mom.
[00:09:07] Tiffany Sauder: I don't really know. They can put whatever they want to in there and it's a way to get it. Out of our main living area and a place where they do have memories, but I don't feel the need to put them into a book with lots of stickers and words and like thought bubbles. This is not my gift in life. So that's what we have is a memory box.
[00:09:25] Tiffany Sauder: You can steal that idea if that's helpful for your family.
[00:09:28] Tiffany Sauder: the last one I have is I will just call it's kind of like zones. I think about our house in zones. Is this a play zone or a no play zone?and I try to protect areas of our house and I kind of call them no play zones. My bedroom is one of them.
[00:09:43] Tiffany Sauder: Our bathroom is one of them. They don't have toys in them. , we don't keep toys there. I don't want toys there. Those are spaces for us to be able to live our lives without having to Be around toys. I do have a reading zone in our bedroom at the end of our couch. I have like this really pretty little leather book holder.
[00:10:03] Tiffany Sauder: that has maybe eight books in it that the kids have like different reading ability or like different pick whatever, you know, like a picture book for Quincy. And if they're waiting for us to get ready or they have something they're wanting me to help them with or something like that, they can sit and they can read.
[00:10:16] Tiffany Sauder: It sounds maybe a little bit militant, but I need area of the house to be protected where I don't feel like I'm constantly living in. I don't know, a daycare. Like, I just want it to feel like adult space sometimes. and that has been really helpful. And even as I talked about, like, these treasure drawers for the most part, our main living area for the most part is A permanent toy free zone, meaning there's not stuff out all the time in those areas.
[00:10:44] Tiffany Sauder: They will bring out projects certainly and do them on the dining room table or do them on the island. But most of that stuff is kept in the basement and in places where it's like, I don't have to see it all the time. So anyway, thinking about your house and zones, I think helps teach your kids where things go, what happens in different areas of it.
[00:11:03] Tiffany Sauder: And don't be afraid to say not every area of the house has to have toys. They have tried very hard to make our bedroom a toy zone because . We're in there and our kids like to be by us and I get it. But so we do reading and they can do flips on the floor. Those are the two things they can do in our room and somersaults.
[00:11:20] Tiffany Sauder: So I don't know. That's kind of how we roll.
[00:11:23] Tiffany Sauder: So anyway, these are some ways that we keep our house. I would say peaceful, streamlined and everybody kind of understanding the program and a few really simple tools. I feel like I've taken really complicated things that feel like a lot of pressure, like baby books and made it just a very simple, like, boop, put it in the box.
[00:11:39] Tiffany Sauder: So anyway, I'd love to hear your tips and hacks and how you're keeping things super simple in your house. So if you have them, share them with me, I'd love to hear them and maybe I'll share them on the pod. Thanks for listening.