Ever feel buried by stuff and parenting and life? In this episode, I’m bringing you someone who’s cracked the code:b father of three, NYC public school teacher, cleaning and organizing expert, bestselling author, and host of the Tidy Tidbits podcast.
We talk about how the right systems can transform your home into a place that actually functions. Tyler breaks down how his classroom experience influences his approach to homes, why small spaces demand smarter systems (not bigger closets), and the real secret behind calm family living.
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Why Systems Matter More Than Square Footage
We often think more space is the solution, but Tyler flips that on its head. His philosophy? A calm home isn’t born from square footage; it’s built from small systems that keep the chaos from swallowing us whole.
One of my favorite examples from our conversation: when Tyler’s family grew from one child to two, they didn’t move. Instead, they rethought their space. They switched bedrooms with their daughters to solve the problem of noise flow and access. It’s not about more storage. It’s about smarter pathways.
That mindset of updating the space to meet your life is a recurring theme in his work. It’s wildly freeing.
The Teacher Brain Behind the Calm
Tyler’s background as an educator shows up in every part of his home life. In the classroom, no teacher survives solo. Kids learn through clear routines, zones, and shared responsibility—and the same holds true at home.
He uses zones instead of “rooms,” and each child has their own area of responsibility. His cleaning systems are modeled after what works in his classroom: small, daily tasks that prevent overwhelm later. His approach to parenting? A blend of teaching and trusting. He introduces systems with intention, models them with his kids, and adjusts as needed.
Even his content reflects this mindset with his Instagram, which feels like a well-mapped curriculum and his Substack like a lesson plan for living better.
Home Rules: Systems That Actually Work
We also talked about his latest family experiment: “Home Rules.” It’s a laminated list of age-appropriate expectations like “I can put away my shoes when I come home” or “I can ask, ‘Do you need help?’ when I see someone working.” When the kids follow the rules without being asked, they get a ticket. Collecting enough tickets will earn them small, meaningful rewards like choosing a family meal or a bagel trip.
But more than incentives, it’s about language. When kids understand that the home is a shared space, they become a part of how it works.
He also has non-negotiables that hold the family together, like a consistent 7:30 bedtime and a quiet morning rhythm, not for aesthetics, but for emotional bandwidth.
The System Isn’t Perfection. It’s Breathing Room.
Tyler’s work resonates because it’s not about control. It’s about capacity. The systems he builds create space for spontaneous Bravocon trips, for writing at 5 a.m., for walking his kids to school in the city, and for being present instead of reactive.
In our conversation, he said: “Systems aren’t rigid. They’re gentle promises to yourself that tomorrow won’t be chaos again.”
That’s the kind of home I want to build. Not a perfect one. A possible one.
Find It Quickly:
Connect with Tidy Dad:
Website: thetidydad.com
Instagram: instagram.com/tidydad
Book: thetidydad.com/qrbook
Podcast: Tidy Tidbits
Review the Transcript:
Julie: Welcome back to the System for Everything podcast. Today’s system tip. If your goal is a calmer home, start with the loudest drawer. Welcome back to the System for Everything and Happy New Year. If this is your first time tuning in, this is the podcast about systems that keep life and business running, especially when you’re managing small humans in a normal sized home with not so normal amounts of stuff.
I was planning to cul. This guest in 2026, but I was asked by a friend of mine who is your dream podcast guest in an ask me anything on Instagram, and I took the time to shoot my shot and I tagged him. And because he is the loveliest and most gracious human, it worked. Let us be your friendly. Reminder to go lovingly stalk your favorite content creators.
Many of them are just hanging out online waiting to say yes. I am joined today by Tyler Moore, AKA tidy dad. He is a father of three daughters, a cleaning and organizing expert, and a full-time NYC public school teacher. He’s gone from scrubbing toilets to appearing on the Today Show and publishing his bestselling book, tidy Up Your Life and Host the Top Ranking podcast type.
E tidbits, which helps people make space for what matters most for Tyler. The goal isn’t always a perfectly tidy home. It’s a home that’s easily tidied. You can find him on Instagram at Tidy Dad and his newsletter on substack tidy times. Today we’re talking space sanity Systems, and. Simplifying the way your home functions can transform the way your family feels.
Welcome Tyler, thank you so much for being here.
Tyler: Thanks for having me. That was such a fun intro and I’m glad that you shot your, your, i, I don’t know the proper grammar, the way to say it, that you shot my shot that, but you shot your shot because you just. Never know. I feel like that’s been so much of my own sort of like tidy dad evolution is that you just have to sometimes put yourself out there and try and you never know how things are gonna work out.
And that’s whether you wanna have a podcast guest or you want to try out a new system in your house or make a bigger sort of like life change with tidying things up. Like you just never know how things are gonna work out. And I think sometimes there’s beauty in that. So. I’m glad to be here.
Julie: Yes.
Absolutely. All right, everyone. We’re gonna start, as we always do with the system, reboot a quick reset to start our episode with some humor and humanity. Okay? We are gonna dive into this more later, but I must ask since I voraciously followed along, as you attended Bravocon in November, if Bravo hired you to organize the Messiest franchise, where are you starting and why?
Tyler: Right now I am starting with Salt Lake City. Jen Shaw just got outta prison. Um, I am up to date with all of the episodes and the plain Meredith drama is just running a little bit dry and I feel like she was literally. Almost arrested on the show in that Sprinter van. She went to prison. We’ve got to see her when she comes back.
So I need Salt Lake City to show this mess, even though that is highly controversial. ’cause right now no one wants to see her, but I really do. So that’s what I’m gonna click.
Julie: Yes. All right. What is your template for a perfect Saturday?
Tyler: Ugh. A perfect Saturday would probably be alone time. I wanna go on a run 2026.
I’m running my first marathon in 20 years, so I need, oh my gosh, time to train. So I feel like it’s that balance of alone time, plus maybe some family time, plus a nice cocktail in the evening. So that’s my life, that’s my life. Saturday.
Julie: All right. You are famously an NYC dad. What is your most must see NYC location?
Any and all cliches are on the table.
Tyler: Oh, I, my favorite place in all of New York City is Rockefeller Center. I feel like there’s something so just magical about the history of. The buildings I love going the to, to the top of the rock. I think it’s the best observation tower in all of New York City. And there’s the underground concourse that has great bathrooms plus really great restaurants.
And if you’re there in the wintertime, it’s a really nice warm spot to get food, do a little bit of shopping, and it’s just really chill. So that’s the underground concourse. So I love that.
Julie: I love that I right everyone. You have met the personality. Now meet the powerhouse. A calm home isn’t born from square footage.
It’s built from the small systems that keep the chaos from swallowing us whole. Here is my conversation with Tyler Moore on the system for space, sanity and small living. All right. Before the book, before the platform, before the podcast, even before fatherhood, you are an educator and I think definitely that the classroom teaches you things about routines and space that many people never learn from.
From your years of teaching, what shows up most clearly in how you run your home now?
Tyler: I think that it’s, we have to share the workload because in the classroom, you know, I’ve taught. Anywhere from 30 kids down to this year. I have 12, which is just wild. But when you are navigating 30 kids with diverse learning needs and multiple different subjects and lots of adults coming in and out of a space, one person cannot be the bearer of all of the systems when all of the systems just live with the one person.
That means that that one person is responsible not only for designing them and implementing them. Teaching others how to do it, but also maintaining them. It’s way too much work for someone to take on. So I always tried from a classroom standpoint to have this very clear sense of we all have to work together as a team.
When a lesson is unfolding and a kid doesn’t know what to do in order to get a pencil when their pencil breaks, that can undoubtedly have a huge ripple effect on everybody else who’s trying to learn. So I do think that that. Systems approach from the classroom gave me a huge foundation. And then also my wife, her background is in pediatric occupational therapy, and that was the other huge, she taught me so much just about how do you foster independence in kids and so often.
We can become frustrated when our children can’t do things, and often it’s because we’ve either introduced something that’s far above their developmental level or we haven’t modeled for them exactly what it is that we want for them to do. So I feel like that education background. Really is the hallmark, or it’s the foundation I should say, of tidy dad because it really is this heart of teaching, but also building independence so that hopefully the people that we live with can thrive and we can thrive ourselves.
Julie: I love that. I think more than most professions, teachers are masters of structure. Was there a moment you had when you realized that those skills translated directly into your home and into parenting?
Tyler: Yeah, I mean, I feel like what really sort of came to a head was when we transitioned from having one kid to two kids.
Julie: Uh, yeah, I hear that one’s hard.
Tyler: Yeah. That two-on-one sort of like zoned offense, it just didn’t work because it’s like we had all of our first daughter stuff and. Then we had the new babies stuff and it just felt like everything had multiplied and the exhaustion compounded. And so I feel like for us, that’s when the need for systems just really intensified.
Plus, we had made the decision that we were gonna continue to live in our small 750 square foot apartment, and so we couldn’t just invent. New space. We didn’t have a basement, we didn’t have an attic. We didn’t even have separate bedrooms for the girls. And so we had to think strategically that it’s like, okay, if one kid is napping and the other kid is awake, but yet that kid needs something from the room, how do you go in and get it without like waking the baby?
Plus we live in a railroad apartment, which means that. It’s long and narrow, so you literally have to walk through one room to get to the next, which just compounds things even more. So the solution that we came up with was switching bedrooms with our daughters so that our bedrooms could have the largest room, which meant that it was buffered from the playroom by one bedroom, which meant that we didn’t have to walk through one room to get to stuff when we needed it.
So that systems thinking really came to play, and for many people. That comes from extreme exhaustion, being completely overwhelmed, thinking this isn’t gonna work. But again, instead of trading spaces, we did decide what can we do to update our space to better meet the needs that we have right now?
Julie: If you had a former student walk into your apartment today, is there something that they would immediately see and be like, yep, that tracks.
Tyler: It’s funny because in the classroom I always set up. Quadrants. So I set it up on a quadrant system and I give the students numbers so that they, the numbers are organized into quadrants and at home we really use this idea of zones. So like each girl has their individual zone. So I do feel like that language of like zone and quadrant and setting the boundary, they would say, yes, that tracks for Mr.
It does, it does help. I feel like when there, where there, when there’s that clear organizational blueprint, people are able to find the things that they need much more quickly, and it provides a framework to then set up a system.
Julie: Okay, so even before Tiny Dad existed, you were building systems without calling them systems, so I love that.
Tyler: Yeah. Yeah. So this has really been decades in the making, long before podcasts or Instagram or the worldwide web. ’cause my first classroom I was 21. It was 2008. I don’t know how I had my own classroom at 20. This was long before the invention of any modern sort of technology. So yes, it has been possible.
Julie: Well, let’s talk about how that grew into something that people really have connected with. ’cause one thing I am like. Obsessed with is how organized your content is. Your Instagram kind of reads like, I mean like a teacher, like a curriculum map? Mm-hmm. I mean, lesson plan themes, intentional sequencing. I mean, I have to assume that it’s not accidental.
So do you plan content with a teacher brain, a parent brain, a systems brain, or if they’re all kind of melded into one at this point?
Tyler: I do think that being a teacher does lend itself to tidy dad because I try to think about. How I’m connecting themes across periods of time. And I think that the way that people’s brains work is that oftentimes things don’t stick.
The first time you tell them something, like you have to see it. Yes. On repeat over and over again. And it’s funny because there are things like my weekday cleaning routine that on stories, I start every single day. By saying the sun is not awake. My children are asleep, and that’s a reminder to people of the routine.
That brings me so much joy in life, which is. Years ago, I set my alarm to go off before my children because they’ve always been early risers, and I know that I’m better as a dad and as a teacher and as a human. When I have 20 to 30 minutes of alone time in the morning before the rush of the day and everyone’s awake.
That’s how I start every day. I then move on to my like weekday cleaning routine. And it’s funny, the people who are still like, so you clean your bathroom every Monday. And I’m like, yes, I clean it every Monday. And they’re like, do you really have to clean your bathroom that frequently? And I’m like, I’m like the fact, no, I don’t wanna go to their house.
I’m like, the fact that you’re asking me that question means that you should probably go clean your bathroom right now. But. You know, for me, the more I can have these systems on autopilot, it really does help free up this greater sort of bigger thinking. And that’s true with my content as well, that I have to think what is the average, the average person is not, you know, just.
Scrolling through all of my old things to find these tips, like it has to be manageable, digestible, but also realistic because we also follow, I mean, there are lots of people online who have all of these strategies and tips, but they, to me, they just don’t seem attainable. I’m not saying that I can’t follow a decluttering expert who lives in a 5,000 square foot house.
To me, if you have five bathrooms and you’re trying to tell me organization systems, to me as someone who just has one bathroom, you’ve already lost me because I’m like, you don’t actually know. What does it mean to navigate. Five different sets of toiletries in one little tiny space, but I know how to do that because I’m living and breathing it just like many other people are too.
Julie: Okay. What does the back end of your content look like? Because I’m imagining like folders, tags, like. I need details.
Tyler: Mm-hmm. So, it’s funny because my wife helps with the backend because she Oh, I love
Julie: that.
Tyler: She’s very organized in terms of, I, I can have a lot of ideas. I’m a. Enneagram seven. So for any listeners who are familiar with the Enneagram, the Enneagram seven is sort of like known as having this like boundless energy, but yet they oftentimes need someone to step in and help them get all of the sort of energy sort of funneled into something productive.
Because I wake up and I have 15 different. Sort of ideas. But what I’ve been trying to do lately that’s been helping is I’ve really had to identify like what is the center spoke in my content wheel. And for me it’s always been about the writing. So for years it was working on my book. Now I’m really loving, pouring into.
My substack because writing to me is just something that’s always brought a lot of joy and it’s something that I can do in the early morning hours. My like writing process is that I use small pockets of time, whether it’s washing dishes, walking to school, you know, walking up and down the hallways.
Sometimes I’ll get an idea and I quickly voice memo it to myself or put it into my phone. Oh, I love that. I have my writer’s notebook with me. I travel with it everywhere. It goes with me to school. I have it on home. When we’re out in New York City, it’s, it’s always there with me because when an idea comes, I want to be able to jot it down.
But to me. The heart of being a writer has helped because I’m then able to say, okay, what is this really big idea? And then how do I distill that into the different channels, whether it’s putting it together in a reel on Instagram, writing a script for one of my five minute podcast episodes, um, you know, putting something on threads that nobody still knows what to do with TikTok, I don’t really fully.
Understand, except for the funny stuff that’s on there, but I think, oh, I
Julie: don’t understand it either. I just claimed my username when it first came out and left.
Tyler: Yes. Yeah. I know it’s hard, but I think for me, for content, it has to be organized. I have to have a way to be able to recall the idea. But at the heart of it is, is this realistic?
Is this practical? Is this actually gonna be useful to someone? Does it feel realistic? And if not. It can be an idea that just sort of sits in my notebook, but I really do try to be cognizant of the people who are following and the tips that they want. ’cause we’re all in the thick of it. Yeah. So how do we come away with something that is sort of digestible?
So that’s sort of my approach.
Julie: Your reels that you film are so clean, like how long does it take you from one reel, from like idea to filming it, to editing it? Captioning. I mean, for me, I’m, you wouldn’t know it, but I’m looking at my face, but I’m 87 years old and so for me, like some of the technology, I’m like, oh, it’s too difficult.
Tyler: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, for me, I have always leaned into. The, the scrappiness of sort of putting together content. Because for me, anybody who spent, if it looks perfectly polished and put together, that means that someone spent hours putting it together. Yeah. And I don’t personally have the time to do that.
Yeah. So oftentimes I have the text overlay or the concept in mind, and then I sort of just connect it to the B roll that I’ve sort of captured that I know about myself. I’m never gonna be like. The dance guy who like is able to dance and have this message. I have tried the like li lip syncing, but that’s also not fully in my wheelhouse.
The whole like trending audio. I think for me it’s just more so how can I package this together in a fun, in sort of creative way and then just. Move on that it’s like you just have to sort of keep it going and not overthink it, and just try to have your message be as consistent and cohesive as possible while still having fun and playing around with it.
Julie: Well, I think that consistency that you have in your message is why a lot of people trust you. I mean, you’re not just sharing the final product, you’re sharing that thinking behind it. Mm-hmm. Which I think people appreciate.
Tyler: Mm-hmm. Because I think that people are over unrealistic strategies. People are over, I think, content creators or writers who don’t seem to have attainable lifestyles.
And so I think for me. What still grounds me is the fact that I’m a New York City teacher, that I walk my kids to school every day, and then I’m in a classroom with children who cannot stop talking all day long and I have to deliver, you know, high quality instruction and meet all of the goals there, and then come back home and still do the like dinner, bath, bed, while also trying to like.
Be a human and feel like I have time to read and binge watch my shows and make space to like go to Bravocon. You know, all of these things don’t just happen. I have to be very strategic with my time and my energy and being okay with things being 75% or 80%. Yeah. Because even with any category of life, like my 75% is better than some people’s, a hundred percent.
Just like another person’s 50% is better than my, you know, whatever. We all have our strengths, and so it’s really trying to leverage it the best that we can and then recognizing that we can’t do it all. We can’t be it all. We have to then move on.
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You’ll find my Engie link with a special listener discount. Waiting for you in the show notes. All right. We’re gonna pivot and I wanna talk about real simple for a second. Mm-hmm. Because most people dream of their home being photographed for a magazine. Um, but you got invited to do something completely different and honestly even more impressive.
’cause real simple, didn’t wanna see your space. They wanted you. To design theirs. And that’s so cool. I mean, you helped create a model apartment that the families across the country could then use as a blueprint for their own homes. So how did the real simple team first approach you about designing a room?
Was it like a slow collaboration or like a, oh, we’ve been watching your work and we want you.
Tyler: That was a dream project that really stemmed from, it was right after my book came out and I was doing a ton of press at the time and contributing to a lot of different articles, and I always make it a point to be.
Really kind and help to deliver as best as I can and sort of overdeliver in terms of content and when they need sort of like tips or quotes. You just never know where a relationship is gonna take you. Yeah. And so I had contributed to a few articles and then this opportunity came up a few months later and.
It was really daunting to think about at first because there was this huge project, so many eyes on it, but there was this foundation of how do I transform something in a luxury multimillion dollar apartment for the pages of real simple magazine, but yet when the average person looks at it, they’re able to say, oh, I think I could do that, or I could take this sort of, you know.
Idea and sort of change it, which is why when people walked in, the, the hardest thing was they threw this big, beautiful party, uh, and all of the designers were there and all of the editors were there. Tons of press. And I walk in and, you know, there are little signs for who is the designer of each room, but I heard people talking about mine and it was like, what?
What are they gonna say? But what they kept saying was it seemed. Beautiful, but also so practical. And they felt like the different ways in which, because I, I basically brought in an IKEA unit. It was an IKEA closet unit for the laundry room. And a lot of people think about drawers and shelves and hanging space for actual closets.
But yet when you think about a space like a laundry room. That is what you want too, because American laundry rooms are designed with the one bar that goes directly across the top loading washer and dryer, and that’s it in terms of organization. But when you think about all of the things that you do in a laundry room, the ways in which you need it to perform and work for you as opposed to being against you, I was like, how can we flip this?
Sort of standard American system on its head. And so the editors, they were like, you want the Ikea? And I was like, yes I can. And I had to go in and install it and configure it, but it was a beautiful space. And then I added these little pegs in the corner for scooters because if you live in New York City, you ha, and you have little scooters in your house.
And so to hear people say, he even thought to put the scooters, which are right by the door, I was like, yes, this is a hallmark of someone who knows. You know, just what they’re doing and how they’re leading us. That’s the tiny dad touch. And I, I don’t know, I was just very proud of that because yes, it’s one thing to design my own space, but it’s another to have the expectations of a huge storied magazine.
You know, saying, here’s a blank canvas and what would you do with it? So that was really cool.
Julie: That’s awesome. I, I think the thing I like. Most about it and seeing that issue is that like you weren’t just organizing a space. I mean, you were kind of building an example, like kind of proof of concept for how those small decisions can really create a home that feels calm and intentional and possible, and then.
I mean, right after that we got to see a whole different side of you. And I was like, what? He’s at
Tyler: Bravocon. I know, I know. And it’s funny because that night we, I went to the party and I was actually talking to the editors and I was like, okay, I’m about to go to Bravocon. Do you think that I should take people on this journey?
And they were like, you absolutely should take people on this journey because the whole point of tidy dad, it’s the catchphrase that’s on the book is to make space for what matters most. Yeah. And so that could be, I. Going to Bravocon with my cousin. You know, it could be, you know, I train for triathlons in the summer.
I love running. I’m training for a marathon the end of April. I’m turning 40 this year, and so 2026, I’m like, how can this be the year of. Sort of like celebration and I’m walking the final a hundred kilometers with my dad of the El Camino Trail through Northern Spain. I’m doing that over my spring break.
My gosh. ’cause I’m turning 40. My dad has Parkinson’s, but he’s in really good health right now. My grandma just passed away and there’s something about me at at her funeral. I was like, dad, I don’t know that this is the right time to ask you, but I was like, I really wanna walk this trail. Do you wanna walk it with me?
And he was like. You know what? I don’t have to take care of your grandma anymore. There like, and now he’s pouring himself into walking every day and trying to meet. ’cause I, I made this little like, training plan for him. Again, this is the like structured brain, because I was like, dad, I love that. By April, you have to be able to walk 20 kilometers a day.
So I was like, let’s build these milestones, these little like markers of what are you gonna do each month in order to get there. And those are the things that I feel like underlie, tidy dead, that it’s not just about cleaning and organizing and having a neat closet, it’s what actual space. Are you trying to open up so that you can do some of this more creative thinking and designing and living your life, which again, as you would attest to, that’s the whole purpose of systems.
It’s not to drive people nuts or to think that you’re just so, you know, so type A that you have to have everything in its particular order. It’s so that you can do the things that you want to do. That’s the goal.
Julie: I love that from real simple to systems to bravocon, that is rain
Tyler: and it is, bravocon is coming back in 2027.
And what I will say is, is it did not disappoint. It was one of the best weekends of my life. And so I’m like, it was your,
Julie: I cannot believe I just met that moment.
Tyler: Um, so I love Erica Jane. Okay. From Beverly Hills, I think that she has gone seeing her in person. She was like, I feel like she has like unicorn blood because nothing can get her down.
And she was just. Beautiful. My cousin, every person that walked out, I was like, they are just so beautiful. Like it, it was just so much fun. Um, yeah. To see.
Julie: But as much as I love my housewives, I think I probably would like flip over like a ship rose from Southern Charm or like a Tom Schwartz from.
Tyler: Yes, Vander Pop, just the ultimate
Julie: like Peter Pan syndrome, where I’m just like yelling at them on my tv.
You meet them and you’re like, oh, they’re so charming.
Tyler: I mean, at one point I was invited up on the Top Chef stage and I was making a cold cut sandwich with Dorinda Medley. Oh my God. With, I don’t know who the guy is, Craig. I don’t know whether I’m, oh, Craig Conover from Southern. I dunno whether I’m supposed to like him or not like him, but he was the judge.
We’re in the middle right now, so you know, it was a wild. Experience but so much fun.
Julie: What is the most like unexpected thing you learned about Robert Lebert from like being around them off camera or were they still always on?
Tyler: No, it is that they, like the rest of us are thirsty and working it. Love that.
Kathy Hilton. Kathy Hilton, she even had a booth where she was hawking. Her little lab booboos with like little non like Swarovski knockoff crystals on them. And I’m like, if someone who is worth. Hundreds of millions of dollars feels like she needs to set up a booth and hawk her stuff. That just gives the rest of us even more motivation to not be, and even thinking about, there’s so many times where we.
Feel embarrassed or there’s like, oh, what are people gonna think of us? Or should we really do that? Should I put myself out there in that way? Yeah. And when you see these people out in the wild who are just joyfully engaging with people and hawking their little booboos with all the crystals on them, I was like, we can do this.
And at one point, Nikki Hilton. One of her daughters was like, mom, I was right next to him. She was like, mom, you have to say no. You have to say no more pictures. And Kathy was like, but I don’t want to. And Nikki was like, mom, we have to go. We have to say no. So those are the little interactions that it’s so funny to see, but I think sometimes we forget that all of these people are just.
Humans who have found themselves Yeah. In sort of these extraordinary situations. But it’s one of the things that’s just sort of funny about Bravo, and I do think that people, you either love it or hate it. Some people judge me for it. Yes. But for me, when I was intensely writing my book. Bravo provided this escape, because even going back to what we were talking about with systems, I was writing my book while I was still teaching.
I had deadlines of when I had to have certain chapters in. I also felt like there was only so much mental space that my brain could take for other storylines. Yeah. And I needed an escape, so I somehow. Having written the manuscript, I somehow binged all 11 seasons of Vanderpump Rules from September through March, and it was one of the greatest gifts that I’ve had because it was just, oh my, an escape.
And sometimes you just need. That moment to sort of step out of whatever sort of is unfolding. So
Julie: any girlfriend of mine that goes on maternity leave, I’m like, have you seen Vanderpump rules? This is gonna help
Tyler: get into it. And there’s this feeling of like. Did I actually live in my twenties? Like I missed all of those shenanigans.
I have never had, like
Julie: I didn’t, and I’m glad there was no camera. Oh, I saw myself in a lot of those scenes.
Tyler: Oh, that’s funny. So,
Julie: alright, despite, you know, magazine shoots and bravo crossovers, what people I think love the most about you and are why they’re fans of you is the way your everyday systems actually work and help people.
Because behind it all, I mean the content, the opportunities, the visibility. And you are still, uh, husband a father raising three girls in an NYC apartment. What is a home system? You personally rely on that people would never think to ask about.
Tyler: It’s so funny because right now we just implemented this new system called The Home Rules, and I haven’t really talked about it at all on Instagram because Ooh,
Julie: new scoop people, this is
Tyler: a new, uh, I’m like trying it out because.
I’m trying to see sort of what my thinking is around it and actually if I believe in it, so it’s a good sort of test case. But the idea with the home rules was we had just come out of Thanksgiving. We had spent all of this time together and we’ve all had those moments where we feel like we’re just saying the same things on repeat again and again and again.
Mm-hmm. And I had this moment where with my wife that we were like. Have we actually drawn the lines in the sand of like, what are our actual rules for the people that live with us? We have rules when we go into a workplace. We have rules in the classroom. Yeah. We also have rules like when we’re on the sidewalk, even though people don’t always obey them.
And I was like, could I write these in? A like kid friendly way, but also work on some sort of incentive with the girls. And so I made this little PDF and I laminated it and I put it in their bedroom and it’s by our front door. And it’s things like I can put away my coat and my shoes when I walk in the door.
I can set the table and clear the table after meal times. I love
Julie: that.
Tyler: I can ask, do you need any help when I see my mom or dad working? And what I mean by that is, is like if they actively see us, sort of like in the kitchen or getting meals, just sometimes someone coming in and saying, do you need any help right now?
That can be, so,
Julie: that can be helpful. Helpful. You know, to say not
Tyler: even of a like I. I just even, even the acknowledgement of like, I see you working right now. Another one is I can have a team mindset. And so what we’ve been doing, this is what I don’t know, this is the like system sort of check. When we notice the girls doing these things without being prompted, we’ve been giving them tickets.
So like we have, okay, one girl has a white, one girl has a blue, one girl has a yellow. And what we said to them was, we’re gonna test this out for 30 days. And so at the end of the week, we are, when we meal plan, at the start of the week, we choose out one ticket and one girl gets to choose a meal. We’re gonna make for the family that week.
Aw. Um, when the girls get 50 tickets together, they’ve decided that they wanna go out for bagels one Saturday morning. It’s little things that I’m like, how can we foster this like family approach to work while also help to make it really clear? What our actual home rules are. So that’s a new system that we’re trying out because the girls are five, eight and 10.
Like they’re fully capable. There’s.
Julie: Oh yeah,
Tyler: responsible girls. But also there is so much work that unfolds in a home and we have to have this teamwork approach, or else mom and dad are really stressed out or mom and dad don’t have time to sit down and do the things that they would like to do. So that’s our new, that’s the like off hot, off the press I haven’t talked about on Instagram.
I haven’t really, I, I’ve written about it a little bit in Substack. I haven’t done anything podcast related. So you’re getting the latest
Julie: hot scoop. Hot off the press guys, you know,
Tyler: but sometimes, but I think that it’s permission for listeners to experiment. Yeah. And you can name to yourself and to your kids.
We’re gonna experiment with this for 30 days. We’re gonna see how it goes. This is not a forever, let’s implement. Let’s name what it is that we’re working on, and then after 30 days, let’s step back and assess did we actually like that? Did it lead to the change that we were hoping for it to have? I think that that’s a really beautiful thing to try.
Julie: I love that, and I’m excited to see how it pans out. I’m excited to also. Like follow along after you in these systems. ’cause I’m nowhere near there yet. My mine turns won this this week. So, so far she is contributing. Nothing. Nothing. But it’s when though. But when you, she’s really good at being a baby.
She’s so good at it. But
Tyler: it’s also when. If that is your goal is working towards independence of anything. I mean, there are children who still go off to school and can’t get themselves dressed a 1-year-old, especially as they’re transitioning into 18 months, two years of age, they can follow, they can
Julie: pull their own pants on
Tyler: the simple, the simple commands of, can you bring me your shoes?
We’re finished with the blocks. Let’s put away the blocks. Oh, yeah. You know, when you start to have those systems, it really does. Pay off. And it is, it’s a ton of, we do. I mean, that’s what you’re gonna be doing for the next several. It is. It’s like that. It’s that classic. I do. We do. You do. Right now you are fully in the I do.
Because you literally do everything for the child. Yeah. Eventually you transition to the We do. Which is, you wish that they could do it independently, but they can’t yet. And that takes a really long time. And then eventually there will be the You do and then. You have to cycle back through it as you teach all the new things.
Yeah, but I do. We do. You do. That’s another system that I think about all the time, and with all three of our girls, they’re so different. So they’re all at any given point in time at different phases of that? I do, we do. You do approach to things.
Julie: Is there a non-negotiable rhythm within your household that, that everything else revolves around?
Tyler: They are in bed. Seven 30. So that is my, what we’re beginning to transition with. Now it’s like one night a week, the girls have gymnastics. So for the older two girls, they’re out a little bit later, but to me, and that’s even on the weekends, they’re in bed at seven 30. I cannot have children walking around my house.
Now, just because you’re in bed, that doesn’t mean that you can’t read. You can’t have sort of a logic puzzle. My youngest, she’ll take like little blocks or. Play, but ultimately they sort of fall asleep and they normally fall asleep in opposite age order because they’re in a triple bunk. So my youngest is always asleep first, then my middle, and then my oldest.
Sometimes when it’s. Eight 30 or nine as I’m going to bed, I have to tell her, you know, turn out your light. But to me, I think that the day needs to be bookended with quiet time. That there’s like seven 30, they need it, and I need it too. I need to be off the clock as I call it. And the same is true in the morning.
So I always set up like morning activities for the girls that if they wake up. They can play and do something, but it’s like contained to the table. So some, like this morning it was Play-Doh. They have these little like rivy Scrubbie they love or doing puzzles. But I do think that quiet time, even though my kids are getting bigger, they need it and I need it because if I am on and if there are children walking around my house, I don’t feel like I have gotten any sort of break at all.
Julie: Yeah, I think that. My favorite thing is that these systems aren’t all about perfection. They’re about creating breathing room. Yeah. You know, which brings us to like what this really means for families. I mean, you’re not just building a home, you’re building an environment that your girls will carry with them, hopefully for their rest of their lives.
Mm-hmm. So what do you hope that your daughters remember most about the feeling of your home?
Tyler: Well. That’s a good question. I mean, I feel like, I hope that they would take away that there was intentionality to the decisions that we made that I think, you know, right now they ask a lot of questions about our small space because they have cousins, family members that live in homes that are much larger than ours.
Mm-hmm. And it was. It was over the summer, there was this question of like, daddy is so and so rich, and are we poor because we live in a small space. And I was like, tell me more about that. Like what, you know, tell me where, where’s this coming from? Yeah. And they were like, well, our cousins, they all have their own room.
They have this huge playroom in the attic. They have this big basement. And I was like. When we think of rich and poor, I was like, you know, obviously there’s this question of money, but I was like, but what your mommy and I have decided to do is a little bit different than what other families have done.
We have our small apartment in New York City, but it allows us to walk to school every day. It also opens up some space. I mean, we have our cottage in Pennsylvania that we bought back in 2019 for. Pennies now comparatively, but I was like, we get to go there away. You know, we get to go there every summer, and that’s such a gift.
Um, we’ve also decided that we wanna spend money on experiences and vacations. And so I was like, rich to me is the feeling that you have choice, that you get to decide how you wanna spend your time and your money and your energy. And so to me it’s not a question of square footage. It’s a question of are we making space for all of these other things?
And so one girl sort of got it. The other girl was like, well, I’m gonna have a big house when I grow up and I wanna have five dogs. And, but I was, but I was like, but the beauty is you will get to choose, you know, it’s not that choices are limitless, but like we all get to make decisions around square footage and space.
And just because people have. Chosen differently than us. That doesn’t mean that it’s better or worse, it’s just different. So it is really interesting talking with them.
Julie: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s really why the, the heart of your work really resonates with people because you show people what is possible without more space, more stuff, more overwhelm,
Tyler: and I love that.
Yeah. And it’s funny because like over the summer. So I, I have driven my grandma’s 2000 Chevy Malibu for years. It was 20 years old. It was, no, it was 25 years old and it died this summer and I felt so crushed. And my wife was like, we really need to get a new car. And I was like, but Emily, you don’t understand what this car represents.
I feel like for the tidy dead audience, this car has. Represen presented that concept of things being just enough, and I was so proud of the fact that we had that little scrappy car and so we ultimately did buy a new car. It was a used one, but it’s just funny what things sort of represent to me and also to other people that like this little apartment.
I think it does bring people a lot of joy seeing how we spend our time. It brings joy and I try to as authentically sort of share. What’s unfolding, what’s happening, while also being mindful of my kids, my wife, and I don’t know, just the stories that I wanna share.
Julie: Tyler, please tell everyone where they can find you online.
Please share your book, your podcast, where you’ll be seen next. Share it all.
Tyler: Yeah. So on Instagram, I’m tidy dad. I also have a substack that’s called the Tidy Times, and I have a podcast. It’s all these ts, um, which is called Tidy tidbits. Their episodes are five minutes. Um, and then my book, which is Tidy Up Your Life and it’s celebrating, its first on the shelf birthday.
Yes. First birthday, which feels like a huge monumental. Moment. It’s been this huge, I don’t know, there’s something very metaphorical as you know, with your own child getting to that first year, it’s like there’s so much newness. Not that everything is figured out, but it is this moment of like celebration of like, yeah, we did it.
We went through. ’cause that first year of anything is so hard.
Julie: Yeah. Absolutely pilot. Thank you so much for being here. All right, everyone. Before we wrap up, I wanna end with a little system shutdown. A reminder to unplug, laugh, and not take ourselves too seriously. Because January makes everyone feel like they need a new personality, a new planner, and a color coded fridge.
But honestly, a few pop culture inspired resets can do the trick. Okay, here are some of my favorites, to ease into a cleaner and calmer year without becoming a full Monica Geller overnight. All right, number one, Marie Kondo’s five item tour. Stop not your whole house. Not even your whole loud drawer. Just touch five things, decide their fate, walk away with the confidence of someone who completed a full home edit.
Number two, the Abbott Elementary Reset Channel your inner Janine Teas and fix one. Tiny thing that has been bothering you for months. A dead light bulb. A broken basket, a drawer that sticks. Quiet Competence, big Reward the sex and the city shelf audit. Go through one shelf and ask the Carrie Bradshaw question, do I actually love this or did I just buy it because it was on sale?
Keep the items with personality. Release the ones that give beige energy. Number four, the Grey’s Anatomy. Clean to the soundtrack sweep. Pick one hallway or one room. Hit play on a dramatic emotional ballad. I’m looking at you chasing cars and tidy like you are processing an entire season’s worth of feelings.
And finally, number five, the Ted Lasso believe load. One load of laundry, just one run it. Start to finish. Wash dry fold and put away no mountain, no shame. Just a tiny act of optimism coach would approve of. That’s it for today’s episode. Thank you for spending your time with us today. If something in this episode resonated a system, a mindset, even a TV reference, share it with a friend or tag me and Tyler tidy dad online.
If you loved this conversation, make sure you are following this. System for everything. Wherever you listen to podcasts, new episodes drop every Thursday, and if you’re feeling extra generous, leave a quick rating or review. It helps more people find the show and gives my ego a tiny serotonin boost. More episodes, more systems, and more ease come in your way.
Until next time, take care of your systems and yourself.
