Ep 40 - Home Organization with Children: Featuring Parenting Specialist Rachel Bailey

In this episode, we are joined by Rachel Bailey, a renowned parenting specialist, as we explore the challenges of maintaining a tidy home while raising children with sensory overload, anxiety, or other emotional challenges. Rachel shares practical strategies for overwhelmed parents and their children with big emotions, including effective decluttering and organizing techniques. We also discuss how parents can navigate the challenge of helping their children let go of items and overcome overwhelm during the decluttering process. If you're looking for actionable advice to create a balanced and organized home, this episode is a must-listen!

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

Carly: Hey guys. Welcome back. I am here with Rachel Bailey. We have been connected on the internet for a while because for us she has been this amazing source of inspiration. Then we connected about her podcast and now I'm bringing her to our podcast.

So without further ado, I'm just gonna let her take it away. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having me here, Carly. I really appreciate it.

Carly: Thank you for being here. I'm so excited to jump in and get all of your parenting wisdom as it pertains to home organization and decluttering.

Can you tell us all about yourself and your story, including how you came to find your niche?

Meet Rachel

Rachel: Yeah, absolutely.

So I am what I call a parenting specialist. My background is in clinical psychology, but I'm not really a parenting coach because I kind of feel like I advise more than I pull information out of people, which is what a coach does. I didn't really mean to start with parenting in any way. I was actually studying to be a neuropsychologist. Got pregnant along the way. So I didn't actually become a neuropsychologist, but I've always been interested in the brain and I was getting my PhD along the way. So, at that point when I got pregnant, I was still doing therapy. I was mostly doing therapy for teenagers, although I was working with some kids and some adults.

What I found in the teenagers was that there were a lot of teens who were really struggling with low self-esteem and a lot of anxiety. So I said to myself at that point, and this was probably, I don't know, 15 years ago. I said, whoa, there's a lot going on here. I need to back up and work with parents because if I can actually get to parents before I get to the kids. It can make such a big difference, not only for kids who are gonna become teens but also for the entire family.

So I started working with parents again maybe 14, 15 years ago. Now, it was before parent coaches were even really a thing. Eventually, I was working with them and realized that my passion was for what I really focus on right now, which is parents who are raising kids with what I call big emotions.

So parents know kids have big emotions. If their kids have maybe anxiety or they're more sensitive or maybe more strong-willed. Those are the words that parents tend to use, but it's generally kids who just feel things strongly. That's what I focus on working with the parents of these kids.

Carly: I love it so much, and as somebody who was one of those teens that needed a little extra assistance, I really appreciate everything that you do. I definitely know kids with big emotions. Everything that you talk about really hits home from my Auntie perspective. So thank you. I'm really excited because I know folks in our community are really excited to hear what you have to say about these different things as well.

How Parents Really Feel About Their Homes

Carly: So I know Both of us are really in the business of having folks find peace at home through the strategies that we both teach. Can you elaborate on some of the most common things you hear when folks start working with you about how they're feeling at home?

Rachel: Yeah, definitely not peaceful. And I agree with you. We're both in the business of peace of relief. That's what we wanna give. When people come to me, they tend to feel overwhelmed. That is probably the first word both you and I hear. Yes. Overwhelmed that life is chaotic. They feel out of control again. You and I probably hear these very similar words when they first come to us.

Feeling helpless and guilty. And one of the words that I think we don't talk about enough but I hear a lot is maybe even a little bit resentful in my world. It's resentful of kids who just drain us and take so much of our energy and like they need so much from us. So maybe there's a little bit of resentment too.

That's generally how parents are feeling. All of those words I hear.

Carly: I feel like that's the word that people don't really want to say. Yeah. But it's like, here's the surface, and here's the word. Exactly. Exactly. So what are the most common ways that folks work with you?

Teaching Task Resilience to Kids

Rachel: I'm working with kids with big emotions on self-esteem and resilience, so my focus these days is on improving what I call task resilience so that kids can clean up, do the things that they have to do, do their homework, be nicer to their brother/sister. So the things they don't feel like doing.

I teach parents how to teach kids to do those things. But also emotional resilience. How do kids handle the fact that parents are gonna say no to them?

No, I'm not buying you another video game.

No, you can't go to your friend's house cuz you didn't do your homework.

How do they handle those big feelings without yelling at their parents or melting down or hating themselves?

I teach all about resilience, task resilience, and emotional resilience. I teach those in a membership. That's how most parents work with me. I have a curriculum that I actually walk parents through. It's a step-by-step process. And then I also do live classes. The goal is really to bring more resilience to the home in kids and in parents, too. I start with parents actually teaching them some resilient skills as well, so they don't get sucked into their kids' big emotions.

Carly: Oh my gosh. That's gold because that's a tough thing to not get sucked into sometimes.

Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. Personally, I have two kids with big emotions and I'm very sensitive. I have big emotions too, so it's so easy to get sucked in for me. Even if you're not sensitive, it's easy to get sucked in. We need those skills first before we can teach them to our kids.

Carly: So here's a question for you that's not on my list of questions. Do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person?

Rachel: I do. I'm textbook highly sensitive. Like if you actually Google highly sensitive, Dr. Aron is the first person to coin this term and there are certain qualities. I fit almost every single one of them. I'm very highly sensitive. Yes.

Carly: That's so interesting. So I am a mentor in a community and so I talk to hundreds of organizers every week about the things that we are going through. And I know for our highly sensitive people who happen to be organizers, sometimes that can be really difficult to not take the emotions on of what their clients are going through.

Rachel: Exactly.

Carly: So I can only imagine how difficult that is as a psychologist. Because our work ends up being a lot more emotional than people might think it is before they end up going through the process themselves.

Rachel: Absolutely.

Carly: Yours is all the time.

Rachel: Yeah. Well, I think organizing is all the time too because there's so much emotion around organization. I mean, you think it's just the things. it's not. It's not just the things. There's so much emotion here.

I remember one time early in graduate school. One of my professors said to me, I noticed you're an empath, which is actually a subset of highly sensitive. An empath is where we kind of feel other people's feelings. He said you're an empath. You're gonna have to be careful so that you don't actually hold other people's feelings all the time. So I actually have a lot of training in not holding other people's feelings. That's what I teach parents now because as parents, we can't hold our kids' feelings, otherwise, we can't be helpful to them.

So, yeah, absolutely.

Carly: Oh, oh, I love that so much.

Okay, so now getting into kind of some logistical things. Folks in my community wonder if it's even possible to have a tidy and organized home while living with kids who may struggle with sensory overload, anxiety, or other emotional challenges.

Strategies for Overwhelmed Parents

What are some decluttering or organizing strategies that you've seen work particularly well for overwhelmed parents? Which might be every parent and their children with big emotions.

Rachel: One of the biggest tips I have is if you're going to organize with kids, declutter with kids, is to do it with them. There are so many benefits of connection. Just knowing that we're in this together. For example, when my kids were younger, we cleaned together every Sunday afternoon. That was just what we did. You get a lot less resistance. It's also when you're connected and you're kind of in the tough stuff with them, they're more likely to do it.

Just as importantly, when the big feelings do come up, You can help your kids through those feelings. One of the things I say all the time is that big feelings will sometimes stop us in our tracks and prevent us from doing the thing we have to do, but we can actually move through them so we can get back to the thing that we have to do, like clean and organize.

So, for kids who do feel anxious or upset when we're giving away things, we have to help them through their feelings so they can get to the other side and continue doing what they have to do. So just cleaning and organizing with your kids is probably one of the top tips that I have. I have others, but that's probably the biggest.

Carly: I can totally see that.

Something that I end up seeing all the time with folks along those same lines is working with adults when we're going back to childhood and reminiscing about childhood. When you ask folks. You know, when you were growing up and your parents said, Hey, go clean your room. Did you know what that meant?

And a lot of folks are like, no, I didn't know what that meant. But then you're too young to really ask. By the time you're old enough to ask, you're either moved out or you're embarrassed that it's been, you know, 18 years and you have no idea what that is. That's how people end up just kind of shoving things under the bed into closets. They learned subconsciously what their parents were looking for. And that is kind of like clear surface things away, things Tidy, but they never got like the full explanation. So I love what you're saying about doing this with your kids because there are things that are like second nature. I'm doing that in air quotes, guys.

“Second nature” as an adult that actually a lot of people didn't even learn. So, You might not know that yourself. You might be learning it for the first time or you might think that your kids know what the hell you're talking about, but they don't.

Rachel: So true. And man, everything you said about cleaning and shoving things under the bed, that is so representative also of our feelings, by the way.

Like our parents want us to clean on the surface and all we do is shove our feelings under the bed, metaphorically. It's all the same stuff. When we say to kids, calm down or clean your room. They don't know exactly even if they know what it means, which I agree with you, most don't. They don't know how to do it.

They don't know how to push through the “this is boring”. “What do I do when it's boring”? Their attention gets distracted like they don't know how. So when we teach them how to clean their space and clean their minds, we are empowering them for life.

Carly: Ah. So there's this trend that I've seen with my sisters and their kids where I'm just like, this is amazing and I love when I have the opportunity to be involved in this way. When kids are having big emotions and you're able to say to a child you like, basically get them through with breathwork. I was doing breath work with my niece the other day and kind of some grounding, not affirmations, but like, let's just kind of go through some breathing.

Rachel: Mindfulness. Mindfulness is probably what you were doing.

Carly: Mindfulness. I think I did say mindfulness at the moment, but, you know, she'd lost her shorts. The shorts she wanted to wear the next day. She couldn't find them. She thought she had both, but she didn't. We've all been there and she was starting to become very worked up over it and to be able to say, Okay, let's take some deep breaths. I'm gonna have you breathe and I'm gonna have some things for you to think about. Just kind of like coming down from that moment, but having kids know the keywords, let's have a mindfulness moment. Kids know about deep breathing and how that can help calm you down and what to tell yourself in that moment.

Those are tools that I did not have as a child, and I'm just like, it's amazing.

Rachel: Yeah.

Carly: And you know, it's not like our parents were holding it from us. Our parents didn't have those tools either.

Rachel: Correct. That's what I say all the time. Our parents did the best they could. They didn't know. We're gonna break that cycle because now we do know and we can teach our kids and we can really empower our kids to not be controlled by their environment.

That's the thing. We wanna teach kids to recognize their feelings, but not be controlled by someone being mean to them or someone telling them no, or someone doing this or that.

Carly: yeah. I mean, I'm working on this as an adult. I have my therapy appointment later today, so I'm doing my list of things to talk about and all of it is so helpful for kids and grownups.

When it is Hard to Let Go

How can parents navigate the challenge of decluttering? This is the next question. These are questions from my community, so I really appreciate you. How can parents navigate the challenge of decluttering when their kids struggle with letting go of items and become easily overwhelmed by the process?

Rachel: Yeah, and this is where It goes back to when we are teaching kids how to respect their feelings but not be controlled by their feelings. So we're starting to declutter, and a child is getting upset because they have to let go of an item. There's basically a two-step process that I teach.

It's pretty simple.

It's not easy, but it's pretty simple.

When someone has an emotion, the first thing they need to do is actually release the energy. Things are happening inside our body when we have an emotion, so we need to be able to release it. We don't ever wanna say to a child, all right, let's calm you down right now. They actually have to be able to release what they're feeling and feel what they're feeling. Feelings, if we try to just push them down, they don't go away. They just go right back inside. So we allow a child to feel upset and feel this way. And then we actually help them. We'll do what I call, this is my strategy, traveling the yuck curve.

So basically, yuck is a word I used to describe anything uncomfortable where your brain is like, whoa, something is going on here like overwhelm. So basically yuck gets bigger before it gets smaller. It's like a rainbow-shaped curve. Imagine a rainbow in your head. What we do is… we allow kids to release that feeling. They are gonna get a little bigger at first, where we're like, yeah, you know what, we're gonna pause right now.

We're gonna stop for a moment. Feel the feeling, let it pass. It will pass. Then once it passes, once they've actually gone through that curve, they realize they're safe and they're okay. That's when we return to decluttering and we use some strategies like, all right, what is in your control? We don't wanna give away that thing right now.

It's really upsetting you. Maybe we take a picture of it. You could probably give all these strategies of what you do about giving things away, but we're basically letting our child have the feeling and we're teaching them how to get through it. Then once they get through it, we can ask these questions to help them deal with the overwhelm.

You cannot help an overwhelmed person while they're actually feeling overwhelmed. You have to help them get through it and release it. Your mindfulness strategies help someone actually get through these feelings without acting in a way they regret.

Carly: Mm-hmm. And I feel like these are things that come up for adults all the time too. And I wanna say that because if anyone is listening and are thinking like, am I a child? No. All of this comes up for everyone. When I'm working with adults, cause I mostly work with adults, sometimes children, but mostly adults. We're taking little five-minute water breaks. We're taking little pauses. I'll leave the room. Sometimes people just need to feel their feelings. I'm giving out hugs If they need them. I have tissues on hand at all times because there end up being a lot of emotions around what we're going through. A hundred percent. And it's not easy. These strategies can work for you as well, which is the point.

Rachel: A hundred percent. Yeah. It's funny, whenever I work with parents and children now, but I used to do corporate workshops and communication presentations. It's all the same stuff, whether it's parent, child, parent, parent, adult, adult. I mean, it doesn't matter.

These are just human emotion and behavior topics. It's not just related to kids for sure.

Carly: Oh, I love it so much. Can you tell us a little bit more about your community? Because II wanna hear more about this.

Rachel: Yes. So my membership community is called Raising Resilience. And again, it's basically where we are fostering more resilience in ourselves because most of us, like we were saying, don't know how to not get sucked into our kids. So we see our kids are melting down or this is the one we get triggered by. They're being disrespectful. So we say, clean your room and they say, no, I'm not gonna clean my room.

Or they just don't listen. How do we not get triggered by that? And yes, It is possible and you will feel so empowered when you learn how to do this. It's not that hard either. So we learn how to not get sucked in. We learn how to diffuse kids, what I call drama more quickly, and then we teach them that resilience that I was mentioning before. the task resilience.

So how do they clean their room, even if we're not in the room? When I said do it together, you're not doing it together with them all the time. Let's say they're in their room cleaning a part of their room and again, it gets boring and they get distracted. Or they are distracted by a friend that just got mad at them.

How do we teach them to maintain their task resilience so they can do what they have to do? And then how do we teach them to handle those uncomfortable feelings that aren't necessarily related to something they have to do? So that is how I help my community. It's all about resilience and doing it in a way that helps them feel more confident.

What I find is when we usually teach resilience, we make kids feel worse. Because we say, just like Carly, you were mentioning, in the beginning, clean up, but they don't know how and then they feel bad about themselves. So we do all this in a way that increases their confidence because we're teaching them how to do these things. Not just that they should, but we're teaching them how.

Carly: I love it so much. This is a side question that I was thinking about as you were chatting. When you're talking about task resilience, do you use a lot of timers in your strategies? And if so, what kind of amounts of time to stay on a task do you feel are good for different age ranges?

practical strategies, Tools + Timers

Rachel: Okay, so it's a good question, and I will just say this about timers. Parents use timers in two different ways. One is like you're probably implying, which is okay, if you have a task that you don't wanna do, let's just set a timer. When it's done, we can stop. That's one set of timers. I will tell you, most parents, when they think of timers, think of timers like, you have five minutes left on your device.

And then the timers tick down and when the timers are up, the kid has to get off the device. In that case, timers do not work. I just wanna start by saying that, cause that's what I hear most often with timers. Timers don't work if you're trying to stop a child from doing the thing they wanna do. They're on their device and you put a timer. There are actually other strategies that you need to use that are not timers.

However, I think the way you were implying it, yes, they're very helpful if they have to do their homework and you're using what's called, I'm sure you teach the Pomodoro technique. So you are putting it on for 10 minutes. Then at the end of the 10 minutes, they can pause, take a break, and then come back. That is very helpful. So if you're using a timer to end something unwanted, it's helpful if you try to end something that's wanted it is not as helpful.

Carly: Okay. I love that, and I love that you mentioned Pomodoro. We also shortened the Pomodoro because even for my folks when we're decluttering, especially if you're starting with like a very decluttered area, it's a lot easier to use Pomodoro in like 15 to 20 minutes versus that 25 with a five-minute break.

Rachel: I totally agree. I used to be an ADHD coach, which is helping people who struggle with executive functioning skills. I did that for like seven years. We use a lot of this type of strategy and it's always about making it work for you.

There are what I call yuck emotions or uncomfortable motions that shut off the part of our brain that allow us to be productive. So if we are just trying to push through and we don't have some cutoff, we're not gonna be able to get through.

So it's really important that we figure out the amount of time that works for us and it may depend on the task. I'm sure you teach that it may depend on the task and the person. It has to work for our brains.

Carly: I'm really loving that and I'm really grateful that that came from you, somebody who has the degrees to back it up. I talk about that a lot, but I don't have the degrees. Unless you want a degree in American Studies, which no one does.

Rachel: You have the experience. You have the experience, that's what matters.

Carly: It's great. Making it work for you is such an important part of it that I think people can miss a lot of the time. I think the things that come to mind probably in the work that both of us do, is the questions we're getting of what is the best way?

Rachel: The best way is the way that works for you, the best.

Carly: A hundred percent. Yeah.

Rachel: When I worked with kids and teens as an ADHD coach, I would actually have them do experiments to figure out what was the best way. We would literally have a chart. We would say, okay, try it for five minutes.

How did it go? Try it for 10 minutes. How did it go? I've always been all about self-esteem, and the way we need to feel good about ourselves is to understand ourselves and what does work for us. So let's figure it out. It's gonna be different than what works for somebody else.

Let's do experiments to figure out who we are and what works best for us.

Carly: I love the experiment method, cuz that makes it fun. Yeah. I think I'm there. I'm like, Ooh, experiments. Let's do it. Yeah. And then also the feeling, I think it's easy to forget that so much of what we're both doing really has to do with how you're feeling.

Oh, yeah. And to tap into that. Absolutely. Ugh. Okay. Any last thoughts before I let you go, Rachel?

Rachel: I would just say going back to what we were saying earlier, that we're both in the business of bringing peace to people. As a highly sensitive person, I'm very sensitive to my environment and clutter. I will say that. So my husband actually jokes. He knows what kind of mood I'm in based on how much I clean the kitchen. If I'm cleaning a lot, I'm not in a great place because I'm very affected by my environment. But ultimately, peace doesn't come just from our environment. Peace starts from inside of us.

It starts with the way we think and the way we perceive things, and that's good news and bad news. Bad news maybe because it's like, oh, you mean I'm not gonna feel better when I just make everything on the outside better? When I make my kids listen and when I make my space clean? No, you're not gonna feel better.

However, the good news is that because it starts with us, we have complete control over it, and there are strategies. I'm such a how-to person, like, tell me how. What do I say? What do I do? There are literal strategies to help you gain more peace in your mind, and then it's so much easier to lead your children and to create more space in your home as well.

So it starts inside of us, not outside of us.

Carly: I love it so much. Where can folks find you?

connect with rachel

Rachel: Probably the best place to find me first of all, is my website, Rachel-Bailey.com. I also have a podcast which I'm excited to have you on Carly very shortly. You can find that on my website at rachel-bailey.com/podcast.

The podcast is called Your Parenting Long Game. You can find that on any podcast app. Then I have a Facebook group that goes along with it where I give behind-the-scenes and extra tips- Your Parenting Long Game Podcast Community. I am on Instagram, but not as much there to be quite honest, but I'm still there.

Carly: No worries. And we will have all of those links in the show notes as well. So go follow Rachel. If you are a parent or an auntie, you're gonna want these tips.

I think I mentioned this, I know I mentioned before we recorded, and I think I tapped into it a little bit at the beginning of the show. We as a company have been following you for a while because of how well you disseminate information. You've been an inspiration to us from the business side of things, but also from the actual content that you have, learning about parenting kiddos with big emotions. We're just big fans over here, so thank you so much, Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you so much for those kind words and for having me here. I really appreciate it.

We would love to make sure that your questions are answered for a question of the week or a future episode. So we love to hear from you. DM (on Instagram) or you can always email me, carly@tidyrevival.com. We love hearing from you. We love hearing your thoughts about the pod, and thank you so much for hanging out.

If you wanna learn more about how I can help you, feel free to head over to tidyrevival.com to learn how I work with people one-on-one or in our private community. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest episode.

We would also love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to tag us on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. The Tidy Revival podcast is written and hosted by me, Carly Adams, and edited by Brittany McLean. Title Song Maverick is by Dresden The Flamingo.

and until next time, remember that…