Episode 2 of The Intentional Edit Podcast is all about bringing balance and simplicity to your home. I share four things that you can implement right now – enjoy more and stress less. If you feel like you’re surrounded by clutter and stressed out all the time then tune in to this episode right now. Simple systems are the key to an organized and simplified home and you will finish the episode with actionable tips that you can start doing in your home this week!
Listen to episode 2 of the Intentional Edit Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription:
(00:00):
Hey there. Welcome to episode number two of The Intentional Edit Podcast. We are talking about bringing balance and simplicity to your home on this episode. If you feel like you’re surrounded by clutter, you are stressed out all the time with things going on at home and commitments, a busy calendar, everything that goes along with being a parent and having a family and schedule to follow then tune in to this episode right now. I am going to share four things with you that you can do to create balance so that you can enjoy more and stress less. Let’s get going with this episode of the intentional edit podcast.
(00:44):
If you are struggling with daily tasks, clutter organization, and finding any sort of work/life balance, the Intentional Edit Podcast is for you. It’s time to stop the chaos and live with more intention. I’m Lauren and I’m here to help you declutter, implement systems and maximize routines that remove the overwhelming unorganized parts of life – Bringing simplicity to your home. Come on, it’s time to create a life you love
(01:14):
Your days are full, there are piles of laundry that needs to be folded, laundry that needs to go in the washer or dryer, toys everywhere – You have kids in school, and maybe still some kiddos at home. You feel overwhelmed by the dirty dishes that always seem to pile up in the sink. Everything that is surrounding you, the clutter, the chaos, it feels stressful and overwhelming. You are thinking, how did I end up here? This is not what I imagined this stage of life to be like, well, I am here to tell you it does not have to be that way. The days are full, your calendars are full. You might be over committed. You’re probably thinking this is just normal. It doesn’t have to be a normal yes, life is busy. And if you have filled your calendar with activities that you love, surrounded by people who bring you joy, then good for you.
(02:08):
This should be filling you up, not draining you down. If you feel depleted at the end of the day on a regular basis, then it’s time to make some changes. Those changes don’t have to be as big of a deal as you’re probably thinking. So this is the Intentional Edit podcast, and I will always be talking to you about being intentional, taking a good look at how you’re spending your time and what you’re saying yes to and eliminate eliminating everything else. If it’s not necessary, eliminate it. And that’s what being intentional is with making decisions to live a life that you want to be living. I want you to live your best life, and I am going to help you simplify and find a little bit of balance by giving you some things that you can do. And some of these you can start implementing today.
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I honestly don’t know that a perfect balance in a home exists. And as we go through different stages of life, there’s going to be more balanced in some areas and less balance than others, but creating systems that simplify and really take the tasks to the most basic level. That is where the balance comes from. We want to take the chaotic part of life and make it composed, create a systems around it so that you can function and your family can be involved. And everyone has a little bit of responsibility. Everyone contributes. And that is how we reduce the stress and make your homes have that simplicity and that balanced feeling that you are so desiring and you deserve, you really deserve to feel that way. So let’s dig in. I try not to have a lot of fluff in my Instagram posts, blog posts, or on this podcast.
(03:59):
I really want to just dive in and not fill the space because your busy have things going on and our time is valuable. So let’s get in and let’s talk about these four things that you can do to bring down the stress in your life, reduce the stress. So, one thing that I just mentioned was definitely be intentional. Don’t just say yes to every opportunity that comes up, every play date, every birthday party, I promise you, your kids will survive. And they probably won’t even notice if they miss a couple of parties or events and you are able to have family time instead. Now, number one was be intentional. You can say no, and you don’t have to give an explanation. You don’t, this, this takes time. And I’m terrible at saying, no I’ve worked. This is something that I’ve had to work on. And I can say, no, the older I’ve gotten, I can say no a little bit more, but you don’t have to have an excuse or a reason behind your know.
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Sometimes you can just say, oh, I’m sorry that doesn’t work for us right now or we won’t be able to attend this time. But hopefully next time, your family, your free time and the time you spend together as a family unit are so important. I can’t emphasize that enough if you’re missing out on that, or don’t have time for that, because of all these other things you need to cut out on some of the other things. So that’s all I’m going to say about being intentional, intentional. Just start thinking about what you’re saying yes to and what you can say no to what can you eliminate? That’s number one now, number two, depending on your scrolling habits, you are not going to like when I say this, but number two is simple. Put your phone down, be engaged, be present with the people that you care about the most don’t waste time looking at your phone.
(06:01):
If you are in the habit of taking your phone to every room of the house with you, always having it on you somewhere in your pocket or in your hand, or you can’t go to the bathroom without carrying it into the bathroom with you, those habits are negatively effecting you. You can look up, there’s tons of research and all of the research points in the same direction, less screen time is better. I promise if you have kids that are at home during the day, they are pleading for your attention. Think back right now to a time where your kids have said, you know, mom, mom, mom, or they try to get your attention and why can’t they get your attention? It’s because you’re looking at a screen. So, decide how much time you will spend on social media or playing games or whatever it is that is causing you to spend time on your phone.
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You know, you can set limits on the apps or you can set a timer, whatever it is, come up with a solution so that you do not go over that timeframe on that stuff. And you will be blown away. I know I’m an iPhone person. And every week it tells you how much time you have spent on your phone. And it will say, you know, up 6% or down 10% or whatever it is. And I saw a TV interview one time that said the average elementary age kids are spending between 6 and 12 hours on their phones a day. Now, if you think about that, if your kids are going to school for six to eight hours and maybe in an activity or just playing outside, eating dinner, things that kids do, where do those hours come from? Six hours, seems exponential. Like I hear that.
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And I just have to shake my head because it seems terrible. What does your phone say for you? What is your weekly screen time? Now, if you work and of course you’re answering emails, you’re coordinating carpools and activities via text. Some of the things you do on your phone are necessary, but the majority of them are not necessary. We will dive deep into this, but one habit that you can create is around laundry. And I’ll go in this when I tell you what number three is to like reward yourself. If you hate doing laundry, one thing you can do is when you’re folding laundry, take it into the room where it belongs, sit down with the laundry, fold it, put it away. And that’s when you get your 10 minutes of watching Instagram stories, or that’s when you listen to a podcast, you’re doing two things at one time.
(08:42):
But what you’re doing is not sacrificed by multitasking. So, you know, reward yourself with little things like that. So put the phone down. So we’ve talked about number one, be intentional, really think about what you’re saying. Yes and no to number two, put your phone down. If you actually do this, you will be surprised at how much time you will gain, because you’re, you’re really going to be shocked at what it’s like to not constantly be engaging with the screen anymore. We have the first two, the third one is routines, and I will do many future podcasts episodes about routines, where we will dive in to specific routines. The number one thing I can say to creating simplicity in your home is having routines that are simplify. I’m just going to go over a couple of things, basic to routines that you can start to think about.
(09:42):
And then go ahead and look for future episodes where we dive deep into these and we really talk about how to create these episodes for you in your house, based on the specific needs of your family. The first one is implement chores. Even if you have kids that are two and three years old, they can do chores. They can do simple things like pick up the dog toys or, you know, gather the stuffed animals. It’s amazing what little kids can do. And honestly, younger kids thrive on chores and having expectations that they can meet. You rewarding them, even if it’s, you know, a hug or just words of praise, kids love to feel like they are important. And what they did is helpful. And those nightly chores, 10 or 15 minutes a night can really make a huge difference for how you start your day and what happens in your day, the next day, those nightly chores and evening routines kind of mesh together.
(10:44):
One nightly chore for you could be making sure that the dishes are put in the dishwasher and the sink is clear and clean. That whole section of the counter is empty, nothing is on that when you go to bed. That means that every morning you wake up, you have a clean kitchen. How great is it going to feel? If you start your day with a clean kitchen, other nightly chores, give everyone two or three chores that take about 10 to 15 minutes and everyone does their chores at the same time. Now going a little bit further into that would be more evening routine things. What can you do at night pack lunches at nighttime? Fill up water bottles at night, make sure backpacks and work bags are put together, zipped up – waiting by the door. Your purse is waiting to go out the door.
(11:34):
If your kids have activities right after school, or you go to the gym or a class and you require a change of clothing, something, a musical instrument, something goes with you that goes by the door to your keys. Everything that you need to walk out the door in the morning is right there. All you have to do grab the lunch boxes, put the ice packs in them and they go in the backpacks and they’re ready to go picking out outfits the night before, or even you will hear me talk about the weekly reset and refresh that I do over the weekends. You can even pick your outfits out for the entire week. This is especially helpful with kids. Get those things out of the way at night, spending 10, 15, 20 minutes at night, accomplishing these tasks, eliminates them in the morning. And I promise you, especially if you have like tween or teen kids, they can spend 15 or 20 minutes picking out their outfit in the morning.
(12:29):
Be very frustrated. Feel like they have nothing to wear as adults. Like we have days like that sometimes to pick out your clothes the night before, that’s something huge that can be added into the evening routine. Anything that is specific to your family or someone in your family that you can do at night to save you time in the morning will be helpful and you will benefit from it the entire next day. Something else. That is a good routine to get into. We briefly talked about laundry a couple of minutes ago, but doing one or two loads of laundry a day, rather than trying to do it all in one day over the weekend, we all know if you’re trying to do your laundry all at one time, it can be overwhelming and you get frustrated. And sometimes it’s left in the dryer. Sometimes it’s left in a laundry basket, unfolded.
(13:16):
Most people are guilty of doing that at some time in their life. One tip that I have told numerous families to do, and everyone has come back and said, it is an absolute game. Changer is putting a laundry basket in every person’s bedroom or in the bathroom. If that’s where you take off dirty clothes. So if you have two or three kids that share a bedroom, that bedroom gets its own laundry basket. You get one for your bedroom. If you have a child that has a, that doesn’t share a bedroom, they get, oh, that bedroom still gets its own laundry basket. What happens when you do this is when the laundry basket fills up in that room. And maybe because kids’ clothes are small, maybe it won’t fill up. But if you get in the habit of every morning, when you wake up, one of the first things you do is throw a load of laundry in the washing machine.
(14:08):
Before you walk out the door, that load can go in the dryer. And depending on how early you get up or what time you are there, a lot of parents or the someone is at home. They put the laundry in first thing. Then they go make their coffee and start getting breakfast ready. By the time they get back from the bus stop or dropping their kids off at school, that load of laundry is ready to go in the dryer. They put it in the dryer before 10:00 AM. They have clothes ready to be put away. You can find time in your day to spend 10 or 15 minutes folding that load of laundry. And the amazing thing about having laundry baskets and each bedroom, when that load of laundry is done, there’s not any sorting. You take that basket with the clean clothes, into the bedroom that it goes in or the closet.
(15:00):
It goes in, you fold, you put away and you’re done. And like I said, a few minutes ago, you can reward yourself by watching your Instagram stories while you’re folding or listening to a podcast, put on your favorite music, whatever it is, don’t make that 10 or 15 minutes of folding, one load of laundry and putting it away stressful, make it a time. That’s not a big deal. And even reward yourself with your favorite music, podcasts, Instagram stories, something on YouTube, watch, little bits on Netflix, whatever it is, something that you like doing. So folding laundry is not a burden to you anymore. Simple things like that, that you can put in to your daily life. And those just become routines and habits. That is when laundry is not stressful anymore. It becomes simple. And you’re like, then you start to feel that simplicity in your home.
(15:51):
Something else that you can do when you are out and about errands that have to be run all the time. Things like filling up the car with gas, don’t make a separate trip to fill up the car with gas, get gas. When you pass a gas station, fill up your car instead of it taking 30 or 45 minutes, because you have to leave the house and make a special trip to get gas. No, don’t do that. Just when you’re out, maybe you’ve dropped your kids off in an activity on your way home, get gas, start doing things like that. Don’t make special trips for things. Make sure they fit in to what you’re already doing. So you take what would have taken you 30 or 45 minutes. Now you’ve reduced that down to five or 10 minutes. Those little things save you time all over the place.
(16:38):
Let’s just go back really quickly. I just did this just popped into my mind when we talked about evening routines that goes along with planning ahead. Just plan ahead. It’s not just, what can you do the night before to prepare? What could you do on the weekend to prepare? I take a few minutes and glance at my calendar for the next week. I plug everything into another calendar that the whole family can see. I know what we’re having for dinner. If there’s anything extra that needs to be picked up at a store for a school activity or a function, I have all of those things I know what’s happening. And the family knows what’s happening. Planning ahead and getting on the same page where everyone knows expectations is key is one of the keys to simplicity. Another thing you can do, and this is kind of the last one that I’ll wrap up routines with because this is getting a little long is meal plan.
(17:29):
And I have an amazing meal plan section. You can go to my website, intentional edit.com, click on meal planning. You can read all about how I meal plan, but basically stop guessing what you’re having for dinner or coming up with last minute things or running out to get unhealthy, to go options. When you can create meal plans, meal plan for a week or two at one time, make a grocery list and save it, do it in the notes app on your phone, do it on paper and have it handwritten. If you want a word document on your computer, whatever you need to do, save it and reuse that over and over again. You can use it a week later once you can, and you can create more than one of these. All you need is to know these are the meals we’re having for dinner.
(18:14):
And these are the groceries that I need to make these meals. You can create as many of those meal plans as you want use them. I personally meal plan for two weeks at a time because I don’t like going to the grocery store a lot for two weeks. I know what we’re having for dinner. If I were to only have that one meal plan for two weeks, I could reuse that and we would only eat those same dinners twice in one month, create these reusable meal plans. I will go in depth. I get questions about meal planning all the time and how we do this in my house. So I will go in depth and further podcast episodes, um, pay attention. If you’re looking for meal planning strategies for those, but in the meantime, just go to intentional, edit.com, click on the lifestyle tab and scroll down to meal planning.
(18:57):
There’s tons of information there. Let’s just recap. First thing I told you, the intentional second thing, put that phone down. And the third thing, routines implement routines in your house that create habits. Once they become habits, you’re not even thinking about them. You’re just doing them. The fourth thing, and this is the last thing we’ll talk about today is get your family involved. And I mentioned this when I was talking about routines and the 10 to 15 minutes of nightly chores, get your family involved. You can’t do it all yourself. You are always going to feel stressed. And that’s just the facts of how this is going to work. If you are putting everything on your yourself, that your house requires and your family requires for basic maintenance and daily tasks, you will always feel stressed. You have to divide and conquer. You have to start delegating, creating routines, healthy habits at home like chore charts, where everyone can contribute just a few minutes.
(19:58):
A day adds up to hours, saved for you. Family involvement is essential to the success of the systems that you’re implementing into your home to running smoothly. That was a lot to take in. I tried to give it to you in a short amount of time as possible. I could dive into every one of those things that I just mentioned for an entire episode, or even more creating systems that encourage simplicity. What is game-changing, it’s taking those everyday tasks, making them as simple as possible. We want to add balance to your life. We want to move it from that chaotic feeling to a very composed, simple feeling, implementing some of those things that we’ve talked about today is absolutely going to do that for you. Good luck. I know you can improve what is happening at home. Achieving perfect balance in simplicity. Again, that’s not, that’s not the goal.
(20:55):
That’s not a realistic expectation. We’re not striving for perfection here. We just want to make a drastic improvement, go back and listen to the episode if you need to, but start today. Be intentional with what you say yes to start saying no to things that don’t serve you or the life you want to be living. Put your phone down, spend more time away from the screen, set up routines for everything that you do throughout the day and what your family does and get your family involved. Even the little ones from the little ones to your significant other, everyone in the family should be involved. They help make the mess and cause the stress so they need to be part of the solution. Good luck! Send me a message on Instagram if you’re struggling with this and if you had success, I want to see that too. I know you can do this and start by making simple changes and to create these healthy habits, new systems and routines in your home, and you will start seeing success. I know that balance and simplicity are in your future.
(22:02):
Thank you for listening to the intentional edit podcast. If you found today’s episode valuable, tell your friends about it by taking a screenshot, sharing it on social and tagging me at intentional edit. I’ll be back soon with another episode in the meantime, find me at attentional, edit.com and be sure to follow intentional, edit on social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook, to ensure you catch future episodes, click the subscribe or follow button. Now I’m grateful for a five-star rating and review from you. Be sure to let me know what you liked about this episode and what you want me to cover in the future.
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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!
Intentional Edit participates in select affiliate advertising programs. If you click and/or make a purchase through certain links on this site or any related social media platforms, Intentional Edit may make a commission. All opinions are my own.
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