‘We need to reset to factory settings’ – Instagram's @tidydad shares his secret to an organised family home
Tyler Moore, aka Tidy Dad, has picked up more than 380,000 Instagram followers devoted to his practical and hands-on advice on decluttering, organising and cleaning.
With three daughters and a demanding day job as a schoolteacher, Tyler, 38, has now written his first book, Tidy Up Your Life, sharing his step-by-step home organisation method ‘for the overwhelmed and overworked’.
He lives in a 750 sqft (69.9 sqm) two-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York, with his wife, Emily, a children’s occupational therapist, 38, and their daughters Mabel, nine, Matilda, seven and four-year-old Margaret. The family also love to spend time in their weekend cottage in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania.
House Beautiful caught up with Tyler (@tidydad) to find out how he became a decluttering influencer, picking up some tips along the way.
How did you end up as Tidy Dad?
TM: It started after our second daughter was born. I began to feel overwhelmed and struggled to keep life feeling manageable. I thought long and hard about what ‘tidy’ meant to me – a state where I could create space for myself, my family, and my passions. My first ever Instagram post was a tour of my closet. It measures 14 inches (35.5cm) wide by seven feet (2.1m) tall. I had sorted it out to create my very own capsule wardrobe, concentrating on things that matched my favourite colour, navy blue – so other blues, olive green, burgundy, and tan.
Were you a tidy child?
TM: Growing up [in Kentucky, a middle child between sisters Amanda and Kristin] there was always this expectation of being able to reset our own bedrooms. No one ever came in and tidied for me. It was important for us to show care for our things; that’s a value I have today.
How did becoming a father influence your attitude towards organising your home?
TM: Life happens and messes happen. We just have to learn, ‘how do we deal with those messes?’ My wife and I always aesthetically and organisationally wanted things tidied and organised. I’m very much a ‘don’t want to see anything’ person. My wife will leave things out as a visual reminder of stuff she has to do.
Now there are five of us in this space, and we are all wired very differently. It’s a training ground for life. The basic point is, I don’t want the burden of stuff to get in the way of life, but I’ve had to learn that in my daughters’ little playroom, it’s OK to leave out the dolls and Barbies. I may want everything up off the floor, but that would stifle creativity and play.
What does home organisation mean to you?
TM: Home organisation is fundamentally taking care of your things, putting them away and knowing where things are. So many people will overbuy things because they can’t find the ones they already own.
Has Marie Kondo influenced your mission to organise and streamline your home?
TM: My book opens with the scene of me imploding our apartment, swapping around the main bedroom with the children’s room. Marie Kondo’s books acted as an impartial mediator because when Emily and I felt stuck on something, we would say, ‘let’s go and see what Marie says’. Independent advice can diffuse a tense organising situation or just give you a little bit of help when you need it. Sometimes when organising, you need a different kind of inspiration, a different way to look at things, a different sort of tip. You can’t take any home organising book and say, ‘I’m going to take 100 per cent every tip they have given’. It’s more like being an investigator; you’re looking at the situation and deciding what can go where.
What’s the first piece of advice you would give someone struggling with where to start?
TM: Sit with the mess. Sometimes it’s important to just do this. Think about where you are and what you want to achieve. There is often this desire to immediately fix a mess. Some people call this 'black trash bag energy', where you just want to dump everything into black trash bags and get it out. But that approach doesn't address how you are going to organise and sort out your stuff.
You start with items that are easier to sort and edit, not sentimental items, and work towards progressively more difficult categories. Along the way, you hone your decision-making abilities, you learn things about yourself, and you determine what items you want to bring into your future.
How do you work out your organisational ‘type’?
TM: Ask yourself, do you like grouping things together in one lot – such as all the art supplies in one large bin? Or do you prefer organising items into more specific, smaller groupings, like markers in one bin, coloured pencils in another bin? How do you prefer to put things away? And which systems are the easiest for you to maintain and continue to use? Are you visual or non-visual? Do you prefer to see the items you use regularly on open shelving and in baskets, or do you prefer hidden storage in cabinets and drawers?
How do you and Emily divide up household tasks?
TM: I call this ‘define the work conversations’, and that is the way you have to treat them. A lot of the time, home organisation disproportionately falls to the woman. It’s time to flip that on its head. The philosophy that we have in our home is that we’re all responsible; this is our shared space, this is our shared home, and we have to figure out how we’re going to make it work for us. We’re also confronting generational things. My grandma’s figured out how to see my Instagram posts and she said, ‘Why are you scrubbing that toilet? Men of my generation never did that’.
Your goal is not to live in a home that’s 'always tidy' but instead one that’s 'easily tidied'. What’s the difference?
TM: The foundation of that is the clear connection between organising, tidying and cleaning. There needs to be a system in place for where things actually go. I have this thing where I say to the girls, ‘we need to reset to factory settings’ – this means they have to tidy their things and put them away. There is something really nice about a tidy house at the end of the evening, set up for the next day. But there is not a level of perfection I want to aspire to. A home is where life unfolds.
You talk a lot about the relationship between mental clutter and physical clutter. How can we steer a way through?
TM: Sometimes when people think about the physical clutter in their homes, what comes up is embarrassment, regret, or that feeling of, ‘I just want to walk away from this’. You can’t wave a magic wand and completely transform your home in one day, so my advice is to start small. Maybe start with just that kitchen drawer, or that one cabinet. I’m also keen on using a timer. You can set your threshold at a 15-minute or 30-minute timer and just work as diligently as possible during that window to reset things.
• Follow Tyler Moore on Instagram, @tidydad. His new book, Tidy Up Your Life (Ebury Press, £20), is available from all good bookshops.
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