Madison is an incredible single mom who spends her life pouring into everyone around her. She fostered and adopted a 14-year-old daughter and is raising a sweet baby boy who’s just over a year old. On top of that, she serves on multiple nonprofit boards in our community and leads the youth group at her church. She shows up for everyone! But like so many of us, she’s walked through seasons of mental health struggles and when you’re carrying that much while also carrying the weight of the world for others, sometimes your home becomes the place where everything quietly piles up.

This reset wasn’t just about decluttering. It was about creating peace. It was about giving HER a space that feels safe, calm, and truly hers—a place where the woman who gives so much can finally find an escape to recharge. Follow along and let’s transform her home!

As with all of my Chaos to Calm homes I am never able to completely overhaul an entire house so I try to focus on a couple of rooms. I had it in my head that I would tackle the kids’ rooms and the bathroom, but then after much thought and prayer I decided we needed to finally make Madison a priority. So I decided to tackle the bathroom and her bedroom. I always explain how vital it is to create one space in your home that is your sanctuary. A place where you can hide from the stress that the clutter creates. You see, our brains are very simplistic in nature. If your brains can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. So while you’re trying to work through the mess in your home, you still have one place you can turn to for those moments when you need solace. Almost always, for us, that place is our bedroom. It typically is the room that makes the most sense. If we try to use a shared room like a living room as our escape it’s a lot more difficult to keep it tidy and stress free because there’s other people living in the space too. You have more control over your bedroom. Even if your kids sleep in your bed, every morning have them take their stuffies and blankets back to their room when they go to get ready for the day. You want no evidence that others spend time in there. Our brain can’t forget about the chaos if the chaos doesn’t leave.

So, as I said, our focus was the bedroom and bathroom. We all worked together to clear out the bedroom to give my husband, Luke, enough room to work on assembling the bed frame. While he was doing that I jumped over to the bathroom to work there. Any time we go to a house, Luke will assemble as much as he can ahead of time, but the bed had to be assembled in the space it would live. He did assemble the nightstands beforehand though.

For the bathroom, it needed a good decluttering and a good cleaning. I NEVER clean the homes I go to. That’s not my specialty, I have no experience cleaning other people’s homes and I typically don’t have the time. However, with this house, I decided I couldn’t not clean it up. Luckily I only live a few short minutes away so I was able to run home and grab my cleaning equipment.

The clutter in this bathroom was formed from what I call inherited clutter. Lots of donated products as well as products that were her grandmother’s that she ended up with after her untimely passing. And like all of us, life was so busy she never had time to properly deal with these products so they piled up. She already had several bins in the bathroom, so I reused as much as I could. I focused on tossing expired products and using my S.U.M. Method for the rest. (To remind you, my S.U.M. Method stands for Space, Utilization, and Maintenance.) There was also a vanity in the bathroom that wasn’t being used so I made sure we got rid of that. I just posted a video for my members recently talking about how if you have horizontal space, you will fill it. So, even though the vanity wasn’t being used, it was still filling up with clutter because the horizontal surface acted as a catch all. So by removing space we aren’t using, we stop that human tendency of dumping items.

Apart from the vanity and shelves, I did downsize her towels and baby’s bath toys. Again, human nature. If were are given an opportunity to procrastinate, we will. It’s especially true with laundry. People think they need a ton of towels, but that’s only because they aren’t doing laundry frequently. If you follow my cleaning schedule, the 6/10 List then you’ll see that every day you should be doing one load of laundry. When you do that, you find that you don’t need a ton of clothes or towels or whatever else. So, I downsized her towels to two per person and reminded her to stick to the Daily 6. She was absolutely good with that. Beyond that, the bathroom just needed a good scrubbing. The sink was pretty stinky so I cleaned the plug and trap and flushed the pipes. Then I scrubbed the sink, the toilet, and the floor around the toilet. I gave them one of my trash cans because EVERY bathroom needs one! I swapped her toilet brush for the Clorox Wand System and swapped out the bathroom rugs.

So once we finished the bathroom we went back into the bedroom and made the bed. Luke had hung her new battery operated wall sconces and her artwork. I was so anxious to get the bed made because I knew it would completely transform the space. And it did! That was the missing piece. People tell me all the time that they don’t like a made bed and sure, some of those people are telling the truth. But for most of us, we just haven’t had a beautifully made bed before so we don’t understand what it can do for us and to us.

Everything I did was simple tasks. It’s the stuff I teach every day. My tips and methods aren’t hard. The stumbling block isn’t decoding what I teach you so you can do it. It’s just about getting started. We get so stuck on taking that first step that we just don’t. That’s why when I go to a house I only need to spend 4-5 hours there to make a difference, because I’m not stuck. It isn’t my house. I haven’t been staring at the same piles for months and months. There’s no decision fatigue for me. If you can, try to detach your emotions from your stuff. Pretend you’re me in your home. Be very objective about it. You’ll fly through it at that point!