Ep 12 - When You Need a Kick in the Ass

 

Today we're talking about tips to help you when you are on the struggle bus, aka when you need a kick in the ass just to keep going.

It's really common for people to kind of fall off a little bit with their new habits when they're decluttering and organizing. That's fine. It's normal. I think people get frustrated and tell themselves “Well, It doesn't work for me.”

You're tempted to quit. It's just like other healthy habits that you keep working on—hydration, what you eat, moving your body, and getting enough sleep. You may have days that are harder than others. You may have days where you're not necessarily doing things as optimally as you would like to do. That doesn't mean that you are not able to do them. It just means you need a little kick in the butt and I'm going to give you some tips to help get you going.

You can listen right here, on Apple Podcasts, or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Why decluttering and organizing matters

Let's talk for a minute about why decluttering and organizing matter. Most people come to me because they're feeling very stressed, and they're feeling very overwhelmed. I hear people say this all the time, I feel like it's stressing me out. And the thing is– it is. It's not in your head. There was this study done that I reference often and gets quoted left and right in my industry. The study is called No Place Like Home: Home Tours Correlate With Daily Patterns of Mood and Cortisol. Essentially what the study uncovered was that with more clutter, your cortisol levels rise. They studied a lot of different people and they found this correlation between clutter and stress cortisol. We're going to link it in the show notes. If you want to read the study, because I know I'm just glossing over it, I welcome you to look at it. It is very fascinating, very interesting. 

This can feel so isolating, but what this study confirms is that this is across the board. This is not just you, it's not in your head. Stress can easily be linked to clutter, and it's really, really hard.

Where to get started

The tip that I always start with when you're decluttering and getting organized is to make your action plan. The great thing about this is that it helps you know what you're doing now. It helps you know what you're doing next. If you have fallen off a little bit, just go back to your action plan. Or if you don't have one, this can be a great time to help you create one, because again, it kind of takes away getting organized from this vague, large project and helps you break it down into workable baby steps, and that's really what you want. If things can feel less overwhelming, we are more likely to get started doing them.

The second tip is to make sure that you are working in baby steps. I talk about this all the time, but this is a great time to reiterate it. Breaking it down into baby steps ensures that different aspects of your action plan don't feel overwhelming or like you're going to have to take huge chunks of time or days, weeks, vacation days, or your whole weekend to get these done.

What we want to do is to break down your action plan into little steps that you can do. We're talking for like 20 minutes while someone takes a little disco nap. While you know you have time after bedtime, before you go to bed, it's not taking all of your precious time before you go to bed. Just something that you can do to give yourself a high five. Cross it off your list. Feel motivated. Know that you've accomplished this step, you've accomplished something– because that can be a thing too. Feeling frustrated that you're not finishing anything and then you're just moving. So don't forget about those baby steps. Okay?

It’s not just background noise

We're also going to have you listen to podcasts or other motivational media like our podcast, which you're already doing. So congratulations. High-five yourself. Other great sources of inspiration are Pinterest, different people's newsletters, and YouTube. every little bit helps.

This matters because what you are bringing in, what you are ingesting as far as media, those are going to be the things that help keep you motivated subconsciously. So that's something that I'm always doing if I'm trying to focus on a certain aspect of something if I'm trying to push myself in business like I'm going to be listening to a lot of business stuff. Maybe that is old books I've listened to before or going through a course again or a podcast from someone I admire. Whatever it is, it just helps keep me motivated.

Revisiting older things. That's tip number four. So if you read a book that you loved on decluttering or organization, maybe you could listen again on audio. You could listen while you are doing your projects. You can binge old podcasts. We have a bunch to choose from. If you haven't listened to episode one, this could be a good time to do it and to stay motivated along the way. So you just have those little tips in your ear, those stories in your ear, the things that are going to help motivate you and motivate the reason why you want to get things done.

Because that's always something to do, that's important to remember. I always tell our students to listen to our Q&A calls because we have a library, an extensive library of call replays that people can listen to and have access to in their student portal. So that's just a ton of content and messages right there.

You don’t have to do it alone

I also recommend Finding an accountability partner. This makes such a huge difference in business. I have a few accountability partners, People that I touch base with and talk with if there's something I need to work through if I have questions if I'm celebrating something if I have ideas.

I'm in a business where I don't have a lot of colleagues. I mean, we have our small and mighty team, I do bounce a lot of things off of Brittany, who is editing this podcast. Hi Brittany. I also have another team member who helps with errands. We're a small team, so there are not a lot of colleagues and it is really important to find people who care about the things that you want to share because.

When it comes to decluttering and organizing, let's be honest, this is not a sexy topic for everybody. Not everybody wants to hear about it. I've seen some people use social media for different accountability things, whether it's working out or if it is a new habit that they're trying to form, or even journaling.

When you can have active conversations with somebody who really, really cares and has answers for you where you can bounce ideas off of them. You can get their opinions and you can just ask questions on an ongoing basis, In real time. That's really, really helpful to help keep you going when you need it. Again, it's also really helpful to be able to share your wins with somebody else who cares. All these little things matter if they all matter and they all add up. 

Time management tips

The sixth tip is to put it on your calendar when you're decluttering and organizing it. Is easy to have this as an abstract thing of like, Oh yeah, I need to get that done. But the difference between that and getting it done, making it happen, and checking things off your list is going to be to figure out when you're going to make it happen. Again, that's why we really push doing things in small chunks because it's a lot easier to find small chunks of time that you can consistently make happen versus having to set aside, you know, half a day, a full day a weekend, your vacation days. 

I hear a lot of times, especially in the springtime, should I take time off of work. Should I do this spring cleaning? Should I do it all over a week? I'm like, That sounds awful. I'm going to tell you right now, I don't want to spend my spring break doing home projects for like five complete days.

Even when I was doing some of my most intensive decluttering for me personally in the last Gosh, I guess this was about nine years ago. When my grandmother passed away, we were cleaning out her house. This was before I was an organizer, but again, it's still the most intense decluttering that I've ever done.

When we were cleaning out her house, one thing that kept it feeling. Doable. There's that snoring again. One thing that kept it feeling doable was that we were working in smaller chunks and it was because my grandma lives on the other side of the state. So I'm in Northern California, and she's in Southern California.

So we were going down on the weekend going down like on Friday then spending All of Saturday decluttering, maybe a little bit on Sunday, and then driving home doing that a lot. That was exhausting, but it was less exhausting to do it in that shorter spurt than if we tried to do it all in one go, like one week or two weeks or something.

But yeah, so that's one full day. If you could make it shorter, if you could do a little 20-minute, 30-minute, one-hour spurt, like you're going to make amazing things happen, you're going to be checking things off your list. You're going to be feeling super accomplished you're going to be able to make it happen in chunks of time that you already have.

So look at your schedule. Everyone's a little bit different. That's the other reason I'm not like you should do it first thing in the morning. You should do it at 8:00 am because everyone's schedule differs slightly. What's going on with your family, and their needs? That's different for everyone and the stage of life your kiddos are in.

That makes a big difference too. Figure out that time for yourself. If you know you need help figuring out that time and you have some options, but you need to work through it, feel free to DM me, right? Let's make it happen. Make that date with yourself. 

One tip that I have for setting alarms. I do this all the time for myself and I do this for clients a lot. I have a separate calendar just for this because we do it so often that they're not popping up on my calendar all the live long day. We set a lot of reminders in this special Google calendar that I have for clients. Say they want to work on it, let's just say going through their photos they want to work on it on Thursday evenings.

I'll just set a recurring time on the calendar for the time that works for them to do the thing. Then I'll put a cute reminder with some emojis. You know, I love emojis. I'll put it on there. We set it, but then it's very important to also set a notification so it'll pop up on their phone and we set an email.

So then if you miss it, you're going to see it, it's going to remind you like, Oh yeah, I need to make sure I was working on this. Oh, when was I supposed to be doing that? Oh, that's right. Thursday evenings. Oh yeah. That's when I ignored that notification. These types of things are really helpful because you will be able to stay on top of them and be reminded of them. It's not going to fall by the wayside. You're going to get these regular reminders. That's what we do with deadlines too.

Now, for that swift kick in the ass….

If you need extra help to get going, or you're wondering how you're going to be able to find support and accountability, we would love to have you in the course community. Honestly, all of the things that I mentioned before are things that are built-in support in the course community. We have ongoing accountability— You can fill out this form at any time and say what you're working on, what your deadline is, and your name, and then we follow up in our private community for accountability.

Say your deadline is just for example Friday, then we'll pop up on Thursday and just say like, Hey, you know, you are working on this. We're going to tag you in there. So you're working on this and this was your deadline. How's it going? We'll be following up, checking in because we care, like a lot. We give a lot of shits in the community. We want to make sure that you have those notifications popping in so that you know that people are following up. We will follow up with you on as many things as you need following up on. So, ask questions anytime. That's also a huge part of the community or where you can just share your stories, share your wins. Big wins, small wins. We celebrate them all.

Setting aside time to work on projects and getting feedback from me personally as well as other students along the way, all of this costs a lot less than it would cost for you to bring an in-home organizer to work with you one on one. If that sounds intriguing and you want to learn more ahead to tidyrevival.com/course

Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you're always going to have access to the latest episode. We would love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to DM us anytime @tidyrevival. We're on Instagram, Facebook. TikTok and also on Pinterest. I know Pinterest is not really a DMing place, but there are a lot of resources there too.

The Tidy Revival Podcast is written and hosted by Carly Adams. It is edited by Brittany McLean. The title song, Maverick, is by Dresden The Flamingo. 

And until next time, remember that…

 
 
 
 

Links mentioned in this episode

 
Tidy Revival Podcast, Decluttering, MindsetCarly AdamsTidy RevivalDecluttering, overwhelm, time management