Episode 91 - On the Brink of a Break Down & Struggling to Get Everything Done - Where to START SIMPLIFYING to Make Daily Tasks Easier, Feel Better & KEEP YOUR HOME ORGANIZED - Intentional Edit

The idea of simplicity, an organized home, and overall calm feeling is wonderful! How do you reduce stress, get organized, and start simplifying everything to make daily life seem easier?!?! This episode is full of strategies and ideas to implement at home to help you feel better and struggle less.

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Full Episode Transcription (not edited):

The idea of simplicity and organized home and that overall calm feeling is truly wonderful, but how do you reduce stress? How do you get organized and how do you start simplifying everything to make daily life? Seem like it is easier. This episode is full of strategies and ideas to implement at home to help you feel better, stress less, and reduce the struggle With all of those things that we have to do day in and day out. Hey moms, welcome to the Intentional Edit podcast. Do you wanna stop feeling overwhelmed and finally get your home organized? Do you find yourself up late at night worrying about how you are going to get everything done and not drop the ball? You are wondering where to start and what to do. There is never enough time in the day the piles of laundry are building up and it’s already time for after school activities, homework, snacks, and carpool.

(00:51):

Oh, again, I’m Lauren. I too want an organized clean home where my family can make long lasting memories and be present in the moment. Feeling like there there’s never enough time to complete all the daily tasks is exhausting. Simplicity all around a healthy meal on the table at dinnertime and a family that contributes to the chores really is attainable. Stop telling yourself that you have to do it all or it will never get done, or that picky eaters will never allow for a complain free dinner. And this podcast, you will learn exactly how to declutter, implement systems and maximize routines that remove the overwhelming unorganized parts of life, bringing simplicity to your life and home. Come on, It’s time to create a life you love.

(01:34):

Hey friends. Welcome to episode 91. If you listen to last week’s Friday episode about parenting and how routines and systems and being intentional with setting up those routines for your home and your family and your kids, how setting those up at an early age impacts them and creates responsibility and independence as they are tweens and teens and all of that. Then you know that I had politic good question box on Instagram asking you what are you struggling with, What’s getting you stressed out problems at home? Like what is happening right now? And the two thing is that were brought up really were dinner time meals, the stress around dinner time, not eating together, feeling guilt around not cooking for your family or not having dinners at home or not having dinners around the table. And my suggestion for that was to sign up for the master meal planning mini course that I offer.

(02:33):

If that was one of the things you struggle with and you haven’t listened to the last episode or two episodes, go, go listen to episode 89. Also sign up for that meal planning mini course because that will be life changing for you and get you on the road to simplicity in terms of meal planning and teach you how to create a customized meal plan, two week reusable meal plan for you and your your family. You’re so easy. It simplifies everything and it takes the difficulty out of figuring out what’s for dinner, getting dinner on the table, eating on the go, or pick up orders all the time. The grocery list is done for you. You can reuse this over and over. You save time, you save money. So many benefits. The other thing that came up in that Instagram question box was so many people are struggling with where to start, whether it is how to start with chores with your kids, how to start with any type of decluttering, purging, getting your house organized.

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You feel like you have too much stuff. You feel like you have too much on the schedule. Life feels heavy with home, daily tasks, daily chores, cleaning, everything that has to be done, all of the mental load that you carry as a busy parent, a busy mom, a busy person. The mental load is huge. We’re constantly consuming. We’re constantly taking in information. The comparison game is real. There is a better way. If you are on the brink of a breakdown and you feel like you are struggling to get everything done, you know that there’s a better way, but you don’t know where to start. I’m going to talk about that in this episode, so I took your feedback and that’s what I love doing. Please share with me whether it’s in the Facebook group, on Instagram, through a direct message. I love when you leave me questions.

(04:20):

Going to intentional edit.com, click on the record now button and actually ask a question. You don’t have to type anything out, you just leave me the question and I can answer those on podcast episodes, but I want to create content that serves you and that you benefit from. I want to have content on the podcast and share things that you can listen to an episode and implement in your homes and your life so that you can simplify. You can make things easier, you can organize, you can declutter, you can feel confident in purging and getting rid of things. All of that and so much more. So please give me the feedback. If there’s something you’re struggling with that I haven’t touched on yet or that you need more information on, go to intentional edit.com. The record now button will pop up. Just click on that.

(05:10):

You put in your name and then you record just like you’re leaving a voicemail. It could not be more easy, and whatever you ask or whatever you share is a struggle and you need feedback on, I will answer on a future tip Tuesday episode. Let’s really get into this. Where to start simplifying. We have all of these things that we have to do every day. You know you wanna feel better, you know you want your home to be more organized and orderly and picked up. You wanna feel good when you walk through the door. What can you do? Where can you start? People ask me all the time, where can I start? They share that they don’t know where to start, and the secret is, it is individual for every single person. There is not a magic pill or a magic button or a magic room or a magic drawer that I can tell you you, if you start your organizing journey in that space, everything will be perfect.

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Everything will be organized. It will make every organizing project and decluttering project in your house easy. That’s not how it works. Because we’re all individuals and we all have different clutter habits. We have different organization or lack of organization or clutter problems. We have different routines. We have different people living in our homes. We have different expectations. We have a different threshold for a baseline of what feels good for the amount of stuff that surrounds us and is in our closets and cabinets and cupboards. We’re all different, so we all have to start in a different place based on our biggest struggle. I can give you the formulas. I can give you questions to ask yourself when you are decluttering, and I can give you the guide to go through that you can use in every single room of your home. I can teach you how to organize.

(06:54):

I can recommend products for you and I can give you all of these basic things in philosophies and step by step instructions on how to do this, but the starting point will be different depending on the place in your home where you feel the most irritated, the ma most aggravated the place that is the most frustrating for you, and that might be with the way that something happens, like the kitchen is always a mess because you have a lot of people in your home. The dishes stack up. You have to collect dishes from all over the house that they’re constantly in the sink. You would be starting with a system, You would be creating a new routine to get people in your house to always bring the dishes to the sink. Depending on the ages of those people, renting and putting in the dishwasher might be appropriate.

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If you have a two year old, carrying a little bowl to the sink is what is appropriate in that situation. If you have older kids, maybe a couple times a week, they’re responsible for emptying the dishwasher. Now you can see what these basic examples, what works for one family isn’t going to work for another family in this stage, but all of our kids grow up and at different points in time carrying a dish to the sink becomes rinsing a dish becomes putting a dish in. The dishwasher becomes starting, the dishwasher becomes unloading the dishwasher. All of these things are dependent on what stage, what phase of life your family is currently in. That example is starting with a routine, creating a system that is going to work for your home. If there is too much stuff all over, you are going to start with decluttering.

(08:37):

If you feel like you do not have a space to purchase one more clothing item or one more kitchen accessory or anything because your cabinets are full, your closets are busting at the seams, your drawers are barely closing because you have too much stuff. Not to mention you have knacks and clutter all over. Then you would be starting with decluttering and purging and you have to get to that point to organize. But before you can organize, you have to purge. You have to start by getting rid of anything that you do not need, anything that you do not use, anything that you do not want and anything that you do not love. To start purging and to go through the purging process, I want you to listen to episode 49. Episode 49 talks about purging. How you start purging walks you through that process. That is where you are going to head and listen to that episode when you finish this one.

(09:31):

One thing that happens when we start these projects, sometimes there is excitement that builds. You feel like you’re all gung ho, you’re ready to do this. You’re tackling your whole house organization or you’re tackling the decluttering and you’re going to go room by room and get it all done, or you’re creating systems and you’re gonna make everything easier and you’re creating chore charts and all kinds of new routines for your whole family and you’re going to do a complete overhaul. How do you stay motivated? If you need to stay motivated and you wanna know about that, how do you keep the momentum going and what can you do to not burn out? You are going to go listen to episode 43. It is all about staying motivated for these big projects. What do you have to do though in any circumstance, whether it is creating the routine, getting to the place of organizing, have to declutter first, There’s three things that you always have to do.

(10:25):

The first one is to reduce, so in like a business sense, it would be to reduce your inventory at home. What does that mean? That means to purge, you have to purge, You have to do what I just said. If you don’t need it, if you don’t use it, if you don’t want it, if you don’t love it, goodbye, you are donating it. It is trash. You are getting it out of your home. You are removing it from the clutter because it is causing you stress. It is burdening you. It is a point of contingent. You have to get it out of there. You have to purge. That’s where I said go listen to episode 49. The other thing you have to do is make sure that everything that is in your home that you own, that you choose to keep in your home, you are being intentional about what you’re keeping in your home.

(11:07):

Every single thing that is a belonging of yours or your family, it has a place to be stored. It has a location where it lives within your home. Sometimes you hear me say it has a home within your home. Every single thing you own needs to have a place that is its storage location when it’s not being used. When you are shopping and you are thinking about buying something else, you need to think about if it is worthy of coming into your home. Is it something you want to take care of? Is it something you want to maintain? Is it something you want to clean? Is it something you want to store? Because every single thing that comes into your home is now your responsibility. Think about whether it is something you really want and maybe it is, Maybe it’s replacing something else. Maybe it’s something you need.

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Then make sure when the new item comes home, the item that is being replaced or the item that is not going to be used anymore is removed from your environment. You don’t need to store things that you are not using or that you do not want to have that do not bring you some kind of enjoyment. If you are replacing decor items, throw pillows, anything that would be considered home decor with something new because you don’t like what you had or you are upgrading to something that is more comfortable or more user friendly for this state of your home and the people in it now, do not keep the old item unless that item is going to serve a purpose in a different room or still continue to be used. Donate that item so someone else can use it. The things that we choose to keep that are stored in a cabinet or closet or high ups shelf or in an attic or basement that stay there year after year after year do not have a purpose for us.

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There is not a point in keeping them. Of course, there are keepsakes and there’s a very small percentage of things that you could keep that are a true keepsake, but that is the rare example. Those are the few things. You’re not filling your house with those things. Let your house breathe. Your house is not a storage unit. The third thing you have to do in this process is have good habits that help you maintain the type of home environment that you truly want. What does that mean? That means routines that pick up five minute pickup at the end of the night routines, like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, where you will be taking the dish to the sink and putting it in the dishwasher instead of leaving it all over the house, teaching your kids to help you unload the dishwasher a couple times a week, making it the new habit and the new routine.

(13:52):

That we do these things with the dishes so that the kitchen counter stay clean and clear so that mom is less irritable and people can feel calm and feel like they can take a deep breath in our kitchens because the clutter is not overwhelming to us. You’re creating a new baseline of how you want the home to feel and run, so that third thing that you have to do is come up with those systems and routines. Where do you start with the system and routine? Again, you have to identify the struggle. What is the pain point? What is the struggle in your life? You identify the struggle, the thing that is most bothersome to you right now, and then come up with a plan to tackle that. Is that a routine, a new routine? Is that a new system? Do you need to implement a weekly reset because every house that functions well and that stays clean has some type of a weekly refresh, reset, restock to do so that the house can get back to that baseline and be prepared for the week ahead.

(14:56):

Episode 45 is a huge episode on how to simplify all week long by doing, I think three things at the beginning of the week. It can take you less than 30 minutes to do these three things, but it sets you up for success and it saves you time all week long in everything that you do. I do what I call a weekly r and r refresh and restock everything for the week ahead, and in that time I prepare. I look at my calendar, I see what’s coming up. I know that we are prepared for everything for the upcoming week. Listen to episode 45. If you are wanting to simplify a lot of the tasks and the scheduling and the things that are going on in your life, the commitments, that type of thing, but whatever you are working on, whether you have a home that needs to be organized or you have way, way, way too much stuff and you need to start with reducing the clutter and purging or you need to start with systems and routines, the first thing you are going to do is to identify your struggle, visualize your days.

(16:05):

Think about when you go through each day, where are you the most frustrated, Where are you struggling? Where do you feel like you are about to have a breakdown? Like this is so frustrating, you just can’t take it anymore, and that is the problem you are going to solve first. You will always give these things time. If you need to work with a coach, sign up for a program, spend time researching and looking up information on how you’re going to tackle this problem, devote time to that. Come up with your plan, Stick with your plan and implement the whatever it is that you’re doing for two to four weeks minimum, it cannot be less than two weeks. I prefer a month, but sometime between two and four weeks. Then you are going to assess how it’s going, how are the changes going? It may not be easy, but after time, after about a month, you should be in that groove and then you can assess it to see if, do you need to make a little change?

(17:04):

You need to tweak it a little bit here or there and how do you move forward with it? Because the intention with these changes and with these new systems and this new routines and re removing the clutter from your home and giving everything in your home a storage location so that you can be organized is to create simplicity. It is to make life easier. That is the point of why we do this, but these things do take time and you have to make an individualized plan for you, for your family, for what is going on in your life right now, so I identify that pain point, identify the place you are struggling the most and start there. You can always sign up for the simplified home master class that I offer. There’s a link in the show description. You can scroll down from where you’re looking and sign up for the Simplified Home Masterclass that walks you through how to organize every single room in your house.

(18:00):

It teaches you the process. It goes through decluttering, purging, how to organize the process that I use and the professional organizers use with clients, and then we break it down every single room with examples and ideas of how to organize those rooms, how to create systems and routines, systems and routines in your home that are good to have like morning routine after school, routine dinner time and bedtime routines, examples of what those look like, all kinds of things to thoroughly do this, and it will take you time to get through this program because you have to put in the work, you have to do the purging. You have to touch the physical items, whether you’re doing it on your own or you have a coach helping you or a professional that you’re paying to come into your house or something like the Simplified Home Masterclass that I offer.

(18:51):

You still have to do the work. You go through the process, you do these things and you come out on the other side and the day to day tests in life become easier and the simplicity is brought to your home and you feel that calm feeling and you can truly enjoy more. You have more time to spend doing things you actually want to be doing with the people that are most important to you. That’s a lot of information. I gave you those three things to think about. The episodes I referenced again are episode 49 for purging, episode 43 to help you stay motivated and give you some ideas on how you stay motivated with these projects. An episode 45 for three things that you can do at the start of each week to simplify everything. If you are new to this podcast, go back, start at the beginning and listen to the episodes because there is goodness in all of them.

(19:46):

You will get something from every single episode that you can apply in your life. If you are truly wanting to bring simplicity to your life and home and to feel better and to eliminate the things that are not essential, to give yourself time to breathe and to feel and to enjoy the people and places and events and experiences that are important to you. Then you need to declutter. You need to purge, need to get that organization under control and come up with intentional systems and routines, and you start by finding the biggest point of contention, the biggest pain point for you, and come up with a solution from that. Do it for two to four weeks and then move on to the next one and you move through until you have solved the problems that are causing you the stress and that breakdown, emotional, overtired, stressed out feeling that you are having way too often.

(20:41):

Now, I know you can do this. I have faith in you. You totally can do this. Get the right materials, get the right resources, sign up for the right programs and start with what your biggest problem is. Move forward and you will be looking back in just a few short months, the successes that you’re having and the thing is that we’re once to struggle for you where you can now know how to handle them and feel good and start to feel better in your home because of the purging and the decluttering that has taken place. Good luck. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them on the record now button that pops up when you go to intentional edit.com. Send me a direct message on Instagram. I’m always happy to answer your questions or join us in the Facebook group. You can click on that link, head over there, join us, ask your questions.

(21:32):

I will be happy to help you and get you on the journey too. Simplicity. 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@intentionaledit.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!

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