Our spaces need to evolve in order to fit the needs of our families. -Tyler Moore

Have you seen the dad who cleans on Instagram?

I don’t know if Tyler Moore, aka Tidy Dad, enjoys that people probably know him that way, but I think it’s accurate!

I’ve followed Tyler since the summer of 2022 – but who in the world remembers WHEN they started following someone on Instagram? You’ll hear why that summer was important in Tyler’s career during the interview, and also some little-known tales of how and why he got started online. (I was surprised!)

In this joyful and open conversation, you’ll hear:

  • why Tyler “declutters” differently than the guru books
  • how the Moore family pushes against “the norm” with how and where they choose to live
  • how Tyler’s own parents helped lay some foundations for tidy-ness (but also ultimately caused his life to feel very UN-tidy)
  • some of the practical cleaning advice that Insta-followers go gaga for
  • what the philosophy of “just enough” really means and how it looks in real life
  • peeks and glimpses into Tidy Dad’s new book, Tidy Up Your Life – super fun!
  • what Tyler says to his girls when they don’t really feel like helping with chores

I really do love watching Tidy Dad clean; it’s kind of ridiculous. You’ll love listening to him and feeling his optimism even more!

Be sure to pre-order the book ASAP to help him hit the bestseller lists in January!!

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Can’t see the video? Watch Tidy Up Your Life here on YouTube!

No time for the video? Here are the notes!

Tidy Up Your Life

  • 0:41: Today on the Healthy Parenting Handbook I’m chatting with Tyler Moore, a.k.a. Tidy Dad! We’re going to be talking about his new book Tidy Up Your Life.
  • 2:32: In the summer of 2022 Tidy Dad shared one of my Instagram posts and I followed him after that. I was his 9,998th follower helping him hit 10,000, but a couple of weeks later I noticed that he had over 250,000 followers and I thought I had the wrong guy!
  • 3:50: Tyler shares the story of how he became Tidy Dad. His family of 5 lives in a 750-square-foot apartment. He noticed they kept losing friends to the suburbs as everyone’s families grew. People wanted bigger houses due to all the stuff accumulated through having kids. Tyler didn’t want to move just because of their material possessions.

Balancing Cleaning and Tidying: A New Perspective

  • 7:02: Whether you work outside the home, work from home, are raising kids, or homeschooling, everyone works. We’re all trying to balance work and kids and trying to find some time to take care of ourselves as well. Tyler thinks that his Tidy Dad account has done so well because he gives practical tips that speak to people feeling overwhelmed.

Everybody's trying to balance competing priorities while trying to feel human at the end of the day. -Tyler Moore

  • 8:56: Cleaning and tidying are two different things. Tidying is a matter of organizing and keeping things picked up and in their places. There’s a correlation between physical clutter in our homes and mental clutter. To truly deal with one, you’ll need to deal with both. More on organizing for families.

I’ve experienced my fair share of messes. I believe that life is a beautiful mess. Nothing is perfectly put together. Nothing is ever 100% tidy or 100% clean. -Tyler Moore

  • 13:32: It might sound like Tyler just had a lucky break getting about 300,000 Instagram followers in a month, but it isn’t just about luck. Tyler shares some of the hard work that went into his account with us.
  • 18:35: Sometimes our spaces can feel like a puzzle that we’re trying to figure out. How can we make this space work for our family? What are we doing to do about our child’s new interest or stage of life? We are never done rethinking and decluttering. It’s not just our physical possessions, but also our professional lives, and our hobbies and interests.

Practical Tips for Tidying and Cleaning

  • 19:43: In Tyler’s book there’s a line that says “We can’t upsize everything.” You can’t have a blazing career, be super involved at home, plus have all of these extracurriculars. Something has to give. Get ruthless in decluttering your schedule so that you can actually make space for what you really value.
  • 21:21: Let’s get into some practical tips! Tyler has a weekly cleaning checklist where he cleans one area of the house every day to stay on top of cleaning instead of waiting until the weekend and taking hours to clean the house.
  • 22:21: Another good strategy is to use a timer. Set a timer for 15 minutes and get super focused on your task for that time. Then celebrate when you’re done!
  • 23:15: Tyler did something he called “shower school” with his girls. He realized that it isn’t intuitive for kids to know what we mean when we say “Go take a shower.” So he taught his girls all the fundamentals of taking a shower. There are so many life skills you can break down into basic steps and teach to kids so they can master the activity.
  • 26:15: One organizing tip is to create zones in each room. For example in the kitchen you can have a prep zine, putting away zone, cleanup zone, and kid zone. Here’s more examples of setting up your kitchen in zones.

We want to equip our kids to be independent. -Tyler Moore

  • 28:20: My youngest is 10 now and it’s sad to think that we may be moving on from some of the routines and systems we’ve been using for years with little kids. Here are some of the ways I organize a kid-friendly kitchen.
  • 29:07: Society tells us we should be hermit crabs. Hermit crabs choose a shell that fits and they grow to fill the shell. When it’s too small they move on to a bigger shell. Society says we should do that with our houses, when you max out your house, just move on to something larger.

Sharing Responsibilities and Life Skills

  • 31:14: Let’s talk kids cooking and chores! We both get asked about what we should do when our kids don’t want to help in the kitchen or help with a certain chore. Kids need to know that they have to be involved in the household, even when they don’t want to, and sometimes when kids appear to be really frustrated or overwhelmed by a task that’s a sign they’re not ready for it. Here are my top reasons why kids should do chores.
  • 32:31: Back to the idea of breaking tasks down, even if a child isn’t ready for the entire task, they can maybe start learning the first step. For example, they can help sort the laundry even if they’re too little to fold it. Kids can wash vegetables before they can cut them up.

What Else Can Your Kids DO in the Kitchen?

Life Skills Goals in the Kitchen Printables

Download this printable list of age-appropriate kitchen skills for kids of any age to tack up in your kitchen and remind you what your kids can do to really help in the kitchen!









Note: When you grab our free gift, you’ll also get helpful emails about getting kids into the kitchen and eating healthy food.

  • 34:25: If you’re struggling to get started teaching your kids life skills or getting them to do chores here are some tips. Identify what the real pain point is in a given task or system. For example, for Tyler’s family, the pain point in their laundry system was that they would do 8 loads a day and that was a lot to fold so it would sit in the bag all week. They began including their girls in the sorting and folding to help alleviate that bottleneck.
  • 36:35: You can outsource responsibilities or just eliminate the responsibility altogether. By living in the city, Tyler doesn’t have to deal with yard work anymore. When you declutter something, you no longer have to care for that item.
  • 38:19: We want our children to be competent adults when they leave our homes. I’m certainly on the same page as Tyler on that front!
  • 38:43: In addition to giving kids chores you can delegate some of the mental load for their responsibilities to them. Instead of telling them every step of cleaning up the playroom, for example, teach them to notice what needs to be done. Tyler and his wife did this by taking their girls into the clean playroom and having them notice how it felt and how everything was put away. Then when it’s time to clean up they say “Girls, go to the playroom and notice and do.” The “notice and do” technique Tyler talks about is from Sam Kelly.

Kids don’t need plastic knives. They need real skills.

Teach safe technique, focus, and confidence in the all-time fav lesson from our kids cooking class! (ages 2-12)






Or find out more about the free knife class here.

Breaking Stereotypes: Gender and Life Skills

  • 41:07: One of the pushbacks Tyler gets is that he has all girls so it’s easier for him and boys can’t learn all the same things. We have to break this tidy girls/messy boys stereotype. Tyler and his wife try to balance things out by balancing the physical and mental energy for each of them, not by gender role defaults.

All the pieces of tidying: mental, physical, and emotional, they’re all doable for all people. It just takes a little more work on different pathways to get there. -Tyler Moore

  • 45:40: What do we gain when we tidy well? Mental and emotional space to breathe. Culture says to fill everything to the max, your closet, your cabinets, your schedule, etc. It can initially feel really strange to have that white space because it feels like we’re doing something wrong, or not doing enough, but push against that feeling and let yourself breathe at the end of the day because you aren’t overwhelmed.
  • 48:07: You can preorder Tidy Up Your Life now to support Tyler and get all his stories and tips for getting that white space in your life.

Resources We Mention for Organizing Your Life

Tyler MooreTyler Moore, also known as Tidy Dad, began his tidying journey in January of 2018. His goal is to help others to tidy, simplify, and find joy in their lives. He firmly believes the process of tidying, or putting things in order, doesn’t only apply to the physical space in a home. It can also apply to our habits, routines, and careers. Through a variety of resources, especially Instagram @‌tidydad and his upcoming book, Tidy Up Your Life, Tyler shares practical tips on how to declutter your life and focus on what truly matters. Tyler lives in a NYC apartment with his wife and 3 daughters and is a schoolteacher by trade.