Decluttering Your Priorities with Tyler Moore, The Tidy Dad | Ep. 14
Hannah and Amy welcome Tyler Moore, AKA Tidy Dad, author of Tidy Up Your Life, Today Show guest, and New York City elementary school teacher. Hannah first interviewed Tyler on her previous podcast Focus Forward, complete with a coughing fit that almost took her out entirely. This time around, the conversation opens a little differently than usual: Hannah shares that she is recording this episode on the same day she learned that one of her favorite musicians, Glen Hansard, died the night before.
Tyler's book is now available in paperback, and he has also launched a podcast called Tidy Tidbits, short digestible episodes on tidying, organization, and priorities. Both are worth checking out.
The conversation covers a lot of ground, all of it connected by a through line about what it actually means to live in alignment with your values rather than everyone else's expectations. Tyler talks about his twenties as a decade of building, his thirties as a decade of proving himself to others until it led to a complete mental health breakdown, and his forties as a decade of ruthlessly decluttering other people's opinions. He lives in a 750-square-foot New York City apartment with his wife and three kids, walks six blocks to school, comes home for lunch every day, and considers that a life well designed. It might not be what others would choose, but it is what aligns with what his family actually values: family, connection, freedom, and time.
Hannah and Amy connect Tyler's philosophy throughout to executive function skills, particularly organization, prioritization, metacognition, and interoception, making the case that tidying your physical life and tidying your inner life are the same skill practiced in different rooms.
In this episode: living in alignment with your values, the messy middle, priorities vs. time management, organization as a life skill, the focusing illusion, what your body is trying to tell you, metacognition and interoception, starting over, the oxygen mask principle, ruthless decluttering of other people's opinions, and why the bathroom being on floor three and a half of a New York City school is just fine.
Find Tyler
Instagram: @tidydad
Substack: The Tidy Times | Substack
Tidy Up Your Life by Tyler Moore is now available in paperback. Amazon link
Tidy Tidbits, Tyler's podcast: short episodes on tidying, organization, and priorities. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE
Tyler's previous appearance on Focus Forward
The Viral Sensation Sweeping the Nation: Eric's delicious dinner. Trader Joe's lobster bisque over pasta with Argentinian pink shrimp and scallops. Hannah promised the recipe in the show notes. Here it is.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Hannah references the focusing illusion and Kahneman's quote: "Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it."
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk: Hannah brings this in during the conversation about the physical signals our bodies send us when something needs to change. Tyler's eye twitch during the book editing process is a perfect example.
Metacognition and interoception: Two helpful skills that come up throughout the episode. Metacognition is the ability to think about your own thinking and notice patterns in yourself. Interoception is your awareness of what is happening inside your body: tension, stress, hunger, fatigue. Both are learnable and both are, as Hannah and Amy point out, things Tyler has clearly put real work into developing.
Glen Hansard: The Irish folk singer Hannah mentions at the opening of the episode, whose music has been a companion through some of her hardest seasons.
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