Category: Podcast

This week we have Monica Monfre, Founder of Make Caviar & 

The Chalkboard Lifestyle, discussing how to set yourself up for success before the school year, especially if you are an educator, teacher or homeschool. Monica, an experienced educator, shares valuable insights and tips on how teachers can establish routines and stay organized throughout the school year, whether in traditional classroom settings or homeschooling.

In this episode we talk about:

• Why setting yourself up with a plan will save you time.
• What happens when things change during the school year.
• How to NOT stay in the classroom until the late hours trying to keep up with the work.

Other Episodes You Might Be Interested In:

Ep. 02: Digital Space vs. Physical Space Organizing

Ep. 10: 10 Note Taking Made Easy: The Different Styles You Need to Know

Ep. 19: Finding your Summer Groove: Staying Organized During the Long Break

Ep. 21: Avoiding Burnout and Achieving Mindful Organization with Jennifer Bassman

Where to find Monica Monfre online:

Web: https://www.monicamonfre.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/monicamonfre/

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Hello, Monica. It's so good to see you. I'm so glad you are our guest today because I've been wanting to talk about this for a really long time. and as our community knows, we already did the introduction and we get straight to the nitty gritty, and I've been wanting to talk to a former teacher for so long on the podcast specifically because I feel like you and kinda like — either school teachers or educators are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to organizing and productive. Like, you have to be you kind of have to be in your own way, and that's the thing. like, in your way. So I'm excited about the conversation today. So welcome. Welcome. we are going to 1st just get to the why is this even an important topic and why we're devoting an entire episode to this. And that is why is it important to establish routines or be organized before you even start the school year or very early on in the school year, whether, again, if you're homeschooling or if you're more in the traditional classroom style. Like, why is this an important part of, of an educators organizing journey?

Oh my gosh. This is such a great question. And, Stephanie, I don't know if you know this, but my very first day of teaching was the very first day I showed up to the job. Like, I had never done student teaching before I was hired non traditionally, and I was, you know, a smidgen organized. I had no idea what was gonna hit me. but literally, they tell teachers whether it's your 1st year or your 20th year. Right? You have to be ready to hit the pavement running, like, the they eat, there's no, like, yay, it's the 1st day of school, like, let's all, especially if you teach high school, I taught high schoolers. So for me, I think when I look back at those 1st years, when I was still figuring it out, And now when I, like, think back to, like, years, 13, 14, 15, starting off, organized, just for my brain, also allowed me to feel really ready to just be present with my students and to start off strong, whether that organization was how you're gonna enter the classroom, like, that's part of being organized, whether was the routines of, like, this is how my day's gonna start. this is how I'm gonna end my day. I remember my 1st year, like, I had no organization. I would show up, like, an hour before school. 3 o'clock 4 o'clock came. I worked in a charter school, and I would be there till, like, or 7 because I had no idea how to start and end my day. So even that much of organization helps with sustainability. And then also when the students were like, miss, where should I put this? And I would be like, oh my gosh. If you could see my class during the 1st year, there was papers everywhere. It felt organized in my brain. but I know that the more that I got organized and the sooner I did it, the more effective active I was inside the classroom and the just the better my classroom ran.

You mentioned something very important here, and that's the, the because you're handling other people's you know, education and you're with other people, like, you can't control that. And so that's the space that you can control. Like, you just mentioned that, like, hey, I don't I can't I can't have, you know, so and so student be organized or whatever. They they they are doing what they're they're doing. And, feel like you just kind of took control of that on your own, because you could control. You can you can help that. So let's talk about it. It's so funny. Oh. Oh, go ahead. Good.

I was just gonna say it's so funny because my students are probably more organized than I ever was. And so they helped teach me how to be more organized.

But that's that's the thing. Again, they're only consumed with their own, you know, organization, not the whole classrooms. That's 30, you know, it could be 15, 30 bodies, even if you're, homeschooler, that's still more than one person you are responsible for. So, that's something to to always think about. Like, you're not just organizing yourself, but other people too. okay. So now, you know, that's the importance of it. How long do you think it took you to find a good rhythm, like, your style? Like, what worked for you? Oh gosh.

It takes a long time. I think that for newer teachers, I just would say, like, give yourself grace because it took me a while. I think and there's lots of different parts of organization inside of the classroom. So I didn't really have an organization to my day until probably year 3, because I was just sort of trying to get by. But the organization around how I collected papers, that really was the 1st year. Right? I started to think about how could look in testing it out. One thing that I think is so unique for teachers is you might have multiple different systems based upon your class. So I taught 5 periods, when I first started 5, 5 sections, and 2 of those I had a co teacher with. So Those organization were different because again, we're managing 2 people's organization styles and also students who maybe had different legal requirements around what organization needed to look like for them. so certain ones got better. I would still say that when I left teaching, in last year. So my last full year was 2021 to 2022. I felt like I was pretty down to the organization aspects it. And the thing that I I wish if I could have gotten it done faster would have been my calendar and just putting in dates on there. So my 1st year, I was like, paper planner also, I think it's so key. You might ask this question later, but I was teaching for 15 years. So when I started teaching was 2007 to 2008, and the technology that helped me get my life together as a teacher drastically changed. I mean, 15 years isn't a huge like, span, I think. But it's it's a huge span in the technology and teaching world. So I do think that I had to switch everything up, but those 1st couple of years, I I definitely would say the grace. to get to get some things together. And the most important thing, though, after year 3, when I got my day to get together, I enjoyed teaching so much more But it took me a while to figure out what it would be like if I wasn't at the school building from 7 AM to 7 PM.

Yeah. And what would be the one tip or, like, what would be the one thing that or haven't maybe that carried you through, you think? Like, the one that you were consistent with, even if things were changing around you, even if you were co teaching, like, What's that one habit you you think you would have credit to your, staying organized long term?

I think putting timers into my calendar. Teachers talk a lot about timers for students, but it was super helpful for me to have either timers or reminders. So using Google Calendar has been the one thing that once I figured out how to use it, it was so helpful. And when I think about being organized, whether it's, like, putting in appointments for the beginning of the day and saying, like, change your board, like, change the date on your board, the things that you just think you would do, but having those sort of set up. And then also putting in a reminder, I hope it's okay to say this, Stephanie, but to go to the bathroom, right, like, I would forget, like, I think things, if you're not in the classroom, you might not think about, ah, I just go to the bathroom whenever I like me to, but as a teacher, I was like, You have 15 minutes now. That'd be a great time to go to the bathroom, get some water, maybe put some sustenance in your body. and I had to so those are, like, the base organizing that will sustain you, whether your kids are doing what they're supposed to do or not is are you taken care of?

Oh, a 100%. And I'm glad you mentioned it. Yeah. We can though, those are, like, basic human needs. And we sometimes forget when we're talking about, oh, I wish I was more organized. or, oh my gosh, I'm such a mess or a hot mess express. You don't think about, well, how just go to the basics? Are you taking care of yourself? Because if that not sustained, then the rest will be really hard. Not impossible, but really hard. Your energy won't be up. It's kinda like exercising or really just anything. Like, you have to be able to sustain it. So I I can see that a 100%. Yeah. That's a great point. Thanks for mentioning that. Yeah. human needs. Everybody meet your facing and human needs. Oh my gosh. I worked at a school before that did let us eat in front of the kids because they were like, if the kids can't eat, you can't eat, and I was like,

Oh my gosh. Like, how am I gonna get by? And I think that's, like, the Google calendar just reminding myself but it was time to do the things so important.

Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit. Let like, let's go into and segue into, okay, great. You're you're putting things on the calendar and you've got your, you know, your timers or whatever that one thing that is helping you, you get, you know, stay organized long term. Great. But then life happened. either at the school, things change, you got added another educator into into the picture, if you were more home based, just like things got shake shaken up. What what's something what are a couple tips that you would give people that are going through a major change, and they just feel really overwhelmed. And they don't think they can go back to their old routines, or it's getting really hard to go back, or even restart one that they just haven't even had. Like, what would you what are some of those tips that you would give to people?

There are so many. I think one of the things that I loved about teaching, and I still love about it is that it does always change. So it I think what's really helpful is to do an organization routine at the beginning of the week and at the end of the week. I think Aftons are here to do lists are really important. What I found that I loved, and I have some, like, sitting here because I still haven't given this up is I love sticky notes. So it was really helpful for me, in teaching a stressful. So I used to love to put sticky notes around the room. That would be the the things that I had to do And then when they were finished, depending on how I felt that day, if it was a great day, I would just toss them away. If it was, like, a really stressful day, I would use the sticky notes as a way to, like, tear up or to crumple up. so a thing that I think one of the most important things is maybe putting it in your planner. Sometimes planning putting in the signer on the Google calendar can feel really, like, permanent. And then if you don't get it done and feels really like, stressful. So if you're going through a big change, one of the things that I love as a teacher again, we're sticky notes. I know they can get lots So they're not probably they're not always the most important, but it was helpful to me to know that there was malleability in that routine. And I didn't feel many teachers, were probably former high achievers inside of their space, and they we want things to be done perfect and done right. So if it's in a book, it can feel like, oh, I'm a failure versus, like, If it's a sticky note, I can just move it to a different day or I can just, like, throw it away. And I don't even know that it ever existed before. And then by doing that, it allowed me to sort of also see what were things that were pretty consistent that then I could create more systems around. so giving yourself some flexibility and some trial and error, again, there's lots of different ways to organize sticky notes, but I really liked, 1st of all, they give them to you. And I'm a big fan of whatever the school gives me I use. And I like that they were color coded. I like that they could, again, I could throw them out. And I also think that if you're somebody who really enjoys motivation, buying sticky notes that have, like, really positive, really nice things on them can help you stay motivated throughout your daily routine and throughout your organization. So I'm a huge fan of sticky notes for organizing and scheduling.

And further, I love that. I didn't even think about that mobility of that task and that, like you said, we do we talk about that a lot in paper planner type of organizing, but absolutely. You can see that when you have a room, like your room or your area that you can move it around to where you need to go where it needs to go next or just have it be movable, like the reminder would be movable. So, I love that. Okay. So we talk you actually mentioned this earlier about the digital organizing. So let's talk a little bit about that because you're right. Things have changed very quickly, and we actually talk about how digital organizing is is 1. It's a of course, it's a category within organizing. But people sometimes think about it as, oh, it's just It it's not even a thing. It's like digital files or digital or or or it's not even a thing. People just think about their physical space. So with digital organizing, do were you a hybrid type of person? We did it take you a while to transition from one to the other? Was it an easy transition for you? And what tips would you give to somebody that, is going through that now, especially because we're going so much more in the hybrid mode. so that they can stay organized both in their digital space and their physical space.

Yeah. It was hybrid for me. I think one of the things. So I think about how I scheduled my calendar versus how I scheduled or how I organized my files. One of the things that was helpful at some schools I wanna talk about files first. Some schools had, like, a system that you had to use, and that was really helpful. Like, how do we name our curriculum? How do we name our lessons? How do we name our worksheets? Google classroom, like, through the pandemic, I think people had to get organized because of Google room and because parents were getting access to it. but one thing I used to when I first heard, I would say, like, fun things. I'd be like, unit 1, da da, and I soon learned that the way that digital organizing happens in Google or any file is knowing that numbers first and then letters. So as I progress, I have I actually have to go back and I'm even reorganizing by adding in the years and adding in the reminders and color coding because Teachers. One of the best things about if you set up a strong organizational system for your curriculum, it's so much easier to pull up that lesson. I'm blessed and that I remember like, oh, I taught this lesson in October. Like, I always would teach James Baldwin. My dungeon shook, like, every single year, I knew I taught that in the very 1st week of school. if I needed to find it, I could oftentimes just go back to that date planner, but not everybody remembers exactly what you've taught. So I think in your files, putting them by dates, remembering the years for so that you can have easy access and replicate it. And if your administration also needs access, they're not trying to figure out what you meant by unit 1, shapes and sounds. Like, they know that this was taught in 2023.

September 1st, unit 1, lesson 1, and then just being really consistent. wasn't always that organized, but it's helpful to think of it that way. And then when I think about my calendars, I also I really like to write things down. This is where I always I need to listen to some of your other podcasts about this too because for me, I like to write things down because when I write, it creates memory in my brain. So if I'm writing it down, that actually creates this is nerdy. I'm so sorry, but this creates the brain matter. So I still really like to have a digital plan I like an undated one so that if I miss dates, I don't feel like I wasted time. and then I would sit there with my Google calendar or whichever school calendar you're might be using. I know a lot of teachers like to use passion planners, and they have a digital program in it, a physical one. So I like to do the hybrid only because the writing reminds me that it's creating that that memory for me, but digital is nice because I can easily share it with whoever needs to see it, whether that's your administration or your co teachers, and it can be color coded. And I used to like to block off time too, if I was, like, not available. I wanted people to see that I'm not available. I used to hide out in my classroom, so people can't see that on a digital planner, throwing up paper plan or so. Hybrid is still good to me, but I would say just being really organized and hot, like, knowing what your school does and then what you do. And I also had a shadow organizing system because I found my school to be very disorganized. worked in many of them, so nobody needs to know which one it was. And I found them to be very disorganized, and I remember them saying, like, it was in my evaluation. Like, We always know where your lesson plans are. So I think it's really important that the school they might have theirs, but if you have a shadow organization system, that that can be something that helps you set, you know, sets you apart from other educators and becomes a strength though. You might even be able to share with your team what you're doing. So for sure. Yeah. I hope that's helpful. It it absolutely. And, well, one of the reasons, like, you're the guest today for this topic is because you are so good at identifying what your, trouble are in your memory bank, and then you kind of adjust to that. Now every time we have a conversation, you're like, okay. I know this. This is something I'm not going to remember. So it's you know, so I need to make adjustments for that, or this comes very natural to me. Like you said, I I usually will will will know what I teach around this time, so that doesn't need as much. work, if you will. So I feel like you just follow your, your own habits and work from that, which is what we talk about they're gonna sprinkle, like, having it be as organic to your being as possible. So you're not trying to force all these 30 different new habits at the beginning of the year that you've never even done before. And all of a sudden, you wanna be this, like, you know, stellar, organized teacher. And you're like, I've never done that before. Your brain's like, what? What? What are we doing?

And I think one thing I haven't mentioned that's, I guess if I think back to one of your first questions and then this question, I used to save all of my grading until all of the kids have submitted it, and then it would be a of, like, 3 hours of grading and it would overwhelm me. So one of the things I did do, and I think it'd be re it's a and if I could go back, I would even add layers on this, is putting in, like, 15 to 20 minutes a day to grade what's turned in. And I think we talk about it, like, an analogy to mail it. When you get your mail, like, open it up, toss, file. Like, when kids turn in paperwork decide, like, is that something you can grade now? Is it something you have to wait to grade? And then even marking down, I think one of the things I would sometimes forget, like, I would grade something, and I would give it back to the students and sad story, students don't really care what I had to say in their paper. They would throw it away. And then if a digital computer went down or something went down or somebody over wrote, they'd be like, Where's my grade? And so, again, a couple of things that I think I would do if I was doing this over again is I would take pictures of, like, what are the gauge of the students and put them into a file so that I have that digital tracking of it as well as, you know, if you're working with a co teacher or with a team, it's kind of like tracking who's, like, turning things in. Again, as teachers, even though we're organized for ourself, we're also organized for everybody else. So grading, I would go back to that very first question you asked me if there's one thing I would have gotten together much sooner. It would have been how do I wanna grade and my system for tracking the turn in. Because when I taught high school literature, if 20 kids turned in a two page essay, I was so overwhelmed. I was almost happy when some of them didn't turn it in. So I was like, oh, less paper.

Hey, Kit. Just remember that teachers are humans as well in all the good possible ways. So Give a little grace there too. Yeah. Yeah. I I can see that. I can see that the grading would be really overwhelming all at once.

Oh my gosh. It was like it's like when you go in vacation and you come back and you've got, like, all of this mail and you're like, I don't wanna go through all of that. That's sort of what it would feel like every day. when I was giving assignments.

Oh, love it. Okay. This has been such a fun conversation, and for everyone listening, if you're not following Monica, you need to because she is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to, like, the real life of organizing, most of our guests are, but with with you, Monica, you're, you know, since we're here together right now, you were a teacher and you were with a lot of like human beings, other human beings. So you get to see you got to see the human, interaction of, of how people get and stay organized long term, like other children to, like, children and other educators. And, like, you were just amongst a lot of people at once. And I think that, is a talent in itself when you can juggle all that. so I'm very happy and very excited that you are here today to talk through all this. If you're not gonna, if you're not following Monica, you definitely should. She also, like I said, she has wealth of knowledge about about this, but she also extends her knowledge into other parts of a real life, like real life and business life. So, I know you have lots of other of these tips that you share in your social media. So head on over there. Okay. So to finish off our conversation, we always ask our guest these questions. The first is if there is one thing you would like to, leave our listeners with, like, one tip, one thought, what would it be? Oh, I think it would be stickers. Like, get stickers. I don't you know, it's it's been hard for me to to write everything, but I like stickers. And so stickers make everything fun, whether you're a teacher for your students or a teacher for yourself. Yeah. I love that. Okay. So and then the second question is, what is your favorite magazine, whether digital or physical that you'd like to read for business or pleasure. And why? I really like real simple. I still get it. I don't read it as often as I should, but I just love the like, I love that it's bigger print. I think they actually changed the side of their magazine, but when it first came out, I love those bigger print. I love that it's got tips and tools for business folks, for teachers, love this got recipes in it. I love this got fashion in it. It just it, to me, it feels like me. Yeah. Agreed. Awesome. Okay. Well, where can people reach you? We talked about where they that you're out there in the social world. Let us know what are, some websites or sites or social media platforms where people can find you. I love Instagram. I'm my main account is Monica Montfrey, m o n i c a, m o n f r e. Yes. I taught high school literature. Yes. I have an illustrative name. even though I'm married, I still like to go by my alliterative name. same for my website, www.monicamonfrey.com. definitely check those out. Stay tuned. There's things that are always shifting and changing inside of my world. And Those are probably the two places that Instagram is probably where. Unless you're on Facebook, I like to be on Facebook too. Awesome. Alright. Well, thank you again for sharing your experience and all your insights with us, and everyone head on over and find Monica on the social webs. Thanks again, Monica. Thanks so much, Stephanie.

For the last time in this series, we go deeper into Step 7 of our 7 Steps of Organizing *almost* Anything framework. This week it’s all about why it’s important to maintain the organizing habits and practical tips on how to keep the organizing party going! Tune in to learn practical tips to help bring organization and flow back into your life!

In this episode we talk about:

• Why Maintaining your organizing project is important
• Practical tips on how to maintain your system
• How to have long lasting effects 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go.

Welcome to our next episode of the organized and productive Podcast. I'm Stephanie, your host, and today we are finalizing the seven steps of organizing almost anything. It's our last step of this particular series. If you are new to the podcast, there is a whole series of episodes that came before this, you technically can listen to this episode on its own. But I think I would suggest that you go and listen to at least the very first one which outlines all of the steps so you know what's going on, and why and how we got to this step to begin with.

And then there are also detailed steps for each one, excuse me episodes for each one. So you can listen to the overview one, and then there are six episodes that outline each of them in detail. And today, we're on to Step seven, which is the maintenance step of organizing almost anything, by the time that you got to this step, we are assuming that you've already gone through all the other six steps, everything from laying out your plan and assessing your goals from sorting decluttering, finding a home for everything, making sure you have the right containers, and evaluating if the system even worked for you. So we've already done all those steps. So that by the time that you're maintaining, you've already established that this new system that you created works for you, it works for you in this chapter of your life. And this episode is to remind you why it's so important to actually have this as a step. Because this is the part where you remind yourself why you even did all this hard work, why you got to this place, and why it's so important to maintain it so that you don't end up having to do that hard of a work all over again, you might do it for a different space in your house or in your environment. But that the project that you just finished is something that for going forward, you will only have to maintain that you're not going to have to do that whole, you know that whole journey ever again, because at this point, it is now living and it's like part of you, but it's not overwhelming you.

So let's talk about a few of the benefits. First of May of you know, of maintaining this organizing project. The first is that the primary goal of organizing is to create a more functional and efficient living or working space, right. So regular maintenance will ensure that you continue to enjoy the benefits of this new organized environment. Long term. When you maintain it, it ensures that that feeling that you had the first time will be carried out over and over again, it might not be obviously the like the you know, the the first feeling you had, which was oh my gosh, I'm so glad that I you know, it's all done, it'll be a little different. But it allows you to continue to enjoy this space that you worked so hard to clear out. It also keeps a clutter at bay. And it really reduces state of stress and and promotes a sense of common order which something we talked about and write about all the time. Now let's talk about the time and energy savings. Obviously, this piece, which I mentioned earlier, is one of the most important parts where you don't have to redo this whole thing over again, I mean, I'm sure that this whole step took you a little longer than you might have expected. And that is normal, because you've never either you've never done it before. You've never decluttered you've never sorted, you've never really gone through a process like this on your own. So it was probably a lot of hard work and a lot of emotional hard work. When you maintain it, you ensure that you're not having to do this over and over again. And you don't have to go through all this really heavy emotional chaos that you probably have to go through, especially if you were decluttering or sorting your emotional items. And then of course, there's the Okay, well, now I have a system so you can find the things that you need much quicker and easily.

So that in itself is just going to give you more efficiency and save you so much time. So that in itself is going to be awesome. Let's talk about the cost effectiveness, which is hey, you finally found a system that works for you. And so the next time that you're at the store, you are not going to be buying more bins. Okay, that's usually the thing that people buy or whatever like the basket is or whatever says or whatever like item that you think is going to help you get more organized because that's what ends up happening. We overbuy when we're overwhelmed. We don't know what we need so that we get it all and so this way it's going to reduce the likelihood of of losing the misplaced items. Yes, but then not having go by duplicates, for instance or or find or buying more bins that you think is going to work. Because if you already found your system, you don't need to go buy a whole new system anymore or like one offs. So that in itself is going to save you a lot of money. The next thing that I want to point out here, when you do the maintenance, you know, the step and you don't skip this is that if your life does change, like your chapter changes, you now have to move again, or there's like a big life event that happened, then your system is going to be dynamic, dynamic enough to move and change with you, it should, because you're not recreating the wheel. At this point, if you if your life changes, all you have to do is it just needs to change or tweak a little bit with whatever this new chapter is of life. Like you don't have to redo everything again.

So that's another benefit. The last tip that I'll give you here as to why this step is super important to complete is the enhanced, like the positive habits that will inevitably come out of it. Whether you intended to build new habits or not, what ends up happening is when you do all this work, and then at the end, you are so proud of it that you do want to sustain it and you want to maintain it, you will start practicing maintenance, which fosters the good habits, and it encourages that discipline and responsibility that you didn't even think you had, which will help you develop in a proactive approach to keeping your space organized, which is really what you need, right with the with the ongoing efforts of keeping a space that's a little more tidy, and that works for you. It's that habit, in the good habits that you'll need to to complete and do. But what I love about doing our step is that for some people creating new habits feels really overwhelming. Like it's a whole lifestyle change for some people. And when you do a space within the steps at the end, what ends up just happening naturally, organically is that you end up just building positive and good habits for yourself. And that's what we want. We want it to work with your lifestyle. We don't want to force anything. Okay, so now that I've given you some of the the why we want to create a maintenance system, or just to make sure like what are the some of the positives of having a maintenance system, let me give you a couple of tips on how to maintain your space.

Um, you know, it'll depend on where like what space you ended up working on. But for most people, some kind of checklist is how they like to start something that is either a reminder on your phone or a paper like a paper type of checklist, something that you are always looking at on a consistent basis. So two very important things. One is create a maintenance schedule that you will stick to and that's realistic, that's the most important part, something that's realistic, like if you're you know, don't do a maintenance checklist at the end of every Friday, if on Fridays, you're exhausted. And the last thing that you want to do is go through your closet and declutter, don't do it. If it's once a month and you're doing it once a month when you're you know, once a month, you're always traveling for work, and you come back and the last thing you want to be doing is going over your kitchen cabinets, you know, don't be realistic about about your schedule in the checklists that you will create for yourself. This is the part where if you have questions come join me during our office hours, which I post on our Instagram stories all the time, but we try to meet once out once a week, usually on the clubhouse app. But sometimes that changes and sometimes it's like via web, but it's a free one hour open office hours with me.

And so if you're trying to figure out what's the right checklist for you to use for your maintenance, now that you've finished your organizing journey or you for this particular space, then come on over and join us there. But like I said, for most people like a checklist will work really well. And that checklist will entail just going over the things that are important to you. So if for you the important parts are go back to to your first step, which is the assessed step and go back to your why like okay, well, why why is so that every time I go into this to this area, I don't feel overwhelmed that I feel at ease. And so if that's your goal, make sure that you're always decluttering or editing so that that feeling is something that you get, if it's Hey, I don't the reason I'm decluttering my closet, it's because I'm tired of being late to work all the time. So if that's your why, then your maintenance, why you and your maintenance checklist should reflect that.

So your checklist for your maintenance will be making sure that you have you know, easy access to your wardrobes in the morning when you're needing to get ready for work or that you have a capsule wardrobe so that you you know everything's like mix and match and it's easy for you. So that checklist. The maintenance checklist will go right back to your why and it should be easy to connect the two But like I said, if you have questions on what type of checklists could work for you, then just shoot me a message over on Instagram. You could also like I said, find us on our during, during our open office hours every week, which I do post where we'll be over on Instagram stories.

And that's it. We're done. No, just kidding. Okay, so this is just the seven steps of organizing almost anything framework that we like to use for one particular project. So this step, you could always just mimic this step to the next project or working on it could be a digital project organizing project may be the next room that you're working on. So each space each project is the seven steps. And basically just go ahead and go back and re read or re listen to the podcast episodes. They're not very long, I made them short and sweet, very intentionally short and sweet for you, so that you can go back and repeat them whenever you need a refresher or motivation.

So just remember that maintaining your organizing project ensures that the effort and time invested in creating this organized space has long lasting efforts and benefits for you. You worked really hard to create this amazing space for yourself and your family and your friends and the people that you're around so you don't maintain it. Don't let it go so far that you regret having to have gone through all these steps. We want you to continue to have success and to associate organizing in a happy positive matter. Okay, so until next time, happy organizing. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

This week, we dive deep into the process of evaluation and how it can lead to long-term success in creating an organized and sustainable space.  We go deeper into Step 5 of our 7 Steps of Organizing *almost* Anything framework. Tune in to learn practical tips to help bring organization and flow back into your life!

In this episode we talk about:

• Why it’s important to evaluate progress
• Evaluate progress, make adjustments, ensure long-term success.
• Evaluation of goal achievement and system effectiveness.
• Consider others when designing your system.
• How to evaluate, adjust, and tweak your organizing system

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

The Organized Flamingo Shop

www.theorganizedflamingo.shop

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well then let's go

Hello, friends, and welcome to our next episode of organized and productive the podcast. I'm Stephanie, your host, and pro organizer, bestie. And today we are on to step number six of our organized almost anything, steps one through seven. So if you are just joining the podcast right now, just know that this is step number six, and we have an overview episode, which I will put in the show notes that outlines all of the seven steps. And then after that episode aired, we went into detail with each and every step. And right now we're on to step number six.

Then after this, we will talk to about step number seven. And as a quick recap for everyone, we have seven steps of organizing almost anything that is our framework or roadmap here at the organized Flamingo as to how we organize physical spaces and digital spaces. But just as a reminder, step one will always come first. So that's the assessed step. But then steps two through five can be interchanged, depending on your goal. So just as a quick recap, we outline them in the most conventional way. But sometimes your goals will be a little bit different. And the journey that you're on or the chapter in of life that you're on will be a little bit different and will change. So just don't forget to interchange steps two through five depending on what your end goal is. And then for step number six and seven, they're also interchangeable. So you can almost look at step one as being the first phase steps two through five as a second phase. And then step six through seven is the third phase.

And they're all in order, like I said, in the most conventional way. But in this third phase, step six, and seven can be interchanged, depending again on your goal, and what really is the realization that you'll have as to which one comes first. So Step six is the evaluate. And Step seven is maintaining the system that you've now put together, the way that you'll be able to know which one will come first is usually if you've made permanent solutions to your organizing space. So for instance, if you did a whole redo like a construction type of permanent solution, then for you maintaining that organized space is going to be the one that comes first and then eventually down the line, you will then evaluate and see if you need to make changes. But because changes to a permanent solution are harder to make, I would suggest that you put just maintaining first and then evaluate later. But if you're making semi permanent changes to your space, so let's say you got a new bookshelf, that where you can change the shelving size very easily. It's called a semi permanent change, then I would just go straight to six, which is this evaluate step, evaluate if it's worked, like if your space is working out if if what you've put into place is working, and then maintain it after that.

Okay, so that's the big difference maker here is if you've committed to a permanent solution for your organizing space, and no, now you're onto this, you know, the last like, let's just say if it works out well for you, once you've made that permanent decision, it's a lot harder to make changes than if you went with a semi permanent solution. Okay, so let's get on to step number six, which is the evaluate step. And the evaluate step is just how it sounds. It's all about making sure that you're checking in after you've made all these changes in the all of the all of the sorting decluttering, you found a home for everything, you found the perfect containers for the your items, and you already went through all those steps. And now you're sitting back and it's time for you to evaluate if all those changes you just made are actually making sense. The evaluation is the ascent it's essential because it allows you to assess the effectiveness effectiveness of our of that system that you put in put into place. And it helps you determine if you've achieved the original goal that you set out to accomplish and whether your system is truly working out for you or not before you start fully, you know, maintaining and going all in into this whole new system that you've put together. So it's really important for you evaluate and be honest with yourself. Because by reflecting on the progress and seeing if you're even satisfied with what changes you've just made, and how things are functioning that is going to help you make the necessary adjustments going forward and make sure that you have long term set Fast and that you are making your system in your space work for you.

Remember, we don't want to force anything that doesn't either come naturally to you or that you, it'll be a really hard thing for you to adapt like a new habit. So even if you, you know, did all the steps, and then at the end, Something's just not feeling good about like, Okay, well, I just, I just revamped my entire closet, let's say, you know, and you went through all the steps, and you decluttered, and you found the perfect solution for it. And now you're evaluating it, and you walk in, and you're thinking, Oh, but I always take off my shoes on the left, now that I think of it, or sometimes what ends up happening in the evaluate step is that, you start realizing that what you had in mind was, was more of a sketch, you know, a sketch or an idea. But practicality wise, the practical side of it, is just not feasible for you or for the, for the, for the, for the space. And I'll give you an example, like a real life example. So I had a client, who they redid their entire kitchen, you know, just kind of rearrange things. And we decluttered and we just got rid of all the duplicates, like she had, you know, five of something. So we just kind of downsized a little bit, so that that there was some room to breathe, and everything wasn't so cluttered. Everything was looking great and beautiful and perfect. And then at the end, what happened was no matter how many, how much planning you make, and all, you know all the things, once everything was cleared out. And it felt a little like there was more room to breathe, the client realized, oh, my gosh, I don't really, I don't really bake this way, or cook this way to begin with.

The reason I was doing it like this was because my kitchen was so cluttered. So I always used this particular space, because it's that's the only room that I had. But now that I'm seeing all this, like openness now, and everything has a home. Now I realized that what I really want to do is I want to do it, like, you know, she wanted to kind of bake and cook when she was looking out the window. And so she realized that that's really where she wanted the baking and like more the the fun cooking, more elaborate type of cooking, and prep station to be close to the window. So that will come in this step and evaluates step because you're now seeing your space in a different light. Pun intended now. Because now you will it'll, it'll just feel different, it will look different. So this evaluate step is really important. So also, the evaluate step is important for the long term organization because it'll help you maintain order, you know, prevent the clutter built up, like it'll just help you make sure that what you've got in place is actually sustainable, and that you like it that it's feeling good. So you know, definitely a very important step to not miss. So for the evaluate step, I'm going to give you a set of questions to ask yourself. These are questions that I either ask clients like real life clients of mine, and myself as well. These are also part of our declutter and organize guides over our on our shop.

So at the organized Flamingo dot shop, you can find some DIY guides that you can just follow along with when you're trying to declutter and organize different parts of your house. So these questions are in there as well. So if you're just listening in, and you're trying to just absorb the information, but don't really want to be writing all, you know, writing down all these questions, and you just kind of want them like a nice workbook, then head on over to workshop, and then you can get the questions there. So there are four questions that are the primary questions, and then we'll go into some sub questions or additional questions that I think are always a good idea to ask yourself, but these are the four super simple, but very informational, very important questions to ask yourself. So the first one is, did you achieve the original goal you set out to accomplish? So back in step one, we it's all about assessed? And we asked you to do like an exercise as to what how do you want the space to feel and there was a whole set of questions there, right. So at the end of that step, and that exercise, you had a goal of what it is that you wanted to accomplish, so that you could continue on with the steps. So did you achieve the original goal you set out to accomplish? The second question is, is the system working effectively? And what that means is going back to the example I just gave you with that client once you set your space up and this goes for your digital spaces as well, but once you've set up your system, your organized system, it all looks tidy, it's all is looking and feeling good in theory is the system I'm actually working but effectively so is it? Is it taking you less steps extra steps? Is it an inconvenience? Do you feel like you're forcing something into your lifestyle. So that's what it is like Is it is it actually even working, especially this really comes into play with, with spaces that you utilize every day is it is a feeling like you're, it's just not feeling natural to you. So the next one would be do you like how your system looks. So even if something looks beautiful and perfect, excuse me, if it's working great, but it's not looking good to you, you and your brain and your visibility, you may be actually not accepting the new system, because it just doesn't look good to you. And so that part of valuate, that part, this will really come into play. For those of you who decided to not buy anything extra, you decided that you were going to use what you had. And I love that, you know, we are all about us, when you have simplicity, don't go out and go spend extra money when you don't need to, okay, like money or effort.

But what might happen is, once you see what the space actually looks like, after you've decluttered, after you've gone through all these steps and sorted, it's still a friction point for you. And one of those friction points for people is that it's not it doesn't look good to them, so then they don't use it. And that's especially true in closets and highly visible areas that you're in and out. And it's a lot more about the visibility. pantries tend to be that way. And so if it's not looking good to you, you actually might be fighting it and not adopting the new system that you worked so hard to put together, because it just doesn't look good. So this is a very important step. Do you like how your system looks? The last question is, is the system is this whole new space that you've cleared? Is that aligning with your preferences, but also the people that live with you? So this is a common part like a step that people or a question that they don't really ask themselves in an honest way, or they just skip it because the person who worked so hard to put the space together, they want everyone else to adopt it. And that's great in theory, but in practicality, if you are not asking others is it really is it working with your lifestyle and the people that are living with you, if it's not, then again, you will have that friction point. And it won't be adopted, like continuing and maintaining it after this will be really hard. And you will go back to step one over an extra step two and three over and over and over again. It'll never feel like you actually accomplished anything because you didn't ask the people around you. And or it's just not working for yourself with now living with other people, if that makes sense. Because other people need to be able to adopt that system if you do share spaces with others.

Okay, so those are the four questions to ask yourself. Let's say you ask yourself all of these questions and you said Yep, it achieved the original goal, even if it didn't achieve the original goal, but it's pretty close, you know? Yep, I feel good about it. It's working great and for the people that I share this space with, and I love how it looks. Okay, great. Moving on, you will head on over to our next step in the next episode that comes out so we just step seven, but for many of you this is the point where you will realize that the step is not what you you know, it just needs a little bit of fixing or a little bit of adjusting and this is the part where you will do that you will adjust you will write down the areas that need improvement. So you will start answering okay, this area is just not looking good. So this in this area, I would like to get new baskets or new bins. For others of you for you the problem spot will be okay it's still feeling really cluttered. There is still a lot of stuff here. So for you you will need to go back to that step of decluttering and doing another round of that because you realize that no matter you know you tried your best and now that you're evaluating and stepping back, you realize that you want to do a little bit more so this is that time and this is a step where you will adjust and do whatever it is that you're feeling like it's just not quite right. And this is a really good opportunity for me to say it nothing is ever going to be perfect so don't get too caught up in the everything feeling perfect.

We actually will have an episode about all this about perfection. Okay, so, so that's not what I'm talking about. This is just How's it feeling? Do you need to make some tweaks does something need to be a little bit different, just so that you feel good about it. What I typically like to recommend for people is to evaluate about a week or two after you've completed the project, so not right away, because right away, you're still too fresh. So I would wait a good, you know, week or 210 days or so until you make this evaluation. But don't wait too too long. Because if you wait too too long, it's basically like you're just restarting the process over. So I would just do this quick evaluation about a week or to laughter so that you can, you know, decide if you need to make some adjustments as soon as possible while while it's still fresh, but not so fresh, that you're overwhelmed. And it's too soon to start making changes, because then you'll get burned out. So just wait a little bit of time, get a little bit of rest, enjoy all this hard work that you've put together. And you've done to make this space more organized for yourself. But don't wait too long again, so that it's just not fresh enough. Okay, that's it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy with the evaluate step number six. And remember, this is the step where you get to be retrospective, where you get to look back and look at the progress, the amazing progress that you have made. Don't be too hard on yourself, I would not suggest that that's not what this step or exercise is about.

This is all about realizing that you've come a long way. And for some of you, you might do steps one or two through five again a couple times before you feel good about it. And that is perfectly normal. This framework, this seven steps of organizing almost anything is not supposed to be a beginning and end point. There won't really be that for any because you're living in this space, right? It's like a living, breathing space. It's not supposed to be a museum that has a beginning, a middle and an end and you'll never come back to never move or declutter or adjust ever again. So this step number six is really all about just making sure just doing those check ins with yourself and your space and making sure that it is fitting your lifestyle and that it's feeling good. And that's it for our step six, evaluate. If you like to do the whole recap remember in the show notes, we have the Quick Links to all other steps that came before this. And then the next and last one will be step seven, which is the Maintain step. And until next time, happy organizing. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing

Our Mid-Year Check-In is here! This week, I share ten organizing trouble spots that are trending and on the rise. From cluttered workspaces to overloaded email inboxes, we delve into the challenges people face in organizing both their digital and physical spaces. Join us as we explore the latest organizing trends and provide practical tips to tackle these common issues and create a more streamlined and efficient lifestyle.

In this episode we talk about:

• Common trouble spots that people are experiencing when it comes to organizing their spaces
• How a cluttered workspace hinders productivity
• Why it’s important to regularly check and organize your workspace

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 002: Digital Space vs. Physical Space Organizing

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/digital-space-vs-physical-space-organizing/

Episode 005: Set Yourself Up for Success with a Capsule Wardrobe with Caroline Bower

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/5-set-yourself-up-for-success-with-a-capsule-wardrobe/

Episode 007: Organize Your Way to a Healthier Kitchen with Tomesha Campbell

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/organize-your-way-to-a-healthier-kitchen-with-tomesha-campbell/

Episode 013: Untangling the Web: How to Practice Good Digital Hygiene

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/13-untangling-the-web-how-to-practice-good-digital-hygiene/

Episode 015: The Pros & Cons of Subscribing to Email Lists

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/15-the-pros-cons-of-subscribing-to-email-lists/

Episode 018: Conquer the Paper Mountain: Reducing Your Paper Clutter

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/18-conquer-the-paper-mountain-reducing-your-paper-clutter/

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Hello friends, and welcome to our mid here check in here at the organized and productive podcast. And if you're wondering what is it mid year check in? Well, it's actually two things for us one every year, we'll be doing a mid year check in just one of like one of those, hey, this is these are some of the organizing trends that I'm seeing some of the solutions that I think could work and just kind of a check in, in general about what's going on in the organized and productive podcast at the organized Flamingo community and world.

And again, to just give you some statistics of what's going on in the organizing and productivity world. But this year, it's extra special and an extra mid year check in because it's our 26th episode of our podcast year. And this is our first year doing this the podcast. And so it's a real obviously really special milestone. Whenever you start something new, you know that first year is usually just a really special moment, whenever you reach these big milestones like half a year like that's, that's a full 26 episodes of a commitment, right and making new habits and whatnot. So it's a really special episode in that way as well. And I am so glad that we are here to celebrate it together.

Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with the organized grooming go, I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go. Okay, so let's go ahead and talk about the mid year check in. So what happens in the organizing and productivity space is that there are certain things that are for certain that hat like for instance, habits, those are pretty certain that are there, it's very important for you to do when you're thinking about becoming and staying more organized long term, like having just good habits or sustaining systems that can be done for a long period of time, right. So just those those things are for sure. But there are other things and other elements and trends that tend to come and go depending on what phase of your life but just like as a whole of our community, it like we're facing. And so these are the trends that I'm seeing for this year that either clients are really having troubles with and asking for help with, or that I'm seeing or reading about.

And my hope is that this mid year check in will help you just kind of do your own check in hopefully that these 10 things that I'm noticing will give you that little reminder of oh, you know what, that has been a problem that I'm facing. I'm glad that she mentioned it, let me go ahead and and think about it for a little bit or take care of it. So that's what I'm hoping for, for this video check in so that it's like a gentle reminder for you to just kind of see if this is an area of trouble for you. Now, if I go through all of the list, and you're thinking to yourself, like nope, I I'm good and all those 10 things then, awesome, I'm so glad. And I hope that you'll share over on Instagram or any other social media platform that you're doing awesome. So that we can continue to cheer you on. But if you are seeing that you are struggling in one of these areas, as well as because again, it's a trend so if you're seeing that you're agreeing with the list or some of those things, just know that you are not alone.

Okay, so let's get through our list. LV coming in on number one is a cluttered workspace. So this has been something that people have been struggling with for a long time. Okay, so this is this, this is one of those things on our list that is continuously a trouble spot for people just having a cluttered workspace. But more specifically, and more of a change has happened ever since 2020, when people started to work from home a lot more and having to mix the personal and business side. So that kind of triggered people to not really have a system anymore, you know, because a lot of people would have like their office that they would go into and then that would be their workspace, and then at home, they would not necessarily have one. But now there's just a lot more overlap. So a cluttered workspace is something we're seen as a trouble spot more often.

And a disorganized desk and workspace can hinder productivity and make it difficult to find important documents or supplies and it just doesn't allow you to think as freely as you probably want to. So be aware of that check in on your workspace and make sure that that space is how you want it to be and that it's making you feel free that your thoughts are able to come and go easily that you're not so stuck because there's clutter everywhere. So just kind of do a little check in on your workspace coming in on number two is the email inbox.

Again, email inbox has been a trouble spot for a long time. But nowadays it's even more troubled because we're just getting so much Do more and more emails from people, right, you're subscribing to email list. And now you're on different lists and groups and whatnot. So that is definitely something that is becoming a troubled spot. And just like junk mail, like the physical junk mail, your inbox now probably has been with you for a long time. So it when you move like as opposed to junk mail, you know it, when you move, it doesn't necessarily follow you, per se will hear an inbox does no matter where you go, it's just continuing to accumulate.

So if you're not paying attention to your filters, what you're subscribing to, and making sure that you have some kind of system in your inbox, then it can become crowded, I mean, having a crowded email inbox with lots and lots of hundreds and 1000s of unread emails or just like a cluttered space digitally can be overwhelming and time consuming. So the inbox part is very important, it is the one way that we receive information digitally. And that is owned by you.

So you do want that to be or to have a system, it doesn't have to be inbox zero, we don't necessarily subscribe to that being the only way to abstain organized, but it should have some rhyme or reason to you. We do have several episodes that we have done in the past year, about the digital world and how to kind of have that a little bit more tidy. Also how to have good digital hygiene with some experts that offered their advice. So I will put that in the show notes, as well as how to unsubscribe to email list intelligently. So not to just necessarily go on this unsubscribe and binder because that's not always the solution. So I will put in some of those episodes down in the show notes coming in on number three is just having dis organized digital files. Speaking of digital organizing, so like I said, we I am going to put in the episodes that relate to digital files and inbox and all of that in the show notes. But when you don't find your digital file your files easily on your computer or maybe your phone. And there's that lack of proper folder organization, or maybe even inconsistent naming conventions, it can just start to get overwhelming, you can't find things easily.

So that is something that we're seeing as the that is like a trend that is actually growing more so than even the overloaded in email inbox. Because we're just operating in the digital world a little bit more, and there is no rhyme or reason to are organizing. So check in on your digital files and make sure that that system is working for you coming in on number four is a trouble spot that has been around this list for a long time. And that is the excessive paper documents, accumulating stacks of paper documents that need to be sorted and file or disposed of can create clutter very fast. And just like the digital files, right, but these you can actually see. And that could be a hazard. If you have too many like a fire hazard, it could also just be in the way. And if you can't find what you're looking for, then that is a trouble spot for sure. So this paper document if you need help with that, let us know. Or let's just go ahead and talk about that. Because make sure that that is not piling up so fast that you can't keep up coming in on number five is the wardrobe or closet that could be a trouble spot for you like the place where you're just kind of stacking up clothes, maybe you're not keeping up with what's coming in and out of your closet, meaning you're buying or consuming more than you are letting go of.

And that can immediately start to fill up the closet area. So that is an area of trouble. And in particular this year. And we're seeing it as a trend. Because of that change in the work mode that I talked about earlier where a lot more people are starting to work from home or they have a hybrid situation happening so they don't need as many of those suits or work clothes that you used to wear into the office and or even if you are going back to the office setup and type of office environment, the wardrobe types have changed, right? It's not a little of more companies are going less formal than before. So if you are in the if your closet is like outdated or you're still having you're still keeping those older clothes that are no longer serving you especially in the workspace, then maybe it's time to declutter or start to think about what is coming in versus what's coming out of your closet. Okay, and then coming in on number six.

Let's talk about the trouble spot in the kitchen. So we're seeing a big trend in cabinets and more specifically, it's for people that have what we're seeing is that a lot of people did some renovations on their home or they just don't know how to upgrade their homes. So then now it's sort of starting to feel a little bit clustered. So we're seeing a lot more people doing updates but then to their house but they're not updating their like the friends Since or organizing systems, so if you used to have closed kitchen cabinets, and now you have open shelving, then that type of system is going to look a little bit different, you can still use some of those things that you used to use before, but maybe not. So what we're seeing is that people are updating their kitchen areas and or they're moving and they're just not really changing the kitchen system to fit their new needs.

And so that's why it's becoming a trend of a troubled spot trend this year. Coming in on number seven is we are seeing a big trend of having overflowing bookshelves, this is a troubled spot that has grown in the last couple of years, where the book area is just a growing the available space. So now it's just feeling cluttered, it's no longer that nice to look at bookshelf that maybe you are going for. So a lot of people that keep their books for nostalgic reasons, maybe they're sent or sentimental reasons of their favorite books, or whatever the reason may be and then they like it to be in their library. Cute, awesome. But they're not letting go of old books, or they're just not really rearranging their book area to fit their space. And so we're seeing a big overtake on books just growing and growing like book libraries growing and growing, and not really decluttering or letting them go.

And again, kind of like the paper, the paper, the excessive paper documents. Trend, this is also it could be a hazard. And if you're not getting rid of it fast enough, then it just becomes overwhelming. And then you will have a harder time finding a taker of the books because there's just so many and books have, you know, they were published at a certain time. So when they start to get outdated, less than less either people resellers, or donation like libraries, they won't take it as much because it's an old version of information. Now, of course, we're not really talking about the collectible type of books or first editions of popular books, we're talking more just about the general books and bookshelves that maybe we're not taking a closer look into be. And then so now becoming a trend and problem, problem area. Okay, the next one is all about digital photos. And this one is starting to grow, you know, again, another trouble spot that is starting to grow in the area where people are needing more help with and that means that you're just have so many digital pictures that they don't even know what to do with them. And there's a couple of things that we've talked about before in some of the past episodes, that where you can, you can remedy this, and that's including deleting duplicates, etc, etc.

There's programs out there that can do it for you. There's also companies that will do it for you. But here, I just want you to have that reminder that digital photos even though they're the out of sight out of mind a little bit because they are digital, so you're not really seeing them pile up, they do pile up. And at some point, I think that you will find more peace knowing that they're organized in some way shape, or form maybe in a folder so that you can pass it down to whoever you need to. And so that they're not just in this one big cluster of photos, where you're probably are also saving screenshots and you're saving documents. And now it's just all a big mumbo jumbo. So this is an area of troubles where I would just make sure that you do a check in with yourself and make sure that your digital photos have a rhyme or reason so that you can easily find them. Okay, going in on number nine is we're talking all about cords and cables. This is a trouble spot that has also been on the list for a long time. But it's becoming more of a trend because we are going cordless for more. And you know there's technology is just advancing so fast, that people are letting go with their old technology. But now there's all these cords and cables and you got a new phone and now you have the old cords or the old phone etc. so tangled in identified cords and cables make it really difficult to connect devices when you need them.

And it's just create an unsightly mess, right just in general. So make sure that you're checking in on your chords. What I see a lot is when we so when we help clients is that they'll have a whole bin of all the old chords. And although yes, maybe you might need one one day. There are other ways that you can access these old chords, you can rent them from a library, there might be some other the original company that made them may have something available to you if you were ever to need it. So just know that there you will have access to those old cords in some shape or form. It just doesn't have to be in your possession. So do check in with your unsorted cords and cables. Those also tend to weigh a lot. Once you start to accumulate a lot of them kind of like books, different weight levels, but still so just do a check in there because They can get heavy and they can just start to accumulate, you know, bins and bins that could be freeing up some space for you. So do a check in with that.

Okay, number 10. And our last one for today in a trend that we're seeing as a trouble spot that keeps growing is the digital bookmarks or saves. And you probably didn't think about this or you didn't think that this was something that I would talk about, I have a feeling because we including myself, we we love to save things, or we save the tabs, we have like the 100 tabs open. Or maybe we save a post on a social media platform to quote unquote, read later or Pinterest page, you know, cumulating a vast number of bookmarks in web browsers or platforms, without the proper categorization or structure will make it really hard to find it later on. But most importantly, it may be occupying some precious area on your computer or digital devices. I mean, how many times have you tried to save something or download something or go to a website or your turn your computer on and it says memory, you know, it's taking up too much memory, you have limited memory free up some space, right? It's probably because you have too many tabs open. And you're you know, it's just occupying some of that space in your work browsers. So check it on that you may be having unneeded headaches when you could just be clearing your cache or clearing all those saved but unused bookmarks.

So that is our list of 10 things that I have seen the up on the uprise of trends that people are struggling with in the organizing and productivity space. Just like I'm doing this half year check in with all of you and to celebrate our half year of our first year of the podcast. I would love to hear about your Admitted check in let me know if you checked all of these to just make sure you're doing a little bit of decluttering you don't have to go all in and that way later on. You don't have to do this like big project of trying to let go of so much stuff all at once. When you do it little by little it really helps you in the long run. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

This week, we dive into productivity with our guest, Sabrina Runbeck. Sabrina shares her insights and tips on how to define productivity and provides actionable steps to become more organized and productive in both your personal and professional life.

In this episode we talk about:

• Prioritizing Tasks
• Project management tools
• tracking and measuring outcomes
• Defining what productivity means to you

Where to find Sabrina online:

Sabrina Runbeck is a recovery clinician and helps healthcare entrepreneurs gain visibility and credibility in the right circles to accelerate their mission and increase profitability. She's a keynote speaker, podcaster, advisor and author.

Web: https://runbeckmediagroup.com

IG: www.instagram.com/sabrinarunbeck

Linked In: Linkedin.com/in/sabrinarunbeck

Podcast: Provider's Edge Podcast sabrinarunbeck.com/new-podcast/

SabrinaRunbeck.com/Blueprint

(Complimentary Consultation)

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Stephanie
Hello organized and productive listeners welcome I'm Stephanie your host, and on this episode, we are diving into the world of productivity. I invited renowned productivity experts arena, Ron Beck as a guest this week. And Sabrina specializes in working with high achieving executives, she'll be sharing her valuable insights and actionable steps to boost productivity and achieve the highest result with minimal effort. Sabrina is a recovery clinician, She is the CEO and co founder of poise point solutions, and Ron Beck Media Group. She focuses on the healthcare industry and healthcare providers. But her tips are actionable and relatable to anyone and every thing in all industries, to be honest. So she does talk a little bit about her own experience in the healthcare industry. But like I said, the systems and the methods that she uses, can be utilized with your everyday projects, everyday systems everyday life. Now I met Sabrina a couple of months ago through a summit that we did together. And something that caught my eye and really attracted me to her methodology. And the way that she teaches productivity through to through her programs and whatnot, is that she understands that productivity is not a one size fits all that having good goal, you know, a good clear goal is going to be very important for your productivity process. But she talks a lot about freedom, and to define what freedom means to you. And I love that because here, the organized Flamingo as a whole as our brand, we always talk and preach about how organizing and productivity is not the same for everyone. And it's not going to be the same throughout every chapter of your life. It will and it needs to evolve. And I love that she talks about freedom in different manners in ways and she understands that life is just like regular life, not just business life, but like life is just as important to take into consideration when you're trying to be more productive. So I'm excited for the conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And as always, we get straight into the questions. So here we go. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with me organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go. Hey, Sabrina, Hello, and welcome. I am so happy that you're here. I can't wait to dig into productivity in the topics of productivity with you. How are you doing? Welcome.

Sabrina Rumbeck
Thank you. Thank you, somebody. And thanks, everyone, for joining us. We know you can choose to do anything. And you choose that though we appreciate you. Yes.

Stephanie
Okay. All right. So as our community knows, we get straight into the nitty gritty of the questions here. And today's theme is all about the intersection between organizing and productivity. And how productivity is, is a very broad term that we use nowadays, you know, we talk about let's be more productive. And so we are in this episode and episodes like these, it's about who what does that mean, exactly. And getting into the nitty gritty so that you have actionable steps and so that it means something not just the empty word of becoming more productive? Can you tell us a little bit about the definition of productivity? Or what does it mean to you, especially since you work with high achieving executives, and you're in this world? So how do you see productivity in its definition? Or within kind of the human kind?

Sabrina Rumbeck
That's a great question. I think all of us define productivity very differently. Now, I always say this. Every time you ask someone how they're doing, they're always like, I'm busy, like busy is a good thing. Now we know busyness is not the same as productivity. And productivity really is now the same as the efficiency and efficiency is not the same result driven, and go that you're able to achieve. So that spectrum of productivity for me is simply you are able to get a lot of things done. Now we have to get into more into productivity. When you get a lot of things done. What does that truly mean for you? Are you doing the most effective way to get things done? Are there alternatives that you can use tools, resources, people that can actually help you achieve? And when you achieve that, are you achieving the right thing? So at the end of the day, productivity should lead you to the most effective way of doing something to reach the highest result with the least amount of effort. So when I believe thinking about productivity, especially was people who are running motor seven months or eight figures, and also very crucial for all the solopreneurs at the same time is not to get yourself into the weeds of doing everything we're feeling obligated have to be in control over everything, but be very specific and knowing exactly what to do. So for me productivity also very much attached to freedom. And I believe freedom has many different levels, you have to be able to say I have activity freedom, right, and that go into the productivity, what to do and how to do. And then you have to have people freedom means you are allowing only the best of the best, the 18th on your board, and everybody else, including clients, you're able to say no, then you have to have location freedom. Now, that also means it can help you to determine whether the people you want to work with expand locally, state, nationally, internationally. And also that can mean you can travel anywhere. So I am someone who will travel every month for networking, giving advices, both from clinical and business side. So that is my way of freedom for location, then you also have to have that financial freedom because the more productive you are, the higher level income impact you can create. And then you also need to have health freedom. And that means you are able to do what you need to do to keep the physical body at the best level and to really, truly understand yourself better, and therefore you're able to understand other people better. So so far, we talked about activity, freedom, location, freedom, people freedom, financial freedom, body freedom. And lastly is time freedom. I think that most people would think productivity is really to time, freedom. And it's that flexibility to say I only wanted to work 80 hours per day, or some people even much shorter, right? Or I always wanted to have a three day weekend. So however being flexible, you can be the steward getting the most important things done that altogether. To me, that's productivity and efficiency.

Stephanie
Oh, I absolutely love that. And that's actually how I started to follow you and just have these conversations when we met. And it's starting to fall in love with how you define this because you do talk about the freedom so much that were enough that to emphasize that it can mean very different things for different people. And I that's something that I, I love how you define that. That yes, productivity has its dictionary definition. But to you, you need to define what freedom means to you so that you can then go from there. So that's, that's really, that's awesome. Okay, so speaking of freedom, and, you know, yes, freedom can mean a lot of things too. So people want people to try to figure out what what that means to them. What, how can people identify their goals based on now what they think freedom is to them? How, like, what are some tips you would give to people that feel overwhelmed with going the next step? If they they're not, you know, working with someone like you like, Okay, well, I know that this is what freedom means to me. Now, now, what should I do about it to continue the momentum of finding the right productivity tools and whatnot? Yeah,

Sabrina Rumbeck
great question. So it's definitely you're saying is we have to first define, okay, these six categories, how do you rank them? Right? What for me, actually, timeframe is number one, and there is activity freedom, so I write them that will guide me on decision means when I'm pressing time to be most important means I block out time to hang out with my friends, I block out time to have dinner with my mom when I'm in town this week, block out time for XYZ and therefore I'm not gonna put anything else on my schedule. And that helps you to make that decision. But let's just put up a much bigger something that I learned from Michael Hyatt it's called a freedom compass. So he break it down into much simpler terms. So our freedom compass to have four quadrants and desire zone. I distraction zone, a dis encouraged Alonso. And really, it's disinterest and then the last zone is that despair so so we actually want to stay in desire zone more than 80% of the time. However, majority of people that I encountered have always been spending 80% of the time in anything else. So how are they different? The desire zone is boasts you have the natural talent to do that. And you have the interest and passion to do it. Now that's the desire zone. And what's over here You're in a distraction zone, it truly is you simply have an interest and passion to do it. But it's not in your natural genius know, now that this interest zone is actually just the opposite, you have the talent and genius to do it, but you don't like it. And that become a dread obligation that kills momentum. This is I thought I want to do, but there's actually not getting me anywhere. So example of a distraction means some people are really good at data entering collections, Excel, they do all they're counting by themselves. But just spending the time to interact and figure things out, calculate what return you have all that things. If you don't do that day in day out, or accounting, big bookkeepers spend hours upon hours to get licensed to us for then you should not be doing now. And this site is, well, it's so easy for me to enter all my activity tasks into this time management system, task management project management system, and I can sign to everyone, right? It's just so intuitive because I'm good at operation. Okay. But if it's dreadful, because the natural way that you do best is actually engaging with clients, one on one, we're doing speaking engagements or whatever method on client attraction activities that you're really good at, then this become a disinterest. Because with time, you just feel the dread of having to do that keep everybody else in check, and they actually slow you down. Now the last zone is that dreadful that despair? Because those are the things that you don't like to do, and have no passion for right. And you're not good at, frankly. But then some people, we have the false belief of, well, I don't have the money, resources, or people to do it. So I'm just going to do it, oh, it will only take me two minutes, but I read him is at all. And then sometimes when we get into the weeds, like just say, you have put together a photo relatively easily, but you have to learn about it, you have to copy the mall, you start changing up all the colors, and then you're like, wow, that's three hours of my time, I still don't like what I put together, right? So think about all these activities actually killing your efficiency. So we need to one of the exercise I always recommend everybody do. Now, I have saved people more than 10 hours just by doing this one exercise is write down all the activities that you had done within the past week. All right, that's column A, Column B, make a checkmark, if it's something that you feel very drawn to, right you passionate about interests out, I like to do that all the time, Colin see is put a checkmark, if that's something that you're really proficient at. Just so easy, I can get it down very quickly. High quality, right. And then column D, you want to to do a checkmark when the activity actually have two checkmarks. So that means that column D will show you the activities that is in your true desires up. Now, we wanted to go a step further. We wanted to band put out of all activity in your true desire zone, what's the time commitment that you took for those activities? If there are elaborate tasks that will actually produce your time? What does that mean is you it will help you to complete a client task will help a client to sign on for another program services that you provide those things you have to keep anything else, we say to go back to a focus on oil. And that can help you to figure out what to eliminate, what to delegate, what to automate, and what you really need to keep on your schedule and put it on your calendar to make sure you do.

Stephanie
So I mean, the ranking is the starting point for a lot of people is kind of what I'm hearing that you know, ranking and doing different models of it and using different models. But that ranking is so important and really getting to know yourself to to be able to do that ranking exercise to even get you started. So this is a great segue to talk about, okay, that you've got yourself your ranking system and then you can put it into different quadrants or evaluations if you will, especially if you're doing this with a professional who's guiding you but as you go through it What is something that people should be looking at when they differ? They've defined what freedom means to them. So they're starting to, you know, they're starting to rank, what's important, what's not and whatnot. And now they're like, Okay, here I am, this is what I, this is what I need more time, or I need more of this, or I'd like to have more of this. So how can people then go and pick a tool that's right for them, according to that ranking list? Now I know, of course, you know, within this conversation, it's more, it's much shorter. And that conversation can be much longer. But what are some tips that you would give people to look out for? Like, what should they be looking out in a, in a system a, that could be a software system, it could be just a system that you're implementing in your life to become more productive? What are the things people should be looking at, when they're picking those types of tools and systems?

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah, great point. So we'll quickly summarize what I said before, because that in itself is a system. And then we can also talk about what are the tools that we can add on to keep track? So number one is all of the six degrees of freedom? How do you rank each of them. And based on that, you're going to do a systematic review of all the activity that happened to you within the last week and figure out which activity are both passionate and proficient, and only keep those as your personalized activity to do and then, and then go back to your six degree of freedom to say which one of these activities helped me to gain time. If time is valuable to you, or helped me to be more flexible was who I wanted to engage to write, continue to ask yourself those questions. And then you can get to Okay, what about all the other things that I needed to take off my play? Now you can start thinking Which one can I immediately say no to which one Hi, Korea automation system, perhaps a simple thing like using a tool to put all your calendar online and automatically send a zoom link to that person when they upon booking, I have sequence of text message and email to send reminders to study in the same way, and automatically have the link for them to rebook, reschedule if needed to right instead of going back and forth about what time it is. And so think about any type of activity you ever had. And that could be caused you to drain your time your drink, drink an energy, drain your spirit, and then we go down to Okay, so if I'm very clear, I now know what to automate what to delegate, having the right people on my team is, of course, very important, because we know sometimes when you grow very rapidly, or once you get into a certain revenue, you kind of get hit a ceiling. And then that means perhaps the talent pool in your existing team is not going to get you to the next level that you truly believe you can go, there is very much needed to have the talent acquisition team to help you to find those higher level of talent that can really believe in your true mission and help you together. Now, some of those who when you start having more people on your team is about how do you keep track of what people are doing right. And then some times, you guys might have virtual assistants that you need to track their hours, because you pay them by hour, or you just have a flat fee of part time, full time whatnot. But either way b there are many different tools out there between clickable Asana, teamwork and many different things. What you are looking at is a very simple system where you can create a project and do you tell tasks behind it. And then each task also needed to have dependency, what that means is, certain tasks can now start and do the previous one is completed. So for example, in podcasting and media creation world, when we have film this episode, now, the next task is uploaded into a file, and then it gave to the video editor, and to take out all the NS does whatnot, and then add the intro outro. So if you think about systematically, you cannot technically do some the other work without the beginning, right? No production team can do anything and do they get a file? No production team can do anything when they actually know what this episode is about to then create graphics that create teasers and whatnot. So think about systematically What is one thing flow into the next so then you can put it into the system with the right people's name and a template, right if these things are doing all the time, you can A whole template of that system was the right dependency was the predicted, oh, this step should only take two days. And then that automatically gives you that two days, or you're manually adding on to two days from now. And then the next task was Star. So that's what you have to really consider. And then there are many different project management tools, it just depend on whether you're more visual learner, you're more task oriented into like, detail the weeds because they all have different function. But whatever works best for you, just make sure you have a place to track. And for people a lot smaller, guess what, even Google Tasks helps, you can schedule these specific tasks out with repeats with alert, whatnot, if you don't even want to pay for any software. So Google Tasks works, I believe some of the software version, like Asana, they're free if you have less than 15 people in your team. So there's all different ways that you can try out tools that might be the best for you. Yeah,

Stephanie
I saw something that you just said also triggered, or at least like reminded me to ask you about how much wiggle room should some of these systems, whether it's a software system that you use for your company, or for your own personal use, how much wiggle room should there be in there, because sometimes life happens, and you have all the best system in the world according to the your ranking system and how you defined you know, all your definitions and have what you want in life and your business and whatnot. But then life happens or time is not just as timely or someone got sick, and that they couldn't eat, you know, they couldn't do part of that step it within your system. So how much wiggle room would you either recommend or just like let's talk about wiggle room in your system? Like what is what are things that people should be looking at, within, so that it's not so stressful all the time, like feeling like you have to reach every single one of those steps?

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah, for sure. So, to have wiggle room, you first have to have boundary, right. And what that means is once you determine a system that you want it to keep, you have to teach other people about the system, and also exactly how you want to do it. So I have, for example, a new team, a healthcare creative network, where all the health care podcasters radio host TV hosts, YouTubers come together. And we're actually putting a summit together. And we are have a whole collective to really support each other. Now, this new project, we have committee members, I have everybody Asana, I assume nobody knows right, you have to almost put in mind that I just going to assume nobody knows this system. And now I use a loom to record a quick overview to say these are our projects. These are deadlines. These are the people who are assigned to x, y, z, based on my knowledge of their expertise, feel free within your own subcommittee to arrange for deadlines and due days systematically. However, our ultimate deadline for this one project is this. And we are all professionals. I'm truly appreciate everyone on the team. So take it right. So he's overview of giving people a sense of what needs to be done, but not over micromanaging, because we have subcommittees for marketing subcommittee for legal subcommittee for speaker into invitation, right sponsorship. So each subcommittee can take the lead for what they need to do, I'm just simply assigning the big chair per se of the company, and they can take it. However the detailed things can be, hey, don't forget to tag the people that you want to respond for. So you can get an alert, not just reply in general. And don't forget to check your task management system at least once a day. So you know, what's coming out what you need to do and what the deadline. So sometimes we have to be very specific, and have that type of boundary. And so people are on the same level of commitment. And then you can say, now I kind of have the wiggle room of if things did not happen the way I want it to be. There's a reason because resources and whatnot. But if we didn't establish a standard and boundary ahead of time, and then things fell through, they set up the leader to take the responsibility to say what to do next.

Stephanie
Yeah, so I mean, what I'm hearing is good boundaries, good communication and clear goals along the way, as well as the larger my hand goal. So you mentioned the part about the good boundaries and whatnot. What are some mistakes that you You see your common challenges faced when people are trying to find the right system for their life or business? Like what are some of those things that people should be looking out for or common mistakes that you see that you encourage people to take

Sabrina Rumbeck
a look at? Yeah, great question. I think sometimes when you go into organization into a team, they already have a system, and then the learning curve a little bit high for you, or you simply, you are the founder of that business. So you pick to something that seems like worked for you, and you want everybody else to learn it. So one thing is about, who are your key players on your team? And can you have a conversation with all of them based on their experience, expertise was the best tools to use and have that calmer session together, and therefore, you're not spending extra money or spending extra energy to build everything out. And then people have a such a big learning curve, but it won't serve them,

Stephanie
you're so good, you're so good with the collaboration piece to that it doesn't have to be so stringent or so linear, that there's a component of teamwork, you don't have to do it alone. And actually, they'll probably will, will give you the togetherness or give you that community sense with your team because you cared you took the time. And and at the beginning of this, you would at the beginning, but this part, this segment part, you said take a look at yourself to is what learning curve, is it for you? Is it something that you're coming into? Are you acquiring a team or a company or you're the newbie in in it, even if you are the highest rank, even if you are the new founder, you might be the one that needs to check yourself. And you might have to change a little bit so that you can be more collaborative. And yeah, I love that.

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah. And then tapping into the collaboration. So post point solutions, were really a team of experts of all domain business, looking at these growing healthcare companies who are doing pretty well, their revenue generating or a multi seven figure, but they're hitting that ceiling and hitting that plateau, and don't know how to get themselves into the next level. So when we come in some people's like, whoa, 12 business areas, I don't even think there are so many of them. And then we're like, well, that's the point, right, we're gonna put your blinders away, make you see the risk. 60 degree of everything about your company is not just these a threat, a 12 different area, we actually how we work is subdomains and make sure when we do strategy and evaluation, and helping someone it's always in a trial format, means they're always a three people team. What that means for any company, even you start small, some people will say, Oh, I just you know, to have the second hand that can do anything for me, right? There's someone who I truly trust, but they it is a two person relationship. If you are by yourself, that means you're not truly the CEO, as well, my co founder says is you are the chief of everything, which is not going to help with any company growth. And but if you only have two people, sometimes it becomes a debate for anything that needs to be done. Someone always feel like a win lose situation, a lot of time because someone wanted to lease I'm gonna have the other idea. It kind of keep going back and forth. It's not as healthy or effective. When you have three people. Now even the two people are debating an idea, the third one become the observer, and then the clear by to help mediate the situation. And vice versa. Right. So when we think about working to any project, or committee, it's always minimum three members.

Stephanie
That's very interesting. Okay. Would you recommend that people do the three? Can it be a consultant? Does it have to be part of a higher team? Can it be an extra set of eyes and ears that is only hired for that project or for whatever that goal is that you are going on?

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So when you are at a certain level, we always say, who's your third sounding board? So anytime you're strategize, you're brainstorming, you're creating that work. You want it to work in three. So even you are the CEO, you technically don't have a clo or you have, you don't have a chief Informatics Officer, but who is that third leg that can help you? And the same thing as you're saying that third leg could be a temporary consultant coming in, while you're working with your main person and this consultant and that consultant depend on what area subdomain business you're working. Ah, that consultant better be that expert in that domain. Right? That person simply is there to evaluate and strategize. And then the two of you that are on the team are joined as committee is to give information and help decipher what works best for your specific company.

Stephanie
Yeah, that makes sense. So, okay, so we've talked about what is productivity? What is productivity to use some tips around that, that we talked about? What to look for in our software and whatnot. So now you're using it, you picked it you did your you did your list? You checked it, okay, I'm on I'm on track, you know, or I have a, a road that I'm going to start driving on? How do you know if it's working or not? Or what are some practical tips we can give in this short conversation, right, that gives you that evaluation and making sure that you're assessing your productivity tool and system? Like, what are things that people should look at when they're evaluating and determining if they should continue on that road? Or if they need to halt? Yield? Or do some kind of pivot?

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah, so things you have to go back to the beginning, right? When you start tracking everything that's not that's when you know, what works, what doesn't work? So once you track these means, outcome, what whatever result that you're hoping to get, did you get it? How many things you put in right input output? And the result? And then is that result truly, even measure by Effort, Right? Like, did it cost you hard to extend it to coffee, or a lot of time where like, stress, or bring extra people just to get the data, or it feels like a super last minute, then means there's a lack of strategy in the beginning, or lack of enough timeframe for you even doing this? Or there's something happened doing this project system that it wasn't right, or is because this whole new team, and they're just still trying to figure out how to work with each other. So then you can give yourself the grace and empathy to or, okay, didn't do it as exactly how I expected, but we'd learned something from it. So what was the lesson learned from that situation? And then how do you share that with your team or for them to do that reflection to say, Okay, we're going to ask for questions. And we'll do that in our executive work as well. So what worked? What do we need to continue doing? What didn't work? And we have to immediately stop. So once you are able to track and then do that evaluation, you needed to be able to answer these four questions for each out the project, and then keep moving forward.

Stephanie
When is, is it okay to just start over? is have you come across clients, people that do this evaluation and this, ask themselves these questions, and then realize that it's not working? Or is it? Or should they be doing these types of evaluations in smaller increments along the project? Are they do they wait until the end? Yeah, great

Sabrina Rumbeck
question. It's always a small increments, we do two week sprints, right? So that means every two weeks you have a project based on where ever it is. It could be a continuation of previous tasks, previous projects that just shaped into this new direction, or is the same direction, we ask ourselves those four questions, so we have a more guidance in what to do next. So along the way, no matter what, it's not just let things loose, and see what happens. If you needed to continue to build in those checkpoints.

Stephanie
You know, those recaps that are a little shorter, be like will save you so much time at the end. And that really does go sometimes you kind of let time. Go. I don't know about you. But on a personal basis sometimes or my professional life you think about like that's the last thing I want to think about. I don't want to evaluate this. I don't want to go and look at my what, how my goals are doing because it feels like a time a waste, almost because you think you feel like your rewrite, reiterating it every so often, and then it just feels like oh, it's a reminder. But you're saying when you do this, it's actually could save you so much time at the end, probably going to be the healthier way sanity wise to do it, versus at the end finding out that with all of your efforts that you've done, we're, we're not good. You should have been doing some check ins and checkups. Yeah. Okay, so let's go ahead and help people a little bit more about just kind of this this last section of how can they find a good productivity tool system that they should invest in? Is this something that they should just we have this conversation that we just had now, you know, they should like do their check ins and things like that. Um, But how do they know if they should go all in and into something. So whether it's a software, it could be a software that you're implementing for your business? Maybe it's a new system that you you should be implementing now, how do looks like a good temperature check for them to go all in? Or just start slow? And that I feel like

Sabrina Rumbeck
everybody wants to know that, right? Like, how do I do psi, it's really worth it. I always believe in any two answers that it's about consistency, if you're not used to, it's not going to do you any good. So from today, we talk about a lot of differences. Now, a lot of these systems are not going to cost you any thing financially by it's going to cost your time, honestly, with yourself to figure out the right activities to do, what to eliminate, what to delegate what to create additional automation system for and how to leverage additional project management tools that you can keep track of your team and make sure that they are on top of things, right. So for all of that, which one do you implement first, while star was the ones that we talked about the checks the self evaluation, if you can't even get that down, if you can't even invest in yourself to be honest and do those assessment that why invest in a whole system that looks fancy track, a bow charts, timeline, that doesn't mean anything to anybody, because you're not going to use it, and or it'd be become a burden for you. So you have to start from the ground up, if you can consistently, even just to do what we talk about. Every week review, your sixth level of freedom, are they still in the same order, every week, you're going to look at your activities from the past week, are they still getting you the maximum about result, as well as at least amount of effort, and they're in your desire zone, then you keep doing. And without doing that for at least a couple of weeks for you to figure those things out in the beginning, they it doesn't really make sense to put all those projects into these fancy tools and software. And now you can start somewhere, if you have a project manager, that person, whether he or she can help you sort things out and put it all tracking appropriately. If you don't have that person, then don't even worry about it. You have to work on yourself first. Because everything start from the top, if your mind is not in that, to win it, if you're just have hazarding doing everything, or you just got trapped into just continuously being busy and putting out fires left and right, then you don't have a system. I mean, honestly, like, you're not you're no matter what are you building is not going to last you that long. So I would say when you want it to go all in, it's because you can consistently do this week upon week, actually evaluating yourself. And then once you keep up with having a system that works for you, independently, now you can invest into a tool, teach everybody and talk about what that tool means for everybody why it's so important setting the right boundaries, and actually start keeping track everything into that tool.

Stephanie
Yeah, you have to start with yourself. That's, that's a mic drop moment. Yeah, start with yourself. That was awesome. That was amazing. And so let's, let's talk about what what would look like a takeaway that you would want someone to have, as they're finishing this episode with you? What's the takeaway about productivity and finding the right productivity for you in your business? Or maybe even your personal life or both?

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah, I always like to say, you have to say no to pretty much everything, then you can say yes to the only thing that truly matter. Because of everything that we always talk about all the different type of freedom or the systematic compensation, you can use a focus funnel, and all of these things are is about how do you say no? More frequently? So they can say yes, so definitively for the only 20% of the work that gave you 80% of the result. Now the concept is thrown out there a lot. But how many of us actually do it? We needed to be very consistent with ourselves and be okay with that. Because every no is a new opportunity. And that's the major take point from this episode is less take some time. You have to be able to slow down to do that reflection, perhaps assess your Sunday, Friday, Monday thing, right? Give yourself that time to actually look into the whole big picture of what this week is going to be for you.

Stephanie
Yeah, love that. Okay, so This is a question we like to ask all of our guests. And it tends to give us a little bit more insight about who you are but also just a fun recommendation that maybe you have that others have not heard of. So what is your favorite magazine, whether it's a digital magazine or physical magazine, like which one's the one that either you grab when you're walking in the store or the one that you're always getting on a monthly basis maybe in your Kindle or something.

Sabrina Rumbeck
So the funny thing is, while I was in middle school, I was reading all these magazines subscribe to Aldi saying, and then college and grad school comes. And I stopped all those subscriptions because I got into audiobooks. So for me nowadays, I have not read a typical magazine for a long time. I'm always having my audiobook of some sort.

Stephanie
I love it and actually to be to be fair, some of these some of the articles and whatnot become books anyway. So you know, or tips and things. It's like the start of a conversation the magazine so I love that that makes sense. Okay, so let's let's give people where they can find you. Tell us a little bit about you know, some of the platforms that you're on some of the tips that you give out in the social media world or maybe your website so that is especially if you're in the healthcare industry, but you don't have to be she's amazing it just all things like productivity and systems and just finding success within yourself and also your business but where can people reach you?

Sabrina Rumbeck
Yeah, okay, step I am most active on LinkedIn feel free to go type in my phone name Sabrina rumba. To find me and connect there with me. We do a lot of fun stuff on LinkedIn I every Tuesday we'll have a linking audio every Wednesday would drop our podcast the providers edge so truly is how do you gain your extra edge as a executive entrepreneur founder in the healthcare space. And then Thursdays we run and LinkedIn, live stream and and then Monday's, our newsletter to draw. So it's kind of a lot of fun stuff that we do online care and then very easily to reach out to me send me a personal message. I'm always active, to engage with anybody who wanted to see how they can expand figuring out what's missing in their own system in their own business model to have the right infrastructure for them to scale exponentially.

Stephanie
Wonderful. Awesome. Well head on over over to LinkedIn. Thank you again, Sabrina for your time. And until next time. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized flamenco. If you enjoyed today's episode, and we'd love it if you leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player, it helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

What is the best container? Hint: It’s a trick question.  This week we dive into the world of containers!  We go deeper into Step 5 of our 7 Steps of Organizing *almost* Anything framework. Tune in to learn practical tips to help bring organization and flow back into your life!

In this episode we talk about:

• The Importance of Setting Boundaries for your Items
• Choosing Suitable Storage Containers
• Choosing the Appropriate Container
• Finding the right container for your needs and setting boundaries

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Be honest, how many unmatched semi broken missing lids have no purpose containers do you own? I bet there is at least one container in your possession that is creating clutter instead of solving the problem you thought it was going to fix? Am I a little bit right? Yeah, it happens. I have a bunch of them too. But here's the thing. For today's episode, we are focusing on step number five of organizing, which is the contained step. And we all have those containers that we have outgrown, but also that we buy without thinking about the purpose of that container. And so through time, it starts to collect dust, or it creates more of a problem than helping you solve at the intention that you purchased that container for. So that's what we're focusing on for today's episode. Here we go.

Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then, let's go. As a quick recap, every few episodes, we are focusing on each of the steps of our seven steps of organizing almost anything. There is an episode that outlines all of them, which I will link in the show notes. And we are going deeper into each of them, remember, so there's one that has the overview, and then we have already outlined steps 123 and four in detail, and this one is for Step five. As a reminder, step one should always start first, but then steps two through fives order will vary depending on your end goal.

I talked about this in our overview episode, but basically, your end goal will determine whether you do the source step the declutter step to find a home step or this one first. So for example, if your goal is that you are moving in two weeks and need to declutter as much as possible, so you are only packing what you need, then step three, declutter may come first for you. Or maybe step two, which is the sort step then do number three, which is Declutter. So, you know, first go, first sort everything, and then declutter after that, and then pack it. And then which is the container, find a home etc. You wouldn't start with a container step, or find a home step, because it wouldn't make sense, it wouldn't get you to your end goal. You will at some point, though, but not it's not a priority.

So all of the steps will be covered at some point, but steps two through five may vary in their order, depending on your end goal. Another example is if your goal is to create a visibly pleasing area, like a pantry, a closet, a file cabinet, maybe your desktop on your computer, then the container step, the one we're covering today will come first because your end goal is to have it be visually pleasing. And you need to find the containers that will fit that goal for you. So you will need to measure figure out what containers are available. Basically, it's the it's like the design step. But when you do that, then if you're starting with this step first, then everything comes after that. So you're designing for you're not designing for the items, the items will fit into the design, if that makes sense. So that is what we're focusing on today. Now is there a right way to do all of these steps not at all, we put them in a numbered order that that is traditional, that is usually how we do organizing.

And those are the steps we tend to follow for most typical jobs, most typical organizing journeys, but no not at all again, if you are more into the visually pleasing part of it, and that's what you want your items and your space to fit into. Then you are going to start there so not at all feel free to interchange these steps no right or wrong. We just happen to put them in this order which is the most traditional way of organizing. So why is it so important to contain the items and find a container type of area for your items which is very different than finding a home for your items. Finding a home it means finding a place where it will live the place the area. So are there is this grouping of items will they be living in a play area in the basement in the attic in your kitchen? That is finding a home the container part is all about boundaries. It's all about this is the air this is the actual container it will live in and they will not spill over that and if it is then you need to find a different container that will then grow with whatever your items are. Look we are not only minimalist here at the organized Flamingo, we embrace all types of organizing journeys. You And, and types of people because so yeah, for some people, you can have a container and anything that spills over that then should, you know should be thrown away or donated or sold or whatever, only keep it to that container.

Sure, that is absolutely a great strategy, especially if your space is limited. And or if you get overwhelmed by a lot of stuff, absolutely. But that's not for everyone. Some of you may be you, maybe it's with your business, and you're you're growing and your inventory is growing with you. And that means that your container needs to grow with you that so there are many, many times when your container will need to evolve. And that's the word we like to use, we like to use the words, the container are your boundaries, but it may have to evolve with you, it may get bigger and make it smaller. And so that is why this is its own step. And why we, it's so important to figure out what is the right container for your space. So before purchasing or acquiring bins just because you can or baskets or boxes, let's just make sure that you are evaluating kind of a quality, like the quantity and in the size of the items that are going in there. Right. So that's, that's kind of the first step that I would take is first figure out what should be going in there. Now if you're doing these in order, then you now know that maybe let's talk about writing utensils, like all your pencils, and pens and markers. Right?

Let's say that those are now going to officially live in your office. And now you have designated that they're all going to live there except for the occasional one or two that lives you know, next and next to your bed in a drawer in case you need one. But for the most part, your writing utensils now live in your office. So if that's the case, that's the home, and then you will find a container, is it going to live in a jar? Is it like a? You know, do you want to put them in a jar? Do you want to put them in a box? Do you want to put like where are you going to contain them.

And then within that container, that's the boundaries of the items. So that when it starts to spill over, you need to now figure out or assess or evaluate if it's worth going bigger, do you maybe need to go smaller? What we find is, for many people, when they put them in a container, they realize how many of that item they have. And then they realize that they don't even use most of them. And so then they start to declutter or let go and get rid of a lot of them. And so another container has now shrunk because they realized that they don't even need that many. So sometimes your container will get smaller in the, in the evolving process. Containers are also really good and important for setting like I said boundaries, right. And so it's a reminder of, okay, I have to stick to this area, because that is the only area that I have. This is especially important for two cat for two types of people or two types of chapter in your chapters in your life. One, if you are in a an in between living situation, or you're moving around a lot, where if you acquire too many things, it's going to get very difficult to keep moving them around, because now you have to pay the movers more or it's more effort on you.

And so you don't you don't want that. So that is an example of, okay, this container has to be like this is the only area in container that I am keeping napkins. So we're doing let's go back to the kitchen. For some people, they start acquiring like paper plates and utensils and like paper straws and all of these things that they acquire from restaurants and things like that. And then they start to overflow. So a container is perfect for those instances where I have to keep it to this area. And if I if if it overflows, and it's time to let it go, because when I move, it's going to get heavy, I'm not going to use it all they're going to be expired are going to get old. So there's no point. Okay, so those are the examples of the boundaries, that a container will allow you to have it within this boundary section and discussion that we're talking about. One of the pros, one of the outcomes of setting boundaries is that then when you know where things are the home and the container, you easily can retrieve those items and access them. Because you start to recognize that oh, it's in the wicker basket in the bathroom and then you just kind of know where it is visually you can explain it to somebody else.

And but also visually for your own self, you just know where to go because you know what it looks like you can visualize the space where the item is that making it much quicker for you to go get something and find it which is very important. And one of the biggest purposes of why we want to stay organized so that you can quickly access and get the things you need when you need them. Okay, so let's go into to the fun part for a lot of us, which is choosing containers. And so this is a really fun part because, you know, it's just visually so appealing and fun, especially at the stores that tend to sell them. Those stores that just make all of these really cool bins like stack up and that they're just so pretty. So for a lot of us, this is a really fun part us I say, because this is one of my most favorite parts. I love shopping for containers. And so let's get to this, this part.

So here are some of my tips on selecting suitable containers based on the your storage needs and your space, air and area. First is figure out the temperature, that is probably my number one tip find figure out what temperature the items that will go in there will be better stored under. So for instance, if you are for the kitchen is so most kitchen items, let's say food and things like that, those containers are going to look a little different than the container than the items and containers in your garage. Why? Because if your story so let's even talk about like the refrigerator, those storage containers that go into your freezer and refrigerator, our temp and temperature resistant to cold it via and vice versa sometimes with hot, because it is living in a fridge, right. So those containers, you will need to make sure that they can be stored in a refrigerator, you wouldn't want to put something that maybe breaks or gets cracks under cold and pressure because then you know it'll ruin your food etc, etc.

So that's an example. Another example is either a garage or basement that is not insulated, or that has very high temperatures and very low temperatures winter, summer, it just goes up and down very quickly, you won't want to have a container that melts or that is toxic to the items that you're storing, because of the temperature change. Another example is a for your bathroom, you know, you will want to have containers that can sustain water or humidity because that is where typically you will have you know your running shower and you have that humidity and the wetness like the particles and the water particles that are within your stuff. So you will want to make sure that that container can sustain the temperature that it's being stored in and what you're storing in it. Another example for this is paint or spray spray paint or things that like aerosols types, hairspray, some people will put them in a container, and they forget that when he rises or if it's not stored properly, it can leak when you open that container, it is just Oh, It's potent, it will punch you in the face with the smell. It's also very toxic. So those are the things that I want you to consider when choosing the appropriate container for the area.

So remember, temperature, where are you storing it? Can it sustain that temperature that is natural to that room, and the items that are being stored in it? Will it be safe? Is it appropriate to be storing it in that container. The next thing I want you to think about when choosing an appropriate container is the weight of the container. So this goes for the smallest of the containers that goes into your doors to the biggest the ones that go in your garage, and even the ones in your digital space, which I will explain in just a second. But let's go back to physical containers. So if you are, for instance, putting that box those items on a shelf, and the shelf has a certain weight limit, you won't want to get a container or a box that is too heavy, because that adds to the weight. So maybe in that space, you will want to get more of an airy type of liquid airy or basket lighter type of container for that space.

Same thing for if it's in the garage. If you're going to be stacking them up against each other up on top of each other, then you will want to get stackable containers that can hold that weight so it doesn't crack. If we're talking about your digital space, this obviously is a little bit not as predominant for you because there is no quote unquote weight of the container. But you will want to figure out how much space you have in your desktop or the area that you're storing. So that you don't go too deep into your folders, which is what the containers are in the digital space in the digital space, like your desktop, those are like folders, those are containers. Those are the things that are holding the data that the things that we have. So even though you're not thinking about weight, per se, you are thinking about size.

So do you want to keep adding additional size to your file structure? And do you have the ability to file to store all of those documents and all of those files which nowadays quite frankly, if I'm being on honest, I talked about this when we talked about the digital organizing in the digital organizing episode. In today's age, we just have so much more data available to us, the space that's available to us. So it's not so much about priority like it used to be where before, you had to be a little bit more conscientious about how you stored your files, and that you didn't keep adding data to it because you were limited on size. But So nowadays, not so much. And for the last thing I want you to consider is the location, where is this container going to live? If the container is a dust magnet, for instance, and you have it out by the open window, and you hate to dust, it's probably not right for you. Let me give you an example. Many of you and you know people that I work with love the cloth type of baskets, especially for living room, it kind of adds that softness to a room, great love them.

The problem is, is that speaking of dust, they are a little bit of a dust magnet slash, if they get dirty, they're not that easy to clean per se, unless you know you have the right tools or you're good like spot cleaner type of person. But if you're not, you can't just put these in a washing machine, they're too big or maybe too bulky for most, for the most part. So maybe that container is not the right one for all of your pillows or your decorative blankets that you have around, maybe that's the one that where you put all your your blankets. Great, it's cute. But if that container is always getting dirty, and you have no way of cleaning it or you don't often, then maybe that container is not right for you. Same thing with the if you have a location where or the place where you're putting this container is always getting wet. And the bottom is you know, it's going to be absorbing the moisture of that area. This is especially true for outside play rooms. You know where you maybe you put like all of your patio furniture or patio stuff. If that container item bin chests, whatever you putting all of your outside stuff in is not appropriate for being outside, then you might want to get a different one. So think about where you're putting the location, what are the elements of the location, like I talked about a little bit in the first tip, which is finding the material and the temperature, where you're going to be putting it so similar to that tip. So here, just think about where you're going to be putting it so that the container can sustain the area that it's going to live in. Something else that I want you to think about is optimizing the storage space that these containers are going to go into. What that means is secondary through to the three tips I just gave you, after you pick what kind of container based on the temperature, the material and the weight and all that that I just gave you think about the space that it's going into, as far as is it a tall vertical space, is it a shorter space, that is also going to play into the type of container you get. Now, the reason that I'm saying it's secondary to the three tips that I just gave you is because for many of you, the location of that of the items of the container may not be permanent. So I don't want you to overthink it, because you you might move that or you may redesign that space. So I don't want you to put too much effort into into making the container fit perfectly to that space or designing it to that space. Now again, if your priority is to visually enhance that particular space, and the container has to fit perfectly to that space. And of course, that's a different goal. And that is going to be your number one goal. But for the most of us, that container should be optimal for the space, but it's not the number one priority, because again, you might move you might take it somewhere else, you you know you may outgrow that space eventually. So that's a secondary thing to think about some of the tips that I can give you to optimize storage space is utilizing vertical we don't go up many times we don't even think about the walls, the vertical space so think about can I utilize the top a portion of my space. Another space that goes under utilized is the back of doors corners, those often just get ignored because they're they're not the first thing that you think about but those are also places that you can place a container. Also using attachments like hooks and racks. We don't often think about those as containers but they are like shelves. Those are also containers. It's a home but it's also a container because it contains and you can put the stuff on top so it's not always a basket or like a bowl type of shaped item that has you know that get a hold your things. It could also be a flat place that is considered a container. Something else that we don't think about is nesting containers of those are always is very handy, especially if you live in a smaller space. Or if you don't like RV RV solutions, tiny homes, or even traveling because when they can nest together, then you store the items when you need it. But then you can also when you're they're not being utilized, the containers are not being utilized, they can nest amongst each other. And so that's something that goes underutilized a nesting type of containers. When you're traveling, let me tell you something that is a misconception. So you know those packing cubes that are out there, I have a pot, I have a post that I will put on the show notes that I did about traveling nesting in cube containers right like those the ones that packing containers that you slip up. So there's a misconception about these types of cubes is that they're supposed to save space. And they do, but they're not utilized correctly, people think that all packing cubes are made the same. And they're not. There are different types of packing cubes, some are going to be the type that compress the items that you're trying to pack, especially clothing and fabrics and things like that. So they come with like a couple of zippers, so that you can compress it as much as possible, kind of similar to the vacuum sealed bags. But more you don't need a vacuum for in this instance. So it they will come with several zippers. And then you can just get it as you can take the air out as much as possible and compress it as much as possible to save space in your luggage. But not all packing cubes have that compression. And some of the least expensive ones, you know, the ones that you may get it at your local big store that they're very fashionable. Some people think that those will save you space, and they could they potentially could. But they're those are going to be more just to keep your items separated and organized, which you may need. But it's missed opportunity or a misconception to think that all packing cubes are going to help you save room in your luggage. And that's not the case, if you truly are trying to compress and get the most amount of items in a luggage, you will need compression type of packing cubes. And so that's what I mean about not all containers being the same. And that goes kind of under the same category of think about those things when you are purchasing a container because well, they're not all the same. Well, there you have it step five, of the seven steps of organizing almost anything. As a quick recap, remember, think about the temperature, the material, what does the container need to be made out of? So that the items that you are storing, and where you're storing, it can benefit your items, and it actually can help you not ruin the things that are inside, too is the weight of this container. Because it'll depend on where it's going, can they be stacked? And all that good stuff? So think about the weight? The third is the location, where will it be stored, that plays a big role in a big deciding factor over what kind of container you should get. And as a bonus, and just secondary to think about is where it like what kind of space are you working with? Can it fit into the space as best as possible, but don't overthink that particular tip. Because you may move and you want to be able to bring your containers with you, you don't want to be buying new containers every time you move. So that's kind of like a bonus tip that I give not necessarily a priority. And also remember that the container step is all about boundaries. This is supposed to be the part where this container is helping you not making more work for you. It's supposed to be the place where it reminds you that this is the area that you're sticking to so that you don't overflow. But it's also supposed to evolve with your needs. So make sure that the container is not something you're just buying just because it's cute. It's pretty that it's actually serving a purpose for you. Okay, so that is step five. We will be back next week with a brand new episode and throughout the weeks we will continue with step six and seven. But if you want to get a new overview, don't forget, in the show notes, we have the overview of all the seven steps of organizing almost anything. And then over on our online shop, which is the organized Flamingo dot shop. You can also find our different organizing and productivity and decluttering guides, which also walk you through all of these steps. So until next time. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

This week, we talk about how to help individuals with memory loss or dementia navigate their world in a more organized fashion, giving you, the caregiver and your loved one easy to implement tips. Our guest, Adria Thompson, Speech Pathologist & Owner of Be Light Care, shares great tips on how to reduce distractions, simplify their technology, and create custom solutions to help them navigate their devices. We also explore the importance of understanding their perspective, as well as the different stages in this life event. 

In this episode we talk about:

• What is Dementia, exactly?
• Caregiving for Someone with Dementia
• Techniques for Helping Individuals with Dementia
• Understanding Dementia and Simplifying Life
• Solutions to keep you and someone with dementia organized

Where to find Adria online:

Web: www.belightcare.com

IG:https://www.instagram.com/belightcare

Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@belightcare

Email: [email protected]

You can contact Adria at 

to learn more about Adria and her services, please go to 

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The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Stephanie
All around here, we always say that being insane organized has to fit into the life that you live, not the other way around. So it's not about finding the party bins and having an organized system, and then figuring out how it works into your life. Usually there is a problem that you're trying to solve. That is what being an ST organizer is all about. It's finding the solution to a problem. And sometimes it could be as simple as you're tired of being late all the time, and you are finally ready to get organized so that you don't have to struggle every morning and be late to work. But sometimes it can be a lot more complicated than that. And that is what today's episode is about. It's for those complexities in life that sometimes come in as a bump on the road that you may not have expected, or maybe you were prepared for this, and you just need a little bit more help. So today's episode is for the caregivers for those individuals who have to make sense of it all. More specifically, we are focusing on a type of caregiver today, and it is caring for someone with dementia. For our guests. Today we have Adria Thompson, who is a speech language pathologist and the owner of B light care consulting Adria has worked with hundreds of individuals with dementia in long term care communities, providing one on one speech therapy services. But from there, her specialty and passion quickly grew into the dementia care specifically. And if you're familiar with Adria from social media or just any other platform out there, you know that she has a true passion for this topic and making it easier to understand what potentially the patients are going through your loved ones are going through and helping you as a caregiver navigate through this very difficult time. Now this episode is focused for the caregivers of dementia patients. But if you listen closely, you actually can and will take some tips about staying organized as a you know everyday person to be honest. But just know that her tips are a little bit more centered towards the caregiver and helping their loved ones their patients navigate through the difficulties of dementia so but more specifically, their their surroundings, their things, what are some ways to ease into simplify their surroundings so that they don't feel so overwhelmed. And also you as a caregiver aren't feeling overwhelmed, either. So I hope you enjoy this episode, and that it brings you comfort knowing that there are people out there like Adrienne like myself who do understand and see you caregivers and understand that you may be facing through some really difficult times. And we just want to make life a little easier, a little simpler, so that you don't have to navigate it alone. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized grooming go. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well then let's go. Hey, Adrian. Hello. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Adria Thompson
Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so excited to get into dementia and organization, this is going to be fun.

Stephanie
Yes. So as our guest and community knows we get straight to the nitty gritty of the topics of the day. And today it's all about dementia. So love to put you on the spotlight to kind of give us that overview for people that are either just starting the journey of of this, learning more about it or there's interest level to learn more. So what is dementia? And what is the what are the stages that just for like a quick overview for someone who is starting on this journey or need and maybe they need a refresher?

Adria Thompson
Yeah. So Dementia is a term that's a kind of like an umbrella term. So this is dementia just basically means that someone has experiences changes in their brain that is affecting their daily life. Now these changes in the brain can be many different symptoms. We most often think of dementia we think of memory loss, right then forgetting things repeating things. But that is not the only symptom of dementia. There are many types of dementia, so specific diagnoses. under that umbrella term of dementia, the most common type of dementia is Alzheimer's disease that accounts for anywhere from 60 to 80% of people with dementia. And that symptom that has most prevalent in Alzheimer's disease is forgetfulness. It's short term memory loss. So That's often why we think of that. But there are many other types of dementia like Lewy body dementia that has symptoms like sleep disturbances and visual hallucinations. There's Frontotemporal dementia that reveals For most mostly language deficits and behavior changes, there's vascular dementia, which usually is in individuals who have had a past medical history of strokes or mini strokes. So there's, I think over 100 different types of dementia with various symptoms. But in general, we know that dementia is just a change to the brain that is now affecting someone's life. Regardless of what type of dementia someone has, it will get worse over time, that's also part of the definition. And so because of that, there are many stages. So there's a progression that kind of happens at the very beginning, usually, when someone's first diagnosed, that could be considered having mild dementia. And so there are many scales that exist that describe that progress over time, many doctors will just say mild, moderate, and severe, or early, middle and late. There are other skills that put numbers like stage four, stage six. And that's not super relevant to this conversation today. But it's just important to know that dementia does get worse over time. And so we have to care for individuals and treat that a little bit differently based on what type of dementia someone has and what stage they're in. So we for the purposes of today will just reference, mild, moderate or severe dementia.

Stephanie
Thank you. Yes. And this is how we came together, right, because this is a life event for families and caretakers that will change the trajectory of the person's life all everyone involved, and there will be a few stages. So that's how you I connected with Adria, because I realized she was just so good at explaining how there will be progression, but each stage is its own, and it needs to be treated as so versus just clumping it all into this one pool, that can be very overwhelming for caretakers, and friends and family. So you breaking it down in this way allows I think people to organize their thoughts, their life and how it will change going forward. So so thank you for that. Okay, so let's because there are different stages that we that you just mentioned, let's talk about how caretakers can help their loved one or the person they're caring for navigate through their space and their life in an easier form. So some organizing tips. And I noticed you mentioned that there's different steps, I know, you'll have some tips that have that will depend on the severity of where the person is at. So Adrian is going to go through some of the tips both in the physical space and the digital because it nowadays it affects both. We live in a world that has both. So we'd love to hear you know, from from the different levels, how can people help their loved ones and the people that are caring for get a little more organized

Adria Thompson
in their space? Yeah, absolutely. And I think starting out, it's important to note that this is true, not just for organizing someone with dementia, but this is probably true across the board. But sometimes we need to add things to their life. And sometimes we need to remove things from their life. So we're kind of gonna jump back and forth between adding something and then removing something. So my first tip would be very practical for people in the very early stages of dementia, or even people who might be considered having mild cognitive impairment, which is kind of the step before dementia. So many of these individuals might still be using technology. And so one, my first tip is to remove digital clutter. So removing programs or apps that are unnecessary or unused, clearing out clutter will simplify the person's experience and navigating to what they need. And it's also going to decrease opportunities for making mistakes, right so when someone has a brain change and it's affecting their life, it's going to also affect their ability to navigate through technology, whether it maybe it's a phone or a tablet or a computer and so removing things that are unnecessary that they're not using anymore is just going to simplify that process for them. So if they if there are some apps that that need to be there you know for like system operation or it's some files that are just necessary for whatever you know piece of technology it is even just putting them in a folder and labeling it do not open or like ignore this like being very straightforward and simplifying their experience can really go a long way because I don't know about you but I really like a simple layout when I when I get on my phone but not everyone does. My dad's for example, there's like a 1000 notifications on every single thing, and it's just overwhelming. And so when someone's having difficulty with complex things, why continue to make things that complex? So removing unnecessary things is probably the first step if someone is experiencing some changes in their brain,

Stephanie
yeah, I love that. And this, you mentioned something so like, sometimes you just have to remove and sometimes you will need to add and adding that instruction, that very direct action that needs to take place within that parameter, the file system, what are the app or whatever it may be you in our daily lives would think that that's, that's, that's going too far. Like that's an addition. But in reality for someone who is needs like a little bit more direction, that is going to simplify someone's life incredible. Incredibly, so you mentioning that was like, Oh, I was over here cheering like, yes, some movement, sometimes you need to add, so thank you for adding that gap.

Adria Thompson
Yeah, and sometimes even just taking apps that, that maybe they don't use as often and moving it to a page, you know, especially like on an iPhone, like moving it to a separate page, it still exists in case, we need to get to it as caregivers, but just making sure that what they see when they first go to interact with that piece of technology, that it's just as simple as possible.

Stephanie
I have a quick question for you here. The are there types of technology that you would recommend without maybe not necessarily naming any specific product? But is there something that is easier to lean towards like a, you know, more of a tablet versus a phone versus something flipped in today's age technology? Are there some recommendations that would go along with this tip?

Adria Thompson
That's a great question. I think overall, my recommendation here is to stick with what's familiar. So most, like I said, a lot of times we think about memory loss when it comes to dementia. And although that's not a symptom for everyone, it is a symptom for most people, because Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia, and that's the primary symptom. So short term memory loss, it means that they are going to forget things that they've learned most recently. So if we think of someone's timeline between today, and you know, birth, they start when they lose memory, they start to lose memory and the things that are most recent. So the saying here is last thing in first thing out. So the last thing they learned will be the first thing that they forget. So we need to stick with the two pieces of technology that they have the most interaction with. Now, sometimes that means that, you know, if they've been using an iPhone for 10 years, it's likely that they're going to remember how to use it for a good amount of time. But if they just learned it last year, and now they're starting to show signs of dementia, that's likely going to be something that goes out the window. So maybe we need to think about well, what were they using previous to that, maybe a flip phone, or maybe a landline phone, right? And so we just need to go with what's familiar. Often we see these fancy smartphones that are meant for individuals with dementia, and they're great and everything. But if someone has never even had an experience of touching a screen, knowing how to swipe knowing how to hold down a button, then this is not the time to teach them something new. So I just say overarching ly, there are products out there. But the best, the best kind of product is going to be the one that they are most familiar with already.

Stephanie
Thank you. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so what are cups as we head into the deeper, you know, more advanced stages, what are other tips that you would

Adria Thompson
recommend? So that's kind of focusing on removing things digitally. So the next tip I'm going to give you is how to add something digitally for people who just removing things is not enough. Okay, so we remove we simplified but they're still struggling. One of my favorite things to do is to add and create a custom background for whatever piece of technology they're using. Now, I often will use Canva for something like this. But let's say that someone is using a laptop or even a desktop computer and they love playing solitaire. They love checking the weather, and they love watching sermons from their grandson's church, okay, those are the three things that they love doing. And they're having difficulty navigating to find where those things are, if even though we've already removed things, they're still struggling. So what we can do is we can go on a program like Canva and we can create a custom background. My recommendation is that it's a solid color. I know we like pictures of grandbabies, and dogs and sunflowers, but that's just visually really distracting. So we can just create one With a black background, and then what I will do is make like four, three squares for this example. So three big squares that are going to be on the background that are a contrasting color. So let's say lime green. And then next to that, on this custom background we're making, we will write the three things that they want. So the weather, Solitaire, and then sermons from First Baptist Church, okay, so then once we can save that picture, and then apply it as the background of our desktop computer, and then drag the icons that are going to be those things into the boxes that you created on that backdrop, that is going to make it super obvious where they need to click. So it's highlighting the whole background is showing them exactly what they need to do. And we can be as creative as we want. When it comes to creating backgrounds. This is possible for tablets, phones, and computers. But there are times where I might make a bet custom background that has their username and password information for certain bank information. Right. So instead of trying to always find a post it note or something it is on their actual computer, when it opens exactly what they need to do. Maybe it has a direct instructions as to what order they clicked. So it might say, we might have a step by step 123 directions of click this button, then click this, this is going to pop up do this. So we can use custom backgrounds to just add clarity, and explain exactly what the person needs to do.

Stephanie
That makes complete sense to some even for me that when you can explain it in that simple format really would probably help a lot of you know, overwhelmed, but I can see how that, you know, that would be easy to make. But also easy to explain to someone without over overdoing it, if you will. Yeah,

Adria Thompson
yeah. And there are some apps that are not as obvious as to like what they are. So for example, like good reads, If you if your mom loves to read book reviews, but she always forgets what that app is called. And maybe the icon doesn't always stand out to her, we can make a custom background for her phone that has an arrow to where we know, we can put the icon and it says Click here for book reviews. Right? So this thinking about how what's the problem that they're experiencing? And how can we make How can we add something to make it more clear?

Stephanie
That makes sense. I love that. Okay. So then as we progress through, you mentioned, and I know you talk a lot about this in on your social media platforms as well. But consistency? Yeah, go into that detail.

Adria Thompson
Yeah. So kind of going along with short term memory often being an issue. As we move through maybe more into the moderate stages of dementia, we're going to see a pattern of forgetting things misplacing things. And what even can happen here are sometimes accusations that things have been stolen. So picture this situation, you have a set of keys, and you can't find them anywhere. Now for you. And I often when we have valuable things, we might be able to remember that we put it somewhere, but we don't exactly know where we put it. But when it comes to short term memory loss, but dementia, not they don't even have memory of ever having it much less where they put it. So if they know that they're looking for something important, and they have no memory of being the one to put it somewhere, then the most rational thought next is going to be well someone took it even though it was them, right. And so then when we have this paranoia of oh my gosh, things, people are taking things, then every time we interact with something we deem is valuable, then we're going to hide it in a place so that those people who are taking our stuff can't get it. But then what happens is we forget where we've hidden it. And then that further makes us think, oh, people are stealing things again. And so it's this cycle that can be really difficult to manage as a caregiver, because often we are the ones blamed for it right? Like where's my, where's my stuff? Did you take it? So consistency is really important when it comes to helping someone keep track of their items. So what we can do is determine a safe place that actually might be a safe, but it could be we need to follow their lead with where they're typically hiding things. I know I've worked with many patients in the past as a speech therapist, that they when we can't find something I know exactly in their room where their tendencies are to hide things. It's a certain drawer. It's under the pillowcase, it's in between the mattress, everyone has different tendencies. So follow their lead and know where they have a tendency to put things down. And then put a sign or create a spot. Sometimes I'll use colorful duct tape to square off a section in the back of a closet, or I'll use a red plastic tub to dit to put in a drawer and be like, this is your safe space, every time you have something valuable, we're gonna put it here. So what we can do with repetition and consistency, walking them through, here's this valuable thing, let's go to your safe space and put it there, we can start creating these patterns and habits. So that anytime they are looking for something, they instinctively go to that safe place and hopefully find it and can decrease some of that paranoia, and some of that, just distrust of the people around them. It's a terrible feeling.

Stephanie
Absolutely. And I think this is a good time to to insert the warning, if you will, or maybe just a heads up that we're talking in Adrian's kind of talking in general speak, but that sometimes there is trial and error for you as a caregiver, because assuming most of the community that's listening, is on the caregiver side. And we're trying to guide you at least or give you some purposeful and some tips that you can implement. But sometimes, like you just said, you might have to do some trial and error. Just giving you examples here. But generically, it's the safe spot, you may have to experiment, right and with with a couple of things that your person is demeaning is the safe spot. And maybe they you know, you just have to play around with that. So

Adria Thompson
Oh, absolutely. And not only does it depend on like, the individual's like the objects that they're hiding, or the the places that the physical aspects of trying to figure out that how to support them in this way, but also the way that we approach that, like how we're communicating with them that can make or break these these tips, right. And so there will be no one tip that's going to fix any one problem. And I am nothing but a problem solver, a trial and error. Er, I mean, that is what I do. And it's okay, if things don't work that gives us information still. But there's always usually something we can try to give us a little bit of hope in those moments of Oh, my gosh, what do I do about this issue?

Stephanie
Absolutely. And that's what we hope that people would get from this conversation that there are people out there on your side, trying to help you figure it out that you don't just have to, you know, start from scratch, hopefully. Okay, so as we progressed, let's keep going.

Adria Thompson
Okay, so let's say someone has a little bit more progressed from that. And that consistencies this really not working or, or we can't really get them to remember that safe space, we can I want to talk about creating salient solutions. So when we talk about saliency, that's just making things obvious. Okay, so let's use the example of someone with dementia that's constantly putting their dirty clothes back into drawers or on a hanger in their closet that can happen sometimes. So they might think, Well, I just wore this one day, so I'm going to hang it back up, when in reality, they've worn it for five days. And it's just an outfit that feels most comfortable to them, it feels safe to them. And so they enjoy wearing it, and they'll keep putting it back. As a caregiver, we don't want to have to fight the battle of arguing with them that, you know, you've actually worn this five times. And we all know how those kind of interactions go we we often don't win and both of us walk away, feeling really frustrated. So what we need to consider is to guide them to make a better choice, right? We would rather than place it in their hamper. But how do we make that hamper and making that decision to put it in the hamper more salient. So consider where they are going to be when they're making this choice. So for example, a lot of people take their clothes off at the end of the day while sitting on the edge of the bed. But maybe they are sitting on the toilet, in their bathroom. Or maybe they're in the middle of their living room who knows everyone has different habits, but consider where they are physically when they are making this decision. And think about how we can make in our eyes, the right decision the most obvious in that moment. So for example, we don't need to put a hamper in a closet behind a closed door and assume that they're going to use it out of sight out of mind is very much true for a lot of people with dementia. So we definitely need to bring the hamper out in the area that they will be experiencing this dilemma. Often we also can use things like signs so we can make a very clear statement. We can make a big bright red sign and I'll often when I make signs for people with dementia I do In first person, so it might say, after I take off my clothes, I put them here, and it has an arrow pointing into the hamper. There are many things we can trial and error here too. So we might need to not use a hamper that has a lid on the top, because maybe if it has a lid on the top, it doesn't feel as inviting. Maybe it needs to be open. Well, maybe they are just completely against the idea of putting their clothes in a hamper because they think they're clean. So maybe we use a nice basket. So they fold up their clothes, and they put it in this pretty basket thinking, Oh, I'll wear that tomorrow. For us caregivers, we know that's a cue that those clothes are dirty. Okay, so think about physically where someone is, what perspective visually do they have in wear in that moment? And how in that moment, can we make the right decision, the most obvious choice,

Stephanie
I love that. And the part about figuring, well, like we mentioned the trial and error, but also you going through the steps yourself as well with how you what what you want you as a caretaker caretaker, what results you're looking for as well. Because at the end, you are the person that will lead or you're the recipient of that action, you are the responsible partner for that person at the end of that action. So you make it obvious, but also simple for you to deal with. is kind of that that balance a little bit that you have to play with? Yeah, so I, I love the partner like, okay, let's make it obvious. So that you both you win, I win. And you can just legally, you know, lead it as simple as possible.

Adria Thompson
And it takes away that confrontational moment of like coming in and telling someone what to do. We're actually allowing them independence by setting up their environment in a way that allows them to make the right choice without a standing over them, and, you know, authoritative or confrontational way, and giving them instruction.

Stephanie
Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Okay, so for our kind of the last of this, these phases, you talk about distractions. So let's talk about that a little bit.

Adria Thompson
Yeah. So then in the later stages of dementia, maybe someone who with moderate dementia or severe dementia, we're going to see often a lot of changes in attention. We've talked about memory already. But attention is very much a component of memory. If we're not paying attention, if I don't pay attention to my husband, when he tells me a story, I sure I'm not going to remember it right. And so attention and we see this, you know, in ourselves a lot of times, based on the mood we're in or the situation we're in, we might be able to really focus on something and have a long sustained attention to a task. And then sometimes we don't, we don't have the ability to pay attention if our lives depended on it. So individuals with dementia, their capacity for attention will decrease over time. And so they will get distracted very easily. So in these very, you know, the later stages of dementia, we need to think about how we can decrease distractions. Now, I think we all try to decrease distractions in our environment at times where we turn off the TV in the background, or we you know, turn off the radio or turn off our notifications on our phones so that that we are not easily distracted. But sometimes there are really small things that we don't think about that we can do. So for example, if someone is having a difficult time, sitting down for a meal, and focusing long enough to eat, maybe they take a few bites, and then they stand up to leave and we're like oh, sit back down back down. In that moment, think about how we can strategically set them up in a way that will make them be able to focus more. So often what that looks like at mealtime is maybe although it makes us happy and it's really beautiful. We need to take centerpieces off the table. Right? Well, maybe we need to take runners off the table, things that can just draw attention away from what they need to focus on, which is their food. I do this with myself, but also we need to consider which direction they are facing. So if my husband and I are going out on a special dinner, I will specifically and strategically seat myself at a table to where I'm facing the wall rather than the rest of the restaurant. Because I am a people watcher. And so I know that if my backs to the wall and I am seeing everything else go on in the restaurant, I'm going to be listening to other people's conversations. I'm going to be figuring out if they're on a first date or if people are fighting. And so in the same way when we seat someone with dementia for a meal and they have trouble with attention, we might need to face them on the side of the table that focuses on the least interesting part of the room, usually a wall or maybe a window and we need to close the curtains. So decreasing visual distractions, decreasing auditory distractions, that's things we hear, maybe we think that you playing music in the background and nice little, you know, ambiance for, for a meal. But for some people, it might be too much. So there's a lot of things we can do to kind of remove distractions from them so that we can give them the best chance of concentrating and making the thing that we need them to do. The most interesting thing in their field division,

Stephanie
yeah, it's that age old, quote, rights that set them up for success. But I think in this case, it's it's them proxy by you by you, you know, you kind of become one at some point as a caregiver. And it's setting yourself up. But then but you and it's this fine balance, so and finding what that is so that at the end, you're both happy, and your bulls are as happy as can be, or as comfortable as can be given the situation. So yeah,

Adria Thompson
and I think you know, many of these tips that I've given, it requires us to see the world from their eyes. And that's often a thing that's brought up when it comes to caring, caring for someone with dementia is to, you know, consider their reality or look at their perspective. But sometimes we have to physically do that we need to sit in the seat that they're sitting and think what here could distract them? Or maybe when we talked earlier about making things salient, we need to sit on the edge of the bed exactly where they're sitting and think, how are they taking this world? And how when we look at their phone, we need to consider through their, you know, their brain that they have, you know, a disease that's affecting them? How is their brain interpreting this, and then how can I make things easier, that's really what what caregiving is all about is just seeing the world through their eyes. And we can be really creative sometimes when we really fully allow ourselves to understand what they're going through. And then, you know, think about ways that we can make them. The three areas typically are more independent, more safe, and more comfortable and happy.

Stephanie
Oh, I, I love that. And for all of our listeners, because I know, I know my community well enough that I think some of as you're listening, you're probably were thinking, hey, I kind of have that a little bit that can help me, you know, or that could help my husband or my child or my aunt or whatever, whoever you love your roommate. But this is a good reminder that in this scenario, in this conversation in particular, we hope that some of these tips will help everyone but that at the end of the day, the Kate caretaker, caretakers for dementia is that it's not going to get better. Right? Yeah. So I think as you know, some of these tips, hopefully they help, but also did this is to ease those caretakers that, you know, but we'll be facing this for the different chapters in the upcoming chapters in their lives. So absolutely, yeah. Okay. So as we start to unwind, I always ask these three questions we want to know, well, first of all, in them, one of the most important questions is, what would you like people to take away from this conversation,

Adria Thompson
I think the most important thing to take away when it comes to dementia, when people are going to start being unable to do things we know that's that's part of the process. But when someone can't do something independently, or they can't do it as well as they did, that doesn't mean that they can't ever participate in it again. And what I mean by that is, let's say someone is struggling with their iPhone, the moment they start saying, I can't ever get this thing to work, don't throw your hands up and think well, iPhone days are over this is it and check it out the window, we can adapt. There's always adaptations. There's always things that we can try, that could still make someone with support, be able to participate in those things they enjoy. Will there be a day that one day we just get rid of the iPhone, of course. But when someone struggles with something at the very beginning, try to make some changes, try to implement some techniques, trial and error and see what can happen. There's a lot of support for caregivers that exist out there. I am a speech language pathologist. I am biased. Yes, but I think that speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists are most unused resources For people with dementia, so if you think that you need some support, I encourage you to ask the primary care doctor, for the person you're caring for, to give them a referral to a therapist, we can sometimes come into your home. Or maybe if they're living in a long term care community, they can see them there. There's so many things, these are the things that I described are things I do every day at my work. So it is important to know that there's always medical professionals out there that can give you some tips and tricks. So you're not alone. You don't feel so alone.

Stephanie
Yeah, you're not alone. Let's head to a fun question, which is, you have a favorite magazine that you'd like to read, whether it's a digital magazine, hard copies, or something that you just really enjoyed a pickup, even if it's at the checkout of the grocery store, you know, the one that you just kind of typically end up grabbing and perusing through.

Adria Thompson
So I don't read magazines very often, I don't think I've ever stood in a line and looked at anything. However, I do have, I do subscribe to some things through my email. And they're not very exciting. But mostly it's information about, you know, current research and dementia. I subscribe to the American Speech Language Hearing Association, magazines that give me all the updated information. So I, when I read usually for leisure, it's usually books, but I still try to be a lifelong learner and, and consume as much information that's going to be helpful to the people I serve.

Stephanie
You are true to your gift. I think it is that, that that's perfect, like you love what you do. And you continue with that, which actually leads us to our next and last question, which is where can people reach you because that is where I found you, which was the social media platforms and you your passion for this is very well presented. And it's beautiful to see. And I'm very grateful that I get to learn some, you know, a lot of new tactics on how on this subject matter. So where can people reach you? Where can people find you and enjoy all that awesome content that you're putting out there for free? But also, where can people reach out if they need further assistance that goes beyond the the free stuff that's out there?

Adria Thompson
Yeah. So yeah, I'm on social media, Facebook, tick tock, and Instagram, all at be liked care. So B, E, L, I, G, H, T, C, A, R E. So yeah, just type and be like care on any of those platforms. I have 275,000 followers across all platforms. So I have hundreds of videos and post giving tips and education about how to care for someone with dementia. And so that's all free. There's tons of information on there there. Especially Instagram, it's very organized there with categories and stuff so you can find what you're looking for. If you want to just contact me ask a question, you can email me at info at B lights care.com. But I also do caregiver consultations via zoom. So if you go to be like care.com, you will see a consultations or services tab. And you can read about what caregiver consultations entail. Basically we just sit on Zoom for an hour you tell me what's going on in your caregiving journey. And I just give you lots of tips and information. And so you can find that on my website if you would like to work with me one on one. Awesome, wonderful

Stephanie
leader. Thank you so much for joining us today and being the light and truly sharing your gift with all of us and for all the listeners that I know will benefit from this conversation. So thank

Adria Thompson
you so much. Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun.

Stephanie
Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing

Let’s talk about garage sales!  Garage sales can be a great option for decluttering and making some extra money.  But how do you make them successful? We covered tips on how to get people to come to your sale, how to make the most of the sale, and alternative ways to sell your items if your garage sale doesn't go as planned.

In this episode we talk about:

• Pros & Cons of garage sales
• What to consider when hosting a garage sale
• How does the reselling market impact garage sales?
• Are Garage Sales right for you in your organizing journey?
• How can you turn a poorly attended garage sale into a positive experience?

Mentioned in this Episode:

Should You Do-it-Yourself or Outsource It?

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/6-should-you-do-it-yourself-or-outsource-it/

Virtual Sell/Buy Marketplaces Blog Post 

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/virtual-sell-buy-marketplaces/

Think your community or group of friends could benefit from a Community Garage Sale?

Get our  “Community Garage Sales Made Easy Handbook”  in our shop!

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you? Yeah, well, then let's go.

Be honest. What do you think about garage sales? Do they make you cringe? Do you get excited when you go and wake up early and head to a garage sale weekend? How do you feel about them? The reason I'm asking you this question is because I know in the last couple of years, garage sales in the reselling market has gotten kind of a bad rap. There has been a lot of innovation around reselling apps and resale marketplaces, which I love. But as a whole, and as a society. Whenever I talk about garage sales, I usually get a little bit of a cringe effect or factor or commentary.

Now, you all know that I'm all about the data. So I have not officially made a survey or compiled any official information about how people feel about garage sales. But this has been my own take been in the industry where when I talk to a client, and I say, hey, maybe you're a good candidate to host a garage sale, I kind of get this little pushback of ooh, I don't know. It sounds like a lot of work. Nobody wants my trash and I get that kind of feeling. Now, I'm assuming that there will be a couple of you who were attracted to this episode, because you are garage sale pros, and you know your stuff. So obviously, I'm not talking necessarily to you. But I hope you will stick around because we are going to talk about some tips and some observations that I have seen being in the organizing world that hopefully will help you as well. But as a whole, as a society, I think especially here in the US, we just don't really have a very positive connotation to garage sales, it's usually the people are getting rid of their stuff, because they're downsizing.

And it's a it's looked upon as it's somebody else's trash. And it's not always the case. And so we're going to talk about the pros and the cons, we're going to talk about my observations of what I have seen some of the successful garage sales that I have been a part of, and that I put together and give you some tips for you to consider if maybe garage selling is the right avenue for you in your organizing journey. Okay, so let's get started with a little bit of the garage sale one on one and what it is, a garage sale is in this terminology, we're talking about the reselling of items that you already possess. So they could be brand new items you're reselling, maybe you never used them, or they could be used and you are now getting rid of them for whatever reason. So this is a sale that you have personally put together. This is not like a company brick and mortar. This isn't a store. This is a personal reselling of items in your possession. So if you're interested in the history of where garage and yard sales came about, it's a term that we use here, especially in the US where you hold like I said to those sales, the the privacy of your own home, your garage, if you will, something that came about in the 19.

Around the 1970s work garages, were starting to be more popularized, and you could like the 60s 70s. And you would host the sales in your yard. Before that they were called rummage sales. And those were mostly held by charities, churches and groups like that, that would then sell the items to benefit their association or their nonprofit. In even prior to that there is some history which we can dive into in on another episode. But there's some history there with it being a nautical term from rummage, which was the cargo that was packed in to the holder of a ship. And the Roman shells at that time were held at the docks and the cargo that was unclaimed or damaged would then be sold at a discounted rate. And they were that was the rummage and then from there, it just became the garage sale. So one thing led to another so it's a little bit of a fun history for you and for you history buffs. And I also wanted to shed light on the history of it because as most anything things have evolved. But this one in particular, this type of sale really has stuck to its roots, right, it's things that are no longer needed wanted, that are being sold for the fret for a fraction of their their original price. And that's the beauty of this type of sale, the seller is getting rid of items that are no longer use to them, and the buyer feels like they're getting a good deal.

And in today's age that we're keeping items out of the landfills so it's a win win when you host these types of sales. Now there's cons to it and I'm not saying that a garage sale is for everyone which we will explain some of the pros and con on who is the right fit for this type of event. But as a whole, it's supposed to be a win win for all parties. And the reason I am a big fan of this type of sale in an organizing journey is because there is that Win Win factor. It is an emotional win for the seller, knowing that the items are going to a new home, where the item will actually be used. Many of our clients especially if you are more, you have more hoarding tendencies, and you're emotionally attached to items, you can't let go of something or the items that are accumulating in your home in your household in your space. Because there was this fear that you didn't get to use it or that it was a waste of time, or money or effort purchasing the item. Or if it is an emotional, maybe family heirloom, that you are breaking the tradition of keeping that item alive. And there's a lot of guilt associated with it. So to relieve that guilt a little bit, when you know that it's going to good home in for someone that actually will be using it, it becomes a win for you, the seller or the person who will be selling the item. And that contributes to long lasting organizing and long lasting decluttering habits, because it gives you that really good feeling. Now on the other end, for the seller, they of course feel like it's a win because they got something that was much better priced. They know they're keeping it out of the landfill. And so it just becomes a really good understanding between the parties, that it was a good day to buy the item and then you know to buy and sell. So it's a win win.

So let's talk about the pros of having a garage sale. So I already talked about the emotional Pro, which is finding a better home, the next home for the item. But this is a great opportunity to declutter and organize your living space, it allows you to go through your space open boxes, maybe that you have not opened in a really long time. So it gives you that chance to declutter and organize. The other is it gives you a chance to make some extra money by selling the items that you no longer need and are taking up space. Now, what kind of money you will get for the item will vary on what you're trying to sell. But I have a whole blog post, which I will link into the show notes. And you can also download our checklist on how to have a successful garage sale. So one of those points on that list in the blog post talks about Yes, making extra money, but also being realistic about what you're selling and getting some second opinions, asking friends going online and seeing what something is worth. Because just because something may even if it's a brand new item, and you've bought it for $100. And you think that you know, it's never been used, it's brand new, the person who was buying, it does not have the same emotional attachment to that item. So what you are going to make on that item is probably not what you think you will. So just be smart about that. But you will make some extra money. And that item sitting at your basement or your closet is probably not making you any money. So you know, this is one of the other pros, big disclaimer here. We are not talking about collectibles or valuables some of you are professional, collectible collectors or people that know what something is worth. And if that's you, then you understand that you're storing it for the long term value. So that's a whole that's a whole nother episode.

This is just talking about everyday items. Some of the other added benefits, which the first some of you, you may like it's up for some of you, you may not and there is a way around it. But I think it's a pro in that's the engagement with the local community and the potential to meet new people. A garage sale is a great way for you to meet your neighbors. And maybe even if you're not social, this could be a really good opportunity to hear you know, see get some recommendations on where to donate things. Where can I sell this is there a better place maybe someone will tell somebody that you have a thing that they need it so that engagement really helps you get rid of your stuff and finding new homes for your things. Now this is my favorite this next pro in that the sustainable practice of recycling and reusing items rather than throwing them away. i This is my favorite. This is very close to my heart. I host an annual community garage sale here in my neighborhood. I've actually have done garage sales for many, many years. I've also done them for clients, but this is one of the number one reasons why I love doing this.

And it's finding new homes for things that may have ended up in the landfill. And like I said it's a win win. People feel like they're getting a good deal. And to me it just it's my way of contributing to the keeping items away from just laying in landfills forever and ever when I know sometimes it can go to better homes. This now Next tip is not for everyone, but I added it as a pro, because I know some of you get a thrill out of this, I will say that I am not one of these people. So if you are listening to this next tip, and you're like, Nope, that's not me, I hear you, because I feel the same. But it's the process and getting that and getting the thrill of negotiating and negotiating prices. I know some of you live for this, especially as a buyer, if you enjoy going to garage sales. And that thrill of getting a good bargain, oh my gosh, I know that that goes a long way. So if you enjoy that piece of it, you know, somebody saying, I'll give you $2 for it, and you say $1, and then you meet in the middle for $1.50. And you think that that's a win because you thought you were going to get 50 cents out of it. And that's like a win for everybody. I get it.

So I did add it as a pro, because I know a lot of you really enjoy that part. And if you've never done a garage sale before, try it out and see if you like it, you don't if you don't, then there's plenty of tips that I talked about over on the blog page on the blog post that I mentioned earlier, that will be in the show notes. But you don't necessarily have to negotiate, you can put up a sign that says everything, you know, it's non negotiable. You can put price tags on things, and you can just let people know that is what it is. Now there is a little bit of a subculture and understanding that in garage sales and flea markets and things like that, in the resale market in general, that there was room for a bargain, or just to you know, offer another price. So just know that there was a little bit of that norm, but you certainly don't have to say yes, and you can absolutely put in your ads in in your signs and in your pricing that it's non negotiable.

Okay, so now let's switch over to the cons of having and hosting a garage sale. Now, these aren't necessarily negative things, but just things for you to consider. So I added them as a con, because they're important to note in that this one of these cons may be the reason that a garage sale may not be right for you. Okay, so one of them is the time, the most important, it's the time and the effort involved in planning, organizing and promoting this, this type of sale. Like I mentioned earlier, I have hosted community garage sales, which also if you're interested in having something like that, I do have resources for you down in the show notes. But if you're having an individual, like a personal community garage sale, it still takes some time and effort, right, you have to plan a little bit, you have to plan a date, set time for that date.

And once you announce that date, because people need to know that you're having one, then you you're basically committing yourself to that, that time that date that you told people that you were going to be there. And in addition to that, then there's a little bit of a planning, even if you're not a planner, and you're just more of a fly by the seat of your pants type of person, you just grab and sell you there's still a little bit of planning because you you just you have to go grab this stuff and take it out. And you know, and put it up on tables or or just on your driveway or wherever area of you're in front of your house. So there's a bit of time and effort involved. And that is something that only you know, if you have time, and the ability for we recorded an episode here that would help you where we talk about things to consider when you're outsourcing. So should you do it yourself? Or should you outsource it and that is a great episode. If you're contemplating if doing this type of garage sale is right for you. I'll put that in the show notes as well. The next one is all about the weather, something that you really just can't help. I put it as a con because it makes people nervous. Not knowing what will happen like, you know, finding that perfect date, that's like the most beautiful weather not too hot, not too cold. But it's not it's not under your control.

And you can plan as much as possible. Knowing that you know you wherever you live, maybe you know your weather patterns. And you know that it's just better to have it in June, maybe to have it in August, whatever it may be only you know that but just know that if the weather is not great, you do need to make alternative arrangements, especially if you're you did a lot of pre planning like advertisement, like you set up your tables ahead of time and you did all of that. Like I said, I do have a list of all like how to have a really good successful garage sale and it talks about the pre planning process. So there's effort involved in that and if you get rained out, or something to that effect, well now you have to make some plans for another date. And if that makes you a little bit nervous then or you have to have the garage sale that weekend because you're moving the weekend after then that is something that you may not love and something that you just need to consider. Then next one is about an emotional con.

And this is a tip that I just give in that I wanted to talk about because as this could happen, especially if you've never done a garage sale before, and that's the possible disappointment if items don't sell, or they don't get the price that you want. So that is a con, if you are an emotionally attached person, that may surprise you that when you somebody tells you, they'll give you, you know, $1 for it, and you bought it for $100, or it's a family heirloom, and you could potentially feel almost weather embarrassed and or you may get defensive over it, then a garage sale may not be right for you, because people there are trying to get a bargain. And it's not personal to you. But you may feel that way. So if you're in a sensitive emotional place, a garage sale may not be right for you right now, or for those items that you feel very emotionally connected to, because well, you know, the people that are trying to buy it are in a different place, they don't feel your emotions. So that's another con for you to think about. I feel like this one can be worked around as long as you prepare yourself that that may happen. But I also understand that many of you have items that would be very difficult, or you would find offensive if somebody offered you much less than what you thought you were going to. So you know, keep that in mind.

The last tip is all about getting people to come to your garage sale and potentially having the disappointment of not having enough people come to your sale. So that's not even about that you can't even sell things this is about people are not even coming or stopping by. And especially if you're not in a highly visible place, or a corner or house or you know area, then if you don't have a good strategy of getting people to come to the sale, then they won't even be able to buy because they don't even know you're there. And so that can be a con if you don't have a good strategy on advertising for this or a good reach, then or good reach of somehow, whether it's through your social media that you're if you feel uncomfortable about posting, or you don't know how to do it, that may be a con for you. Because if not enough people that not enough traffic comes through your sale through your garage sale, then there's no way that they know that you're even there.

And that might be disappointing. Now I do have some tips in that blog post that I just talked about, about trying to avoid that piece because so I don't necessarily think it's a con as long as you're prepare prepared. If during your sale, you find your if you did not do a good enough job advertising or you just didn't have the time or, or honestly, it was just a bad day and people are not walking by your neighborhood and therefore not seeing your sale. There's a couple of alternatives that you have in that you can turn this event into a positive, because you can just take pictures of the stuff that's out there already, and post them on online social media platforms, marketplaces like Craigslist, and Facebook marketplace and mark in Poshmark, I have a whole list of online resellers that you can post it to. So even if that becomes the downside of you having a garage sale, and you just don't get enough traffic, use it as a moment of exposure because everything's probably out in the sunshine, right outside good lighting, just take pictures and post them on social media, like I said, all these other marketplaces and still get some good usage of the time that it took for you to put this together.

So that could definitely be turned around if you have if you're a little bit prepared. So and our episode today, I wanted to share some feedback that I received from a neighbor. She was one of the participants in our community garage sale this year. And it was just really heart warming to me what she said so let me let me read it to you. For our first and last garage sale. It was so great. Now in parentheses here I just got to share with you they are moving to their forever home. So in theory, this would be their last garage sale and they had never hosted one before so lastin first. Then she continues, enjoyed meeting neighbors we never knew everything is gone, planned to make a run to the local charity, but gave everything away at the garage sale. So many happy faces.

We'd love that some of our treasures found new homes and a new life hope the community continues this tradition. And for the sake of our landfills this was a great idea. Great lesson to teach the next generation. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here are full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast have The Organizing

What is Burnout, exactly? How does it affect our lives? Jennifer Bassman, a burnout recovery & burnout coach, is sharing how to identify the root cause of burnout and how practicing stress management techniques can help avoid burnout and increase productivity. 

In this episode we talk about:

• What is Burnout?
• Causes and Contributors to Burnout
• Can Burnout be Avoided?
• The Impact of Burnout on Organizing Style and Ability to Stay Organized
• Coping with and Recovering from Burnout

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Burnout Recovery Method Online Course: 

https://jenniferbassman.com/courses/

(On Mental Health) Episode 003: Mental Health and Organizing with Suzanne Orlando

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/3-mental-health-and-organizing-with-suzanne-orlando/

Where to find Jennifer Bassman online:

Jennifer Bassman has been researching burnout recovery methods for more than 13 years. She has developed a proven, proprietary method called The Burnout Recovery Method that has helped hundreds of people recover from burnout for good.

Web: https://jenniferbassman.com/

IG: www.instagram.com/jennifer_bassman

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jenniferbassman

Email List: https://jennifer-jenniferbassman-com.ck.page/d20da678f9

—

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Stephanie
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of organized and productive. For today's episode, we are talking all about burnout, and its impact on our ability to get and stay organized. As you know, you know, we live in a world that's constantly demanding of our time and our energy and attention from juggling our work responsibilities to our personal commitments, it's really easy to get caught up in the never ending cycle of busyness. But what happens when we push ourselves too far? Well, that is where burnout comes in. And burnout is a term that has been popularized as a more recent, but it's been going on for a long time. And I for one, I'm really glad it has more of a title and more of an importance placed on it nowadays, because it is something that I think a lot of us can relate to. And then sometimes we just don't know exactly what to do about it. Like do I go get professional help? Do I just let it ride out? And so for our conversation today, we have Jennifer Bassman, who is a burnout and recovery coach, and she is going to talk about about that, like where when is it a good time to to get additional help? But can you do this on your own? And so I'm really excited about being able to talk about this without making it a huge deal. But also prioritizing and understanding this is a thing. So without further ado, you know how we always do it, we get straight into the conversation, so we don't waste your time so that you can get straight to the nitty gritty. So I'm really excited about today's conversation. Let's get to it. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized for bingo. I am your host Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go. Hello, Jennifer. Hello, Welcome. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so excited about our conversation today. As you know, and as many of our community and guests know, we go straight into talking about the subject matter of today, our community is prepped with what we're talking about. And today we're talking about burnout, the causes and just how it relates to our life and ability or inability to get organized and more productive. So let's get right into it, shall we, though, again, thank you for being here. And let's get to the what is burnout. Let's go for it.

Jennifer Bassman
We're just jumping right in. I love it. Burnout is primarily about chronic stress. But it also includes emotional overwhelm, physical overexertion, as well as mental overload, the basic definition that I have burnout that I use, and just so we're all working from the same place. And it doesn't mean that this is the end all be all definition of burnout. But this is a good one to use for the episode is that burnout is chronic stress over a long period of time, from mental, physical and emotional overwhelm. And it's something that sneaks up on you because stress is very, very sneaky. That is a very little known fact about stress or realization about it is that we can we get more and more acclimated to higher and higher levels of stress than we don't, don't notice it while it's happening while stress levels are rising. And there's always something and it's usually your coping mechanism, how you deal with stress, you know, at any given time that finally gives out and that's when you begin to notice the stress. So common symptoms that people see, you know, obviously given stress, an inability to focus, they have trouble making decisions. And some of these to some of these common symptoms are stress related issues. stress causes you not to be able to focus and not to, you know, doesn't provide enough clarity to make good decisions, but there's also exhaustion and I like to make the distinction that it's crippling exhaustion. It's not just I just feel tired. It is crippling, exhaustion, cynicism, you have definitely got a negative attitude towards work in your job that wasn't there before. People are usually experiencing headaches and experiencing them more often and for longer periods of time. Especially when they you know weren't really having headaches before maybe the occasional, you know, pain but not like what happens with burnout. And then there's also irritability. There's definitely a change in your mood. There's definitely a change in your aspects, some uncommon symptoms that I do love to point out, because they're not always associated with burnout. And burnout does have a list of symptoms that could apply to like 100 different things. So some of the more uncommon symptoms of burnout that don't get talked about as much would be running thoughts like you can't shut off your brain to relax or go to sleep, waking in the middle of the night, your anxiety just wakes you up, you could be sleeping perfectly fine for a couple of hours, and then 2am hits, and all of a sudden, you're wide awake, and your mind just starts running again, taking on or committing yourself to an unsustainable workload. And that happens, you know, becomes a symptom and an uncommon symptom because I think a lot of people are used to saying, Yes, I'll take that on, I'll take that on. But people that are going through burnout take on, take on an extraordinary amount of work. And without any care to themselves, or the quality of the output. There's a lot of pessimism. And that is most noticeable in people that are optimists that are typically very positive, very happy, bouncy, people. Muscle Pain is a big one, you're just always sore. And that's part of you know, how lactic acid starts building up differently when you're completely stressed out, and you're constantly you know, tightening your muscles a lot. People that are stressed some people they feel in their jaws, you know, because they grit their teeth. Other people, you know, they have other various forms of like, you know, making fists are constantly bouncing their legs, that kind of thing. This one's a fun one, you get worse hangovers with less alcohol, just because your body processes alcohol differently when you are stressed out. And there's also increased risk taking. And part of that is because you've developed kind of a screw it attitude. So you just kind of let it go and say screw I'm gonna take that risk.

Stephanie
Very interesting. I, Jennifer and I have talked before, but some of this is I'm reading notes like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea because you're right. It's not just being tired. It, it starts to get processed in your mind, and then your body and in the Yeah, another way. So fascinating. Okay, so I know it's not always work related, necessarily. Can family and personal burnout be a thing, too? Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Jennifer Bassman
In fact, it's almost like dominoes that if you burn out in one area of your life, it affects every other area of your life. So if you burn out in personal life, it can, you know, fall like dominoes with your professional life or with your social life. So it's it's absolutely possible to burnout from you know, especially like family or relationship. situation where you are the primary caretaker, there's a lot of compassion, fatigue and burnout that happens with caretaking and caregiving that gets overlooked by a lot, you know, we think, oh my gosh, it's no big deal. I'm taking care of the baby. I'm taking care of an elderly parent. But those things are very emotionally draining energy draining as well. So there's a lot of mental and physical and emotional exhaustion that happens, you know, with taking care of a family, you're keeping a house, you're making sure you know, especially with women, we take on the mental Load More often than not in our relationships and with our family.

Stephanie
Absolutely. So then, so what are some of those causes? I know we talked about, we know, you gave some really good examples. But for instance, can we talk a little bit about boundaries, like some of those causes that that you probably are causing yourself, but you know, as not other people, it's not always about other people. Maybe there's things that you can help yourself. So what are some of those causes that maybe someone listening doesn't realize that they're putting on themselves? It's in might not be other people do it? Oh, I

Jennifer Bassman
love this question. I'm so glad that you're asking this because this was something at the beginning of my burnout recovery journey that was not talked about. I mean, so when I burned out back in 2009 2010, burnout was unheard of. In fact, I didn't even know that that's what it happened to me at first until I had started doing some digging, and I just happened to come across like a business magazine article that said something about burnout. That was like a lightbulb moment of oh my gosh, this might have been what happened. What I I've discovered I've been researching burnout now for 13 years. And one of the things that I've discovered, and this is something that goes against what a lot of people really truly believe about burnout, even the experts I really feel like it's our personal habits and our personality that tend to burn us out. More than our job, or you know, our families or our relationships or the world around us, because there's a way, you know, we all process information, we all handle stress, we all handle different types of workloads very differently. And so it's, for me, it's really hard to say it's this one thing, it's your job. And I really think most of the time, it's not your job, if it's just that you how you think about your job, how you're doing the work, if you've been set up to fail, you know, what your personal work ethic and your beliefs are about getting something done, because it's not always a toxic work environment. And I'm not saying this stuff doesn't exist. But you know, we have personal tendencies that get in our way, I think more than the actual work, think about when you are taking a walk, or when you were working out or, you know, when you are working on a project at work, or you're doing your hobby, your brain thinks a different way. And when your brain is more in a negative mindset, which when you're burned out, you know, that's, that's where you are, that takes more energy out of you. That is very draining. In fact, the when you are, you know, a negative person, and you are in that negative mindset, your stress levels rise twice as fast, and it burns energy twice as fast. So you want and the reason I'm going back to my own burnout experience is because I discovered, I am a perfectionist and a people pleaser. I did not know that about myself, I in fact, I'll be honest, I didn't even know what they were at the time that I figured this out. And it were it were those two personality traits that really were the death of me. Those were at the root of my burnout. And it wasn't until I got to that root cause that my burnout recovery really started to happen. Because I was treating that actual mindset issue, you know, because my perfectionism was causing unrealistic expectations and standards of myself, and the people around me, I was making work for everybody, I was making way more work for myself. And I was taking on way too much work. And the people pleasing. You know, I just couldn't say no to people, I had no boundaries whatsoever. You know, that's actually at the core of my burnout Recovery Formula, the path that I take people down this week, we get in there, we dig in and we look at, you know, what is it that you could be doing? Not the world is doing to you? What is it that you could be doing that is contributing to the situation?

Stephanie
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I bet I have a feeling that some of our listeners are probably pausing right now taking a deep breath. Go please do me, let me let me regroup.

Jennifer Bassman
By the way, I totally relate to that sentiment, where I literally was like, Oh, my God, this I was in denial for a lot, you know, that it was me that it was my fault that what was happening was my fault. So I totally get that, that we're the last people we want to look at. But we shouldn't be the first people. So I get that.

Stephanie
It's hard. It's what you can control the best yourself and your own actions. That would make sense. So it can be avoided to a certain degree? Or can it be avoided altogether? Can how so now that we've talked about what it is, what are some of those the causes or contributions to it? Can it be avoided? Or is this just something that happens? Or it's going to happen at some point? What are your tips on that? Like? Can it be avoided? What can people do to avoid it? If they can?

Jennifer Bassman
Yes, and no. It depends on again, your personality type. If you are an overachiever, if you are a perfectionist, if you're a people pleaser, if you know you are somebody that is you know, your brain has kind of full of limiting beliefs. You have big issues with negative self talk or an inner critic that you're constantly doing battle with, you're gonna be more prone to burnout. And it's, you know, if you have a self awareness of those things with those personality types, sure, you can avoid it. And in fact, we can all avoid it if we had more self awareness about how we worked. You know, how much energy you know, we were expending how you know what our stress levels actually are. And most of us just don't have that the it's not our fault. It's just you know, that's just how you know humans are we don't sit down and think, Gosh, what's my stress level right now. But when you're burned out and you are going down that recovery path, we really need to get your stress management. I mean, like that's the number one thing is, you got to learn how to manage that stress. The type of people that tend to avoid burnout are naturally good stress, manage or, or they had great boundaries to begin with. I also I tried to think of the best term for this that like people were slacker personalities, where things don't bother them, they just kind of roll off their back, or they have no problem walking away from responsibility, you know, ignoring somebody, when can anybody volunteer, they're less likely to burn out as well. It's something that yes, it could be avoided, but we tend to ignore the things that would help us avoid it.

Stephanie
So lesson learned do nothing, everyone. Be the slacker doesn't just not very helpful avoid all of this. And but that's the thing right up the community and why we're having this conversation. Most of the organized and productive community here is they enjoy being productive, organized, or want to get to that point. And but we also don't want them to burn out. So this is this is gold. This is Yeah, we don't want them to get that far. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the impacts of burnout, on organizing, and the style and the ability to get organized and stay organized, which is what we kind of talked about, we just since we as you know, we talked about this in the there's different ways to achieve organizing and productivity. It's not all about the Go, go, go, hustle, hustle, there are different ways, and in sustainable ways. So let's talk about the relationship between between those two, can you give us some tips for staying organized during the times of burnout, like if you if you're there, let's talk about those people. If you feel like you're there, what are some tips to still stay organized, while you're dealing with burnout recovery, like, let's talk about those people first, and then just how to avoid it all together, but still be organized in those types of tips.

Jennifer Bassman
Sure, I'm glad we're talking about this, it's, I think we get more burned out, we are really hard on ourselves, that's just part of the process, you know, we feel like a failure, we feel like we aren't able to be as productive, you know, we aren't able to be as productive, which is physically weak. And mentally, we can't be as productive because of the way stress, you know, reacts within the body. But you know, you become less organized as well. In fact, for your audience, you know, that could be a sign that burnout is happening, or you're you know, coasting right into it, you're on the verge of it is that you're the organization that you once saw as a priority, or, you know, a point of pride is something that no longer appeals to you, or you aren't, you know, working as hard at it, you know, when you're burned out, you really don't feel like doing much, and you don't really have a lot of mental clarity. And one of the things I found was happening to me when I was burned out, is I couldn't remember where I put stuff. I was having a lot of like I, you know, I was so distracted by my internal thoughts and the things that were going on around me and what I was angry about or resenting or, you know, I just I wasn't thinking clearly about, oh, I put this, you know, I could this piece of paper in this particular folder, or I saw I there just the my organization's the time was even worse than it is now. But it's you have to give yourself a break. And you want to streamline your organization process absolutely as much as you possibly can. That would be my first tip is that you know, and this isn't like a permanent thing. And I can, I almost feel like some of your audience, this is like stabbing them right in the heart right now. Because you're organized people and you love things to be a certain way, while your brain is kind of simmering and stress. And while you are kind of working through, you know, your own anxiety, things aren't going to be as you might want them to be, they aren't going to be as cut and dry, they aren't going to be as straight, they aren't going to be as organized as you typically might be. And I can see that being a point of that alone being a point of stress, something that your audience would look at and say, Oh my God, you know, I can't believe I let my pantry get like this, or oh my gosh, I can't believe I let my desk get this way. And at that point, if you're having those thoughts, I would love for you to take a step back and go, Hey, I got to give myself a break here and my brain just isn't operating. Same way right now. I you know, I'm going to be a little bit messy right now. May be if, you know, I can just get things into a neat pile on my desk instead of expecting myself to put every single piece of paper away or refile a folder when I've taken it out. You know, figure out ways that you can kind of pull back without digging into yourself without being so hard on yourself while you're trying to recover because the was negative thoughts and beating yourself up? It only keeps the burnout going

Stephanie
such great points. Yeah. And that the the reminder the stepping back that you talk about just you know, make sure that you're serving some of the signs and if you're there, it's okay. You know, it's not forever. Might not Yeah, forever like it's going to be okay. We Okay, so let's talk about coping with it and now the recovery pieces. So I know you have lots of great tips on coping with it not just with you're trying to be more organized and productive. This is just in life in general, if, if you're feeling like it's coming on, the burnout is coming on. If all of this is starting to feel familiar to familiar and too comfortable, what can people do? And how can they cope? First, you know,

Jennifer Bassman
I want to tell you that I'm proud of you, if you're listening to this, and you're saying, Oh, my God, this is me. If you're having some self awareness, if you are, you know, soon thinking, wow, I'm doing some of this, and I really should do something about it. I'm proud of you for saying that. Because a lot of people just keep pushing through, and they keep trying to ignore it or sweep things under the rug. And, you know, first, that first step of, hey, something's going on here, it doesn't feel right, I don't feel good. I'm tired of being stressed out. And unfortunately, a lot of us burn out, we have to hit a rock bottom, it may not be the rock bottom, but we have to hit a rock bottom, before we stop and say, Wow, this is I got to take care of this. This is messing some things up. Because it's usually like a relationship, like a close relationship. I've noticed with a lot of people, that's not a scientific fact, it's just because people near us and our good friends aren't usually afraid to tell us, you know, hey, you've been weird lately, or you seem really stressed out? Why are you so angry all the time that, you know, they'll make comments. But going back to the coping stuff, you know, first things first, take a step back stop, I think people immediately want to start blowing things up, they immediately want to quit job, they want to close a business, they want to take a vacation, they want to shut everything down. And even though some of that might help short term, those aren't great long term strategies. Because of the way you know, stress, stress works in your body. If you don't figure out how to manage it, first, those vacations, quitting that job, none of that will matter. Because the stress will come right back, the root cause of your burnout will come right back. And so the first thing that I tell people is to stop and do, you know, do have some introspective time. And let's see if we can identify first the root cause of what burned you out what got you there, it's not always your job. And I know that that's the easiest thing for people to look at. And it may be part of it, the job may not help the situation. But actually, I have an online course where you know, for burnout recovery. And it's got five modules, and we don't even discuss quitting your job until the third module. So those first two modules, we are talking all about who you are and how you are, and how you think and how your brain works and how you would like it to work. You know what your work habits are, you know, what your work habits are versus what you want them to be, there's usually a very big, you know, space there. And then once you have that root cause of your burnout, you can start to make some more decisions from there, you know, you can start to make some decisions about what would be some great stress management, effective stress management techniques that would work for this root cause what a vacation actually helped us, or would it actually make things worse, because some people that time off makes it worse, they're people that don't sit still, my husband is one of those people. He works on his vape. And we we have a little bit of a set time where he gets to do a little bit of work. And then he can go about his day. And everything's fine. The chief first by the way, if you're an achiever, listen to this, you're very much like that, we start tackling you know, some stress man practicing some stress management techniques, and you're not going to get it on the first try. That's the other thing that I'll say you're gonna have to try, you know, do some trial and error error with some stuff to see what works. But then once you've got your stress, you know, under control, you've learned to manage it, you build an awareness towards it. And next thing you can do start making some decisions, hey, you know, what can what's going to want to answer that question of what's going to keep me feeling good? Or what's going to keep this path continuing, you know, keeping me on the path of recovery. And at that point, you can start to think of things about, like, you know, think about quitting your job or looking for a new job. Because at that point, you're, you'll know whether or not whatever is burning you out has something to do with the actual work that you do. Because what we want to not happen is you not, you know, start at least managing your stress, and taking all that with you to your next job, it just the burnout will creep its ugly head. And again, you know, once the new wears off, and at that point, you know, once you've started rearranging your life, so to speak for all your organizers, once you've started moving furniture around a little bit and, you know, repainted the walls, and decided things look better, you know, a different way, that's when you can start pushing to do more self care, that's when you can start pushing yourself to, you know, uproot your schedule a little bit and, you know, make some of the bigger decisions about, you know, how can I, how can I craft my day, so that it goes, you know, in the direction and about this time, you're going to be creating some boundaries to because those boundaries are going to help you stay organized, the boundaries are going to help you keep focused on the path that you want to go down and keep the distractions way.

Stephanie
Oh, I love this, the so much of what you just said is, it's having those tools, that initial fact finding that you get to go through, before making any huge drastic decisions that, like you said, will then lead you back to where you were, like making drastic decisions of quitting your job, like you don't address that into until later. Like having those tools is so so important. Because you don't

Jennifer Bassman
you don't take medicine for something until you know what it is that you're treating. Right. So it's kind of the same thing with burnout recovery. We don't want to make any major decisions, or, you know, do anything drastic until you actually know this is what burned

Stephanie
me out and not needing to control anything.

Jennifer Bassman
Yeah, we naturally want autonomy. Yeah, we naturally want some autonomy in our lives, and we want to be able to control our day. And I know that there are a lot of jobs out there a lot of lifestyles where that isn't always available. But there are ways that you can work around that, you know, if you, you know, I'm like thinking about school teachers and new parents, you know, where there's definitely a regimented, you know, you don't have any control over your day, you don't have any control over, you know, the things that are happening per se, but you know, there are different choices that you can make, that will alleviate a lot of your stress.

Stephanie
We love healthy choices around here. We like knowing we have options and choices. Um, okay. All right. Well, there you have it, folks. That's it. The end, and I'm just kidding. No more burnout. Okay, so did you hear you're? So what would you ask or tell people that you like? Or what would you like for them to to leave, but leave behind? Like, what notes? What parts of this conversation would you want them to take away? From the conversation in a nutshell? If they're feeling like, Yes, this is me. But I'm still a little bit overwhelmed. Like, where should I go? What do I, what would you suggest they go? Or do?

Jennifer Bassman
The first thing that I want to say is, you're not a failure. I think we all are all a lot of us equate burnout with failing. And when we go down that path and our brain, we get demotivated very, very quickly. And we stopped seeing options, we stopped seeing choices. And I you know, I am a burnout recovery coach, obviously, it's why we're having this talk. And you know, you can definitely find a lot of things on my website and my blog, I do a ton on social media. But you know, you want to look for the burnout coach that, you know, is a match for you personally, that has the right personality. I know that I'm not fit for everybody I wish I was. But you want to find that fit because you want to be comfortable. This isn't something where you want to, you know, you're gonna get stressed out when you have to continually meet with this person or, you know, walk through their course. So the first thing that I would probably do is start, you know, doing a little bit of research about burnout, recovery. What are some things that make sense to you? There are a lot of coaches out there. And when it comes to burnout, there are a lot of different types of coaches that talk about burnout, like especially like business coaches, and I would truly go for somebody where burnout is their main focus. That is what they do. Because it is it's it's something that is so unique that the burnout experience is so unique to each one of us that you need that person to understand that instead of giving you prescribe, you know, here, this is what I hate. This is the path to recovery that I hand out to everybody. And I also do want to stick in here that coaching is not a substitute for mental health or professional mental health and professional, you know, medical help, I actually did that therapy in conjunction with my burnout recovery. And it helped me out tremendously. And if it's something that you have access to, and you're comfortable with, I strongly suggest it, because it will also give you an outlet for your thoughts and somebody to help you organize your thoughts and keep you focused down a certain path, especially when you fall. Another thing that I would do at this point is get your support system going get your support network in place, I tell people and I mean this to this day, the biggest mistake I ever made when I became a business owner was not building a support network. And I know that that was a large part of why I burned out, not just my personality, but I didn't have people there wanting me to win, you know, so in those people that are in your support network, they want you to win. That's an important part of them being part of that. But you know, I've obviously I've got different, you know, I do coaching, I have an online course, that is based on my proprietary burnout recovery system that has worked for hundreds of people at this point. And you know, it's been tried and tested by myself. One of the important things is that towards the end, when you get to a certain point, we start creating a long term plan. Because I don't want you to burn out, I want you to be done with me. At a certain point, I don't want you to come back, I don't want you to be a repeat customer. I want it to be a one and done situation. And one last thing and the swirl stop is to start building an awareness of your stress is so big, even you know, if you're not ready for a coach yet, start building an awareness to your stress and what is stressing you out. Stephanie, I've actually been talking about this for the last couple of weeks, I've got a stress journal that is coming out. And I would say about two weeks from now I'm not sure when this is going to air. So I don't want to give you a date. But it actually helps you It walks you step by step through building that awareness. Because a lot of us just don't know where to start with that. Yeah,

Stephanie
those are the tools that we need in you know, to help us through moments like topics like this. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, okay, so we could go on and on forever. But with that being said, we let's talk, there's a question I always ask all the guests and then of course, we want to know where to find you. Your websites, the social medias, the you know, the other things, so that we get start with the resources and and start, you know, getting more comfortable with this topic, especially if you have found this to be very relatable. Or maybe you have someone that you know, could benefit from this conversation and you just kind of want to gently send them somewhere. Jen has amazing social media presence. You have no idea she's funny, relatable. It's great. So where can people find you? But before that, what is your favorite magazine to read? For either business, enter pleasure and why?

Jennifer Bassman
Oh my gosh, I'm such a nerd. I one of my absolute favorite magazines is Harvard Business Review of theirs. I am a psychology nerd and a self help nerd. It's not that I employ everything that I use everything I read, but I love learning how our brains work and why we think the way that we do and I love learning about productivity and you know, habits and all that kind of doesn't mean that I have all good habits by the way. I love learning about how we how we tick and why we tick. What makes us tick. And wow, a personal read. Boy, I'm still an Oprah girl. I am still an Oprah girl at heart. She just does it all in that magazine. And I think she does a great job of bringing awareness to different topics that wouldn't occur to most of us.

Stephanie
Yeah, absolutely. She's, she's good. She's good. She's good. And she's still around for a reason.

Jennifer Bassman
And she's been spot on and Gene recommendations by the way.

Stephanie
That's an Oprah if you're listening. There you have it, people thanks, girl. Okay, so where can people reach you?

Jennifer Bassman
You find me I have a website. I'm very easy to find because everything includes my name Jennifer bassman.com. You are more than welcome to email me at Jennifer at Jennifer bassman.com. I have a social media presence on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, so whatever you're in you too, so whatever your preferred platform is, you know, go there. And I'll be honest, I, you know, post a lot of the same things on each of the platforms. Because I'm big believer in just having one or two social media platforms don't have more, it's too much. So make sure you just follow me in one of those places. Let me see. My course information is on my website as well. And my blog is another great way to you know, learn more about me or learn how my brain works as well. And I also have a weekly newsletter, you get you don't get email from me very often, in pounds you with emails. That doesn't make sense for me to do that, because I think getting pounded with emails is stressful. But I have one right now I have one major email that comes out right now on Wednesdays actually, and there might be a couple of others during the week, but I try to keep those try to keep things you know in line. Yes, and but I would love to hear from you.

Stephanie
Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining. I'm very excited to continue to connect, and have a wonderful day everybody. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here are full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

In this episode we dive into the importance of finding a home for all your items.  We go deeper into Step 4 of our 7 Steps of Organizing *almost* Anything framework. Tune in to learn practical tips to help bring organization and flow back into your life!

In this episode we talk about:

• Why having a designated home for items is important
• Benefits of finding a home for your things
• The difference between cleaning and organizing
• The importance of finding a natural home for things.   
• Working with natural tendencies instead of forcing a certain way.
• The seven steps of organizing and the importance of finding a home (step four)

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger.  For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review the Transcript:

Hello friends and welcome to another episode of organized and productive. Today we are going to be talking all about finding a home for your things and buy things. This also applies to digital files or digital content. So it can be physical items or digital things and finding a home is so important that it required its own episode. Plus, it is part of our seven steps of organizing almost anything. It is step number four. And one of the reasons why this episode would have been an episode, even if it wasn't part of our steps, is because one of the misconceptions that people have when they're disorganized, or frustrated about having too much stuff or being overwhelmed is that sometimes they think that they need to throw everything away, or they're just overwhelmed with stuff. And they think it's the amount of things that they have in their possession. Or if it's your digital items, right, like you can't find a file in a digital space.

So that is a misconception because it's not about the number of things that you have. That is the frustrating part. It is that you can't retrieve or find what you need when you need it. So let me say that again. It is not just the number of things in your possession that is overwhelming you because yes, that is in can be part of the frustration and the overwhelm. But most of the time for you know the regular person with an everyday life, it's really about the frustration that they need something and they just can't find it when they need it. And so that is why finding a home for your things is so important. Because when they have a home to go to you know where to put it back, so that when you need it again, you will be able to find it. So that is the episode that is the theme of the episode today. And that is what we're going to be talking about. So let's get started. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity experts ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well then let's go.

Okay, so for all of you who have been listening to our other episodes, or a part of our community, you know that we have a framework called the seven steps of organizing almost anything. And this framework, you can find over on one of our earlier episodes, and I will link it here in the show notes. So I would definitely start by going into the overview episode where we talk about all of these steps all in one episode, so you can kind of get a quick overview there. And then since then, we've had other episodes where we dig deeper into each of the episodes. And you can find all of those as well in our previous episode list. But as a very quick recap, steps one through seven all are individual steps, right. Step one is the assessed step, which should be started with no matter what. But then steps two through five can be interchanged in any order. So even though we're saying it's step four, technically, if your priority is to have an aesthetically pleasing space, then you probably are going to start with step number five, which we will talk about next, which is the container step. And that is picking your containers first, because for you your most important part of the organizing journey is that you want it to look aesthetically pleasing. So you need to start with that first. But for some of you, let's say you're downsizing, you're moving and your priority is to just get rid of stuff because you're trying to lighten the load of the items that you have in your possession, whether it's digital possession or your physical possession, then you will start with the decluttering step which we talked about right before this one. So steps two through five, you will want to interchange depending on what your priority is. But all steps should be at some point followed.

Right now we're talking about step number four, which is finding a home because conventionally it's done after you declutter. It's done after the sorting process. And that is why we're talking about it in this order. But again, just just to reinstate that. You can do them in any order. Just make sure you have a goal set in mind, like what are you trying to achieve with this organizing journey? Okay, so let's get started with our finding a home for everything. So let's talk about the importance of designing a home or designating a home for all your items. Number one, it's going to give you more efficiency and more organization visual organization. When items have a designated home it becomes easier to locate the items which is one of the biggest pride already here for you to be able to retrieve the items when you need them and access them when you need them. You know, it saves time. And it minimizes the frustration that comes with searching for misplaced items. So because of that, it gives you an improves the overall efficiency in the daily tasks and activities, where you're, you know, you're trying to retrieve the items. Okay, next on our list is the clutter reduction. So when there are clear boundaries of where things live, you then know that you have a set boundary like a set shelf. Or if you're we're talking digital items that you have a folder, and you have a size of amount of size that it can fit into. So you have boundaries, which help you with the clutter reduction.

So if you know that you only have this space to designate for the items, then it can't really or shouldn't, or it can't really overflow past that, because then it starts infringing upon other parts of your house or your space. So therefore, it just reduces clutter naturally, then we have the visual appeal, designing homes for items that will contribute to the visual appeal of a space. So when everything has a designated place or a home, that space will feel more streamlined, and it'll look more visually pleasing. This again, this also applies to your digital space, your folders will will look a little neater and nicer, it'll give a look a little bit more flow and feel like things are fitting into place. It eliminates the visual chaos, that also comes with having things scattered everywhere. It just gives it a more visual representation of where things should be. Okay, let's talk about the stress reduction here. You know, reducing the stress when things have a home to go back to you know, you don't have to think about where does this fit, or oh, I don't have a box for this or a bin for this or it just kind of floats in the middle of the room right or in the middle of your desktop. This is incredibly important. For this part about the stress reduction for digital items.

How many of you have the your desktop just filled with files, you know, when you first open your computer, they're just on your desktop, probably not the best place for it to be your that home that that desktop space or that middle of the room feel creates a lot of stress. And of course, we are trying to avoid the stress that comes with not with things being everywhere and not having a home to go back to. So now that we talked about the importance of finding a home for everything, and for all your things. Let's talk a little bit about the creative part of it, which is once you find a home, what how can it be visually pleasing? Like what what is the next step. So naturally, the next step is to find storage solutions within this space. But I don't want to go too deep into this part of it because it's actually step number five, which we will talk about in the next episode of this series. But in the finding a home comes first. Usually, unless like I said at the beginning of the episode it for you aesthetically pleasing is the goal is for you for it to be aesthetically pleasing. Then for you you already found the type of bins or baskets or the whole look first, and then you're having to you're going to be fitting everything into the look. But if you haven't started that process and for you, it is you're trying to find Okay, where does it fit better? Is it?

Do I want it to be closer to you know, if it's in your kitchen?

Like do you want it to be closer to where you cook? And how you cook? If it's your bathroom? Is it where you get out of the shower like that is? That is what finding a home means like where is it naturally going to flow with the usage of the item and the retrieval of the item. Because yes, you can put things away all day long. But that's not what organizing really is. That just means you're tidying things up. That just means you're cleaning things which is very separate and very different from organizing, organizing is the retrieval of it as well that you're able to get something when you need it. So getting creative with how you naturally operate in that area. How you move, how you utilize the things is going to come in really handy in this step because that will help you design or design or designate where things will be going. A very important distinction between finding a home for everything and then finding the right storage solution or the right container, which again we'll talk about in another episode is that our home, the home the place where it will live the place where the item will now be its designated home. It doesn't have to be contained. That's a different. That's the next step. So just when you find a home that is It doesn't necessarily need to have a basket or a bin. A great example is open items like your keys and whatnot.

Sometimes, yes, it is very helpful to have them in a tray, or a place where you hang things very nicely. But technically, you don't need that extra container, technically, the location of where you put things is the home. So I just want to draw a distinction between the two. Okay, so finding a home to suit your unique need, and style is going to be very important. And I mean, like very, very, very important to think about your natural tendencies and natural flow of how you go about your life and movements. If you always put your shoes next to the front door, find solutions that align with that. So the home will then be somewhere close to where you first enter your mudroom or your front door or your garage door or whatever entryway it is. Yes, you can also start creating new habits. So whether that's the right place for it or not, that's a different discussion. That is a type of change that is different. And it requires a mindset shift, which we don't address in the seven steps of organizing almost anything framework. Because the seven steps of organizing almost anything is taking into account that you just want to place you just want to get organized right now, not necessarily creating new habits. Now, when you follow our seven steps of organizing almost anything, naturally, your habits will start to change, you will uncover new and different habits, we'll be creating healthy and sustainable habits by just the natural way of you going about all these steps. But it is a different journey.

We don't want to overcomplicate the seven steps of organizing anything, we don't all of a sudden want to change the way that we are the way that we live. Because like I said, that's a mindset shift. That is changing your your natural tendencies, which is in should require rightfully so, a different path that is not is more thoughtful, if you will. Okay, so now that you've thought about how you naturally go about your life and your habits just naturally, again, not trying to recreate the wheel. That is when you start to be more observant of where you put things down. This is really important when you're living with other people, whether it's family members, partners, children, or roommates. This comes in really handy like when you find a home for something you can observe how other people where people are leaving things behind. If they're always coming in through the door and they put their bags in a certain place.

Maybe that is not its natural home. Even if it's not as deadly pleasing, right now you can start making it aesthetically pleasing. Same thing with where you're putting away your groceries, for instance, you probably have a natural tendency of where when you get your groceries out and you put them on the calendar or they just kind of like there's a flow that you always adhere to. So instead of you trying to recreate the wheel and trying to be do it the quote unquote right way, find a home that is already close to where you're naturally putting things down. Same thing with your digital spaces, if you are clicking if if naturally, you're always going looking to your left or your right, or you need more space in the computer screen, then put your files or your buttons in a place where it's not getting in the way. And so that's what I'm talking about when you're just naturally looking for places for things for files that are already part of your ecosystem. But now you're making it a bit more permanent and you're going to be working on aesthetically pleasing it putting that area that new home into an aesthetically pleasing way so that now it lives in a place that you didn't have to make a lot of change.

All you did was clear clean it up a little bit designated as a home and then we're on to the next step which is finding the containing the container system which will pretty it up and put the ribbon right you know tie the ribbons are just looks much nicer. Okay the last part of this conversation is the importance of the consistency and maintenance of this new found home or the home that you are now designated for your items. So let's take the example of the keys. You're always losing your keys and because you're always losing your keys you're always late same thing with a wallet or your phone. So you're going to now find a home for it where do you naturally put it when you first enter your house so that is now going to be its home again at the next step of your will find the right container for it and whatnot. But for now, let's say the the home is you know the first counterspace that you have as soon as you come in through the door If that is the natural home for it, and you are now designated that as as your key like the home for your keys.

Now, it is all about consistency and creating the habit that going forward no matter what that is where you're going to put it in till it becomes second nature, I always like to say that you need to live in the area in that in that movement of the of the item being placed in that home for a little while before you commit to permanently making that its home forever. So find the finding a home is okay, you have a hunch, and you're like, Okay, I think this is where it should go. And you now designated it as a home. But do that activity for a little while, you know, for a good month before you commit to it before because what might happen is now that you're being more conscientious and more observant to this new found home for this item, then you will start creating new habits. And then this is where you can decide you know what I do like this, this is where it should live, or you will find another home for it, or give it a try. Live in the moment in that flow of that home for a little while before you make anything permanent.

Okay, so that's what finding a home for everything means. I'm sure you have seen concepts about this over you know, different parts of social media, maybe you read a book about it. But finding a home is a very important piece of the whole organizing journey. Finding a home for everything is one of the most important parts because it's ultimately what will help you find the things. So that's why we have this step as a standalone. And why it's very important to talk about so it doesn't have to look pristine. That's not what this means, you know, doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be beautiful, that's a different step. This is just about finding a place where items will always go back to so that you can retrieve them find them when you need them as you need them. So I'll leave you with an exercise now that we finished this episode.

A very small exercise for you to do at home in that is just become more observant of how and where you leave things naturally. Don't push a new way of doing something. So when you come in the door, where do you put your purse? Where do you put your keys? Where do you put your wallet? Same thing with your digital items. Naturally, when you save something when somebody sends you something and you download it? Where do you naturally put it? Does it go into the download folder? Like what are the natural ways that you're doing something? And then start to think about how you can just enhance that home? Can you just do one quick small step? Nothing that is changing your entire habit, your entire life? Is there a small step that you could be doing so that that home is now a little bit more more organized, maybe more aesthetically pleasing as we lead into the next step.

Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here are full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

In this episode we dive into practical strategies and tips for parents to navigate the summer months with ease. Our guest, Eboni Creighton, a seasoned teacher and mom, shares her insights on balancing the responsibilities of both roles and offers valuable advice for staying organized and productive during the extended break

In this episode we talk about:

• The importance of routines and expectations for families, from establishing structure to managing commitments during the summer. 
• We learn about the benefits of simple routines and how to balance motherhood with everyday life. 
• Practical advice for parents, from how to create a skeleton schedule to finding ways to micromanage less. 
• The joys and challenges of parenthood and how to make routines work for you and your family.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Read to GET READY FOR SUMMER

https://cr8joi.com/2023/04/the-cr8joi-summer-edition-get-ready-for-summer/

Read for Easy Summer Schedule Ideas 

https://cr8joi.com/2023/04/the-cr8joi-summer-edition-easy-summer-schedules/

Find out HOW TO PREVENT THE SUMMER SLIDE HERE 

https://cr8joi.com/2022/06/prevent-the-summer-slide-keep-it-real/

Read HOW TO IMPLEMENT SUMMER LEARNING AT HOME 

https://cr8joi.com/2022/06/prevent-the-summer-slide-easy-ways-to-implement summer-learning-at-home/ 

Discover 8 THINGS TO SURVIVE SUMMER WITH KIDS 

https://cr8joi.com/2021/06/8-things-to-survive-summer-with-kids/

Mom, here’s WHAT YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE SCHOOL LETS OUT https://cr8joi.com/2019/06/what-you-need-to-do-before-school-lets-out/ 

Find out WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD DOES NOT LIKE TO READ AND WHAT YOU  CAN DO ABOUT IT https://cr8joi.com/2021/08/why-your-child-does-not-like-to-read-what-you-can do-about-it/

Mrs. Cr8, also known as Eboni Joi Creighton, the Mommy Teacher Expert from  cr8joi.com. With a Master's degree in Elementary Education and over 15 years of experience  as an Elementary School Teacher, Mrs. Cr8 has a wealth of knowledge to share with moms

Where to find Eboni Creighton online:

Web: www.cr8joi.com

IG: www.instagram.com/mrs.cr8

YouTube: www.youtube.com/cr8joi

Email: [email protected] 

Simply send an email if you are interested in working with her one-on-one. Mrs. Cr8  can help you with a SUMMER PLAN, crafted especially for your family. Tell her the Organized Flamingo sent you for a discount! 

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review the Transcript:

Stephanie
Hello friends, and welcome to our very, very first summer episode. So what's an summer episode? Okay, so it's a regular episode, you know, like the ones you have listened to in the past from us, we're talking all about how to get organized and productive in different ways. But with a twist. So every once in a while right before a season is a special season is about to start, we will talk about how to prepare for that. And in this case, we're about to start the summer. So I thought it would be perfect to talk about how to get organized, how to find your groove during the summer, when normally that's a time when just routines are out of order. It can be a little bit chaotic, and in a good way. And it doesn't have to be in a negative way. But it's just not your normal way and routine. And so for a lot of families and parents, that can be an overwhelming time. So I thought it would be perfect for us to talk about what are some ways what are some things that you can do to prepare you for this long stretch of time off. Now even though we're talking about this summer, this episode can technically be listened to during any time of the year. And it can apply to any time that you are taking a long stretch of time off, maybe with your children, maybe with yourself. So this is like one of those episodes that that could be applied for holiday breaks or any other long stretches of breaks as well. So let's talk about our very special guest. Her name is Eboni Creighton. She's the mommy teacher expert from Crate joy.com. But she's also a really good friend of mine or has become a very good friend of mine. And what's really special about my conversation with her is that she's giving us her expert advice. She has a master's degree in elementary education, over 15 years of experience as an elementary school teacher, but she's also a mom. And she's also a an entrepreneur and a business woman. So she is able to understand the real part of having children at home during the summer. She understands it as an educator, and she understands it as a mom like facing it herself. But also understands it from a working mom perspective where you're trying kind of to do all the things when your routines, and this very long stretch of time off is happening. So she gets it and that's why she's so special. And I'm so excited for this conversation and for you to listen for this conversation. Because it's so relatable so much of what she said is a relatable. So let's talk about finding your summer guru, staying organized during the long break. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. I'm your host Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well then let's go hey, ebony. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Finally my friend. I'm so happy that you're here.

Eboni Creighton
Thank you Stephanie. I'm so excited to be here. Like virtual hubs.

Stephanie
Yeah, that's Virtual High. Since most of you can't see us, she's wearing the flamingo colors. The Happy Flamingo color.

Eboni Creighton
I tried to come on brand today for you darling. I've got a little tropical vertically lined dress so that I can need to be a part of this organized Flamingo life

Stephanie
vibes and she's got the summer vibes, which is why she's here. Alright, so as everybody knows, we just get straight into the into the nitty gritty the good stuff from our guests. And so as I described earlier ebony is a former teacher is a teacher or I should say not formal but is and worked with students but also she has like her own kiddo. You know what she's teaching and has an a mom and a business owner so she has all the elements of an understanding of the okay long breaks are coming. What happens when you need to juggle the life the personal, the work and all of that, and especially as an educator, you know, coming from that perspective so hope so I'm hoping that she will give us some here some tips on how to work through the summer long breaks, where you know, all the things are happening and you're getting a little bit frantic. That's what we're talking about today. So I'm excited. Let's get right into it. The first is let's like the one on one. Let's balance let's talk about the balance the balancing the demands in regular life during the summer break, how do you balance that with being a mom? Maybe business owner maybe working mom working parent where life regular life is happening? Now the kiddos are out of school? Yes.

Eboni Creighton
Yes, the balance. Okay. So I have to say I have a hard time with the word balance. Okay. So, in particular with with motherhood because when we say balance, I'm always thinking of somebody juggling balls, right? And I can't juggle, Can you juggle 70 I can't, I can't juggle to save my life. So if there is a ball in the air, then another one's coming down, I could barely like toss two up in the air and catch them. So for me instead of the word of balance, because when I think of balance, I'm thinking of a mom, like, you know, with a baby on her hip and hot coffee on another hip and the computer on another in the laundry, you know, you're kicking a sack up in the air trying to catch something, you know, you're trying to get the pacifier and got a backpack on your butt. It's just too much, right? It's just too much. So I feel like that's not balanced, motherhood, innately is just not balanced, since that we're balanced is elusive. I try to think of things differently. Because I know with balance, we're thinking like, Oh, I'm either with my kid, or I'm not with my kid, I'm either working, or I'm not working. But a lot of times we are doing all these things, we're more momming we're wiping, we're mothering. And so I like to think of it more like it's something motherhood is something that we're always wearing. Mani hood is something we're always wearing that it's more like our skin, just like skin, right? So since it's always on you, and you're always thinking about your children's children, you're always doing things, but simultaneously, the scratch on little posts, oh my gosh, we need to buy more socks, or Oh, the undies are too small, or, oh, I need to register for this, you know, so we always have this mental load of motherhood on us. And we always had this, like background chatter, when we're doing all the other things. So I like to think of it a little bit more like skin, like we are just trying to become comfortable and confident in this mommyhood skin that we're in. So the here's the challenge, though, are our kids are always growing and changing. So as soon as you master one thing, then they're in a different stage, right? Or maybe you're in a different season or sage so that that then becomes the piece right there, right? That we're not really balanced. Because one Summit, we can't get balanced, because everything's always changing. So maybe I could learn to juggle the balls as the job, balls were always the same. And I spent time focusing on those two balls. But you know, any mom of two children will tell you, no child is going to come out the same you might master you know, your first kid, your second comes out a totally different personality, totally different type of sleep schedule. Or maybe you change jobs. And now your schedule is totally different. So now your life is a little bit upside down and different. So I like to look at things more like instead of the balance, let me just start right there. We're going to think about mommyhood as the skin that we're in, that's always my personal goal is to become work comfortable and confident in my mommy hood in my womanhood. And so that's where I start, I start with my mom mindset, that, okay, I'm trying to be more comfortable and more confident. In mommyhood.

Stephanie
I love how you just said, Well, everything but the scan, like you're you're just wearing it, it just is.

Eboni Creighton
It's just It just is. And so just looking at it in that way, it takes a little bit of the pressure off of like, I'm not doing it right or I'm not, I'm not timing it, right. I'm not spending enough time that here or there, like because you can't be everywhere. But somehow as women who are as moms, we're expected to be all those things all the time. And so that that we're a balance always kind of gives me the little, you know, like 10 Watt, too much. So if we just look at it like skin, it's just like an it's bad, even a hat? Because we don't I mean, can you take it off? I want to sleep tonight I'm taking off my mom hat. Does that happen? No, it does not happen. Right? Nobody hears that baby, but you crying in the middle of the night, so. So I think that I'm just striving to be confident, comfortable and confident in myself as a woman, and myself and my mommy hood. In being a good wife or good human woman, I think that should be the goal. And then if I'm getting my mindset, right, I'm getting my mind right and wrapped around the responsibilities that I have. And I'm not going to be looking at it as a long and demanding summer I'm going to be looking at it more like, oh, okay, we've got summer, which means we have a little bit of a break here from the normal routine. We can take a beat from the rat race and running out the house in the morning and you know, not being late for this or not being late for pickup and having to pay lash key or all these different things that may happen. We can look at it different if we have our mind in the right place that I get to be mom, I get to spend time with my kid instead of having to shuffle them off someplace while I do the thing. Perhaps we can do some of these things together. And then also I get to do this because I am blessed. I'm blessed to be this child's mother. And it's a mutual Well thing is not just one way like, oh my gosh, they're coming home and I have to serve though, oh, my God, it's gonna be this thing, we have to have our mind right about what we want to get out of summer. So I think that's the first piece like, we're going to take a moment, we're going to take a beat, we're going to pause and reflect. We're going to get our mind wrapped around what our wants and our needs are. And so the first piece to me is like the mindset and then the second piece is taking a moment to pause, reflect because I say this all the time to my clients, but we are you are you already know what to do mommy, you just haven't had a chance to sit down and think about it, because you're doing all these other things. You're trying to be balanced, but it doesn't sound really real, right?

Stephanie
Like you said, when it went that balance, like you have to take something when you think of that scale, if your vision you're a visual person listening to this, you're really saying let me take a with a weight from this side to put it on that side and that like constantly having to juggle that. In addition

Eboni Creighton
to wearing addition to like it does it's it's it's elusive. We can't do it. You know, we want to society tells us that we can, but I think just getting your money mindset, right is the first step like okay, I'm gonna take a minute, I'm gonna pause, reflect, I'm gonna think about, okay, yes, we do have the kids are going to be home, we have a long summer in front of us. But what do I need and want to do this summer? If my child is old enough, I'm going to ask my kid like, what do you want me to do this summer? You know, what do you want to learn? Because I don't know, when your kids began to speak any mom who has speaking aged children, those that are talking, they will tell you precisely what they're trying to do. Some things are realistic, some are not my daughter wants to go to Japan this summer. I'm like, Oh, okay. That's great. Let's write that down. Reflect. Right, like, Oh, I love that you like to travel? Yeah, we might take a virtual tour someplace, you know. But having your mind right and setting those intentions. I have a blog series going on right now called the create joy summer addition, with easy summer ideas, easy summer schedules. And in there, I have a reflection sheet printable. And basically, it's just something you can sit down and talk to first yourself and then your kids about or maybe if they're too young, you're gonna do a for them. But what do you want? And what do you need out of the summer, so that you're looking at that at the top of the summer, not the end? You know how like you, I'm sure every man has had this experiment, I'm not gonna I'm not we haven't barely been to the pool this summer, we didn't hit beach, or, you know, oh, my gosh, oh, my goodness, we're going to kindergarten. And now it's the week before and I'm trying to teach my kid how to tie their shoes. Like, sometimes we just, we would do it if we took a second or took a beat to reflect on it. And so I think the mommy mindset is, first and foremost, the most important thing that we can do before the kids get out of school as they're getting, you know, at the very top of summer. And then the second portion is setting our intentions and thinking about our wants and our needs as women. And then as moms and then for our kids.

Stephanie
Yeah. And so with with that, and well, I love that it's the intentionality and that it doesn't have to hopefully, you know, you do it before they they leave or the beginning of the summer or the end of the school year, I should say, but that this can happen at any time like this reset this mindset exercise that you have, or this just pause and reflect a moment can be done really at any point of this long break that you're taking, or that your kids are taking that you're with. So I love that flexibility to have have that you know, or a reminder that you can come back to later like okay, what did I write down? Let's, what did I say I

Eboni Creighton
was going to do? What did I say I was going to do? And then then you kind of have some compass to lead lead the charge for the summer to get you in the right frame of mind like okay, well yeah. This was the summer of swimming, like, okay, it's the summer swimming. So we should be at the pool like the what is the intention? Because if you are just like kind of going along with it, you're if you're just going along for the ride with your kids, Mom, I'm sorry, we got we're gonna have to back we'll have to have a whole nother episode about that we have to kind of have some parameters in place about where we're trying to go this time or what we're trying to do, and so that everybody in the family can get something out of it, you know? And absolutely, this is something you could do seasonally for back to school, I believe in setting intentions for the holidays, I believe in setting intentions. And anytime that you're just feeling really stressed out about how things are going with your kids because sometimes we're on this race, you know the school schedule or the schedule or you know, the after school sports schedule or graduation season or whatever, whatever developmental stage your child is in, but there is there has to be some level of pause and reflect to be able to really kind of say okay, let's be intentional about this time we have to gather we have to be intentional.

Stephanie
So let's talk about routines with you know of intentionality. The you know, a lot of our listeners are looking for like a guidance such as the positive reflect and like that, but they are also they really enjoy having some kind of routine and they either may not have a routine and they're looking for that or they thrive from routines and when kids are in school, that's what they usually have right? A routine. In during the summer, you maybe don't, but what are your thoughts on routines during the summer? Good idea, bad idea? Should they stick to them? Should they not? Like how hardcore do we need to be organized and productive people or want to be organized and productive? How like, good idea bad idea?

Eboni Creighton
Absolutely a good idea. Like you see map sound like them, like dance them to like the robot? Is she saying routines? I'm like routines? Oh my god, yes. routines. I mean, think about the magic of school. You know, a lot of parents will go on to school and visit a classroom and you're like, Wow, that is just amazing. Like, all 30 kids are just sitting here reading books quietly, like, they're not at their seats are sitting here. And I like reading and they're barely reading why? How do they do that? For high school students, or whatever grade level class you step into? You're like, how do they do that? What is the routine, that's what it is. It's a routine. The same way that we go into our workplaces or do our work things and we have a certain way that we get our jobs done. kids thrive on routines, they want to do the right thing, and they want to be helpful. So I absolutely think that we need to have a routine.

Stephanie
Okay, so what roles do routines play in the summer schedule? Like? And how do you create a routine that works for the whole family?

Eboni Creighton
Okay, so, listen, you need to have some routines, and you need to have some expectations, repeat after me routines and expectations. Okay? They work together, they work together. So what do I mean by this? Yes, I live by them. And yes, it is summer. And yes, we should kind of let our hair down. But let me give some examples. So that it's not just this elusive word of routines. So children want to know what they can and cannot do. They need to know, they innately want to do the right things. So we have to give them a chance and an opportunity to do these things. And we have to set them up in a way so that they can be successful, depending on whatever their age is, to give them a chance to be successful at whatever the things are, okay, they're going to get in where they fit in. So if you say it's quiet time, and you are creating a quiet environment, then they will, they will comply, we think that they won't at home because we we are catering to them in a way. That is they're leading the charge as opposed to you so we have to kind of have a little more structure so that our routines can grow and change as our families grow and change. So you're not going to want to say oh, we're gonna have an hour of quiet time with a two year old that's not quite realistic mom, as much as you may want that quiet time for a two year old isn't happy. That's what quiet time looks like. But quiet time for multi age family may be after lunchtime might look like reading time. You know, I right? Grab a book too hot outside, get a magazine and you can lead by example. Where's your magazine? Where's your book? And everybody's kind of plopped on the couch with a you know, a blanket or, or whatever the middle of the day? Or maybe you go outside on a blanket or what have you. But you're kind of leading by example. It doesn't always have to be a routine where they're doing this and you're doing this sometimes it can be things that are coexisting things, activities that we're doing together. I'll give an example of evolution say of my morning routine. If you follow me on Instagram, then you know I'm serious about my morning coffee. I've got this come on coffee, I need light if I if it's wintertime in Michigan, I've got my happy light or I've got the sunshine but that started honestly, in my nursing days, the come on coffee routine. I mean, I know you're not supposed to nurse and have coffee, but I did sorry. I figure whatever was in the milk was already in the milk. So and then when she got a little bit older, it was coffee juicy time. So I would have my coffee and she was sitting on my lap but they're a little sippy cup and she was having a juice and then when she got out a little bit older it was like okay PBS and coffee time like she's sitting next to me she's watching PBS and I'm sitting there having my coffee but she was enjoying her little show. And then the next evolution of that was okay, well maybe she's on her own watching that little show after her juice and a little hug time with me. And now I'm Oh my God, I've got a whole 20 minutes of the rest of this episode. I spent 10 minutes getting our set up and now I've got 20 minutes to myself to pray and journal or whatever you know, so It can evolve like now, if she sees the coffee cup Sure, yes. Oh, was there still coffee in there. So I'm not saying a word because we are, it's evolved. Okay, it's taken a long time to get to that place. But all I have to do is show her my cup. And she's like, Okay, go ahead and just finish your coffee I understand. So these expectations and these routines that we have, it's getting to know each other as family members. And honestly, you know, your kids can respect your time and space just as much as you're respecting theirs. So what I believe it comes back to those attentions, intentions again, but when you're setting those intentions for yourself, you might also talk to your husband or your partner, your ask your kids what they want to do. And then you're planning for the big things, right. And then there's all those times in between. So I think the tendency for us is we're like, oh, my gosh, these are caps, we got to fill up all the whitespace. But maybe it's not about filling up the whitespace. Maybe it's about like, oh, well, next week is going to be a really hectic week, we're going to be on the road, we're going to go see family, we got this, we got all these different things. So maybe we need some decompression time, on the end of that, like getting back into a routine when we come home, getting back on schedule. And maybe before we leave out, we have some things we need to take care of that are going to throw us off schedule, maybe we've got to hit the doctor or go to the dentist or get shots or get our passports or you know other little things that you may need to do in preparation for summer travel. So I know I'm on a bit of a tangent here. But the point is, everybody's family has different, you are going to have a different intention heading into summer. But if you don't know what those are, you're already going to be feeling a little bit for fun, you're gonna feel overwhelmed, because you're like, you're trying to figure out something that you haven't even thought of yet. So of course, you're going to have some anxiety about that. And I think that's very normal if, if you're if you're in that position, but the point here is to set those intentions. And then look at those big events that are coming up, and then create a skeleton schedule, create a skeleton schedule, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it can be something that you can work from. And then you can edit that as the days go on. So, on the blog, I have an example of a skeleton schedule. This year, I have the creative way summer series, the Summer Edition. And I have some core schedule ideas and some core things that you can do. So before I talk about those, I kind of want you to think about what you dread the most to in your daily routine. Personally, I hate the question what's for dinner. Like it sets me off. I'm a very good cook. But honestly, Stephanie, I did not sign up for all this. I did not sign up to cook morning, noon and night. I am a very well educated woman, like When did my worth come down to what we are going to eat. But anywho that's a whole nother thing. So I start thinking about this skeleton schedule with my most dreaded thing in mind the meals. Okay, so I'm thinking about breakfast, I'm thinking about snack, lunch, snack dinner. So right there, I've got a routine set around our meals. That's our morning time, I'm thinking about breakfast. Now that my daughter is closer to 10 There are some independent things I need to teach her about being independent in her morning routine, there are going to be some meals that she can prepare for herself, say last year, our goal wasn't to use the toaster and be able to clean up behind ourselves. Even at the age of say five or six, you might it might be a gobo squeeze. It might be as simple as learning how to pull out your own juice box and go go squeeze it might be learning how to pour your milk in to your cereal. When you are your child's getting up in the morning while you're near you know, and then eventually you're kind of stepping away from that. So starting your skeleton routine on those things that get on your nerves the most, in my case is the meals maybe maybe in your case is something else. Maybe it's laundry, maybe some people I know that's a major pain point. A lot of people create joy community so maybe laundry so in my case, I have my morning routine with coffee and then I put a load in the washer. I never washed more than I'm gonna be able to complete in a day. So I have my coffee, I kind of get breakfast out I put a load in the washer so that by the time breakfast is done or by the time drop off is done, I can put it in the dryer fold it and that is a whole routine right there. I did one low, you know, but if I do that every day two times a day. Then I'm on top of my laundry to a point where I'm not stressed out because I have so many loads waiting for me on Sunday. I might only have three or four to do over the weekend as opposed to you know I don't know, where are these clothes come from? They just come, okay, people keep wearing clothes on house the audacity, right? So they

Stephanie
grow out of them. And, you know, as they grow out, it's that it, that whole pile adds a whole pile.

Eboni Creighton
Oh, and just you went to your son is a little bit bigger when they want to wear the size to T shorts, and they are actually a 6x. That's when it gets fun when your child is no longer in that size, and they dig it out of that pile, and they believe it fits. And it's, you know, two minutes to get out the door to get to camp on time. Oh, that's, that's when you get your mommy stripes. Okay, that's what I happen. So I think that there are ways that we can set our routines around our skeleton schedule, like the schedule is the time that we do the things but the routine is the way that we you know, are building all those things together. So some of the pain points I think for for us over the summer is everybody's home. So then there's more chores to do around the house to keep things picked up. So typing in the kitchen after every meal, that's a routine, or resetting a space when you leave it. That's a routine and I'm a big fan. I don't if you are old enough to walk then you are old enough to assist in cleaning up your toys. If they're old enough to walk and they can pick the toy up, they are old enough to assist in putting the toys away. Okay. And then there are all our own parenting routines imbiah Parenting routine, I mean, like the time that you check in with your kid, or those teachable moments. Meal time is a great time for that. When we're tidying and resetting spaces, like I, I believe that it's a community of family of cleaners and helpers in the house. I'm not, I'm not your maid, but I'm also you're also not here to be the maid as the child or the babysitter. So we've got to find a way. Everybody's kind of pitching in, you know, there might be routines in some of the things that we do i i have core schedule ideas on a blog, like crafts, outside time reading games, learning time outings, three time, practice a new skill. Let's just pull out the craft 144 isn't why because I missed this creative war. So we're gonna pull out the craft one. But when you let's say we're saying is craft time. Now you might say oh my god, we're crafting and it's messy. And I don't know. But I bet you if you had things organized in a way where Craft Time had his own time and place and it could go right back into little box that it was your kids would enjoy you and enjoy it. And that time would be filled creatively. Okay, so having a space for the the paper, the pins, the paint, the clay, the playdough the canvases, the acrylic paints, I mean, I mean, some people think of crafts so it's just for younger kids, I think of crafts where I want to craft so. So whatever whatever we're trying to create, leaving those materials, having those materials in a place that are accessible, that are developmentally appropriate. Telling them that it's a time it might be a little setup on your part. It might be $1 tree. You've done create Saturday's I think with me, Stephanie, but it might be $1 tree table tablecloth, and you've got your dollar tree craft you didn't know I don't know it's scary. Okay, well, fine, go to Dollar Tree and get a little craft a little wooden practice in some craft paint, and put on some music on low and Saturday morning have the serial out. And it can be as simple as that when the craft is over, we're going to clean it up. And they'll get used to that routine of okay, afterwards, we clean up the brushes. Okay, we're going to put the brushes away. So that is a routine in and of itself. So when you say craft time, or you might say oh what's playdough time they will become used to what that means in terms of like the setup and the cleanup. And if you keep them a part of that routine, now you've created space for yourself in the years to come. So okay, it's bad time. What do you want to learn how to paint this summer? Oh, we're painting outside you want to paint like flowers? Okay, let me know I'm gonna get that together. We're gonna get a little you know, extra new paint brushes, you know, get a hat 20 and go down a tree and make this happen. You know? So it's, it's to me the the skeleton schedule and the setup.

Stephanie
Yeah. And so but it will there is no but but what I love about about you like your content and the way that we've always acted, because you know, as I mentioned in the intro, we've been friends that we've turned into friends now and but initially of course, I just followed her as an as a follower as an avid fan, that you just you you introduce life less like just life as activity as part of the learning piece. In the fun nest. I know that's not a word, but the finesse of of the routine and so We like to not overcomplicate it Don't think too much of it some of those daily activities that you're already doing with your children and with yourself are is an activity is is something that can be part of your skeleton schedule you know you don't have to overly complicate it and make it into this big thing this big learning curve like big learning lesson like you just make it like you know doing laundry could be folding clothes could be in tooth, whatever, you know, you make it very practical to make the summer feel like it's not a chore like it's just another type of it's a break humans. I wrote it down. It's a break from the your regular routine. Like it's just, it's just different. But it's not doesn't have to be overcomplicated.

Eboni Creighton
It doesn't have to be overcomplicated. It doesn't have to be. I think I think moms go in two directions. Either. We're like, oh my god, it's summertime, we're going to Disneyland we're getting matching outfits. We're overdoing it, we're over over. And don't get me wrong, I want to go Disneyland. And I want to overdo it. But that's very extreme and quite expensive. Right? It's not always our reality to take these massive big epic trips for weeks on it weeks on end. Or what are we going to do for the rest of the summer outside of that one week trip to Disney, right? Or we overcomplicate the most simple things like why? Why are we rushing to you know, clean up behind our kids after breakfast when this is a great opportunity to put some music on and gave everybody a rag and we're all getting ready to speak in the counter.

Stephanie
And as long as we forget that some of these daily nuances are new to them. To us. It could be we may have done this, our entire youth. And then after that, but we forget that for them. It was probably the first time or they did it a year ago when they were in a different developmental stage. And so now they're appreciated into different ways. So putting that into perspective, I know it took me a little bit to remember how, oh, that thing that he's watching me do. I'm thinking it's not a big deal. But to him, it's like a whole thing. And he now wants to learn it and do it and replicate it. And next year, it's going to look that same thing that I thought we already did, is now a new, it's like a whole new feeling for him the next year, a whole

Eboni Creighton
new feeling. And it's a great way to create confidence in your children. No more going back to the beginning thing was setting the intentions, like my intention. And my mindset is to always be comfortable and confident because I want to raise a comfortable and confident child I want her to be comfortable with herself. I want her to be confident in herself. And so the children are going to gain their confidence for what they're doing with us at home. So it might be as simple as we're unloading the dishwasher. You guys eat all fun element and it we're not rushing off to school. Let's put on some jams. Okay, I heard your baby's thinking, right? I know, you know how to rock out at your house. Okay, so you put your jams on? And you you you put the dishes away, and you let them try it themselves? Or maybe you give a little bit of direction to kind of let them learn your way. Like Do we really have to micromanage like that all the forks are this particular way. If they're in the bin like does it really matter? Like, you might say, Oh, next time, you might want to make sure you put the big forks. But the big forks is not worth it. But I liked how you probably the forks have the right thing, like give them some confidence to work with, you know what I mean? Little bit of redirection here, and especially once they get a little bit older into those tween and teen years, when everything like they're very sensitive. Or you saying I didn't do that, right? You know, you know, everything can be a huff and puff match. So you have to be mindful, we have to kind of plant those seeds throughout the years so that as they're learning the routine can be your parenting friend, like now you're not the bad guy, because that's just the routine, we always clean up our plates and put our dishes in the dishwasher. And we always are wiping down the countertops after we cook. So now you know 10 years later, 12 years later, when you say can you wipe the countertops now nobody's rolling their eyes at you? Because this is what we do. This is how we do things.

Stephanie
Yeah. In this way you're involving them in inadvertently when maybe not even the way that you intended it, but you're involving him in the hope the planning of because now you're they're kind of telling you what they want what they need what you know, so you're involved in like you said, you're you're asking them and you're learning about their strengths and now you're developing this Oh, well I see that you do like to sort or you don't or you're more creative or your we're all creative but in a different way and you prefer this and then gradually it just kind of organically happens. And so I love that kind of like that. Just learn as you go with them. Have your skeleton schedule hat, get some ideas from someone who does has done this for a living but also enjoys it like yourself on your blog. So get some ideas Get some prompts, but inserted here, but don't overcomplicate it, you know, just kind of

Eboni Creighton
complicated, no, and these some whitespace for God's sakes, like let's leave a little bit of whitespace for everybody that kind of like be to just naturally navigate into the next thing without it being so. I mean, when I say skeleton schedule, I think people are like, Oh my God, she's gonna get through this 800 said, No, I'm gonna. I'm not saying that. I'm saying you could write those things down. And if they happen great. Or you could loosely put down a handful of things you want to accomplish in the day, like I am, chunk or it could be as simple as on. And I talk about this on the blog and in the creative way, Summer Edition. Okay, fine. On Mondays, we're gonna lay low because Monday is a Monday, right? But Tuesdays, we're getting a little antsy. So Tuesday is our library day. That there you go, there's, we've got our routines and our skeleton schedule is, at some point, we're leaving our house. Okay, so on Tuesdays, we're gonna go to library. Well, let's see if I have small children, everything centers around naptime. So either we're gonna go before nap time starting to kick in, or we're gonna go after first thing after nap. Simple. I'm not overcomplicating this trip to the lab. It's the library, like go there and have fun, like, get a book for yourself to like, let's not make this like, oh my god, we're going to Cedar Point, we've got to pack everything up. No, we're going to the library. And they'll get used to going to library and putting the book in the bin. And and they'll get used to checking stuff out and be responsible for keeping up with your books to return. Don't overcomplicate it, I think you you hit the nail on the head. But then how do

Stephanie
you handle the the part about because we've talked about it's, it's about them this whole summer. So now we're going to the finding time for yourself for a minute or two. Whether because even even for those of us or you that are listening that are Monday, no more traditional Monday through Friday, or you're going into an office or to a service center, wherever you work, whether you're a working parent or a stay at home parent, it really doesn't matter. Finding time for yourself can be really hard during the summer because as we have just talked such a fun conversation about about all these what to do and ideas as we can listen, it's all kind of about them right now. So at some point during the summer, need to find a little bit of that. Me Time, or just at least that take a breath time because everything as of right now is kind of is about them in a natural way, in a good way. But just now Yeah, I think you mentioned like the morning coffee time, you know, having like a ritual, something like that. But what about what, what are some other tips for people that may not be morning people who might need a little more than, you know, just like the morning

Eboni Creighton
more than the morning. We need we need more than the morning. Let's be clear, I need

Unknown Speaker
more. What do we all do?

Eboni Creighton
Okay, so two things. One is the setup. And two is to dip. Okay, so let me explain. So the setup is if you have all these for Schedule ideas, you have all your routines or you have some things organized and in place. I think before we're done here today, I'm going to share with you some of my favorite ways to organize kidstuff. But if you have less you use that crafting for example, you have craft time. Okay, we got the craft, but it's craft time. Okay, we got to set up we got to pay lip lip look, get your time route. We're gonna paint my bite as a family. I don't care if you're 15. Well, five or two, everybody in your house campaign. It's painting time put your little music on or what have you. And it's painting time. That's 45 minutes. What are you doing now? Are you just gonna sit there and hover and tell them they can't? Don't spell it out? No, get lost by you set them up. Go do the thing you needed to do. There you go. It might be the first time that you set them up or a second time, but you're like, oh my god, I have a little kid. They're gonna run off with the paintbrush, or whatever. Okay, well, fine. Take it outside. Can we not do this on a blanket and you're like, on your laptop in the sun with your, you know, iced coffee. Like it's possible to coexist with your kids while they're doing something and you're doing some thing. But if you're going to hover now, don't get me wrong. I can be a helicopter mom too. But if you're going to hover over them, when they're doing the thing that you set them up to do the next one you So figure out when you're creating your skeleton routine, when you're creating your expectations. When we do this thing, this is what I expect. We're gonna get the thing out when you can. That's why when you go to visit the school and you see the 30 kids doing the thing, you're that's why you're amazed because the teacher set it up that way. This is the routine. This is my expectation. This is how we do it. And the kids are cool, but when we go home we're like what Did you do it the way I told you to do it, you know, and then we were, we're overly mothering. And then we're mad that, that we're having a mother all day long. So it's okay moms, we've all been there, let's find a way to set them up, you have to set them up. So you set them up, you have an opportunity to coexist at the same time doing the thing that you need to take care of doing that. And you can be very clear about what it is you're getting ready to do. And maybe you're coexisting in the same physical space. Or maybe you're coexisting in the same house. It really just depends on the age of your child. Honestly, like the proximity piece there. I am helicopter mom with outdoor play. I don't like my kid to be outside the house where I can't see. See her? Or she can't hear me. I don't think I'm ever gonna get. She'll probably be at nine and I'll be like,

Stephanie
Girl the street if you can't see me, I can't see you. I don't like it my 75 year old daughter, or

Eboni Creighton
get your walker out the street girl. No, tell him but I have. But yeah, if she's 79. Right. But I think a lot of times, that's that's that's a lost opportunity for a lot of moms were like we talked about a minute ago. You're making it too difficult. We're putting too much on ourselves. It's like, okay, they're painting now we're mixing the paint. Now we're all up in their business. Now. Let them do the activity right now is like all time, guess what it's like all time. I'm gonna let you go and like, Okay, I'm not like going with you. So finding a way to set them up for success. I'm getting ready to get on a call, I could have still taken to zoom. If my daughter were at home. Why? Because well, one, we all survived 2020 every other day or something? Our generation, we've got that. That's the training right there. I'm zooming and then you give him the eye starts twitching and all that crazy. There's no, but why would I be able to take a zoom just like you should be able to work? It's easier for me to do because I do it more frequently. Or because I have routines it will be more difficult for my husband, because he's not necessarily in that kind of bow. But what do you do you set the kid up. So before the call, you have a setup, not getting on the call when my kid hungry. I have pack lunches before. If it was at lunchtime, I pack the lunch, okay, and in the lunchbox, your special dollar note and we're so proud of you eat your lunch. I can't wait for you to play X, Y, Z when you're done. Did and I have posted notes I'm going to stick in our baby book of drawing pictures. I used to draw pictures of what the next thing would be. Oh, I love that is so cute. Well stick figures would be like a stick figure doing things like a stick figure plus a toothbrush, paintbrush or D All right, well, and then you know a little checkbox and they mark it off, we underestimate what our kids are capable of when they're little, just think about what they're doing in their classroom and try to do a little bit of that and then add to it. So we're going to set them up. The second thing we're going to do so we're going to do a setup and we're going to dip the second thing we're going to do is we're going to dip so if you know you're getting to your mom tap out point because we all have it, it's like a tap out as tap out on a couple of levels. One Tap out I am over tap, meaning you have touched me one too many times today. Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma you know that one, when we've gotten tapped out, I think is very important to have a conversation with our spouse, our partner, our village, our babies, whatever it is, the grandparents, the babies that are whatever your support system is for parenting, and set yourself up to dip and buy dip. I mean, get out the house and be off duty. It's time to go. It might not happen as frequently or as long as we need it to happen. But I think again, it's the intentionality of saying okay, yeah, well, I've kind of been mom and real hard here, like the last two weeks or three months or I don't know, you know, what your capacity is. So figure out a way like I just need 30 minutes. When you get home No, go for a run, then that'd be that'd be bad. Tap it out. Or I just need you know, Saturday morning. They're going to be you know, using our same painting example they're painting. While you're watching the Morning News, I'll be back. I'm going to home goods. Therapy by I don't need to buy anything at home goods but for me like that's the place that I go and I refresh myself. I just look at things I touch things I walk around. Sometimes I'll get a coffee sometimes I think about getting coffee and that just does it for me just the thought that I could get a coffee if I wanted to. And then you know I twirl for you know 45 To 90 minutes and I come back home that restores me, you have to find the thing. It might be just going to the park. But again the park might be a place where you can co exist. You take the kids to the park their plan on Play escape, what's our expectation, we're gonna be here for 60 minutes, Here's your water bottles, here's your snack, that this is what I expect, go play. And now you're sitting on the bench or on your in your game chair or whatever, you're coexisting your kids are doing something they want to do and you're coexisting and doing the thing that you want to do simultaneously, that book, that podcast, oh, I need to catch up on organized omega, you know, like, you can do the things you want to do, too.

Stephanie
I love that part. Like it is possible to co exist with your kid in that, put that one down and get it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So as we start to kind of unwind, like I think there's a really important piece to this, and you've mentioned tidbits in your conversation. But the what happens when you haven't planned, you set yourself up for success. You got all the tips, you read the blog, and you're like, Okay, I've got this, I think I have a plan. I've got a skeleton schedule that I can move around. Got it. Okay, I can coexist with my kid. I'm going to try that for the first time. You know, let me I got this. I think I think I'm okay. I'm feeling good about the summer. Okay, here we go. Or the reset if you're listening to this, you know, mid summer and it's like, okay, you know what, I'm gonna do a little reset here. We've got five more weeks. I've got this. Oh, snap. After that. You put your pen down, you stop listening to the podcast, and you had it already. And the house, just everything you had planned is now not even close. family emergency, Major Scale scheduled changed, job changed, whatever. Like the thing that you didn't think was going to happen just happened? either big or maybe small. So now how do you handle the challenge of finding the unexpected finding that yourself back in the unexpected changes and disruptions of those plans that you so carefully laid out because you listen to our podcasts and you went to Ebony's blog? No, it's not going to happen.

Eboni Creighton
So that to me sounds like definition of motherhood right there. What you just described Actually, everything you plant just went a little bit different. Kind of all fell apart a little bit and now it's time to regroup. Okay, that that that's a pretty good definition for it. Okay, so what do we do when life is lifing? And the kid gets sick, and you've made the plans for camp now they're home, you put them on campus? You're gonna have like, I was gonna record 49 podcasts this week. Yeah, I was gonna batch No, you're not. It's called, you know, the flu, the summer, whatever, germ this vote around or whatever. So my dad was a very wise man. And he used to say, the only thing that we can count on is change. And he was sad all the time and out, like, you know, sometimes when your parents say things, you get a little annoyed on my younger dad. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, he's right, though, you should learn to count on the fact that there is change, just count on it. Like if things are going smoothly, you need to count on the fact that somebody is gonna get sick, or that your schedule is going to change or that the camp is going to be shut down unexpectedly because of a water main break or something ridiculous. Like it's always something that just is not even, like this is even happened here. And we had a tornado. Why did you say the school ship or tornado? We don't even get tornadoes? Like, what is a hurricane? No matter? Okay, you know. So all kinds of things like that seem to happen just just to us moms, it doesn't happen to the dads, it doesn't happen to people who don't have children. We are plagued with it. Okay, it's a part of the part of our bad part. It's a part of it. But I do think the first thing is that we have to want to give ourselves grace, above and beyond all things, we have to be able to give ourselves grace. And then we have to be able to get off the hamster wheel on schedule, like it's okay, that we created this template, and then it's okay to revisit our intentions. It's okay to think about what our needs and wants are, in this particular week or particular season, things might look a little bit different. So that part of like, you usually know what to do is just you just have not had a chance to sit and reflect. So that is the time when things go bananas that I forced myself to sit down and have some piece of coffee or candle or whatever it might be before the kid wakes up. It might be after the kids go down it might be when they're napping or when they're doing something where I'm coexisting with you know, but I'm kind of in my own brain and they're doing their thing but just giving myself an opportunity to reflect and think about and do a brain dump so what will okay yeah yeah, I wanted to carry on we were gonna go to Disney but now you know we had hotwire main, right? A hot hot water token broke. So there goes the vacation budget. So we're not doing now. And this one caught COVID No, my husband COVID. So now that time off is not there anymore, whatever the case might be, you're going to make that adjustment in your brain down, you're going to put it all down, put your finger on it, but just just barf it on paper, okay. And then from that point, restart, just restarted, like, okay, so this week, we're going to just take a beat, we're not going to worry about teaching, how to clean up the kitchen, we're not going to worry about a new learning a new skill or a hobby, we're not going to deal with the summer packet, even we're leaving all that behind us, we're going to just focus on living, getting through today in a way that we have some grace for ourself in our kids, period, and then you pick up because they're gonna get sick, we're gonna get sick. And that

Stephanie
intentionality that you you set up at the beginning that it's really a feeling, it's the intent. So how can you just pivot it so that you still have the same results?

Eboni Creighton
Yes, you just, it's just that you're always keeping that and as it's in your toolbox, it's a it's a, it's a tool that you is at your disposal when you need it. So not putting it as like this big build up thing. It's, it's a check in point for yourself, because yes, the mental load of motherhood is big. And remember, I said in the beginning, that it's more like skin than a hat. We don't get to take it off. So it's definitely skin when the child is barfing. Okay. It's definitely skin when the babysitter goes away to college sooner than you thought. And you thought you had childcare for another month. But no, you don't have any childcare now, it changes, these things may change, right? Or all the mulch got infested with mold at the preschool. And now oh, sorry, the summer campus closing six weeks early, you're like,

Unknown Speaker
oh, no, no, no, it is not.

Eboni Creighton
Oh, I paid my deposit. And now everybody else is full. You're gonna find this bad? How much punch do you need? Exactly, you know, I will go get

Stephanie
the truck on my way.

Eboni Creighton
But there are going to be these times where we're unable to control you know, these types of things. And so I think it comes back to having grace for yourself in the situation, above all things and then being intentional having that brain dump. And then here's some money tip for you have something up your sleeve. And by that, I mean, I know you your child has not watched every movie that you watched when you were a kid, they've not listened to every song that you've ever watched. They've not done every puzzle, have a rainy day, pull it out, you're behind type of situation, because you're going to need it. I'm trying to remember it wasn't me this year. We've had everything in our house. We've had normal we've had COVID We've had flu, I think it was a flu. I don't know we've had some unknown cold, whatever could be had outside of the bubble. We've had it in these little small things have saved my life. One night, we watched one day we watched Michael Jackson videos are there are there and he is an entertainer and I'm here to tell you that Michael will raise your kids on a day that you need it. Okay? Not He's entertaining. Okay. I'm bad. Ruler. Okay, so now you've learned loads. Okay, great. There you go. There's your black history packed with the month, you've learned about Michael Jackson, you've seen how he became this world phenomenon, or whatever. It might be an old classic children's movie, like comparing the old Annie with the new Annie. It might be I don't know, you watch Wild Kratts and then go down the National Geographic. Kids channel and try to find something about that one animal or have them do a little poster on that. But you can you can make it as simple or as difficult as you want it to be. But I think the point is, we're we're, we're trying to be comfortable and confident and give ourselves some grace. And so those it just expecting that those things are going to happen. So save that little Dollar Tree ball, or the little thing from five and below that one little crafty kid say that thing. For that rainy day that will happen. It's gonna happen,

Stephanie
embrace, embrace that it will happen. Embrace what happened in summer,

Eboni Creighton
and just stop beating yourself up about it because this too shall pass. It always passes and then you'll come out. I can strong and you'll be back on plan and maybe you'll edit some things and it might turn out better than you hoped. Maybe it's it's just not the season for that. But I think just constantly being aware that you have the power to you. You can control it. You don't even though you can't control the change, but you have the power to change how you're feeling about it. There you go. Well, my kid is sick. I do laundry every day obviously but when My kid is sick and I'm feeling stressed out and I might be on the brink of breaking down and getting sick. That is not the day that I beat myself up about staying on top of my laundry.

Stephanie
And just like any good habit, if you've been doing it for so long, you will come back to it and no, in no time after, after the turmoil is settled after the dust has settled.

Eboni Creighton
Yeah, let the dust settle and keep it moving. Like, what why are we over here beating ourselves up about something we can control anyway, so control, I tell my clients control your controllables. So my controllable is I can I can make this target pickup order and I can put something in there that I'm going to be happy about. Try this new grammar I can control that. I can control maybe getting carry out on Thursday and Friday instead of just Friday. Because I'm not cooking today. Or I can control not overscheduling my kids so that I'm still on like a chauffeur back and forth back and forth like okay well let's let's let's budget let's let's create some space here. We've got one kid and baseball over here. And now if they're not all in baseball, this is his baseball season we're going to just brought cousin brother brothers season is baseball. The rest of us are in the stands. We're doing our things. And maybe next season is dance season for the other for sister. Maybe it's not everybody doing all the things that all the time. So it's just finding that space because the other part about the kids becoming more involved. It is the germs as always the charms like if you sign them up and you get them going and they come on sick. Like why why?

Stephanie
I just wanted them to have a good time. That's all I was just trying. I wasn't trying to invite new friends over that was I was right harm.

Eboni Creighton
Yes. Always you bring in your germs. Like I want to spray everybody down with Lysol. I know there's going to be add about that, like 20 years, were you in the year? 2020? Are you exposed to the Yes,

Stephanie
yes, dry. We were just writing. This is awesome. This is so good. And if you're not following or reading her blog, you definitely should. Because I think you also give us the critical thinking piece of all this and what this conversation was about, it's like planting the seeds and ideas, but that it doesn't have to be so rigid. Here are some things for you to work off of. And that's what I love about your content. So definitely head on over there. So okay. Everybody knows that. At the end of our conversations, we always ask three fun questions that the to learn more about her it but one is what is the one thing you would want people to take away from this conversation.

Eboni Creighton
The one thing I'd want people to know is that there is joy in motherhood, even in the summertime, and especially in the summertime, so don't be afraid of the mommyhood skin that you're in. Don't be afraid of it. Embrace it with a little bit of reflection and intention and preparation. Then you and your you you too Mommy you and your kids can have a good summer you can have a joyful summer joyful as in full of joy.

Stephanie
Yeah, embrace it, and know that okay, let's talk about your favorite magazine. What's your favorite magazine to read for either business and or pleasure and why and it could be the virtual version now nowadays but

Eboni Creighton
so I'm always going to be a paper girl. I'm always going to be the paper pack rat. I am the Pinterest kid before Pinterest who was

Stephanie
actually had a board the board change of things to do.

Eboni Creighton
And then I was advanced and I did a binder with like sleeves up in there under categories like the original Pinterest like I was able to put in a binder and I'm gonna like categorize it. And then Pinterest came out but um, I like all home decorating magazines. I can't nail it down to one. So any magazine is gonna have a lot of bright colors on it. I'm always gonna gravitate to that like your HGTV your DIY Better Homes and Gardens. I don't know just any bright color anything that's got bright colors on the cover here I hear icon

Stephanie
where so Okay, actually now that you sparked another question my head with this magazine. Do you read it from top like from beginning to end? Do you read it or do you just more skim through it you kind of keep it as a coffee table on the shelf for a little while for inspiration. Are you a reader of it from cover to cover?

Eboni Creighton
Okay, so I will if I get a new magazine, I am not going to just open it up to the middle. I will start at the beginning and flip through. I will earmark things that I want to go back to but usually with the home decor things I don't generally need to read read but like all magazine or I'm like that like those if I bought it because there was a cover story or something I will read, I will go to the cover story that I bought the magazine for. But I haven't really bought a ton of magazines that have an article article in them to read. But I'm never gonna go backwards. If that makes sense. That would really mess me up. I needed to be in order, like at the start. Like, I don't want to I want to feel like I missed out like, Where was that one pink chair on page seven. Like I might have missed it. So I have to go in order. It's been love it.

Stephanie
All right. So where can people reach you? Where are you at? Tell us a little bit about some of your pages. And of course, as everybody knows, we'll always have it in the show notes. Where can people reach you before we head out for the day?

Eboni Creighton
All right, so you can find me online on my most of the time I hang out in Instagram stories. I'm at Mrs. C are a Mrs. Create on Instagram. And I have a blog which is create joy see our eight J oi.com. And that's where you can find those summer edition print the create joy Summer Edition printables I was talking about with a core schedule ideas and easy easy summer schedules. And there's some blog posts in there too about preventing the summer slide. Things like that resources that you might find helpful. I have a YouTube channel, create joy CRA J. Li, create your YouTube channel. And that's on my intentional list. This summer of my coexisting mom time I've got to get back to my video channel stuff. So um, and that's pretty much where you can find me on Instagram you could sign up for or the website you could sign up for my joy note. It's our little community newsletter, where you get eight things that create joy in your inbox every month and I pour my heart and soul into the joy note. And I try to provide things that are inspiring and make you enjoy you know want to create joy where you live, love and learn. So if you're all about that, then I'm the girl. I'm your

Stephanie
You are my girl, that's for sure. Well, Ebony, thank you so much for being on our podcast and our episode today. And as always everybody thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the Organize Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, and we'd love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

Today we dive into practical tips and strategies to declutter paper. We talk about how to stop any incoming paper before decluttering, and I give advice on how to avoid becoming overwhelmed with new papers while you're sorting out old ones. I also discuss the importance of categorizing your belongings, digitizing documents, and transitioning from paper to digital format for personal documents. I’m also sharing tops on finding a permanent home for papers and preserving their condition. So join me as we explore empowering practices for reducing paper clutter and finding peace of mind through organization.

In this episode we talk about:

• The importance of stopping incoming paper before decluttering
• Choosing which projects are worth taking on
• Preserving important documents
• Categorizing belongings for the decluttering process
• Unsubscribing from mailings
• Finding a permanent home for decluttered papers
• Maintaining organization after decluttering
• Reasons to declutter paper
• Empowering anyone overwhelmed by paper clutter

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

Blog Post: “Organizing Paper”

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/organizing-paper/

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger.  For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go.

Fun fact of the day, on average, it takes five minutes to completely convert a paper document into its digital version. So this includes the action of scanning it and that part of it, and then the administrative part of it, where you rename the file, you save as you need to put it in a folder and all of that five minutes per document. Now think about how many pieces of paper documents you have in your paper pile that we're trying to reduce. So think of that pile and think of how many documents you have. And knowing that you have good intentions of digitizing all those items in those documents. Great.

But multiply that by five minutes. Yeah, that's a lot of time to be spending on completing a project that may or not be of use to you anyway, maybe it will give you peace of mind, I know that for some of you, it just gives you peace of mind to know that you went through every single piece of paper that you're not missing anything important or anything like that. But it will take you a very long time. So either you're paying it by the efforts of your time, you're paying the price by you, putting all this time together into going through every single item and determining whether you're going to digitize it, because that's probably the intention that you have, maybe your attention is to just organize it nicely, but it's going to take a lot of time to do this. So this fun fact is really just to show you how much time it takes for you to organize every single piece of document that you have. And so in today's episode of organized and productive, we're diving into a topic that resonates with many of us. And that's the reducing of paper clutter. So join us today as we explore some practical tips and strategies to declutter paper, whether you're a paper enthusiast looking to make a change, or someone that is overwhelmed by stacks of paperwork, this episode will empower you with actionable steps to conquer the paper clutter. And that way, it just doesn't feel so overwhelming. So what my hope is, is that as we go through our framework and just give you some tangible tips, it will feel like you've got this, you can do this or at least get the project started.

If you have followed us for a while you know that we follow our seven steps of organizing almost anything framework. And so that's the framework we're going to be using here, because that's the one that has worked for us for many years. So what we do though, with every with the framework is we do tailor it to the goal at hand. So our goal today with this episode is to reduce paper, paper, meaning documents type of paper, like documents, receipts, and things like that not so much like gift wrapping paper. So today we're focusing on documents and reducing that pile of either documents, or maybe you have a whole pile of ads or magazines that have come in the mail. So that kind of paper that you probably find at your office space and or places where you keep important paperwork. So that's the type of paper we're talking about today. And that is specific. And our goal today is specific to reducing that pile. So I'll get started with step one, which is the assess step. And again, if you're new to our podcasts or to our framework, we do have a rundown of what the steps are in a separate podcast episode. So I will go ahead and link that in the show notes.

And then we also have a specific one for step one. So we dig deeper into each of the steps. So that you can kind of get an idea of what it how you can set yourself up for success with step one. And so first things first is you'll want to start out by figuring out why you want to get control of your paper, this is your y this is very important. Is it because you have to move Is it because you're finally at a point where it's overwhelming you. I mean, we're living in a world of overflow that is overflowing with documents and mail and receipts, because we're at an age where we are the products of when the digital world and the cloud and all of that was still in development. So we probably have a lot of paper that has carried over throughout the years. Also, not everyone is on board with digitized versions of paper yet. So we also are probably receiving mail or statements from maybe companies that are not digitized yet. Or they're not going digital yet. Or maybe you're dealing with clients or your school or whatever it may be then they're not in the digital world yet. So you probably have a hybrid right of, of paper that you have carried over from just your life, important documents. And then also you're just in this in this limbo where some things live in the digital world of your space like your pewter in your documents and some some things you, you have had to actually print.

So now you have paper. And also when it comes to advertisement like ads and all the what we call junk mail, I guess that is still a thing, you still receive coupons in the mail or maybe catalogs. And so we're kind of in this hybrid moment, moment and time of our lives of the world. So you probably have a lot of like these Limbo items. And so we're overwhelmed with paper and receipts and all of that stuff. So whatever your reason is, as to why you want to get organized, and why you want to start decluttering your paper, write it down, maybe on one of those pieces of paper that you have one of the many, many. So this way, it'll help you navigate and decide which of the actionable steps I'm about to give you apply to you. And you can create a plan. Once you have written down your why you'll get to a really fun step that often gets missed, but makes a huge impact on your success of reducing paper. And I say fun step, because once you do it, it almost takes away this relief this this, oh my gosh, I should have been doing this a long time ago, I just had to, you know actually actually do it. And the effects that it creates long term are just great, because you stop the you kind of stop the all of the incoming from overwhelming you.

So let me describe what it is before I keep jabbering or you know, keep mumbling I would recommend stopping any incoming paper first, before you do the decluttering before you shred the step before you sort before you go through any of that. So these are the some of the steps that I would recommend you do to stop any incoming paper because the idea here is to have it stop from coming, like coming as you work through this journey. Because as you're going through the steps, or you're going through the decluttering, or the shredding, there's nothing worse than receiving more and more paper, you know, it's kind of like when you're doing dishes and you're doing the dishes and then people start, you know, adding to your pile and your pile you think it's just getting smaller and smaller. And you're almost done with with the whole dishes, but someone just keeps adding, right? Like you rather just know what you have at hand. So that you know, what's what's going on ahead of time versus just being in this repeated wheel that you just keep getting more and more stuff. And it just becomes more and more overwhelming. So that's kind of the goal. So these are some of the steps on how to stop any incoming paper. Okay, first, let's make a list of paper you always get in the mail and where it comes from. So that's bills, which are companies, which companies are sending you that paper bill. So like, you know the bills, the ones that are the ones that are sending you statements, maybe it's just like statements like your bank statements, magazines, or ads that are on a scheduled delivery.

Those are the things you'll want to write down. So just write down where like what kind of paper you're getting in the mail, or being sent including newspapers, where are they coming from, because much of our paper is coming from automated mailings. So we want to get a handle of that and get a handle of what these are and where they're coming from. So we can make a decision as to which ones are actually important which ones you want to keep receiving, following that step who you've probably guessed this, but following that step is contacting these companies and asking them to stop the paper deliveries, something that you might not know is that for ads and mailers, you may be able to get on a do not send list. So just do it once we normally give you a specific website to go to but because we have listeners from all over the world, I'll give you where to find the information and then you can search the rest of it yourself because it's going to depend on where you live and what the laws are and regulations in your wherever you're living. So go to the company where you know where the company the sender, the company that sent you this mailer, and then type unsubscribe, go to the unsubscribe list. So you can just go to like a search engine of Google and search actually whatever company unsubscribe list and usually one of the top searches will be how to unsubscribe from that mailer or from that company and then you know go from there. This will give you options on where to go get go unsubscribe from or what to do.

And for invoices and statements and other personal mailings, you will need to call or go to the vendors website and pick the option to only get electronic statements so that's your bank, like your bank statements, maybe your water bill is so anything that's personal to you to your home to the place of living and things like that like your maybe your car your like your car loan or something like that your insurance, they're usually send you new automated statements in the mail. So those you will need to contact them direct Fleet and figure out which ones you need to keep which ones, which ones you actually want to automate. And keep receiving and via paper in which ones you can digitize, if you are not ready for that, because technology is not something you are trusting right now or ready for it, because it's a whole nother learning curve. And you'd rather still get paper versions of your statements. And any of those items that I just mentioned them, the more personal items, I do get that and maybe that's something you can explore, after you get the benefits of going paperless. So maybe, you know, you just need to kind of get used to a little bit there is a learning curve. But like I said, I also understand not wanting to remove that option for yourself. But just put a pin in your in your mind that there are options for you to get removed from these automated lists.

Okay, so we've got ourselves, the names of the companies that you're contacting, and then you are now you have not contacted them or you've gotten on the list that where you no longer will be receiving all this paper. So once that exercise is completed, you will now have stopped the ongoing paper from coming or as much as possible. And know that you only have to deal with what you have at hand. And not also the incoming mail that I was talking about that can be overwhelming because you just keep seeing it coming in and coming in. And there's no stopping point. So this will really alleviate part of that. So now we are on to the source and declutter steps. And this part can be really overwhelming because of the amount of data that you're sorting through. So there's a, there's a couple of protests that I want to give you for sorting and decluttering. Paper specifically. One Pro Tip is to keep the main categories as generic as possible, like bills. For instance, I'll give you an example. Instead of going specific with electronic bills, and gas bills, or whatever bill, use a generic category like bills, just bills.

Same thing with maybe manuals, you know, you have all these manuals, maybe just put manuals, not TV manuals, so you're going to want to be as generic as possible. This will help the process go faster as you sort you won't have to read the fine print to find what company it's from, and what specific category it lives under. Because that's where a lot of people get stuck in the nitty gritty, especially if you're neurodivergent or you're going through paper and it's provoking you a lot of emotion. That's where you want to just be as generic as possible. Don't read the fine print don't get too caught up into the date was this from 2001? Or was this from 2023. Like you just want to be super generic. This is a bill so this is where I have to or had to pay money. This is where you know money was coming in coming out like just be generic and then use categories that makes sense to you. But again, don't go too much in the into the nitty gritty.

After you go through the main categories like the main category part of it, you then will kind of go through those piles right and decide what items you can you want to keep which ones you want to digitize and you'll kind of go from here. Now that you've got the main categories, then subcategories will be easier, but a little bit more tedious. So my biggest goal here for you would be to this is the declutter you like insert declutter here, once you have them in main categories. Hopefully this will give you quick actionable steps of what you can shred. For instance, if you have a whole pile of bills that you actually paid, you know, so these are all category bills, and then you put categories bills that you still need to pay, or maybe the ones you pay, maybe those just you just need to digitize. So you already know these will be need to be digitized, or they just need to be shredded. And it's time to let that go. Because you already paid them you have a receipt, and it's time to let it go. This is where you could decluttering will be really beneficial. And it will go a lot quicker. Now that you have your main categories. It will also allow you to see some of those big categories for instance manuals, you will now be able to see that you have a whole the majority of the items or manuals, maybe this entire time you thought you had all these bills, but in reality, it was all manuals that will make the process much faster.

Maybe the whole maybe they're this the other categories, all coupons in that big stack of paper was actually all coupons and all those coupons are expired. So you can just get rid of those, right? So it makes the process go a lot quicker. So again, start with the main category, and then from there, insert a declutter moment in there and decide what items you need to keep digitize or do something else with this step is also the step where so you're decluttering but also the part where you will determine next steps or next projects. So this is the step where after you have it in in these major categories, then we go into sub steps in sub steps, sub steps or sub categories. I always I simply I'm just kidding, I say, it's the part where you give yourself more work. Because the more subcategories you go into, the more projects you're giving yourself. So if you have a category for these are the items I want to digitize, just remember that you now have added extra work for yourself, or you're paying somebody to do it. So just decide if that's worth it for you. Same thing with maybe you have items like your kids projects, part of the all that paper clutter paper stack was, you know, kids projects, things like homework that just got added in the piles.

That is a moment where you will decide if that's the stuff that you actually want to do something with like your you do want to make it into some fancy, nice, cute album. I mean, if you do, that's great. But now you've added extra work for yourself. So this is the part where you're not only decluttering, literally decluttering, you're also decluttering the projects that you should or should not be taking on. Okay, so that is the part where we do the sorting and the decluttering. So now we're on to finding a home for all this paper that is now leftover, after you've done the decluttering the sorting the deciding what you're going to do with it. Where would you live? Where is it going to live? And in what so it's the home? Like where will it permanently live? Like? Is it a shelf? Is it your office, your drawer? And also in what? So with paper, specifically? It paper ages overtime. And I have some really cool statistics over on my blog about paper, and which I'll also link in the show notes. But it doesn't last forever. And if it does, it's really just been because of luck. You know, maybe you've had all these cabinets from, you know, maybe your parents or whatever you have all these cabinets of paper that you have that have been carried over from decades and decades. Well, maybe that's those have been. Those have survived, but it's been by luck. And but if you want to be intentional about actually keeping the paper you're deciding to keep, then I would be intentional, be intentional about where you keep it. So where you know what type of been in just is it like does it have acid free tissue paper where you will protect it, this is for more of the valuable type of paper.

But specifically for documents and things like that, you know, decide if you want to go the extra mile, some if some documents may be worth it, maybe the title of your house, your car, or the documents that you will need if you need to resell these items, right? Those types of things are very important. And you should protect them and you should keep you should keep them in therefore protect them. So keeping them in a place where maybe it's fireproof waterproof, because these are important papers that maybe yes, you will digitize but you'll need the original four. So that's what I mean about being intentional over the things that you are keeping, that has to do with documents with anything really in life, but with documents, especially because you wouldn't want to go through all this trouble of carrying it around. And then ultimately, it gets damaged because you just stuffed it somewhere where you know, we got too much sunlight in our yellow so that that kind of thing. Be intentional.

Okay, so those are some of the practical tips that I have for you today about decluttering paper. After you go through all of these steps where you're decluttering you're sorting you're figuring out what you want to keep but do you want to create more projects for yourself. And then once you decide, you know, you're deciding what, what the next steps will be, then you find a home for them and then where you will keep them and then from there it is figuring out how to maintain it. So for some people with with paper, what they'll do is they'll do a routine of monthly, maybe quarterly declutter you session in my house. It's really, I'm very used to it now. So I kind of know when my there's this one shelf where we keep it and if that starts to overflow, that's my cue to do a declutter session. So I'm watching TV or listening to a podcast where I just kind of sit down for like a 30 minute decluttering session, but because I have boundaries to where I keep these items, it doesn't become overwhelming. So I can actually get this quick like yes, I need it. No, I need it moment without having it be like a whole week type of project. So once you start to you do the initial big project and just figure out a good system to keep it up. So again, a declutter declutter session is great. You can always go back and revisit that. The unsubscribe from paper exercise. Remember how we mentioned before maybe you didn't do it because we weren't ready at the time.

Maybe now you're ready, maybe that you see how nice it is to not have as much paper and you're ready to unsubscribe or have the statements, invoices, whatever paperwork is coming in. Maybe you're ready to digitize that and only receive it via email or when you log into whatever the vendor vendor website is. So maybe at this this is a good time to read. We visit, okay, is there anything else that I think unsubscribe from that I'm just not using, as much as I say, I will use these coupons I never do. So maybe that is a mailer that you can stop from coming in. So that's the evaluate and maintain, which is the last two steps of our seven steps of organizing almost anything in that will help you just sustain what you've already built. And you've worked so hard for, well, I hope that this was helpful to you, and that you're not spending five minutes per document, whether it's digitizing it, or keeping it for a quote, unquote, later time.

Quick, quick additional tip here at the very end. So if you stuck through, you get this bonus tip, but manuals, there's a website that is still alive right now, or still live right now called, manuals, dotnet, or manuals, net, just go ahead and Google it. And they have 1000s of manuals from all over the world from all kinds of items. So that's another great place for you to, to go in. And if you're able to get it somewhere else easy. What you there's no reason for you to keep it because you can easily get it somewhere else. Of course, this doesn't apply to valuable items. This doesn't apply to necessarily anything that you will be reselling, or maybe it needs to be kept because of the warranty. So I'm talking more you know, the blender that you bought 20 years ago, you still have the manual, do you need it? No, or maybe the small appliance that is not worth a lot, you really don't need the instruction manual. But you're afraid that one day you might need it? Well, a manuals net type of website probably has it on their database.

And if not, then the website for the item will have it the company that made it. There's also great social type of websites as like, like a Facebook, like a social media type of websites, communities where you can ask like a next door, you can say, hey, neighbors is anybody have this, you know the manual for this type of lawn mower because you thought you needed it, you weren't going to need it, you were afraid to throw it away. And now you do need it. So just know that there's resources out there where you can go back and get items like that, that are that are made in masses, that you don't necessarily need to be keeping the manuals or instructions or all the paperwork that comes with it that just adds to your paper, clutter and stack. So I hope all these tips were helpful to you. And until next time, where we keep talking on all things organizing and productivity.

Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here are full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Have you organizing

How many times have you rolled your eyes when your partner, or anyone you share a space with, left the dirty socks they just took off RIGHT next to hamper? We all know that differences in organizational style can be a major source of conflict in relationships, causing stress and tension on a daily basis.  But there are effective strategies you can use to communicate with your partner and find a balance that works for both of you.

In this episode we talk about:

• The Challenges of Communicating with a Less Organized Partner
• The Importance of Effective Communication
• Strategies for Communicating with a Less Organized Partner
• Finding Compromise with people that you live with

Where to find Dr. Dar online:

Web: https://drdarhawks.com/

IG https://www.instagram.com/dr.dar.hawks/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/DarshanaHawks/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/drdarhawks/

Mentioned in this Episode:

The 5 Relationship Languages Quiz & Toolkit: 

https://RelationshipsToolkit.com

https://relationshipquiz.me/

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

Stephanie
Okay, be honest. How many times have you rolled your eyes when your partner left their dirty socks they just took off right next to the hamper. Like right there right next to it, and you're thinking, the same amount of effort it took you to put it on the floor would have taken you to just open the hamper or just place it in the basket. Yes, I know a lot of us can relate. We all know that differences in organizational style can be a major source of conflicts in relationships. They can cause stress tension, and this could be on a daily basis. But there are effective strategies you can use to communicate with your partner and find a balance that works for both of you. For our episode today, we have Dr. Dr. Hawks, a relationship healer, who is sharing valuable insights and practical tips on how to communicate with a partner who is not organized or tidy. She shares her expertise and personal experience with us, highlighting the importance of empathy, active listening, and finding compromise in relationships. So if you're struggling to keep your space organized and need some help on how to talk to your partner, or person you're living with, this episode is perfect for you. Oh, one quick thing. This episode is geared towards communication tips with an adult person you live with, or share a space with. It could be a partner or a spouse, but it's an adult, or not addressing communicating and relationships with children in this episode. Okay, so just a heads up. So let's get to our interview. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go. Hello, Hi, Dr. Dar Great to have you here. Welcome. So we are starting the conversation with the challenges of communicating with the less organized partner. So welcome. And let's get right to it.

Dr. Dar Hawks
That sounds great. Thank you for having me. And I look forward to this wonderful chat.

Stephanie
So let's talk about the challenges just to get it that you know that conversation off the challenges of community communicating with a less organized partner or really anybody that you live with? How what are some of those common challenges that people face that they may not even be aware are happening, but you could probably point it out. So remind people like what does that look like when you're being challenged?

Dr. Dar Hawks
Yeah, you know, it can show up in all kinds of different ways. And I'll share a funny story actually. funny to me now, right. 20 years later, I went out on a first date, and we went to dinner and within the first five minutes, as soon as the guy was with picked up his spoon the way he held his spoon, I knew that wasn't going to work for me. Like every time I would sit for a meal, it would drive me bonkers. So you know, my clients always say, Gosh, that's so shallow. But no, it's real, we really have to pay attention to our preferences and the ways we like our kitchen set up and how forks and spoons are used or where their place is in which drawer. Because those are the things that build up to the big things and then create problems in the relationship. Another one is how to load the dishwasher. Right? That's a big classic one that I think everyone can relate to. Oh, yeah, everyone loads it differently. And you would think manufacturers would teach you how to do that. Right? And there are videos there. But at the end of the day, I learned how to load a dishwasher with from my mom and she likes to pack it full. And my husband likes dishes to be sterilized. So he'll go after me and adjust how they're in there. And it used to really tick me off but then I realized it's not. It's not personal. He's not attacking me. He's just adjusting according to his preference. Oh,

Stephanie
had it Yes, I can resonate with all of that. And, and the stepping back for a second and remembering that what you feel that person may be not doing adequately may just be a different learning style. So which is what we'll talk about all that today. But yes, I could resignate that 100% So why is it so important to pick up on those subtle hints or not so subtle hints that you that argue from your partner or the person you live with? What are some effective ways to or not away effective? Why is it so important to listen to yourself to listen to those irks in the law, you know, in the communication game with a partner?

Dr. Dar Hawks
Yep. So those arcs create a result resulting emotion and a feeling right. So we feel a certain way, maybe we take it personally, or they're just doing it to tick us off, or it's something that's just putting more work on me because I have to redo it, whatever that, you know, explanation is for ourselves, there's a reaction in our bodies and our minds. And that react reaction can create a very contentious situation. And you have to be really clear about what your preference is, first of all, really concisely and clearly, and understand what their preference is, so that you can find a way to meet in the middle. And that's crucial. It's not going to be their way or your way, all the time. It might be, you know, a compromising situation that satisfies both of you. Yeah.

Stephanie
So would you consider that to be in effect? Like, what are other effective ways to communicate between partners and people you live with? Like, are people that you share space with? Like, how can somebody do that in an effective manner, so not just to hurt people's feelings or to be direct, but to actually start to get the responses you're looking for?

Dr. Dar Hawks
Yeah. So I think that it's really important to understand that, when we're communicating around organizing with your partner or somebody you're living with, it's not so much the response in that moment we're looking for we're looking for agreement, and we're looking for action. And we're looking for it based on our filter of what we think it must be. So so we really have to, like get into a neutral place with all of that. And know, okay, this is how I like it. This is what I'm wanting them to do right now. And this is why I'm upset about it. And oftentimes, why am upset, it's not really about the spoon, upside down in the dishwasher, or the wrong way in there, there's usually other things behind it. So number one, you've got to have the conversation when you're not charged, like when you're calm, and they're calm. And you can have an intelligent, you know, relaxed conversation about how you feel about the spoon upside down in the dishwasher, and then ask for support. And it's key to ask for support very clearly, instead of saying, You must do it this way. You know, and defending your position with all of the reasons why. And then the scientific proof for it and all the research to back it up. Because people are going to be the people we care about and the people we live with. That repels, it doesn't invite them to participate with you in creating a collaborative, harmonious environment.

Stephanie
So true. I don't remember what I read or where I read this from you. But it it was kind of like that the approach or your intention behind or I don't know, if it's the tone of your voice, I don't know if the intention, but what are some strategies for communicating with the person at the opposite person, so that they know you're coming from a place where you're looking for compromise? Like what are some strategies for communicating with them that that are practical enough to do in the moment, because as you just you know, you mentioned and we all know, when you're in the heat of the moment, or when that person is doing the exact opposite of what you need or want. And you're in your reactionary, it's not as easy to remember these awesome practical tips.

Dr. Dar Hawks
So what are some way that people can can do that in the moment? Yeah. So I'm a strong advocate for not doing it in the moment, however, to your point, you know, it's hard to remember that. The nice thing about communication with anyone is you get instant feedback, right? I mean, you're gonna know right away, whether it's going well for you or whether it's going well for them or not. So I think an important strategy when you're in the moment and can't take that timeout, so to speak to go just get your mind off it and get into a fun you know, relaxed space is to just claim it. Look, I'm upset my bloods boiling right now, over something pretty simple. And I know it does. You know, it may not sound like a big deal. But right now it is to me, I just need you to hear that I'm upset about you know, the cabinet doors being left open, or you just throwing your laundry down on the floor as you walk in the door. Even though the laundry rooms right there and you could put it in the basket. As soon as you claim your feelings and you're upset, it starts to get you more into a neutral mood. And you're making it about yourself, not them. So that's that's tip number one. Tip number two is to check in to see how they're responding to that. If they're getting defensive. That's a clue to just say you know, well I just wanted to share how I feel, right now, let's let's talk about it later at another time and see if we can come up with something that works for both of us. So that, you know, I'm not pushing you to change, you're not pushing me to change, but we find a workable solution for both of us. So it's not a whole lot of work for either of us. If they're responsive and say, Oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I didn't realize it bothered you. They may surprise you and say, Hey, how would you? How would you prefer it done, you know, the kitchens, your domain, or laundry is something you handle and I want to make it easier for you, then that opens the door. So you really have to look to see whether, then you're going to know right away whether the doors open for additional communication? Yeah,

Stephanie
that's a really good reminder like that, at least being an observer to how that person also is responding to you. Okay, so when do we introduce, like empathy and active listening? And all of that, like, is this? Is this something that we, you know, people can practice ahead of time, especially if you're, if you're seeing the signs of things that your partner is doing is? Is that something that people can practice ahead of time? So how do we introduce that active listening and empathy into this whole thing?

Dr. Dar Hawks
First things first, right? That that whole empathy and active listening, tying into your, your comment about being the observer is that whoever you're living with, or your partner, this is not something new, they've always, typically always done things that way. And we probably just swept it out of there under the rug, because everything else was so wonderful when we got together, right? So having selfish self empathy, and forgiveness and letting go and understanding look, I went into this eyes wide open. And now we need to find something that mutually works. Because this today, however much time maybe it's a month later, maybe it's years later, isn't working for me now. Secondly, the empathy and active listening is really internal, you've got to have that for yourself first to really unpack. Is it something you can live with going forward? Is it something that you can negotiate and find middle ground, or, you know, really learn about your own relationship language and their relationship language because that ties into communication style? So what do I mean by that? Well, there are five relationship languages. The first one is love and belonging and love and belonging, because they love and they're so other people focused, and they are consummate givers, the chances are, they're going to wait for ever before they bring it up. Because they love this person, they don't want to hurt their feelings, they don't mind going above and beyond making sure things are, you know, taken care of, and clean up after everyone the kids and the spouse and partner, but one day, it just becomes too much and they explode. But the way they explode is not through anger, it's through tears and just hurt, feel and feelings, and what I call an emotional, vomit kind of situation. And our partners, people around us who aren't emotional, don't know how to deal with that. So addressing it early on is key for the love and belonging, relationship language, power oriented or relationship language folks, they're very direct in their communication. And they're very task oriented. And usually they're, they already know what the best way to do it is. And they're going to be able to back it up with data and facts. So so so you can already see right love and belonging and power. If you're in that relationship dynamic, it's going to require a little quite a bit of empathy and active listening, not from your own relationship language framework, but from theirs. So love and belonging is going to have to become very unemotional get into this neutral place, get really clear, do their research, potentially, and come back with data as well, right? These are exaggerated examples to make the point. Then we've got the fun relationship language and for them, it's like what's the big deal, it's just a spoon in a drawer Come on, the dishwasher is going to work regardless, lighten up, which is going to take the other two off, right, the love and belonging, he's going to feel like their feelings are even hurt even more, they're going to feel unheard. And power is going to get probably a little bit more dictatorial or authoritative and more assertive with the data and the facts. And fun is going to start shutting down because there's no fun in it, right? There's no light heartedness in it. So and then you've got the freedom relationship language and they live in the moment like they are so present moment oriented and they're the ones that will put you know a dirty dish on a counter intending to take it to the to the kitchen and put it in the dishwasher or wash it. But because they live in the moment, they got distracted. They buy something and they're off doing something that gives them freedom and joy. Right. And then in comes one of these other relationship language oriented people, and they see the dish on their desk. And you know, where it goes from

Stephanie
there, what are you doing to me, right.

Dr. Dar Hawks
And then the fifth relationship language is the safety survival, right. So with them, you know, it could be that dishes on that table, and you've still got gunk, you know, food in it, and it's getting germy. And it's going to be so hard to clean and disinfect it and write, it becomes a bigger deal around safety and concern for each other's health and the dish being in its proper place. Because they're Ultra, you know, organized, they're probably going to be your favorite, favorite Klein or not, because they already have, you know, have it or can improve upon it. So you can already see the dynamics between the relationship languages and navigate guiding them, it's really important to understand each other's relationship language, so that you can, you can have empathy, and listen from that perspective of that lens instead of your own lens. And then share your perspective from your lens or relationship language.

Stephanie
So good. Oh, my gosh, so good. I know that you have the the my explanation of the five languages all were on your site, and with so if you're a listener, and you're like this is, this is amazing, then head on over to our site, which we'll share in just a second. But as you talk about these languages, is this something that can all learn languages? If you have to? Can they work together? Is it Are there some that will of course, work better than others,

Dr. Dar Hawks
that's like saying is, is there a human that works better than others, I tend to be very inclusive, I would say that the love and belonging, relationship language oriented people are a lot more tolerant, a lot more accepting, and probably stay too long in you know, relationships that just aren't going to work, or will just stay and try to find ways right? They're the peacemakers they're going to find ways the relationship language of fun if, if their relationship or who they're living with, it's just a drag every day, they're probably gonna, you know, exit, or they're going to not practice as much self care as needed. So you will notice that fairly quickly, with freedom and power relationship, language oriented people. So you know, we all have a healthy side, or can have the healthy side of the relationship languages, but we also have that shadow not good side that can get triggered. So, you know, if a power relationship oriented person is very dictatorial, they're very control oriented towards other people, then freedom and fun is just not going to work. And then I also see that safety and safety, survival and power oriented people can have conflict. And then safety, survival with fun because fun folks and freedom folks tend to be higher risk takers, and adventure oriented, you know, they're the ones that will step all the way to the edge of the Grand Canyon to look, meanwhile, love and belonging, safety, survival, we're freaking out, because we know about the winds, and we read 10 stories, right? About someone falling and getting blown off. So I wouldn't say there's any one or two that are best, I think we're dealing with people, and the fact that we are dynamic every day and understanding that today, I'm a different person than I was when you met me. And it's an opportunity to create, it's like we have a clean slate every morning when we wake up, right. And then as human beings, we all have all five relationship languages in us driving our choices, which then drive our actions, our behaviors, what we think, feel and say. And given that we also have our prime, a primary and a secondary, that really creates the best self in showing up for ourselves in our relationships. And then we have a shadow one. So being aware of what those are and what those are for the other person you're interacting with, will help you navigate in a really simple way. And also use and leverage that information. To have a discussion about choices. I feel like human beings and relationships and interpersonal communication. We don't talk about choices that much. So if we were to shift it to what, you know, here's what I'm choosing to do in this situation. Here's my ask of you, you know, and what choices can you make for you to be happier with whatever it is we're discussing. And for us to find a way to harmonize is key because choice is really about the action right? And when we're here that choice, I'm choosing to Do it's powerful language, because it gives you that that action oriented thing that we're looking for, we're looking for the result. And when we use the word I'm choosing it has that personal accountability energy to it.

Stephanie
Yeah, absolutely. And you feel like you own it, you own. It's yours, if you own it, and Good, the Bad and the Ugly is something that you chose to do that you have full control over right, as much as possible. And I also asked that question, because I loved Well, I love your perspective on this, that we wake up you know, as, as different human beings, dynamic human beings have personality, and that we all get shaped depending on our journey, our life journey and whatnot. And you know, it's not so black and white, I love your perspective over it, which is how we really connected and also the the part where if you get to learn just a little bit more about yourself and your partner, the pursuing love with but your partner more specifically for this conversation? It could, it could help so much, because I see that quite a bit where it's sometimes the talk about well, what happened, you know, what do you do when your partner is disorganized? And then I think, is it? Is it disorganization? Or is there more or their quirks and aspects of your partner that you're pointing out? That may be deeper? Let me bring in an expert. Let me bring in an expert because sometimes you're just like, you think that's what it is, it's the spoon that was put in wrong, but it's something a little deeper and getting to know your partner, and their love language in like, in your free framework, I think will go a long way.

Dr. Dar Hawks
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's pretty amazing. I've used this framework in my work with couples want one of my offers is I work with couples to help save their marriage and relationship over a weekend. And this is the foundational framework, and it's so powerful, because it removes the emotion from it, right? You and the upset and the interpretation and the assuming and the expectation from it, you're really using a level set of simple terminology and, and framing of a situation, you know a little bit more about the dishwasher story. Exactly. And it's very personal to me, I used to get so upset, because I'd fill the dishwasher that my husband would come on and just change it all around, pull stuff out, put it in the sink, and I had to do my own work, right, I use the framework on myself. And I accepted, you know what, I learned this from my mom, where did my what's my story or my interpretation of why my mom does it, without having to talk to my mom, there's no need in my situation to have done that. Or to show her a different way. You know, she's 6070 years old at that point. But shifting to a place of, you know, maybe there's something for me to learn here. Let me be curious and clean with my communication with my husband around that I said, you know, it really hurts my feelings when you do that. I'm not really doing it to hurt your feelings. I'm doing it because the efficiency and the mechanics and the engineering and how the water and you know, here's how the water, it's the dishes. And if you do it like this, it can't get in there and the soap can't get in there. Oh, I get it. So you know, out of curiosity show show me how you put that bowl in there. You know, I mean, that beginner's mind, and that curiosity can just solve a lot.

Stephanie
Yeah, like how and the why, like, Tell me more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, yeah, it's a really beautiful thing. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about now that we're starting to kind of unwind with the conversation because we could go on forever. So this is a whole like weekend retreat situation that we could be giving people but just to start on winding, what is something that you would want the listener to take from this conversation about? Relationships, communicating with your spouse, partner, a person you live with and share a space with? What is something that you would want them to take away? At the end of the day, if you're listening to this, because it's hitting a lot of your it's hitting, it's hitting home? What should people be thinking about or doing next,

Dr. Dar Hawks
definitely learn your relationship language and your shadow language. And as you mentioned, you know, on my website, there's a quiz there and you can learn all about it and get as much information as you want or not there. I think the important thing is really getting clear about whether you're trying to change your partner, right? And if you are then you know, get get additional help because there's something else going on there. And also understand how your past is affecting your, your present need, and also identifying what your need is, I think Secondly, there's a tendency to do things by yourself or just do it your own on your own. I hear many couples or even people in, you know, living with other people say just forget it all do it. Right. So that that is indicate indicative of, I want it done my way, and there's no other way to do it. So being open to unlimited possibilities, if the end goal is accomplished, whether you get there your way, are there ways in material as long as you know, the dishes, get out of the dishwasher and into the into the cabinets, right? Even if they outsource it. I asked you to do it, but you've just you asked my son to come you know, our son to come in and do it or you hired a special person to write be open. I think that's the that is crucial, open and curious and clean with your communication and where you are with what your needs are. Yeah,

Stephanie
so true. So good. Okay. All right. So we're starting to wrap up. I asked this question of all our guests, I love to learn what is your favorite magazine to read for either business, and our pleasure, and then why?

Dr. Dar Hawks
So I had to do some deep thinking on that one. It's like I had to go into my past, right, the past storybook. And it's Reader's Digest. In fact, I just renewed my subscription. It's like I had lost my way. I love that that little, you know, magazine. There's all kinds of funny, you know, clean jokes in it, short stories. And, you know, when I look at what introduced me to it, my dad used to buy me Reader's Digest books, and I loved the stories in those books. So yeah, that's one. And then I love Human Design and astrology, you know, just studying of patterns and energy and how that impacts human beings and life on our planet. So I'll read, whatever, you know, magazines are out there, or stories that happened to hit me. But I would say on a daily basis, it's Flipboard, the app on Flipboard, because it will write I can put in my interest, and then it'll pop up the relevant articles based on my topics of interest in that moment. And also, I have to say AI, like, AI is really fascinating to me right now from the relationship aspect of it and, and how that's going to impact us in the future as relational social creatures.

Stephanie
Oh, absolutely. Well, we're gonna have to dig a little deeper on that. On another conversation, because I just as fascinated as Yes. Especially with Yeah, with the, with these with communication styles, that power is going to change. Yeah. All right. So where can people reach you if they want to learn more about this super interesting topic, and all about you and the quiz and all the good stuff? Where can people reach you.

Dr. Dar Hawks
So you can go to Dr. Door hawks.com. And if you type in Dr. Door hogs in your search engine, you're going to find all my stuff there. But I definitely invite you to go take the quiz. And you can do that at relationship quiz.me Or at Dr. Door hawks.com. And there'll be a packet of information that goes with the quiz, and I think it'll be super fun and beneficial.

Stephanie
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Very interesting. And I'm excited to hopefully people will share with us what they thought about the conversation, and that you all go do the quiz. So head on over there. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing

Decluttering Benefits.  We are going in depth with each of the 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything. In this episode, we are focusing on Step 3, which is the Decluttering Step in an organizing and productivity project for a happier, healthier life.

In this episode we talk about:

• Importance of decluttering 
• Practical tips when decluttering
• Questions to ask yourself

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

Episode 8: Step 1: Assess. The Power of Planning Ahead

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/8-step-1-assess-the-power-of-planning-ahead/

Episode 14: Step 2: Step 2: Sorting.  Strategies for Sorting Your Things

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/14-step-2-sorting-strategies-for-sorting-your-things/

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger.  For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

There is a famous poem by Nelson Mandela, titled letting go. And in one of the sentences, it goes something like this. To let go doesn't mean to stop carrying. The poem continues on with it means I can't do it for someone else. But here for the purposes of our podcast today, I've wanted to talk about letting go, because we're talking about decluttering, which is step three of our seven steps of organizing almost anything. It's a very important step in the process of organizing. And the reason I brought in the poem by Nelson Mandela in that line in particular, is because when we talk about decluttering, generally people think about throwing things away, someone will make me throw my stuff away, I will have to throw my stuff away, or let go or sell it, when maybe you're not completely ready to do so. Well, if that's the case, that's not what decluttering means. decluttering simply means to let go of something that is no longer serving you to let go, doesn't mean you stop caring about the item.

It just means that in the right now, and in the future, that item is no longer serving you. And instead, it is cluttering your space, your mind your area. So as we start this episode, I want to emphasize how kind we need to be with ourselves about this process. That decluttering shouldn't be a process that anyone is making you do that when you go through this process, you're understanding that this is for the greater good of whatever your goal is, you may be downsizing, maybe it's time to move, maybe it is because you are holding on to items that are causing more mental strain, maybe more emotional heartaches. And so I want us to be kind with ourselves when we go through this process and step because it's a really important step to go through. But also, I understand how hard it can be to let go. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go.

Okay, so let's get started with today's topic of decluttering. So the decluttering phase or step is step three of our seven steps of organizing almost anything. And if you're just tuning in to this particular episode, just know that this is part of a series, there are two other episodes along well, actually three episodes alongside this one, there is the overview of the seven steps of organizing almost anything which I will put in the show notes. And then there are steps one and steps two. So you can do a catch up there, you can listen to this episode on its own. But it is helpful to listen to the other two, to get some sense of where we are. So as a quick reminder, our seven steps of organizing almost anything is a framework we like to use that the organized plumbing go to help us have a roadmap. It also helps us guide our community through the organizing process, because when there's a step by step by step, it just makes it easier to follow. So we created the seven steps of organizing almost anything framework to help you follow along. Now another reminder is that you don't have to do every single one of these steps together at the same time. They are designed so that you can do them each individually. Or you can do them all in one city or one day or one project. But technically they all are each they're an individual part of the project. Now, the seven steps are divided into three phases.

Step one is phase one, steps two through five are phase two. And then step six, and seven are phase three. Phase one should be done with step one. And that should start the process. You don't want to miss the assess step, then steps two through five can be done in any order. So we are talking through step three right now the decluttering phase, but depending on your end goal is which one of the steps you will do first. So for instance, we already talked about sorting in step two, and the last one of the last episodes. But technically you can do decluttering first and then sorting. So steps 234 And five can be interchanged depending on your end game. Like I said, if you're in a hurry, if you're in a hurry, because you're downsizing, you're moving, you're under a time crunch, then you probably are not going to put a lot of effort in the sorting phase because he just don't have the time. And so decluttering for you will come first but at some point you should do sorting, and then we're going to talk about finding a home for your items and then finding the container. And so for instance, if you're aesthetically inclined, or you want your space to be aesthetically pleasing, and that's your number one priority, then for you, the container step will come first. And then you will declutter, because you will need to fit everything into the containers into the aesthetically pleasing area you're you're looking to create.

So that is why steps two through five are interchangeable. Okay, let's finally get to the good stuff decluttering. We are identifying decluttering is removing the items that are no longer needed, no longer used and occupying space. And the goal here is to make room for items that you do need that you are going to use and opening up the space to create some lot life to the space so that you can invite items and breathing room into the area, whether it's your digital area, or your physical area. decluttering has a lot of benefits. And some of those are psychological benefits. And some of those benefits that are the mental benefits are reducing stress and increased focus. A cluttered space can lead to frustration, wasted time, and even a loss of motivation to do anything associated with that space. I mean, how many times have you opened up that very cluttered closet, and then closed it back up again, because you're overwhelmed.

It's visually distracting, it's overwhelming, and you don't even know where to start. So those are some of the psychological benefits of doing a decluttering. Or doing the decluttering phase and doing it? Well. Some of the health benefits, of course of decluttering is you're reducing some of those allergens that get accumulated because when you have a lot of stuff, unless you're cleaning it all the time, and you're dusting it, and you are a very tidy person, when it comes to the cleaning part of it, they're probably creating a mess, and you're probably breathing in all of those allergens and whatnot. So that is one health benefit. Now, this is always a reminder, I am not talking about the people who are collectors, who are, you know, that's not we don't consider that to be clutter. In this space. Clutter is where when you're again, hosting items that are no longer serving you. Being a collector and whatnot is a different type of category that we will talk about in another episode. And of course, when it comes to cluttering or decluttering, then all these other health benefits can come into the picture. Because if you're neurodivergent, it probably could be something that is no longer distracting you. If you are in a place where it's so cluttered, you can't even get a good rest, then the health benefits there will be immense because you will have an area for you to rest and for you to visually visibly be able to take a deep breath and not feel so overwhelmed. And of course, there are highlights to declutter you because it can save you money.

When you know what you have when you put it all together. And then you start letting go and keeping only the things that are serving you, you be will be able to create more space, it'll be easier to find what you need, and possibly even save money because you're no longer buying doubles because they're not stuffed somewhere in a cabinet or a drawer. Or even for your digital space. It's not you know, you're not recreating a document because you've hid it somewhere in a sub sub sub sub folder that you can no longer find. So it really saves you money and time when you declutter. So let's talk about preparing for the decluttering phase. First, let's talk about the importance of setting realistic goals and timeliness for decluttering. This is one of those steps that gets missed. Be realistic about your time, when you are motivated, maybe to declutter, like you're ready to to declutter your garage or to like to get at your closet, right. And you have only one day to do it. But your closet is immense. Be realistic about that.

If you're not sure how to measure time, when it comes to those types of projects, maybe ask a friend, this is maybe where you where you can hire a professional to kind of help you gauge how long a project could take. And that way, you're not being set up for failure because when you start something and then you can't even finish it within an appropriate amount of time before you get burned out, then you know, you're not going to have a healthy association with decluttering or organizing. So we want you to be set up for success and have a good gauge of how long something is going to take. decluttering also can be very emotional. So I want you to start preparing mentally and emotionally for the process. Especially if you don't do this step often. If you're not decluttering like every so often, you may start To uncover items that you haven't seen for a long time, that have been hidden or forgotten about, and it may bring up some memories that you may not want to uncover in the moment or that you were not prepared to do so. So I just want you to know that that could happen. It's completely normal. But if you get caught up in that situation, maybe have a backup plan where maybe there's a friend or a family, or a coach or therapist you're working with, that can guide you through the process, in the event that you do come that something emotional comes up, or that you get too deep into the emotional side of decluttering.

The other thing I want us to prepare for is having a plan of what you're going to do with the items you decide to let go of. So in step one of the seven steps, there's like I said, there's a episode about that. We talk about finding your why. Because when you find your why, which I know can be a little cheesy sometimes, but it's not. Because when you find your purpose, and you find your why as to why you're organizing and why you're finally tackling this project, it'll guide you through the decluttering step. Because whenever you get caught up in the emotional side of decluttering, or overwhelmed with the stuff that you're letting go of, you can always go back to your why like, Oh, that's right. The reason I want to do this is because I finally want to simplify my space, or Oh, that's right, because I have to move next month, and I have to get this done. So you know what, this is the time to make those hard decisions. Let's let it go. So going back to your wife will guide you through the decluttering. And most of the other steps, but especially the decluttering phase, have a plan for your donation items, donating or selling items, really.

So those items can be given given back to the community. And you can even make a little money off of them if you decide to sell them. So have a plan with some of the nonprofits, you you that are special to you that you want to donate to, so that you already have them in mind. So when you're going through your stuff, then you will have if you have maybe a children's charity, you know the toys, if you are decluttering toys, then you will know that they're going to a charity that is near and dear to your heart. And it'll make it easier to let it go. Same thing with the places you're donating. If you kind of know where you'd like to excuse me sell your items, then you will have a good idea of what they're looking for. Like if you're going to a local online marketplace versus like an online one, you kind of will have it you will have an idea with when we're going through all of your stuff. And then for broken or damaged items just have a box, of course, because it's just best to dispose of them properly.

Those are not ideal things to be give donating or selling. Nobody wants a broken dirty item. It's not fair to them, because well, it's no use to them. Unless of course you're donating to somebody that specifically wanted a broken something. But for the most part, just dispose of them in the trash. And be mindful, of course have expiration dates, and get rid of anything that may have expired. And especially in your bathroom and kitchen areas. You don't need to be keeping those so just have also a trash pile. So it's the sell giveaway, but also the trash pile. Okay, so let's talk about efficient decluttering look decluttering you can do it however you'd like. Okay, but I am going to give you some tips on what I would suggest, especially if you haven't done decluttering. And like if you haven't done a decluttering project in a long time or you have not gone through your stuff in a long time. And this applies for both digital and physical items. Starting small is really important. Start small and focus in on one area at a time. Because that way you're not overwhelmed so easy's one of the mistakes that I see people make is that they go big immediately. Like they just open the closet and they just take everything out.

That can be very overwhelming because now you know you have to put it back. Now, again, if your goal if you're under a time crunch because your goal is you know, you have like a very tight deadline, that's going to look a little different for you. But at least just think about starting small or having a plan before you go all in and take everything out. This is where you're introducing, if you're going through through our steps, the way that we have them lined up where this is step three, because Step two was sorting. This is where you will go through all of your sorted items. So now that everything's sorted under Step two, you will now go through them. And if you are going through that step, then you go straight to the unit, you'll have three sections to keep throw away and give away and so go through all the sorted items and then start sub sorting now by these three categories. At some point you will need to sort to put it back so Even if you started with decluttering first and you sorted later, you know, at some point, you're gonna have to sort through this stuff to put them back. So just know that even if you started this step three, first, at some point, you will need to sort. Another method that you could use when you're decluttering, that will help you with this process to be more efficient is a timer. For some of you, you will have many of you know about the Pomodoro method. But if you don't know, it's a method that where you time yourself in certain intervals that you can look them up, I believe they're 25, five, with a break, like 25 minutes, and then a five minute break. And then you do that round three times. And then after the third round, you take a longer break, and then you kind of do that over.

So the Pomodoro is a great method, there's a couple of other timer methods out there that I'm going to do a podcast episode about. So be on the lookout for that, but choose whatever method you'd like. But do plan out some breaks in between, and also have water and or something for you to drink and something for you to eat like snacks throughout the process. Because decluttering does take emotional and physical energy. So I want you to make sure you're hydrated and that you have your energy kept up with some healthy, you know, some treats some, like an orange or something like that, that will just keep the momentum going. Okay, so as you're going through all the steps in the decluttering, naturally, you will come across items that will make you question things like should I keep it? So here are four questions that I would suggest that you think about. And again, all of these, this whole step is outlined over. So if you if you're like listening on the radio, while you're driving or something like that, and you don't have time to take notes, either come back to the episode, take notes that way. Or you can go over to our online shop, which is the organized Flamingo dot shop. And you can just download our guides so that you can just download them and have them handy because I know some of you are more of a visual note taker type of learner, and you'd like to have the steps by steps just written out for you for you to follow. And so we do have that available for you. Okay, so these are the four questions I would ask, every time you're in a conundrum with your items. Ask yourself, when was the last time I use this?

Number two? Is it broken? or damaged? Number three, do I have duplicates of this? Four? Do I have space for this in my current space or the one that I'm going to? So those four questions tend to give you some permission to let it go or to keep it or to make a quick decision, really. So that's what these four questions are meant to do. So with that being said, I think your setup for this for this step, I won't overwhelm you too much. This is kind of these are supposed to be short and sweet. And the decluttering phase can be like I said, overwhelming, it can take a while. But if you have the right support system, and you've got yourself set up, you will, it'll make the whole process easier. And it will make you go a little bit faster, and not be completely surprised over the fact that this process was way longer and more draining than you ever thought.

So I hope that by me outlining this step you will have it'll leave you with some comfort knowing that okay, I'm prepared. I got this, I can do this. So remember that decluttering can be overwhelming and emotional. That's okay in that might be very normal. So be kind to yourself and remember that this process is all about what you want your space to feel like going forward. With the little effort and mindfulness. You can declutter with confidence in zero guilt. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized flamenco. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here are full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Have you organizing

A sit down with Kristy Krugh, a professional digital marketer who explains to us the pros and cons of subscribing to email lists. If your goal is to have inbox zero and have the most organized inbox ever, this episode is for you. This is a great episode to listen to before decluttering and going on an unsubscribing frenzy.

In this episode we talk about:

• The pros and cons of unsubscribing to email lists
• Fully understand what happens when you subscribe and unsubscribe so you can make educated decision over your inbox
• Avoid getting spam emails and protect you privacy when subscribing to email lists
• Best practices for managing and organizing a large number of email subscriptions

Where to find Kristy Krugh online: 

Web: https://www.wickedtacticalmarketing.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristy-krugh-chief-marketing-ninja/

Shop: https://itswickedtactical.com/killer-social-profile-copy-kit

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the transcript:

Stephanie
Hello friends welcome to another episode of the organized and productive Podcast. Today we are talking about the pros and cons of subscribing to email lists. So if you're tired of constantly seeing spam emails, and a huge number of unread messages in your inbox, this episode is for you. But before I introduce our guests for today, I want to talk about what this episode is not for. This particular episode is not about the tactical how to step by step of organizing your inbox, we have a different episode for that. We also have our decluttering organized guides, which can take you through step by step if you're looking to organize your inbox in a nice pretty manner, especially if you're aiming for inbox zero. So we do have solutions for that. But this particular episode is more about like very specifically talking about the behind the scenes as to why you are getting all of these emails from companies. What happened to begin with, like how did you end up in that email system for these companies and maybe your favorite creator. Because at the Organize Flamingo, we believe that a smart consumer and shopper will make better decisions on their organizing and productivity systems in the long run. So we want to give you the behind the scenes first, over why you're even in this system so that you can go ahead and make decisions based off of that our email inbox is supposed to serve as a tool for receiving and sending messages, right. And the problem arises when important messages from family, school doctors, etc. They get mixed up in the clutter, causing overwhelming confusion, because then you can't actually find the messages that are important. So what I thought we should do is have a conversation separate from the step one, step two, this is how you should organize your inbox or tip top 1010 tips on how to organize your inbox with these tools, we should have a separate conversation that talks about how you ended up in these email systems where you're getting all of these emails to begin with, because an educated consumer and shopper is going to be able to make educated decisions based on what they know. And if you don't even know how you got into the system, then you will come back to the same clutter over and over again in your inbox. And I'm trying to help you avoid that. So today we have a digital marketing expert Christie crew, who is the Chief Marketing ninja over at Wicked tactical marketing. She's also the owner, she's so smart and Ken is going to help us understand why marketing teams why companies are sending you these messages to begin with. So she's going to shed a light on why you receive unwanted emails and how to manage them effectively and efficiently. It's not always about companies trying to sell you something or cluttering your inbox. That's not what their goal is all the time. I mean, sometimes yes, some of them aren't just through spam, but let's gain a marketer's perspective and become an informed consumer, shall we? Let's get started. Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well then let's go. Hello, Christy, it is so good to have you on today. I'm so excited about this conversation, because I've been teasing this for a really long time. So this is one of those conversations that I feel like I needed to benefit from as well selfishly a little bit, but that a lot of our listeners have been waiting for because email is just such an important part of our communication system nowadays, but it's becoming overwhelming. So I am so excited about this conversation to meet you, and to have you here. So as always, everyone, we just start with the conversation here and we just dive in. And let's get to it. So let's start with the title of the conversation is all about the pros and cons of subscribing to email lists. Let's just start with a one on one PST, let us know what does it mean to give a company or your favorite personality, your email list or your private information where they will be communicating with you.

Kristy Krugh
First of all, thank you for having me and I'm Deke out on email as well and organization. So I'm really excited about this conversation. So there are particularly in the US there are can spam laws is literally the set of laws that governs email marketing. And in order for someone to use your contact details and reach out to you either via SMS, text message marketing or email. They have to have your expressed permission to do so and a lot of Companies will take a purchase that you make as expressed permission. And sometimes that that works, sometimes it doesn't, technically, but basically, any time you put your email address out there, or your phone number out there to a business entity, you can pretty well expect that they are going to attempt to communicate with you via email, and they do have the right to do that.

Stephanie
Okay, so now that we got that, the what it is, I think a lot of people have questions or so many questions about this, but I asked the community what their common questions were, and one of them was okay, so I get it, I, I subscribe to something I give them permission, either by a purchase, or I clicked yes. Or whatever, give them my information, is this forever? Is this going to be a forever thing? Am I now in this system, forever time until I decide not to and then unsubscribe, which we will talk about, but does this mean it's a forever.

Kristy Krugh
So in terms of your data BD company lock your data, if you unsubscribe. So for example, you know, you hit the unsubscribe button, and you never hear from that retailer, again, you will have your contact details still have to be stored in their database. Sometimes the system if you purchase from them again, will actually renew your permissions. Technically, that shouldn't happen. But there are systems that just don't keep track of that. The other thing that folks should know is that this is not a foolproof system. So if you unsubscribe and I get this, I'm actually kind of merciless when it comes to my inbox. And when I unsubscribe to something, if I get an email from that retailer, or you know, business, again, six months down the line, you can tell they're like doing a new campaign or something, and they just pulled their entire database, that's actually illegal, but it does happen. And the best thing you can do is to report the email as spam before you unsubscribe again. And that will get them kind of dinged within the email system, and also potentially prevent them from being able to give kind of an another layer of protection for your inbox against that particular sender. But yes, it's very possible that somebody you give your email address to will keep it, it's also possible that they will sell it.

Stephanie
Yes. And that's actually how we got to this conversation, not the selling but just the the overwhelm from the community from people who want to get more organized, like, Hey, I keep on subscribing. I keep deleting, and they just keep coming back. Or I just want to delete them all, is that the right thing to do? And so this is how this conversation really started, right? Like when I reached out to Christie because I was like, Okay, let's give some people information, knowledgeable information from a professional that understands the back end that so that our listeners can make decisions based on facts and not just emotional, getting rid of decluttering. And then not understanding the repercussions of it like the pros and the cons. So you mentioned unsubscribing and what it means to unsubscribe to unsubscribe, you're trying to get out of the system and get no more communications from that company, person personality. What are some of the cons of doing that? Like? Let's talk about actually pros and cons. Let's talk about the pros first. Okay, the listener right now is feeling overwhelmed with their inbox, they're ready to unsubscribe, let's do it. Let's give them a little bit of like, Hey, okay, these are some of the pros, they consideration. These are some of the cons take consideration, they make a decision based on this. So let's give them some pros and cons.

Kristy Krugh
So I mean, who doesn't want Inbox Zero? I feel is there a bigger pro than Inbox Zero, you know, is that so exciting? I do think that kind of in the in the sub pro category, you could make it so that your primary inbox is zero, but that some of these emails could be going into a specific folder. Maybe you have a professional development folder or a recipes folder and you want to go in once a week. Look at them decide what you want to keep and get rid of but your main inbox is still you know is still clean. So there there is a pro to staying subscribed if the information is really relevant to you and exciting for you. And or, again, if we're talking about a retailer or somebody that you shop with frequently, you love a deal. Then there are ways to to still stay subscribed, but make things a little more organized.

Stephanie
So let's talk about some of these funnels that companies have with email. And the reason I want to talk about it is because I want to equipped our listeners with, with the tools so that they can make decisions one way or another. So some of these pros and cons. So I know some of the pros, yes, Inbox Zero and all that good stuff. But if you don't read or open some of these messages, some of these companies, right, have advanced funnels or ways to start filtering you as the consumer to a different category, like, okay, Stephanie is no longer opening our emails, so we're not going to send them the VIP emails anymore, or the whatever. Like if, if I was a consumer, you know what, however you feel about marketing good, bad or ugly, I think there is some good about the marketing world. So marketers are trying their hardest to give you what you need, or want and are looking for. And so you as a consumer want, you do want to make sure that you tell the company Hey, I still I like you. I'm just I'm not interested right now. So what are some ways that people can can find that happy medium, where I'm overwhelmed right now? It's not that I don't like you, or the company, or the influencer or the personality? It's just that it's me. It's not you. It's me, not you. How can they merge that? Like, can they put the can they give, you know, maybe to email? I know, a lot of people have to like two emails once one is for their, for more of their, you know, coupons, or personalities and things like that. And then they have like their serious email address. Some people have their inboxes. So you talked so earlier, you talked about that? Like, let's talk about that a little bit? Like how can people tell the company, hey, I'm interesting, just not right now. So they're not totally off the list. They're not missing out over good deals, or communications from their favorite companies. But they don't want, they just don't want to feel overwhelmed anymore.

Kristy Krugh
The ability to do that is really rooted in how the company is managing their email marketing system. So the most sophisticated email marketing system that you'll see is, if you have ever gone to sign up for for something, and it's not, they don't just ask you for your email address. They say, you know, let's say it's a clothing retailer, because that's just a really easy thing to talk about. So they'll say, are you looking for women's men's kids, you know, vacation, where you know what they'll ask you, when you sign up? What is it that you want to hear about? That's an indication that the company is using segmentation and what you just spoke about the idea that, hey, I want to hear about certain things, or I want to hear about certain things at certain times. But I don't want to hear about these other things. That is the the technical term for that is actually segmentation. It's really advantageous for companies to use segmentation because they're open and click rates are obviously a lot higher, when they're reaching out to people with the information they asked to hear about, right. It's like, you know, if you've got a kiddo in school, in sixth grade, you don't want to be hearing about what's going on in the high school. Right? It just makes sense. So a company you'll know if at the beginning, when you go to sign up, if they ask you some questions about what you want to hear about, that's a company that you may be able to, to negotiate with, in terms of, hey, you know, I only want to hear about this or or that topic, because they clearly have some type of segment segmentation or tagging system. The other thing for folks to note, and this is what you're identifying is really kind of, I feel like we're going into the into the cons section here, right? The con of unsubscribing is that for many companies, you are unsubscribing from every piece of email they may ever send you. So that's really something to think about. And I have a really good example of this with one of my clients, and they, their company name is called cascade relays. And they are a very fun company. So they are a company that that organizes and puts on Team relay races, like 10, KS, five K's like three day events, and they do those I'm in the Pacific Northwest. So they do those here. And they have about 30,000 people on their email list. And when I first started working with them if somebody unsubscribed it was their only option was simply to say I don't want to hear from you, which also meant they would not get any of the race communications for any of the races they signed up for work. So a really smart company is going to have the option of you getting, you know, for example, emails related to your purchase, not transactional emails, but other, you know, other things, maybe support emails, or, you know, have you started your course yet that you bought those types of emails, versus a real marketing email, which is really trying to sell you something. So when you get an email, and you we all do that auto scroll right, right down to the bottom to the unsubscribe section, there is often a link that actually is next to the unsubscribe, that's says, update preferences. And I feel like now that I'm saying that everybody's like, Oh, I've totally seen that. And so when you click on that, occasionally, and I just did an audit for another perspective client and clicked on that button, and I got every group they've ever made of people, so they have not used that properly. But for a company that's using it, right, like cascade relays, you click on the update preferences button, and it will say, I want only information related to the race I'm registered for, I would like information on cascade lakes relay, I would like information on the St. Patty's Day dash all of their different events. So folks can can select any of those. And that then helps the company to to be able to really target those folks and not send them correspondences they don't want and make sure they get the things they do want. So that was a long answer to that question. But

Stephanie
not at all it was, I learned something new. Yes. And I know, we also have a lot of companies like small companies and big companies that listen to our podcasts. So this actually, you know, I know this is more for the everyday person to get more organized and productive. But I think this is also good to note for the you companies that are communicating with your community, just know that give them options, you know, give them a little bit of options, so that they don't feel overwhelmed as a so back to as the regular regular person, like myself. Also know that most inboxes now, our smart inboxes, like the Googles, like the anything that XYZ you want to talk about, they do have options for you to mute people, users people's emails, that you're just not in the mood to listen to right now, or to read or to open, or whatever it may be. So just know that you do also have those options, you know, to just put them in a different inbox in a different category. So that if you're not ready to tell the company, you want to unsubscribe or you're not ready to communicate with them, but it's more of a you, you can also take that step. Okay, so let's talk about if you want to, if you want to unsubscribe or change change settings for like, all at once, somebody's listening, and they're like, Okay, my problem is, I have so many emails, I have 14,000 emails, I'm about to just delete them all. Unsubscribe, can I just unsubscribe from everything? Is that an option for someone? Can they go somewhere, to unsubscribe to everything?

Kristy Krugh
So I actually don't know the answer to that question. So I have used a an, it's an app based program called Chuck. And it actually has a little I don't know if you've heard of it, it has a little I think a chipmunk as the mascot or whatever. And, and that will allow you to basically merge all of your inboxes and be able to search by certain retailers to delete them. And then I think there is probably also an unsubscribe, that's kind of a newer, a newer tech feature. But you know, doing it as things come in, but the reality is, the good news is of those 14,000 emails, you probably have hundreds of emails from the same businesses. Right? So really, I think in terms of how we're talking about folks already being overwhelmed, right? Like, you don't have to my advice would be you don't have to take next weekend, you know, indoors at your phone or your computer to do all of this right to get everything done right now. But if you're mindful of this, as emails are coming in, and you unsubscribe, you're really actually taking care of hundreds of emails, right? Because now you're never going to hear from those folks again. And you could always just search and then delete, you know, just out of your general inbox. Anybody you don't want to hear from again, and like I said, you can unsubscribe and then really if you did not provide your contact details and I as a small business owner, I get the solicitations are Unbelievable. The cold emailing, not quite as bad as cold DMing. But it's pretty nice right up there. The those unsolicited emails I get are just crazy. So you I always unsubscribe if it's available. But before I do that I reported as spam, which is just if only if it really is spam. If you know you provided your information to this individual or business, you really shouldn't report it as spam. Because that really, it has really severe consequences for the business.

Stephanie
Yeah, and that's what another reason I wanted to have this conversation because not all marketing is bad. It's a company trying to communicate and give you value. And hopefully they're doing it as best they can, that they don't want you to unsubscribe, they do, they want to meet as many of your expectations as they can. So you as a consumer, you as a shopper, just need to be smart about it and tell them what you need, what you're looking for. Because not everyone is out to, to, you know, not everybody's emailing you about sending them a million dollars or, you know, get rich, quick and 10 days, like not as I know, there's some spammy ones out there. But not all businesses are out to get you, they truly are just looking for the best way to give you value. So if you're feeling overwhelmed about your inbox, just know that there's tools out there to diminish that overwhelm. And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You know, you don't have to penalize the company, they're just trying to do, hopefully, good with you and trying to give you some value. So Okay. All right. So as we start to unwind here, let's have some conversations. three or three last questions are What would you like people to take away from this whole conversation about the pros and cons of email, into unsubscribing, and things like that,

Kristy Krugh
I think, you know, the best way to manage your unsubscribing situation is to be thoughtful, you know, like, so many things with organization, you know, be thoughtful about what you're bringing in, particularly for folks who you know, are one of your obsessions is learning tools, I wouldn't really know anything about that, personally, to be able to bring that example of, you know, if you are just a an over consumer of paid courses, or lead magnets, you know, and freebies, you need to understand that you know, only 10% or less of people who buy a course that actually finish it. So this is something to really think about. If you're just willy nilly throwing your contact details out there, there might be an opportunity to, you know, use your gut a little bit better on the front end. And and I would say use your gut on the back end to you know, if you're just done hearing about something, you can always go back to a company and sign up again, or send them a specific email and say, Hey, do you have any options, to to segment me in this way, I have a, somebody who I follow, who just has the most amazing information, but I get really overwhelmed by the number of emails that I get when they're in a launch. And it's a program that's just like not right for me. So don't hesitate to maybe reach out if you're feeling really committed, but you're also a little annoying. So you know, a business would appreciate somebody actually reaching out and saying, Look, I don't want to unsubscribe, I don't want to put you in a situation where you can't contact me. But I really need to not be hearing about this anymore. Can you snooze me? You know, or can you segment me or tag me somehow in your systems that I don't hear about this. And the same thing happens with you know, we haven't talked at all about nonprofits. But for anybody that's actually my very in my past life. I was in nonprofit for 15 years in fundraising. And you know, you shouldn't feel badly about communicating about the type of communication you want, right? If you want to be an anonymous donor, you should be able to be an anonymous donor if you don't want mail from that you know, entity you should I'm dating myself now you should be able to say I don't want male right? So to just feel empowered to have a conversation, particularly if you just need a little fine tuning. But do know that it is possible that that business doesn't have that capability, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Stephanie
Absolutely. So good. Okay, all right. A question that we ask all of our guests What is your favorite magazine to read for either business and our pleasure? And why? Well I

Kristy Krugh
love clean eating magazine which has gone through like so many iterations but I just love Yeah, I love I'm I have a lot of Italian lineage and so following recipes is really challenging for me. So I appreciate their format for some reason, is very helpful. because

Stephanie
they do have a very, they do. They're very unique. You're right. They make it very easy to follow. Yeah, their digital side as well. So yes, yeah, yes. Okay. And lastly, and also, most importantly, where can people find you to learn more? I mean, I know you're more on the business side getting help with digital marketing and whatnot. But if there's listeners out there that have their own business, or would like to recommend you as somebody that can maybe help a business, get the hint, and work with email marketing, maybe like, Hey, I heard the conversation with Christie or read the organized Flamingo, and some of our tips you might want to take. So where do they find you?

Kristy Krugh
Where can we afford this podcast? So many places. So thank you so much for asking. So my, my name is Christy Crewe. And my last name is Kay RUGH. And so it's very easy to find on the web. My company name is wicked tactical marketing. And my website is wicked, tactical marketing.com. And you can find me under that name or my name on LinkedIn. That's the place I love to connect with other business owners and of course, you know, share all sorts of content about digital marketing.

Stephanie
Awesome. Well, thank you again, Christy, so much for joining us. And until next time, thank you. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.

Sorting Strategies.  We are going in depth with each of the 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything. In this episode, we are focusing on Step 2, which is the Sorting Step in an organizing and productivity project. 

Apple Podcast App | Spotify

In this episode we talk about:

• Why learning how to sorting is an important skill 
• The importance of categorizing items in a way that isn’t too complicated
• The effort you put into sorting items now, will pay off later when searching for items
• Examples of Main Sorting Categories and Subcategories

Mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 1: 7 Steps to Organizing (almost) Anything

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/7-steps-to-organizing/

Episode 8: Step 1: Assess. The Power of Planning Ahead

https://theorganizedflamingo.com/8-step-1-assess-the-power-of-planning-ahead/

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger.  For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

Review full show notes and resources at https://theorganizedflamingo.com/podcast

Connect with Stephanie

https://www.instagram.com/theorganizedflamingo/

Review the Transcript:

I think many of you will relate to this. It's easy to accumulate a lot of stuff over the years, and not even be aware that it has piled up. One day, you just look around and realize how much stuff you really have. Whether it's digital stuff or physical stuff, it doesn't matter what day you look under your bed, or you opened up your digital files and realized, oh, my gosh, I have a lot of stuff. Okay, now what, all right, you're ready to start decluttering, maybe you're ready to engage in an organizing journey, like, become more organized? Well, that's great. But before you do that, you need to sort through the items that you want to keep that you want to let go of that you want to donate or sell, and you need to figure that out, you most likely are not going to be throwing everything away. That's a topic for another day. That's a different type of organizing and situation. So for most of us, it's when one day you're just done, you're over it, or you need to downsize and you know, you have to let go of stuff. But before you start letting go of stuff, you do need to declutter, and you do need to sort through the items. So that is what we're talking about today. Welcome to today's episode, where we are talking all about sorting, some strategies, and some tips that I have for you about the importance of knowing how to sort through your things, and some practical tips that I think will help you along the way. Welcome to the organized and productive Podcast with your organized Flamingo. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go. Okay, so before we dig too deep into the sorting conversation, let me just give a quick reminder and disclaimer for anybody that may be listening to the podcast and just joined us during this particular episode. And also a reminder for our community, that sorting is part of our seven steps to organizing almost anything process. So here at the organized Flamingo, we have a seven step process. And we do outline it in an overview episode, which is episode one of this podcast. And so we will put it down in the show notes for you to quickly access that, I would recommend that you listen to that really quick episode first, and then come back to this one. And or go to step one after that one. And then step two, which is this one. So in our seven steps of organizing almost anything, we outlined seven different steps that get you to an organized and sustainable organized system. And we the seven steps are not necessarily all new on their own. But the way we framed them is particular to us because we do it kind of in three phases. Step one is its own phase, you should always start with step one, which is the assess phase. And there's a whole podcast episode devoted to that. So feel free to listen to that steps two through five, can be interchanged, depending on what your end goal is. So for example, if your end goal is to have an aesthetically pleasing space, then you might be starting with the container step first, which we will talk about later in another episode, instead of the sorting stuff, which we're talking about today. Because for you, the most important thing is for it to look pretty to be visually appealing. But for other people, there may be downsizing, they're moving, they don't need it to look pretty, they just quickly need to let go of stuff because they're downsizing or they're moving and go through that process. So for them. And for you that then you want to start with the decluttering phase, which is the next step that we will talk about now. So it really depends on what your end goal is. And that's why this second phase of the seven steps are there seven steps, three phases, we're on phase two, the four steps within phase two can be interchanged. We just happen to talk about Saudi next because it's the natural, the most natural part most people have when they're trying to get organized. They're trying to figure out okay, what do they have first, before they start decluttering before they start buying the bins and the baskets and the system and, and getting new shelving like that usually comes in that order. And that's why we did we're talking about it this way. But just so you know, steps two through five can be interchanged. If you're more of a visual learner and this podcast, this particular episode is just becoming more overwhelming, head over to our shop, which is the organized Flamingo dot shop. We do have guides there. And we outline all of this for you for all of you who are visual learners, you can just quickly download our guides and then that will outline the phases there because we all learn a little bit differently right? And but if you're an auditory learner, like a lot of you are, then this podcast episodes, just take notes. And hopefully this will help you visualize the entire process. Okay, so now that we've got that out of the way, we're in step two. And because these can be interchanged, I am just talking about how, for most people, sorting comes next. Okay, and the reasons why sorting comes next. And so let's talk about the importance of sorting. When you categorize your items, you can see how much of each item you have, and make, say, a lot easier to decide what you want to keep up with what you want to let go of. So that's why categorizing your items, which is another word for sorting is so important. And a very important skill to have, which I'm going to do a quick sidebar, but a very important one about categorizing and sorting and the importance of this skill. There is a book by an author named Anna Crowley reading, and the book is called Google it a history of Google, how to students his mission, to organize the internet changed the world. If you have not read this book, and you're into organizing and productivity on your personal time as well, not just because you're trying to get more organized than this book is for you. It's a really good book, it talks about really, obviously, the founders of Google it, how it came about, but how important it is to learn the skill of organizing and more particular sorting, because when you know how to sword, then naturally, you will also learn how to look for things in time. So eventually, when you start practicing and creating that habit, it becomes easier and easier. So let me read to you a short part of the summary of the book, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started out as to Stanford through college students with a wild idea. They were going to organize the world's information. From that one deceptively simple goal, they created one of the most influential and innovative companies in the world. I mean, how cool is that? And although you may be at this point, thinking, Stephanie, why are we talking about Google, I just want to organize my pantry or my closet, or my digital files, I get it. But that's just for me to outline and highlight how important and how useful the skill of categorizing, of sorting of organizing is to your organizing project and mission and journey as a whole. I mean, yes, you can take it all the way to creating a tool that will help the masses to find things, like information like Google, yes, you can take it to that level. But this is my way of just saying that it's very important skill. So don't miss out on this particular step. Okay, so now let's bring it back to real life, to the everyday person like you and me. And let's talk about sorting in your own personal life. So we talked about the importance of sorting. Now let's talk about examples of how we can go about this. In the sorting step, you will identify the items you have, and grouped them together based on your desired outcome and ease of finding it when you need it. So in this exercise, again, we do have our guides that you can download, if it's easier for you to just quickly download it and do the exercise that way. But write this down. So this is a part where you're going to need to figure out okay, why do I normally need to look for things like what do I need normally? What do I normally need. So you'll start kind of, you know, writing those things down. This makes it easier for you to find what you need quickly when you need it. And it'll keep your space clutter free and save time, of course, in the long run. Okay, so some quick practical how tos when you do this step. And remember, we talk about both digital items and physical items. So from your closet, like your clothing, to your shoes, to your pantry, to your digital files. So this can be utilized for either types of things. So first things first, we like to empty, empty space. I know this part can be very tedious for a lot of people overwhelming, because you don't really want to necessarily, like take everything out. But it's really important that you do because when you take everything out, you start with a clean slate in the space, but also, all the items will be in one space, some of the stress, excuse me, some of the systems out there like the Konmari method. There.

She's really big on that. There's a couple other systems out there that are really big like that, you know, you have to do this step. I don't necessarily think you have to do this step, but it really, really help hopes, okay, so for the purposes of what I would recommend is that yes, you should empty this space out. So if you're organizing your closet, take all of the clothing all of the items from the closet out and put them in your prep station. And we also talked about PrEP stations over in step one, which is the assess phase, and how to do that, the power of planning a little bit. So a prep station is just where you have a space that is open, it's your project area, it's open, it's available to you, as you work through your project. So if you're emptying your pantry, your closet, then your prep area is where you're emptying it all out. So it's not all over the house, or all over space, or your office and the digital space, you're going to do the same thing, you're going to empty all of your folders out and put them in one central space, I would recommend a holding folder where you put everything in, so that everything again is in one space. Okay, now that we are getting into the actual sorting, the sorting into piles will depend in category piles or categories will depend on what you're trying to achieve here, I would pick one main category, I would recommend that you pick one main category, that's general general enough, and then sub sub subcategories after that, and do that exercise after. So if you really want to be quick about it, I would just do some very main cuts of some general categories. And some examples of that are, for instance, in your closet, it would be by color, by weather type. Those are very main general categories. So these are the greens. Here's the yellows, the whites, the blacks, the patterns, very general categories in your kitchen. Some examples are, these are where the utensils are, like eating food storage, very general, we're not getting into the baking, we're not getting into the spices yet. It's just Is it food? Like Is it edible? Is it you tent? Dishware? Is it storage containers out very general categories. Same thing in your digital area, same thing we're going to do a general category is it if you're a photographer, you know, all like digital media, like pictures, movies, etc, you know, all a very general category. And then we then go to subcategories after you finish that whole process. So as soon as you you know, you maybe do a timer, you know, do it quickly get your general category over with. And then we can start with our subcategory. subcategories are the categories that go under the main category, right, but they are in the family of the main category. So in your closet, if you organized it by color, and you have all the greens that maybe you do, like green, dark green, maybe you do it the subcategory could be by fabric type, you know, do you just choose different subcategories. We don't recommend going more than three, maybe up to five subcategories, because it starts to get overwhelming to retrieve because now we're starting to think about the retrieval process. You can go 20 subcategories in. But if you don't remember subcategory, 19, because let's say in your kitchen, let's go back to the kitchen example. You did it by food, and then spices but and then you did after spices you did for baking and for baking Italian and for baking like different types of you know, Mexican food. And then now it's like another subcategory. And it's when you make enchiladas and it's like Sub Sub Sub Sub Sub, whenever you need that one particular spice for something else, you won't be able to retrieve it because you're so in the nitty gritty, that is you just forgot that it's there and you just buy double doubles and duplicates. Okay, so that's why we don't really go too deep. We just go deep enough for you to remember next time you need it, and it's general enough, but also contained into subcategories that are just not too deep, if that makes sense. Okay, so now we've gone through our category sorting, everything's in categories. Now. This is a really good time before the next phase, which is normally the declutter phase, which is what we're we will talk about next in the next episode of this series. Step three decluttering. Again, these can be interchanged. For some of you, you will do decluttering first that you won't even go through sorting because you just need to get rid of stuff like right now, because you're moving downsizing or whatever it may be so for some of you this will be you know, first or second, but to get ready for the decluttering and regardless of what the next step is for you and your needs. This is a great opportunity to quickly go through any items that are visibly broken and expired are no longer needed. This is like a quick, quick visual, this is not the actual decluttering phase, this is not the actual go through everything. This is just if you held something, you can visually see it and see that it's broken expired or it's no longer needed, then go ahead and let that go. And that's it. This particular step to me is one of the most fun, I love sorting. It's really fun for me. But I also know that a lot of people struggle with what system what categories to go into some of you like for your craft room, right? You have, do I put scissors under, you know, cutting or, or for if you're a quilter, or sower like do I put it in, like there's just so many categories that that some of these rooms and spaces can have that it gets overwhelming. And this is where you either hire a professional to help you decipher what best system works for you. Or you talk to a friend or you just kind of start to really do a trial and error. But again, you know, of course, a professional will be able to ask you the right questions and all that. And because it's the sorting category, sorting and categories, step can be overwhelming for some of you. But for like for people like me, and for anybody that's listening, sorting is really fun. I enjoy finding that the stacks and the where it should go in the category phase, I just find it super fun. Okay, and last thing is clean the surface the area after you're done with the sorting step, what that means is just kind of clean around, I really am a big advocate advocate that after every step, you do a quick little cleanup, it encourages you and motivates you for the next step, because it's like starting a new phase. It's exciting, it's nice and tidy and clean, and prepares you for the next phase and holds the momentum to continue. Because you still have a couple more phases, right? The decluttering the contained finding the container and then finding a home. So you still have a couple more steps left. So you know clean up after like after every phase, and I find that it helps clients people that community continue that momentum. Okay, well, that's it for the sorting step. If you have any questions, we are always here to help. So just send us a message tag us over on Instagram at the organized Flamingo or just email us you'll find all of our information down in the show notes. But the next the next part of the steps is step three, which we identify as Declutter. And then after that we will do designate and then contain. So look out for those episodes in the series. And if again, if you're more of a visual learner, you'd rather just read it and kind of read through it, you can either go to our show notes, which will take you to the blog post that is associated with this episode. So if you're more of a reader, or you can head over to our online shop, which is the organized Flamingo dot shop, and download any of our guides, so that you can just quickly print be done and work through the exercises on your own that way, and as you sort through your physical and digital items. Keep in mind that the effort you put in now will pay off later when you are looking for something specific so your future self will thank you for it, I promise you. And until next time, happy organizing. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.