Welcome to The Real Mom's Playbook, the movement where we elevate your life. Brought to you by our premier sponsor, Earthley Wellness. In season two, we build onward from the intentional transformation to conquer the chaos, live in alignment, and build systems that work. So grab a notebook and let's get going.
All right, and welcome back to The Real Mom's Playbook. I'm your host, Lisa Autry. With only two episodes left in season two, I wanted to give you ladies some tangible tips that you could take and apply to your life immediately and see success. So today is all about the beginning steps to creating a tidy life on less time.
And I am all about working smarter versus harder. So I'm gonna teach you my five best tips in order to start applying the tidy life to your life instantly.
First off, per usual, let's begin by thanking our premier sponsor, Earthley Wellness. With a new baby in the home, I'm making sure I'm very careful about what products I use and what products I put on him.
That's why I love the kids' fun shape, gentle body soap. It's super cute. They come in different shapes and sizes like cars and frogs and little animals. It's really gentle on his skin, who happens to have very sensitive skin. So it's really important to us that we make sure we're very conscious about what we put on him.
And remember orders over $50 shipped for free, and use the code diaries, D I A R I E S before you purchase to get 10% off your first order.
So today I wanna talk about reviewing the tidy process, what it entails to go through the whole KonMari process. And what we're really seeking, what is the ultimate goal and five things you can do to start today for your success.
Really quick before we dive in, this is all leading up to Define, which is my second step in the intentional transformation within the Foundation Series.
Define helps you see a stressful space and take action and see success immediately. Your home is your beautiful foundation. It can be your source of chaos, or it could be your source of peace. Whatever you do for your home can pay dividends on everything. So we wanna make sure that we are putting our time and energy to be most effective.
So grab, define. I'll talk a little bit more about it later in this episode, but you can go do thedaughterdiary.com/services or you can go to the show notes and pick up define today. It's a really great intro price of $27. And you get the mindset right and you take action and you can start clearing out these stressful spaces immediately.
So let's talk about this process and let's review why this process is so important, how it is successful versus just decluttering or just tidying spaces.
So, first off, when you're going through the KonMari process, and I've been certified for a couple of years now and I'm a certified KonMari consultant, and what we do in the process is we figure out what brings you joy. And something that doesn't bring you joy automatically would be discarded.
And so we go through this categorically versus going through room by room. And I know this was a big mistake I used to make when going through and trying to tidy over and over and over again before I did the KonMari Method five years ago. But whenever I would try to tidy, it was that never ending process of "I cleaned my bedroom," and then a couple days later, it is a mess again. That's because when you're going space by space, you're not looking at the categories. And let's talk about the categories. If you've heard of Marie Kondo or the KonMari Method before, we know that the categories in order are from least sentimental to most sentimental. So the order is clothing, books, paper, komono, which is often miscellaneous that doesn't fall into these other categories, and then sentimental. And I like to put digital at the end for my clients because if you don't have 40,000 pictures, that look almost identical of your children, what are you even doing? Right?
And so we go through this process categorically because like with like is extremely powerful. When you put items together, you can get clarity of how much you have, as well as an understanding of what really you love versus what is something you can discard. And this is the process of joy, not the process of anger and just throwing away everything you possibly can. We put our intention behind our happiness, right?
And like I said, I did this process five years ago and I'll give you guys a little bit of a background. So I had just had Mia, my second daughter, and my life was a total mess. I was talking with my executive coach, Alisa, and I told her, I said, man, I'm not able to run my business. She's not sleeping at night. Everything is just a disaster. And she said, I'm mailing you something, be on the lookout for it. And I got, Marie Kondo's book. Now you have to think five years ago, Marie Kondo was just kind of breaking into the scene. She had been really popular in Japan, but really was kind of newer here, and a lot of people hadn't heard of her. I had not heard of her.
And so when I saw that it was about cleaning up your home, I was so mortified, okay, because I was the best closet hoarder. Five years ago, I was the best closet hoarder. Someone would come over and right before they got there, I would shove everything in cabinets and drawers.
And it was like if you open a cabinet or a drawer, you'd be like, oh my goodness. But I thought I had really tricked people, right, into thinking that I was a really tidy person and I had this whole persona about me. Right? We've talked since then, and she was like, I had no clue. I just bought it for you because I thought it was such a impactful and inspiring book, and I thought it would be right up your alley. I didn't know you actually needed to do the process.
But little did she know I really need to do the process, but I was so mortified. Okay. I was like, oh, she knows, she's onto me. But I read it. And then I read it again, and then I read it and cried and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to do this. And I did the whole KonMari process in four weeks.
Four weeks. The average person takes six months and it could be upwards of six years even. It depends on what pace you move at. But I did the whole process in four weeks because I had two young children and I had two businesses I was running. I was like, I don't got time, I gotta get my home in order so I can move on.
And I've never looked back. My home has been the greatest source of peace for me. And I really attribute me bringing my third child into this home so seamlessly, like our schedules are just rocking, we're homeschooling. He came home, two days later, we were already homeschooling and everything was just so smooth. And I attribute that not only to having girls who are a little bit older, but also because my home is in order.
Everyone knows the expectations. Everyone is kind of accountable for their own spaces, and it just stays tidy. I don't have to worry about who's coming over because it's always tidy and there's people dropping by wanting to meet my son, and we've just got such a good system.
We've got such a good system and I'm gonna be sharing a couple little tips today.
But doing the process is truly magical. It really is. I am a believer. That's why when I did it and then I went and got my certification, cuz I was like, I need to help people do this. This is a game changer. And when you look in the intentional transformation, the first thing we do, and if you guys have read my book, the Real Moms Playbook, the very first thing we do is assess our values and the very next thing we do, is the KonMari Method is tidying our homes.
You cannot build a beautiful life on a faulty foundation, and so we need to make sure that we're clearing out the foundation of our home to put these systems into place, what I call maintenance maven mode. I made that term up maintenance maven mode, but that's what I use with all of my clients because we wanna work smarter versus harder in our spaces.
So it was such an upheaval for me emotionally and physically, and you don't realize how much stress you carry with all the stuff you're carrying. Everything I was removing from my home made me feel lighter, made me feel more excited, gave me more energy. My husband and I started communicating better because I cannot tell you prior how many fights we had about where's the keys.
I don't know where the keys are because nothing had a home. Everything was floating in our home. And imagine like how stressful that is. You know, you have dumping grounds, you have junk drawers. All these things are extremely, extremely stressful. And a lot of times we put blinders to them. That's why within the Define program, we have you look at your home without the blinders on to pick out those stressful spaces because you need to see your home for what it truly is instead of putting the blinders on.
The sooner you tackle the stressful spaces, the sooner you can live more in alignment and seamlessly.
So the process, what we do, it's a simple process. You gather, you gather everything within that category. So let's talk about clothing. You have clothing, you gather all of your clothing, we start with you as the process, right?
Gather all of it. Then you do the discarding process. Within the discarding process, you ask yourself, what does this mean to me? Does it bring me joy?
You attach an energy to it, and you'll notice as you go along and become more decisive. Decisiveness is a muscle that is built, but as you go through this process, you touch things and you will understand if it brings you joy or if you shrink away from it.
It's a whole body language. Our body tells us what we feel before we even think it, honestly. And so you go through the discarding process and it'll end up in one of a few places. You either keep it because you love it, you either throw it away, you either donate it or you sell it. Most of my clients have made way more money back than what my programs cost, and that's because we are keeping a lot of stuff that we don't really care about, but that cost us a lot of money and we can get some money back on.
So it'll end up in one of those four places. And from there, the items that you have kept, it'll be the organization, you do organizing after discarding. So you organize everything that you have remaining because it helps you understand, you gain clarity of what you need to control the actual volume of what you own.
So we go and organize and then we maintain, and that's when I teach you guys the maintenance maven mode. We're not gonna get into that in this episode just because there's whole systems that need to be put into place and it can be very cumbersome if you are not ready to implement those. That's something I have one-on-one conversations with, with my clients, because a lot of people wanna put systems in place when the home is not done.
It will not function and flow properly without it being completely done discarding and organizing. And so why do we do this process? What does this process mean? That is your question to answer. What I wanted is I wanted more time on my hands, not to shove things in drawers and look everywhere for them, and I felt so resentful for all the years I had done that.
I'm like, man, I feel like I've wasted so much of my life throwing things in drawers and trying to find said things. And it was really about me taking back my control, me taking back my power of my home. My home was controlling me when I should be controlling it. And as a full-time stay-at-home Mom, my home needs to be my haven.
I could not do what I do today if my home was not in order. And let me rephrase that, I could be doing it, but I wouldn't be doing a very good job because it's very overwhelming trying to search for things. They say the average mom spends 90 minutes a day picking up. Imagine if you spent 20 minutes a day picking up what you would do with all that extra time on your hands.
Probably work out. Maybe take care of your health and eat something healthy because you could prepare your food. And just enjoy time with your kids. Just playing with your kids, maybe picking up a book and reading, you know, binging Netflix, whatever you wanna do with that extra time. That's a whole other thing we do at the end of the KonMari process.
But the ultimate goal is really dependent upon what you desire. What is your ultimate goal? I've met with a lot of different clients. I've taken about three dozen clients through the process now, and everyone has something different. Some want to be able to have friends come over whenever they want and not feel stressed out about their space or embarrassed.
Some people just wanna be able to find things and be more efficient. Others want their children to feel good in their spaces because their children are acting out, and I will tell you guys, children get stressed out by really packed and full spaces too. It's a weight that they carry. So us going through the process is teaching our children how to go through the process themselves and what sparks joy for them.
And it was interesting because in my 30th year of life, I realized, man, I did not know what brought me joy. I did not know what made me happy and I've since changed that. I have changed that whole outlook because I'm looking at my spaces now and it makes me happy. It brings me joy. And I want the same thing for you guys.
I want your home to be your beautiful foundation. That is where you will birth and raise your kids. That is where you guide and nurture your family. That is where you have great conversations around the table and that is where you connect with your spouse. And that's a very beautiful thing. There is no other place on this earth than your home.
That's your haven. That is where all of your most meaningful connections will take place. Not work. Not on the soccer field or the baseball diamond. I know those are places where you can connect and enjoy, but your home is your safety, it's your security, and that's where you truly are you. And if you are bogged down with your stuff, you're not able to identify who you are as a person.
And that's what, when I went through the process, I was like, wow, I didn't know a whole lot about myself. I ended up giving away 90% of my clothes because I realized in doing this process that 90% of my clothes did not bring me joy. Now when I look at my closet, I'm like, wow, I don't have a lot, and it makes me happy and I wear what I love versus just keeping a bunch of stuff and I'm like, uh, well maybe I'll wear it someday.
If only, if only, what if, what if, maybe, maybe.
So many of us are living in the what if instead of living in the today and the yes and the here and the now. And I don't want you guys to live like that. I want you to be free of your stuff so that you can go and have meaningful connections, so you can go and enjoy nature and nurture and just have a great time in your life.
We only get this one life. What are we doing to make it the best possible? And I know tidying up my house ain't one of those. I do not wanna be cleaning my house all the time. And it's funny because since I do this for a living, people are like, oh, you must love cleaning. I'm like, no, I do not. I hate cleaning.
I don't particularly love tidying, but these things need to be done and I like to teach people how to do it most effectively. And I actually enjoy doing it with clients because it's amazing seeing a space transform. But on the daily, I don't wanna be tidying my home. I don't wanna be cleaning my home. It feels good when it's done, but that's not something I particularly like doing.
And most of my friends and my clients feel the exact same way. We would rather be at the movies, we would rather be at a park playing. We would rather be on a nice hike or homeschooling or being at the library, like many other things, you know, pretty much anything other than cleaning our homes.
Cleaning and tidying are two different things, just to let you know.
Cleaning is the active actual cleaning the home, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, cleaning the toilets, the counters versus tidying, which is cleaning up clutter from spaces. And a lot of us have to tidy before we clean. I wanna help mitigate the tidying aspect because you're doing transitional flows and you have it in a system versus constantly feeling like you're tidying so that you can clean. If you have to spend two hours tidying, do you think you're gonna be excited to clean? Probably not. You might not even get to cleaning.
And so we wanna mitigate that factor of chaos. We want to create a home of peace, of comfort, of calm, of security.
And if you don't feel like those spaces are you currently, we wanna change that.
First off, let's take a quick break with Kim from Sparkle and Shine. Be right back.
And we are back.
So today I wanted to give you guys five tangible things that you can start doing today to see changes in your home.
Now, this is not the KonMari process, this isn't Kick the Clutter process that I do with my clients, and it's not even Define, this is something separate.
So if you are wanting to do the whole process, want to do the KonMari process, I have a Kick the Clutter program. It's gonna be a self-paced program that's gonna be launching in just a couple of months.
I have within the show notes, there's an interest list. You can click on it and go to the interest list and sign up there and we'll notify you when it's made available. It's a self-paced program and you can also get calls with me and I can help direct you. And then if you wanna see instant success with small, stressful spaces, define is what you want to grab.
And remember I said go to thedaughterdiary.com/services or go into show notes and it's define, we're going to define your spaces, we're gonna figure out what's stressing you out, and we're gonna make sure we take action.
But here's five things you can do today without having started those programs yet that are gonna make a difference in your mindset, your mental approach to your home, and also make it feel a little bit more organized instantly.
And that's ultimately what we're striving for at the end of the whole process. So what are the five things you can do starting today?
Number one, make your bedside table calm and make that bed daily. So when we look at the bedside table, you might not have one, so there we go, that's done.
You can check that box off. But if you have a nightstand or a bedside table that it's your own personal bedside table, I recommend keeping it clear. And I'd like to see you within the drawers, making a home for each thing. So mine is, my top drawer is all jewelry. And then my second and third drawers, I have three drawers, my second and third drawers are all sentimental items. So, reports I wrote that I absolutely love and I used to do portraits, so I have a portrait of my husband and me in there. And little things that I have, my first hockey puck of a hockey game I went to. Little sentimental trinkets and tchotchkes that I like to look at occasionally, my girls love to pull out and look at.
And so my bedside table is really my sentimental items and then my jewelry.
And then on the second part of this, make your bed daily. Your bedroom is going to be probably the biggest dumping ground in your home because most people don't go into your bedroom except you and your spouse, and so we don't take care of it, oftentimes, it often becomes a storage facility when we're pushing things out of the other parts of the house that people see.
We want our bedroom to be calm. And one of the ways in order to do that is to just make your bed. You do not have to have beautiful, fine linens that cost thousands of dollars, just pulling them over and putting some pillows up goes a long way, and it makes you feel, so much better and so much more calm and controlled. And there's actually studies that show that if you make your bed first thing in the morning, it increases your productivity and it increases your positivity too. It just feels good to have your bed made and all those times that your mommy yelled at you when you were growing up, make your bed, she knew what she was talking about.
So do it in adulthood and teach your kids to do it too.
So my girls are still a little too young to pull the sheets up, you know, and tuck them. So I do that, and then they finish making their bed. And in a couple of years, they're gonna be able to make the bed all themselves.
And so what our ultimate goal is, is to teach accountability and to teach excitement for holding their spaces accountable. And so we do that every single day. Right after breakfast, they run and do their chores, AKA, make their bed, get themselves already, feed the dog, all of these things. And so that teaches accountability with children.
Every space just looks better with it done. So we wanna make sure in order to start our days off right, to make sure your bedside table is clear and calm, and then make that bed daily.
Number two, have a plan for processing the mail. I've had my clients ask me, do I have to get the mail every single day?
We live in a community where we have a lockbox, so I get mine every Friday, that's kind of my process. I just get it every Friday unless I have a package coming, then I get it a couple more times a week. And so my process for the mail is I get it once a week and I go through all of it.
Now, it takes a lot longer to go through it then, because I've been collecting it throughout the whole week. But really, whatever plan you have, make sure you fulfill that. You do not want to take the mail and bring it in and throw it on the counter, typically, the kitchen counter or your desk or wherever, because you are adding to the chaos.
Paper chaos is one of those things that is voluminous and it's constantly accumulating. So we wanna mitigate the chaos by immediately going through and either determining is it junk and it gets thrown away, do I need to process this mail now or do I need to process this mail later?
So say it's not bill paying day, you can put it in a folder to pay it later. That's processing later. That doesn't mean you're not going through the mail. You need to go through everything, open up everything and then figure out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. But that is a process.
Whether you do that every day or you do it once a week is totally up to you.
And it's so funny because where we live in the community, I'm right next to the mailbox. I could go easily get it every day and even keep my kids in the home. I'm just so lazy that I don't wanna do it.
But I know that I have my system, I have my process. I get it every Friday, and it's no big deal. And so I just let it lie and that works for me. It works for my family. Like I said, if we know something's coming, we can go and get it on a special time, but we immediately process it.
Right when we bring it in, I stand at the edge of my kitchen counter and I open up everything. I grumble about all the bills, and then I file everything for later, or I discard it to be recycled.
And so having a plan for processing the mail is going to mitigate the chaos on incoming and cycling and outbound because it's not going to keep stacking up because paper will continue to accumulate and I'm pretty sure it procreates while we sleep, I don't know, it just seems like it.
Number three, keep the sink clear. So having a baby again after, gosh, five years, it reminded me how many bottles we go through. I bottle feed my son, and so when I'm looking at the sink, I'm like, oh my gosh. It always feels like there's something in the sink. We have a process where we wash the bottles all at once and we refill the bottles and you know, that's our process.
But other than that, our sink is clear. And the reason we have a clear sink is we have a clear mind. Do not put doing your dishes off till the very end of the night. I'm gonna tell you this right now, you are too tired, when your kids go to bed. You do not wanna do the dishes, and then guess what, you leave 'em for the morning and that cycle starts over and over and over again.
Transitional flow can be your best friend.
When you stand up, when you're done eating, you immediately go over and start doing the dishes. If I were to go sit down after dinner, guess what? My dishes wouldn't get done either.
I immediately go over to the sink and start doing dishes. And my girls are about at the age where they wanna do dishes too. They like doing chores. They like doing chores now, you know? And so I'm gonna take advantage of it. And I have one of 'em washing dishes. We load the dishwasher together, we unload the dishwasher together, things like that.
It's delegating, holding the family accountable because they all eat too. And so keeping the sink clear can be easier when you do it in transitional flow and then asking for some assistance. Not everything has to be on you, mom, it does not. And everyone lives there. Everyone uses the things within the home.
Have your family be active participants, my husband, my daughters, my son eventually, we all are taking advantage of the home and letting it be our haven, we're going to put some time and effort into keeping it nice. And so number three is keep the sink clear.
When my sink is clear, I feel so dang good. And I want you guys to feel good too, because it can be very, very overwhelming. And especially if you have an open kitchen, you can see the chaos there and you can see what needs to be done and what isn't done. So number three is keep that sink clear. Transitional flow can be your best friend.
Number four, implement a nighttime routine to reset. So we do what's called the 10 minute tidy before we get all ready for bed and climb into bed and read.
So the 10 minute tidy is picking up anything that we'd missed throughout the day. So little papers, I don't know if your kids are like mine, but we draw 500 things a day and so they get spread around and it's like collecting everything.
During the nighttime, 10 minute tidy, I get homeschool out for the next day. I make sure that purse is put away, all the clothes ended up in the clothes hamper like they needed to. Just a quick little 10 minutes and you set a timer, 10 minutes to make sure our spaces are calm before we go to sleep.
It's gonna ensure you guys have a better night's rest and you're also not stepping on Legos in the middle of the night if you have to wake up with a baby because nothing throws off your game than stepping on a Lego.
And so we wanna make sure we're implementing that nighttime routine to reset. It only takes 10 minutes.
If you have a lot of kids, it might take a little bit longer, but then that's when you delegate. My girls, they go into their own spaces and quickly tidy to make sure that they get adequate sleep as well.
So we put a system in place to where everyone feels like their rooms feel really good. And then the communal space, like the kitchen and the laundry room and the dining room and the living room feel nice and calm.
So implement a nighttime routine to reset and it's like the last little bit of energy you got and like say a couple of cups are in the sink, that's a perfect time to throw them in the dishwasher or wash them by hand if you don't have a dishwasher.
The nighttime routine though, is like one of my best tips because it really does reset you successfully.
And then number five, have two times a day where you reset the busy spaces. This is what's called a transitional tidy, and I like to do it before lunch and then in the afternoon before dinner. So that's two distinct periods that are anchored against eating times and it's easy to remember. So 10 minutes before I need to start lunch, we tidy our spaces.
10 minutes before dinner, we reset the spaces together. And so that is the best time cuz you're anchoring it to something, that's a great habit formation, you're anchoring it to your meals. So right before I start cooking the meals, we reset the spaces and then again it's just 10 minutes, because then that 10 minute tidy is actually a 10 minute tidy. It's not resetting the whole home.
And so two times a day where you reset the really busy spaces, we go through the kitchen, make sure there's nothing, you know, on the counters. We go through the living room, make sure all the toys are picked up, make sure the laundry room is nicely reset, garbage is taken out.
And so that's the perfect time. So the best thing you can do if you haven't had the habit yet is to set a timer to make sure you can do those spaces.
So really quick, let's review the five things you can do today to start being successful. Number one, make your nightstand cleared, and make that bed daily.
Number two, have a plan for processing the mail. So when are you going to process the mail?
Number three, keeping the sink clear. No dirty dishes in the sink; make sure they're always put in the dishwasher or put on a drying rack and make sure you have a good process with bottles, things like that, heavy use items.
Number four, implement a nighttime routine to reset.
And number five, have two times a day where you reset the busy spaces.
Really quick, before we close out this episode, we're gonna take our final break with Mom Strong. Be right back.
And we are back.
So really quick before we close out, I wanna remind you guys grab define, this is your perfect start to overcoming those stressful spaces.
And when we created the workbook, so it's modules that you can listen to, along with a workbook that you can actually work through. We give prompts on, okay, is this a stressful space? Is this a stressful space? Because sometimes we can't even look past the immediate chaos. So we kind of help you guys go through it, we go through the mindset and then we actually take action and we circle it back to where you can go over the stressful spaces over and over again. So define as your perfect start.
If you wanna take a little bit more hands on approach, then we have Kick the Clutter, the self-paced program starting soon within our membership portal. Make sure you click on the link in the show notes for access to the subscriber list, so we can notify you when it's available. And so you go to the interest list, get on there, work through it at your own pace, within the Kick the Clutter.
And so we go through clothing, books, paper, komono and sentimental.
And you know, as always, if you want a one-on-one approach, you can grab me for a coffee and coaching chat. I'm loving these coffee and coaching sessions right now. I've been doing a bunch of 'em. It is such a good time and we are just really having a good time with it.
So if you just need 30 minutes to sit down and say, here's what I'm struggling with, Lisa, can we create an action plan? And I will customize it to you. So there's three different ways that you can get started on your decluttering journey, and I wanna be here to best support you. So you let me know how I can support you, reach out to me anytime at info@thedaughterdiary.com. You can reach me on Instagram, The Daughter Diaries, and I wanna best support you. So if your home is stressful, let's work through the chaos.
That's it for today. We've got one episode left in season two, Elevate, and so I'm gonna be giving you some more tips on taking your life to the next level with your time and your energy.
So until next time, I'm your host, Lisa Autry, and this is The Real Mom's Playbook.
Thank you for joining me for The Real Mom's Playbook, which has been made possible by our amazing sponsors. Make sure you check the show notes for links and access to the amazing resources.
You can find me at thedaughterdiary.com or on Instagram at The Daughter Diaries.
See you next time. I'm Lisa Autry.