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. I'm excited to talk about today's episode because it has been one of a lot of interest over social media, and I have been sent multiple questions about has Marie Kondo really given up? And over my two years of being a certified consultant via the KonMari Method, I'm going to share what my takeaway is from the article as well as how you can actually apply this to your life to make it work for you.
Really quick, let's thank Earthley Wellness, our premier sponsor of the Real Mom's Playbook podcast. Make sure you use the code Diaries at checkout in order to save and remember orders over $50 shipped for free. I just picked up some more detergent and moisturizer and I am ready to go. Make those bulk orders work for you, ladies.
So let's talk about, has Marie Kondo really given up? She is a mother of three now, and as you guys know, I'm pregnant with my third, so everyone was sending me the article and being like, oh, be prepared, three is going to be the drawing line for you, right? Because you guys know I did the KonMari Method about four and a half years ago now.
And my home has stayed tidy. It has survived a move. It has survived life transitions, transitioning over to homeschool, and it has really paved the way for my success in my business and beyond. It's made me a more patient mother. And it was interesting reading this article on Glamour, I'm going to link the article within the show notes so you guys can read it.
It's titled Marie Kondo, Mere Mortal, has Kind of Given Up. And it was really interesting to read. So everyone's like, what's your take on this? You know, are you just gonna let it go? And it's funny because she's not even saying anything about letting her home go. She's saying she's letting her perception of the way tidy was before kids go.
And I found it really lighthearted and fun to say, you know, life is life. And sometimes we have to embrace the occasional mess. And they talk about it in the article itself. I'll let you guys read that, but my interpretation is one man's chaos is another man's organization. And we want to make sure that what we are seeking through this intentional transformation, what we're seeking through this tidy festival is really unique to each of us.
And Marie Kondo's, like it's changed for me. It has changed with having kids. What's actually important to me and spending time with my children is important, something she didn't know before having kids. So while I haven't talked to her PR team, I think the tidiness level is still there. I think she is being a little bit more understanding of what tidy looks like on any given day, and that's something I want each and every single one of you guys to think about as you go through this tidy festival. As you tidy and organize your lives, it's your interpretation. It is your interpretation. If you guys think back to when I talked about kicking the clutter in season one, it's really your journey.
I can't tell you what your home should look like. I've taken three dozen women through this process, multiple in-person, and a lot virtual, and I'm going to tell you one person's tidiness is another person's chaos. Everyone interprets it differently. I am not a minimalist, and a lot of my clients are not minimalists, but when they hear about a tidy festival or they hear about the KonMari Method, they assume that you have to get rid of everything.
And it's really based upon what's important to you what you keep. Marie Kondo's philosophy isn't about what you're getting rid of, it's about what's sparking joy for you to keep, and then everything else that doesn't spark joy needs to be discarded. So we're going to be talking about a few ways to live tidier today, as well as I'm going to give you a challenge of something you can get started on today.
And I want you guys to really keep an open mind about this.
I see this all the time on social media. Well, that sounds nice, but that's not realistic, I can't live a tidy life. I have several children, yada, yada, yada. I get it. The more children you have, the harder it is. We're just a few weeks away from welcoming our son, and it made me realize how much baby stuff you need.
I completely forgot about all the baby stuff that I need, but my husband and I are like, you know what, let's go more minimalist. We'll add things as we need them versus feeling like we're fully prepared. Because this isn't our first child, I'm not so worried about everything. I'm making sure I have the essentials and I feel like the rest will work itself out.
And to me that's calming and comforting versus just stockpiling. We are not a stockpiling family around here. It actually really bothers us when we have too much. And that's just my husband and I. That's the way we perceive our home and what's cozy and comforting to us. And I think that's what's important is your interpretation is the way forward.
What you are striving for and what you hope to conquer and what you hope to achieve in this life, that's your defining boundary. It's not saying, I'm only allowed to have these many pens, I'm only allowed to have these many shirts. If you want to quantify it, that's fine, but at the same time, don't be so rigid with yourself because you're setting yourself up for failure.
If you're saying, I'm only allowed to have this, don't look at it that way. Say, I have this much volume, what's bringing me joy? And I think a lot of times when you ask that question that way, that is when you're going to help define really what is joy to you.
When I did this process four and a half years ago now, I did not understand what joy was to me in the beginning.
But now everything that I bring into my home, I'm very critical of, and I'm teaching my girls to be critical too. Not in the way that they're fearful of stuff, but in the way of saying, do I need to get something just to get something? Or am I trying to fill other voids in my life that I'm either trying to avoid, you know, other things, issues that I need to deal with.
You know, when we're struggling with money or when we're struggling with transitions, a lot of times we become materialistic to try to avoid the chaos in our minds, right? That's a very retail therapy thought process. And I want you guys to understand what joy means to you.
I want you to know your journey. If you don't know your journey, that's when you become misaligned. That's when you start struggling with happiness. And I've found a very interesting correlation between the people that I work with when they struggle with anxiety and depression and just overwhelm. It's typically related to obviously situational things, but oftentimes, our home.
Our home could be our haven or our source of chaos. And Marie Kondo was kind of giving you a pass to say, hey, your journey is your own. My journey has changed slightly since having children, and that's actually a beautiful thing for her to see that to say, I don't have to live at the standard that I lived at when I didn't have children because you're a very different person when you have children.
How do I need to adjust my perception of daily living? And I think that gives us permission to do the same. It's not saying her house is a disaster. I think it's really saying, it just looks different.
Yeah, there'll be toys out throughout the day. Make sure you put them in their home so they're not alone when it's time to go to bed, you have to have strong transitions.
We use the transitional tidies, we use the 10 minute tidy system so that everything is put back in its home so that we feel calm and secure.
And that's really joy, right? That is joy in saying, I love my stuff enough, I enjoy my home enough to make sure these things reset at the end of the day.
We need to be understanding of where we're at in our journey, but we also can't, I think it was the perfect way for people to say, see, I can give up. I don't have to try, but that is you trying to make concessions for something that you can adjust. You set the tone for your life.
And I get so sick and tired of hearing hot mess. I'm a hot mess mom. Don't wear that badge proudly because you're leaning into your excuses and I want you to be bigger than your excuses. I want you to be someone that's saying, this is what I desire out of my life, and nothing is going to stop me from going and getting it. Nothing is going to hold me back. It doesn't mean the person you are today is less than. It just means you're going to utilize your home, your routine, and your finances to be the best person that you desire to be.
And that journey is unique for everyone. Stop letting your excuses hold you back. We talked about this a couple of episodes ago. Your excuses are holding you back, and that's keeping you from being the person that you desire to be. It's making you the impatient mom. It's making you the frustrated mom, the one who feels like she's at her wits end.
And how many of us in society now feel like it takes a village, a village that we do not have? We do not have the support system overall that maybe prior generations had. And it's a societal shift. It's something that our society is really trying to push. It's like, you and your children can lead completely separate lives, and that's not true.
You have to craft your journey that's right for you. Stop trying to fit the mold of someone else, including Marie Kondo, including myself. We're not trying to tell you to live life a certain way. We're trying to get you to lean into the life that you desire.
Stop letting your excuses hold you back and look at your interpretation as a way forward. What are you striving for? What is it you ultimately hope to achieve in this life? And don't let anything stop you from it.
Really quick, let's take a break with Kim from Sparkle and Shine. Be right back.
And we are back.
So you guys know, I get really hard on my clients. Those of you that are in the Real Mom's Tribe, when you define what it is you want, your boundaries and your intentional transformation saying, this is what I want my home to look like. This is what I want my routine to look like based on my chronotype, these are the financial goals that I have for myself.
I'm not going to let you off the hook. I'm going to hold you accountable. And I think so many times, so many of us, we fall short because we don't know how to have that self-accountability and we don't have that self realization of like, what's really important to us. It's like, this is good enough. How often is it like this is just good enough and there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, we don't have to always strive for perfection.
That's not what we're seeking. But really that beautiful boundary line of our journey to say, this is who I'm becoming and this is who I desire to become. You don't have to feel anxious all the time. You don't have to feel overwhelmed all the time. You don't have to feel like a flipping mess all the time.
And that's what so many of us are leaning into. When you look all over social media, that's really become the standard, hot mess mama, look at me. That's just who I am. That's my label. And we don't really want to lean into that.
When we set the tone for our lives, that's our way of saying, okay, these are the standards I'm going to live by. These are the standards I'm going to hold my kids to. So many of us feel like we have to manage our home for everyone. But as your children get older, and as we kind of create this roadmap of here's how I'm raising my child, here's what I'm going to hold them accountable to, we actually have to hold them accountable.
You know, discipline is love, and it doesn't mean you need to berate your children. It doesn't mean you need to yell at them. You have to get them to understand that our home is our haven. That's our space to be uniquely us. That's our space to make the messes and enjoy the messes. We love making messes around here.
I think a lot of people, when they come into our home, it's usually very tidy and they're like, oh man. I know they have the perception of, man, these kids probably never have any fun. We make messes, we paint, we bake, we do a lot of messy things. But we also have that boundary of when you make a mess, you need to clean it up.
You're held accountable because this is your home too. You don't just live here. This is a part of your life too. And I think once we set that tone and that standard, it's a lot easier to follow through.
Does that mean that your home is always going to stay perfect? No. Does that mean that your kids are going to have immaculate rooms? No.
I make my daughters put away their clothing and they do not put it away how I would put it away, like it gets thrown in the drawer sometimes. So about once a month, once every couple of months, especially as they start to grow and their things start to shrink, that's a good time to transition and flow and just talk to them about, hey, here's how you fold again. Let's put it away nicely. This is how to keep it nicer.
And my oldest, she's getting ready to turn seven. She's holding herself more accountable. She even came up to me a while back and was like, mom, my room is really stressing me out. And so we went through and tidied it and it's starting to click. It takes time.
It takes a lot of time and effort because it's easy to push those things aside. But we are teaching them what they will hold themselves accountable to when they're grown up, what they are going to expect from their homes and their spaces. And if you have little girls, you're teaching them how to manage a home.
And if you're raising little boys, then you're teaching them how to respect a home because we know the women are typically the leaders within the home. And so you're really setting the stage, you're creating an educational experience of how they're going to hold themselves accountable in the future.
And I think that's a really beautiful thing that not enough of us think about. Discipline is love. And when we discipline our children as far as you're going to hold your space accountable, this is your room, you're not going to trash it. And if you're destroying your toys and messing them up, then you don't get to keep them.
I had one client, her child would break everything and they would expect that they would be able to keep it. And I had to tell her, I'm like, they keep getting a bunch of toys on top of it. Are you gonna let them keep the broken items? And she would essentially say, well, I don't want to upset them.
And it's like, well, if you don't care for it enough to keep it nice, then when it's broken it needs to go. And not saying that your child, the minute something breaks, they have to get rid of it because if it can be repaired. But you have to create kind of a rule system and a boundary of what's acceptable and what's not.
Are you teaching your children to respect things? Because if you don't respect things, then they're not going to last. They're not going to be able to stay in our presence.
And you have to be the one, as the leader of the home to set that tone and say what's acceptable, what's not.
My girls know because they can't reach the top hook, once they're done with their princess dresses or some clothing, they have to set it on the end of their bed and I'll put it away for them because they really can't reach yet. We have steps, but sometimes when we're in transitional flow, they don't have time to go get the step out and it wasn't conducive for me purchase a step for each of their rooms.
I'm like, you know what, that's something easy. We can tidy right before bed. That's during our 10 minute tidy.
When you create rules based on how your home flows, that's when you're going to see success. That's why we don't try to create a mold for everyone. When you're looking at my programs and when we're going through it one-on-one, I'm not like, this is just what you do.
I'm saying what works for your home based on how you function, based on how you think and then how your home functions. Everyone's home is set up differently and how everyone functions within their home is different. We live in a subdivision and there's a couple of homes out here that are same as ours, and I'm sure they all flow and function differently because the way we use our spaces is different based on our family and our lifestyle.
You have to think how my parents who are empty nesters, how they function and flow is very different than me who has almost three small children and a husband. And so when you look at this, you set the tone based on where you're at in your life, and that's really what this whole article is about.
It's like you need to set the tone. You need to set the intention based on where you're at currently in your life. Do you have young children? Do you have old children? What does it look like in your home?
Really quick, let's take our last break from Mom Strong. Be right back.
And we are back.
So I have a couple of things I want you to do today at the end of this episode that we're going to be discussing right now.
Number one, my challenge to you this week is to envision what you hope to see with your home and actually begin to execute it. Remember, this is your intentional transformation.
This is your tidy journey. You're not trying to fit a mold on Pinterest. You're not trying to live someone else's life. You're trying to set your own expectations for your home and how it will function and flow.
And I want you to be very successful in this, so you actually do have to act. But what I like my clients to do when we first start working together, is to walk around your home, literally take a clipboard, walk around your home, note the stressful spaces.
One space I do not want you to compromise on is your bedroom. Your bedroom is where you will go to sleep in peace, and where you will wake in peace. Your bedroom is not a storage unit. Your bedroom needs to be a place of peace and comfort for you.
So that really to me, is non-negotiable. You, whatever comfort means to you is totally up to you. I'm not going to tell you, you need to have this many items in here and this is how it needs to look.
Everyone is different, but I will tell you that that should be a non-negotiable. That should be a place of peace for you.
But walk around, get an inventory for your rooms. Which ones are really stressful, which are high traffic areas, and how are they functioning and flowing currently? Do you have mail stacked up everywhere?
Do you not have a good paper system? Do you not have a good place for toiletries? What does it look like? How can you utilize the space best for you? How can you be most successful with the space you've been given?
I have a client right now who is doing the tidy festival so she can find her ideal home because once you have everything that is remaining in your home, it actually opens a nice doorway to opportunity for the home you desire, for your dream home. And so she's going through it with the mindset of what is my next home going to look like?
This is not something that you're like, I'll just put it off until I move because trust me, when you move, you don't want to be moving all the stuff that you don't want to keep.
So the tidy festival is best to do now.
I had a client say, I don't know if it's right, right now. Well, you know what? It's never going to be the right time. The best time is right now. Just dive in and do it.
But I want you guys to walk around and envision your space. I want you to say, what's important to me?
What do I see for my home?
A lot of my clients want to start entertaining, but they're very embarrassed to have people over. What does your space need to look like for you to entertain peacefully and with excitement?
You don't want to be stressed out when you're trying to enjoy yourself.
Look at your top five values. What are your top five values? How can your home be reflected within those? Typically, family is high up. Faith is high up. If your home is a mess, guess what? You are not going to be spending the quality time that you wish to with God or your family.
You are going to have so much clutter in your mind. And I'm going to tell you, a cluttered counter equals a cluttered mind. It really does. I don't care who you feel like you are as far as your stuff.
I don't know one of my clients or really anyone that I've ever met that's like, ah, I just love all the mess. It just makes me feel so cozy. We oftentimes use that as a crutch for ourselves, but it really isn't making us happy. It's just we don't know how to get out of it.
The beginning is you need to envision the end.
What does it look like? Then go through Marie Kondo's process. And you guys know the tidy festival it goes from least sentimental to most sentimental. We go clothing, books, paper, komono, and sentimental.
When you go through this, be critical of who you are and who you wish to become. What does sparking joy mean to you?
Don't just grab something and toss it aside and say, yeah, I guess I'll keep this. You have to ask that question, what's important to you? Because you are teaching the next generation to find out what's important to them.
And I always try to be very careful when we're going through my kid's stuff, not to say, do you want to keep this? Do you not want to keep this? I try to keep it open into their interpretation. Do you enjoy this? Do you not enjoy this? And if you have a highly sentimental kid, everything is important to them. But we also need to teach them that volume within their bedroom is a critical factor on what they actually can keep.
We have to be realistic with them. And so I have one very sentimental child and I have one child that can very easily get rid of things. And so you need to understand your children and who they are. Jackson, we don't know who he is going to be yet, but you know, he could be very sentimental or he could be not sentimental at all.
We have to take each little person in our life into account so that we can help them pave what joy means to them.
The other challenge I have for you today is, if you're looking for a way to get started, I really highly recommend you click the link in the show notes for the Simple Success Masterclass.
That was a great masterclass I gave a few weeks ago, and it's the three steps in order to understand how less is more and what joy means to you. Really, what Marie Kondo talks about all the time. We go through home, routine, finances, we talk about value systems in that, and that is a free masterclass I'm offering to you guys.
All you have to do is click the link within the show notes and you input your email and it immediately gets sent to you, and I highly recommend it because that's a great way to get started. If you haven't started your intentional transformation, that's where you begin.
You can have a tidy home 24/7, you can have more time on your hands and more money on your bank account when you know what's important to you.
You guys know season two is all about elevating, but we have to build that beautiful foundation first.
If you haven't gotten your home to a place where you're pleased with, or you haven't gotten your routine systems in place, or you haven't created financial goals for yourself. That's why season one was so important, because that's your foundation of success and the Simple Success Masterclass is the perfect place to get started.
I like to keep it simple. I am someone who is actually very lazy. I do not like to put a lot of time into my home, my routine and my finances. And if something is too difficult, I won't do it. And so I want you guys to utilize that philosophy.
It's like, we want to spend more time with our children, we want to spend more time on ourselves.
We need to get these things in order so that we can do that, right? Make sure you guys click the link in the show notes for simple success. You won't regret it. It was a great class. We had a lot of great feedback on it, and it is just a great way to get started.
Also read the Marie Kondo has kind of given up. Let me know what your interpretation is and just know that whatever your starting point for your journey is, that's something to work towards.
What your goals are and what you dream for your home and your life can be a reality. It's not some pedestal you need to put it on and just hope and wish and pray for the future that my home will eventually be tidy when my kids get out.
You know, they can help make it tidy too. And like I said, my girls are getting to the age now where they're actually being helpful. They're wanting to help with dishes. They want chore money. We believe in chore money around here. We believe in everyone gets a little piece of the budget, but you have take care of the space. You have to be a part of the home too. You don't just get to live here, you know, sometimes you got to take out the trash. Sometimes you have to feed and water the dog and pick weeds outside because we want to make sure that our home is a reflection of what we hope to do and achieve in this life.
And that's really the tone I want you guys to set for your life too. How are you holding your children accountable? How are you holding the whole family unit accountable and actually enjoying the time you've been given?
If you're just wandering through life, you're going to find it's really, really hard. And I don't want that to be the way for you guys.
I want you to be successful. I want you to be like, yes, every single day is a celebration. If you're just striving to get to the weekend and then just blowing through the weekend and then it's the next week, like is that joy to you?
Is that enjoyment of life to you? I wake up every single day because this perspective shift I've had and because I've done certain things in my life that I'm like, ah, good morning.
Like I truly feel like good morning. And I didn't always feel like that.
And I don't want you guys to be floating through life and just being like, oh, it's so, so. It's mediocre. It doesn't have to be mediocre. You can truly enjoy your life, and it doesn't mean you have to live a materialistic and lavish lifestyle in order to achieve it.
You can live a very simple, happy life. But it starts with you. It starts with setting the tone for you and setting those expectations and actually executing it.
All right, that's it for today's episode. I cannot wait to share the topic for next week. Make sure you join me and you have subscribed so you can find out when it's live. 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 and on Instagram at The Daughter Diaries. See you next time. I'm Lisa Autry.