Sally McMullen
Hey chicks, I'm Sal.
Alex Hourigan
And I'm Al.
Sally McMullen
And this is Two Broke Chicks, the show that shares life lessons for the gals, from the gals. And welcome back to Fact or Cap, our special little mini episode where Al and I put a challenge to the test to tell you if it's shit or legit. In today's episode, Al and I are putting a five day declutter challenge to the test. So we've been doing this over the last week, we were inspired by Mallory Hudson on TikTok, we will chuck a bunch of links to all of her TikToks in the show notes so you can try it out yourself. But basically, this challenge is to declutter a different part of your home over five days. Let's jump straight into it with day uno.
Alex Hourigan
So as Sal said, there's five days and day one is to make a plan. So you either write it down, or she made up fun template in Canva, which is so my vibe. Like I love shit like that. Canva is my love language. If you're making like a resume, or to-do list, definitely check it out. It is so good because they have all the templates on there already. And I definitely think this really helped keep me on track. Because as we know, I'm so distracted by things. You plan which rooms you need to declutter each day and assign like those jobs. And yeah, I loved it.
Sally McMullen
Yeah. Initially, I was sceptical of day one. I was like, this seems really pointless. Like, why do I need to plan this out? Like, it's not that deep. But I totally agree, because it kept me on track. And I think it made the process just a little bit less emotional. Because you know how when you're going through and decluttering stuff, and you're like, I don't want to throw this away, blah, blah. So like, making that plan really helped me be like nope, it's written down, you've got to do it.
Alex Hourigan
It like helped me place categories on things. So I was like, alright, you know what, there's only gonna be three categories of like bin, donate, keep.
Sally McMullen
Yep.
Alex Hourigan
And it definitely helped. Because what I did in the past, as well as I would end up with like seven categories of like, "Ooh, might wear again, but have worn once but could have a wedding coming up in a couple years". No one I know is getting married. Yeah, no one likes me. I'm not getting married.
Sally McMullen
Okay, let's get into day two, which is your room. So look at your plan, and then get a-cracking.
Alex Hourigan
This was hot, like my room is where I keep all of my junk. And I've got so much storage. So I was like going under my bed, in my chest of drawers in my wardrobe, above my wardrobe. And then my wardrobe. And I was like, this is a case for the FBI. But when I was cleaning out all my stuff, guess who found 50 bucks? Me.
Sally McMullen
That's sick!
Alex Hourigan
There's no better feeling than when you're cleaning out your room and you find money.
Sally McMullen
Oh my god, so that could happen to you, chicks.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah. And I ended up clearing out so much stuff that the set of drawers I had in my wardrobe. I was like I don't need these anymore because I've cleared out so much stuff, I don't, like I'm not gonna use all these drawers. So I put it on Facebook Marketplace and sold it for $200!
Sally McMullen
Oh my god, cocktails on Al this weekend, boys!
Alex Hourigan
No, no, no, no.
Sally McMullen
Oh, wait, no, she's putting it towards her monthly savings.
Alex Hourigan
Savings? Yeah sure, let's go with that. Not the three bottles of wine that I bought us last night. Definitely not.
Sally McMullen
Taco Tuesday at it again. Okay, once you've done your room, what you need to do is ask, "Do I still wear it?".
Alex Hourigan
Yeah.
Sally McMullen
You can put a time limit on that if you want to, like I would ask myself, "Have i worn this in the last year?", and that was really helpful. "Do I still fit into it?", and, "Is it the vibe?". You will absolutely gut your wardrobe that way. Because like Al and I were saying if you have too many categories, too many options, you're gonna end up keeping everything and throw away like one t-shirt.
Alex Hourigan
And if you have enough, you can link up with your friends and do a market stall. We've done it before we made like $800 each. It's a lot of work for a market stall but then you can also donate it, there's heaps of donation bins, like if you can donate them or sell them or rehome them definitely do that because as we said in our recent episode, about sustainable shopping, clothes are the second largest contributor of landfill so don't throw them out.
Sally McMullen
Okay, this one was so difficult.
Alex Hourigan
What?
Sally McMullen
Al and I do receive a lot of PR products, a lot of beauty products, which we're very grateful for. We do love trying out new products and letting you know which ones are the vibe. But it does mean that both of our beauty cabinets are absolutely chockers with products. And even before I was doing this gig I would have this issue where I would have a hard time throwing out beauty products even if I was finished with them or they had expired, just because I felt like guilty about throwing them away if they weren't empty. So with the bathroom, again, look at your plan, have it written down and be like, "Do I have duplicates of certain products that I don't need?", "Have they expired?", and. "Do I even like them?", and then clear it out based on that.
Alex Hourigan
I think people would be shocked by the expiry date on beauty products. Most beauty products expire within six to 12 months. So if you're not sure when your beauty products expired, on them there is a little jar on the back label and it will either have 6M, 12M, 24M and those are the months. It can be 3M, like mascaras expire within three to six months. So make sure that you're looking at that and you can see whether or not it's time to chuck something out, because if a product starts breaking you out randomly, likely it has expired. And there was so many things in there that I was like, "F*ck, it's expired". Yeah. Also, all of our friends love when we do a clear out because we're like, "Who needs a cleanser? Who needs toner? Anyone want a blush?".
Sally McMullen
Exactly. So if you do find yourself with dupes of different products, just hand them out to your loved ones. And then also in the shower was another one where I was like, "God, I have so many empties in here", of like all stuff that I've already reviewed that I can easily throw out. So make sure you're going through those shampoo bottles as well.
Alex Hourigan
Also make sure that you look into TerraCycle. So David Jones uses TerraCycle, pretty sure Priceline does, and it's where you can return the packaging of your empty bottles or makeup products. Mac also does a thing where if you bring in six empty lipsticks, you can choose another one. So look into ways that you can recycle this packaging to just do right by the good old environment, Mother Nature.
Sally McMullen
We love her.
Alex Hourigan
We love her, she's sexy. Last but not least, the kitchen and pantry. I think this was my favourite day. Because I have some crap in my pantry that is never gonna get cooked.
Sally McMullen
Oh my god, same. So go through, clear out anything that is expired that you didn't like, or that you know, you're never gonna cook. Again, you can go and donate that to like, food shelters and stuff like that, or to your neighbours, like Chris and I have literally done that before. When we've had like rice and stuff and being like, we're not going to use this, clear it out and then reorganise everything.
Alex Hourigan
It feels so good.
Sally McMullen
I made sure to take every single thing out and like, wiped out everything in the pantry because it gets really dusty in there and then reorganise everything so it's really easy to see. Then when you go shopping, it's so easy to open your cupboard and see what you are in need of and then you don't end up with the six bags of jasmine rice, which we all do. She also mentions the junk drawer, which is another good one to get in there and clean it out. And then I did my laundry too, which is like another spot that I feel like usually gets neglected and I found lots of dupes in there as well. So you can always make this work for what you need in your apartment. But do you think this is a fact or a cap?
Alex Hourigan
Oh 1000% a fact.
Sally McMullen
Me too.
Alex Hourigan
I made $250 out of it. It's a bloody fact, babe.
Sally McMullen
There we have it, a fact!
Alex Hourigan
Fact!
Sally McMullen
Yay! Like we've said a billion times in this episode, we will chuck all of the resources in our show notes, so make sure to check them out if you want to try it out yourselves. And we can also share some of the templates that we used as well. Head to finder.com.au/twobrokechicks for a transcript of today's episode. And if you loved this episode, feel free to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts because we love to love.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah, love us!
Sally McMullen
Seriously.
Alex Hourigan
Please.
Sally McMullen
As always, thank you to our executive producer Pariya Taherzadeh, Bamby Media and Made In Katana studios for making today's episode possible. And thanks to you for having us in your ear holes, we just love to be here.
Alex Hourigan
Go Declutter. Go declutter, girls.
Sally McMullen
Declutter yo life!
Alex Hourigan
Have fun. Bye!
Sally McMullen
Bye, babies.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
