What does it mean to live more with less? I'm Katie Wells and welcome to the Maximized Minimalist

podcast. If you found yourself caught up in the hamster wheel of modern day motherhood and want to

rewrite the script, congratulations you're in the right place. I'm here to be your guide and help you take

back your motherhood

and achieve a simpler, more joy-filled life. Cheers to being a maximized minimalist. Enjoy the show.

How to keep your kitchen counters and kitchen island clutter free. Does it sound like a pipe dream,

or does it sound too good to be true? Sometimes when I say things,

I'm like, oh, but here's the thing. I'm giving you some really practical solutions to help keep the

mess and the clutter at bay and off your kitchen counters. These are things I use and my family

uses on the day-to-day basis. My students use these and I thought, let's just make an episode about this

because I know kitchen counters, you spend 10 minutes clearing it, and then the next thing you know,

something lands there, and it's super frustrating. They tend to be magnets for stuff and mess. So

let's dive in. Let's talk about this. I want you to first identify and take note what types of things are landing on your kitchen

counters or kitchen island each day. Water bottles, vitamins, keys, mail, kid stuff,

random junk, artwork, things that maybe don't have a home. What is landing there?

Spend a few minutes each day writing out on a notes tab in your phone or on a

piece of scrap paper. And then after a few days of doing that, I want you to go to number two,

which is to put those items into one of two categories. Is it true clutter? And so let's take a

second and define what clutter is because oftentimes

people say, Katie, my countertops are so cluttered no matter what I do. And then they send me

pictures and I'm like water bottles, keys, mail. Like isn't that stuff you just didn't put

where it belongs? Like stuff you need or use or want. And they're like,

...