Hack Your Home: Netflix Star Jess Banks on Storage Hacks & Why Your House Isn't Designed for You | Clutterbug Episode #344

Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast

Host Kaz interviews Jess Banks, a Netflix star from 'Hack Your Home' and robotics engineer, to discuss why modern homes often fail to suppor

Key takeaways

• Jess Banks holds degrees from MIT in engineering and robotics, along with a degree in physics.
• Organizing styles can be categorized by the preference for visual versus hidden storage and detailed versus big-picture thinking.
• The 'touch points' hack suggests placing frequently used items like toothbrushes in the most accessible real estate.
• Jess uses Demeter fragrances to help her brain context switch between engineering, creative, and administrative tasks.
• A useful strategy for overwhelming clutter is to dedicate one specific closet or cupboard as a temporary holding zone to reduce immediate stress.

Main topics

• Home organization hacks
• Designing for ADHD and different brain types
• Visual vs. hidden storage styles

Notable quotes

Messy is not bad. Messy is an organized and organizational style that is different than structured.

Conclusion

Listeners learn to view clutter as a design mismatch rather than a cha

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) As a YouTuber, one of my jobs, and as a podcaster, is to come up with titles that people want to click on. And a really popular thing people like to click on is hacks and hacking your home. And so sometimes you can see a lot of videos out there with these titles because it's clickbait. People want to click on it, except today it isn't clickbait because I'm actually interviewing the host. of the TV show on Netflix called Hack Your Home. Amazing show. I'm completely addicted to it. The hacks are unreal. Usually when I watch something about hacks, it's not even a hack. It's like hang a hook on the wall. It's like, yeah, that's its purpose. That's its use. How is doing something that it's meant to do a hack? Speaker 2 (0:53) This show is different. It is actually hacking. And today, we're going to talk about hacks you can do. Some of those might be actual uses and not real hacks. Not the point. We're also going to be talking to this incredible host of the show, Hack Your Home. It will blow your mind, Jess Banks. Not only is Jess the host of this TV show, she is also an inventor, an entrepreneur, an engineer. She has two... degrees from MIT, okay, in engineering and robotics, and she has another degree in physics. What super genius am I interviewing today? just the coolest person ever. She also invents and has her own company where she designs furniture that will blow your mind. It's called Rock Paper Robot. And she makes things that we all wish we had in our house. So excited to talk to Jess. I'm going to pick her brain. We're going to diagnose her style. She's going to share some real life hacks with us. But before we get into that. I want to challenge you to do some mini hacks in your home right Speaker 1 (2:07) now. Speaker 2 (2:08) The first hack that you can do is actually inspired by Jess, today's interviewer, because she said the favorite room that she has in her home is the bathroom. That is odd, but that's okay. You do you, Jess, but... To celebrate her, let's think of some hacks that you can do in the bathroom. Just like always, you are not allowed to just listen and watch today's podcast. Get up, take action, bring me with you to the bathroom because we are going to make a difference today. Another thing that Jess said was that she thinks about everything in her home like as touch points or that things have fingerprints for how often you touch them. Go to your bathroom and think, what are the things that have the most fingerprints on them? Not literally, like your mirror. We're not cleaning. We're thinking about objects. How often do you touch your hairbrush, your toothbrush, the toilet paper? The Speaker 1 (3:07) toilet paper Speaker 2 (3:08) is probably touched the most. Do you have homes that are really easy to access for all the extra toilet paper, for your hairbrush, for your hair products? Do you use hair products more than face cream or face cream more? The things you touch the most should have that valuable real estate. Are you naturally leaving things out on the counter? Take a look right now in your bathroom. Are all your products all over the place? How can you hack? your bathroom to still keep things visual and not change yourself? If you are a person who is not putting it away when you're done with it, if a way is in a drawer, can you find a basket right now? Or can you hang a hook and hang a little something right on the wall? Can you install a floating shelf? How can you hack your bathroom so it is super ridiculously functional? And if you are listening to this and you're like, Kaz, I don't know, that's so stressful. Here's a hack you can do that will make an immediate impact in your bathroom. It's find 21 things to leave. I know that's not actually a hack, but just bear with me, okay? Because once you've cleared out the extra stuff, everything will be revealed. You are going to have more clarity on what's important and what needs a home, and you'll have more space to create one of these cool homes. We're not buying stuff. We're not pausing this podcast to go on Amazon. Use what you have. Speaker 1 (4:35) Make your bathroom better right now. Speaker 2 (5:03) Everybody organizes differently. Just listen, okay? She had never heard of Clutterbug. She didn't know anything about me or the styles, but listen to this genius talk about home organization, which made me feel so validated. Are you ready? Okay, let's get into the interview with Jess Banks. Hello, Jess. Welcome to the Clutterbug podcast. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited. Okay. Because two things. One, you're a super genius and I love just being in your presence. You just collect, I don't know, degrees like they're Pokemon Speaker 1 (5:44) cards. Speaker 2 (5:46) I Speaker 1 (5:46) don't know. I have a lot of interests. So, and if, you know, I think passion will get you wherever the degrees are not so important. It's really. being passionate about. I Speaker 2 (5:55) feel like everybody else who went to MIT might disagree with you, but I'm so impressed. But the other reason I'm so excited is I am obsessed with your show, Hack Your Home. This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I'm going to say, and I know I can tell you're probably humble, your co-hosts are wonderful, but you are the superhero of that show. Speaker 1 (6:23) It was really, really a totally, total, total team job. And also, yeah, I don't actually think anyone was a lead or anything. It was really, really important that we were very coherent as a group and not just the four hosts, but everyone who was doing the builds, you know, other people were working on design stuff. Like, it was a really big. an amazing team. We couldn't have done it without them. For Speaker 2 (6:54) my listeners, if you have not heard of Hack Your Home, it is on Netflix. I had no idea that this level of show, this blows anything on HGTV out of the water. What an amazing show. And we can watch it on Netflix. I was so inspired. I was so impressed with your ingenious ways of taking ordinary furniture and ordinary objects like a closet and making it futuristic Speaker 1 (7:22) and amazing, but also work in small spaces. That was a huge part. I mean, it really is about working in the space, whatever space you have. Even huge homes have small spaces, right? We all have the closet doesn't work, even if it's a wine cellar, right? If you're fortunate to have a wine cellar. I certainly don't. But even There are small spaces everywhere that can be made to function better for how people live. Speaker 2 (7:49) Well, I'm excited to have you here today because I want to pick your big, beautiful genius brain for some hacks for my listeners that, yes, they probably can't engineer some cool countertop that opens up with a push of a button or a spiral spinny closet. But there are ways that we can hack our home for the things that homes just don't. come with. And this is one of my biggest pet peeves. And you have this amazing, you're like building furniture, so I know you feel me here, in that sometimes our homes just don't feel like they are set up for the way we live our life. And we don't have places for incoming paper. And we all have it, flyers and bills. We don't have spots for our purse to go. That's an everyday item. The backpacks. Homes come with closets, sure, but that and kitchen cabinets, and that's where it ends. And then we are left to kind of have to, I don't know, like come up with solutions for everyday items. You have so much experience doing this, but let's talk about some ideas, some things you think homes are lacking, especially small space homes, and how can we make them more functional? for everyday living. You cool with this? I'm putting you on the spot here. Speaker 1 (9:14) Yes, of course. And I think the underlying question here is that a home is like a box with a lot of little boxes inside of it, right, usually. And so no home is really built for everybody's function. Everybody lives differently. Every family, every dynamic group of people lives differently. So it's really important that you understand how you live and look at your own behaviors then to be able to adapt the home. So I don't think the home should be expected necessarily to accommodate organization because there's no way. Everyone organizes differently. And so and often I think the issue is. It's, you know, that we don't understand our behaviors or we don't acknowledge our behaviors to see that, ah, maybe I am a messy person. I need to then hide mess. Like I'm not going to become not messy. Right. Like that's a much heavier lift than putting a door on it. You know, so I think that's a big, you know, kind of the first principle is that the home isn't made to organize. So that's kind of how I approach things. Speaker 2 (10:31) I love that you said that because I don't know if you're familiar with the clutter bug concept, but I was always a really chronically messy person. And like 17 years ago, I discovered while trying to not only get organized myself, but I started helping friends and family and then clients that exactly what you said, organizing isn't one size fits all. And I kind of discovered. Not that you could put everyone into four boxes, Jess, but it came down to if you're a really visual person or you prefer hidden storage. So there are almost half the population that is really visual. It's out of sight, out of mind. They need those visual cues to remember to pay the bills or they want to see their everyday items because it inspires them. And then the other half want things hidden. And then the other component of that is. how you naturally analyze. And if you're detailed and if you're kind of analytical and logical and you love lots of categories and your brain naturally breaks things down into smaller pieces, or you're a person who's more of a big picture thinker. And sometimes big picture thinkers can be labeled as messy because they're not going to take the time to stop and put things in like... bills in alphabetical order, and Speaker 1 (11:55) they're not going to take Speaker 2 (11:55) the time to sort in detail. So the point is, I call it clutter bug. There's four different styles based on how if you're visual or hidden, or if you're detailed and non-detailed. And I help people set up their home based on how they naturally put their stuff down. So I'd love to diagnose you and then we'll talk about some hacks. But do you prefer visual or hidden? storage? And what I mean by that is, is the front of your fridge have all the reminders and photos and you love open bookcases? Or does that kind of stress you out and you would rather everything tucked behind closed doors? Speaker 1 (12:34) So I have really, and I'm not going to say bad ADHD, I have really forceful ADHD. Speaker 1 (12:47) And so, which I, you know, I love the components that make me creative and help me analyze the world and do pattern recognition different than some other people do. It also has some things that are stereotypically related to order. So things like categorization in piles, for instance, and making those visual, right? The other part of it is that, so I'm, both an engineer and an artist. The engineer part of me is detail, detail, detail, narrow down, narrow down. The artist is kind of big picture. What's the interpretation? You know, no boundaries. Let me think outside of every box, right? So I go between, let me go into all the different tinier and tinier boxes to like, let me be outside the box. I sort of ping pong in between these two mindsets all the time. So I would say that To answer your question, both are true. I need the reminders all the time, but I also don't want to be reminded that I need those reminders. So I put a lot of different categories and things visually behind closed doors. And this was actually something when I was... when I was studying in grad school, I used to have these bookshelves. And that's where I actually was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in grad school. So I had tons of bookshelves. They're brightly colored. I had random tools and books and everything. And I realized after a week, every week, I would suddenly have a stack of books on my desk. I'm like, how did I? They were on the shelf. And it was because I'd seen one. I also have extra peripheral vision, but that's another story. I would see one, be like, oh, I love that. I have to remind myself I'm going to do that thing. I have to read that part. And I put it on my desk. And then it was like I was just transferring back and forth. So after a while, I had to just close off my bookshelves and be like, you know that on Fridays you'll go back and check. And if there's something really important there that you want, or I leave a little note on my desk, you Speaker 2 (15:00) know, Speaker 1 (15:00) on a running note. Speaker 1 (15:04) I love this. I love Speaker 2 (15:06) this. This is what I've realized recently. I just actually had a client who the way that their brain naturally like organized, then they had ADHD. It was like, it was messing with the system, man. And so I love that you know yourself well enough. I have a feeling you're probably a B. That's a visual organizer when things are out of sight, out of mind. but they love things to have a place. Like they're craving that. But then your ADHD is coming in like a steamroller. And it's like, it's too distracting to have everything visual. And sometimes you're just caught up in probably a hyper-focused creativity moment where that doesn't work for you. But what matters is you know this about yourself and you've hacked your home to work for you. And that is what... This podcast is all about helping people have the same level of self-awareness that you just Speaker 1 (16:05) naturally have because you're a super genius. Speaker 1 (16:09) So thank you for saying that. I think I'm just very interested in things. Speaker 2 (16:14) Everyone watching, maybe they can't do as cool of things as you're doing when it comes to hacking their home, but they're looking at their home differently. And I think this is something we don't do. We kind of, we move into a home and we have whatever it comes with structurally. And then we just try to make our lives adapt to our home instead of thinking about how can we. change our home to work and mimic the way we are living in it naturally. And yeah, I was just so absolutely inspired. So for any of my listeners, I'm going to put the link down below. You have to check this out, plus all the other cool things that you're doing. But yeah, I'd love to talk to you about maybe some of your favorite hack ideas. I Speaker 1 (16:59) have