Living an Organized Life: From Chaos to Calm

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Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand, and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show. Hello and welcome to this episode of Organized Chaos. Today, we're going to be talking about living an organized life and how you can turn your chaos into calm. So, as moms and mom entrepreneurs, we live a pretty chaotic life, and at times it could just be too much. So I want to share some of my tips regarding organizing different aspects of your life, because having a system of organization that you can apply to different areas of your life can help you achieve so much. Some of the benefits obviously can be reduced stress and anxiety, it can be improved productivity, it can enhance your time management, it can give you a better work-life balance and it can also increase your clarity and focus, and that's what I'm all about here. So I want to actually take you through some of the areas and give you some of the tips that have helped me steer clear of those long bouts of chaos. So I want to start off with decluttering your physical space. Now these are some of the hidden ways that can increase your stress. If you're constantly seeing your physical spaces just an absolute mess, it's obviously going to affect your mood, it's going to affect the way you perceive yourself, you're going to beat yourself up for not cleaning up and it's just going to create this chaos in your life. So one of the things that I have really had to work on is letting go of things. Really, just thinking about the things that I hold on to Now, there are things that we absolutely want to hold on to, maybe things that are irreplaceable, or just things that feel good to have because they have memories. So there are certain things that we are going to hold on to, but a lot of times there are things that we feel like we're going to need in the future. So my first step is just the art of letting go, the art of just assessing what is absolutely necessary in your life and then letting go of the rest. Another way and probably one of my favorite ways is just to find organizing solutions, so storage boxes or places where you can actually place things that you're not using at the moment but that you can find easily. One of the things that I hate the most is when we buy something because we think we need it and then, when we're organizing or going through some things, we actually find that thing that we bought. So this isn't just going to be a stress reliever, it's also going to save you money because you're going to know where things are and they're not going to be found in different places later on down the line. So having things organized and placed in certain locations is going to avoid that. You also want to have some type of system to maintain a clutter-free environment, because it's great when we sit down over the weekend and we start sorting things and organizing things and we feel great about it. But how are you going to maintain that? Now, a great way to do that is to do this periodically. I like to do a deep clean or a deep organization every quarter, but in order to really maintain a clutter-free environment, it has to be more frequent. But don't make it overwhelming. It doesn't have to be. You have to organize and clean the house in one sitting. I say that you put it on your calendar to at least do this once a month, and it could be per room, you know. Or you can pick a couple of rooms that you want to go through. That way you maintain that, or you keep that clutter from accumulating again, but it doesn't have to be like it's going to be your full-time job. Okay, so let's move on to another area, and that is organizing your time. Now I have a few ideas here, and I've actually talked about this quite a bit on different episodes, but I wanted to give you a quick rundown of some of the things that really helped me manage my time. So, for one, it's setting goals, having some type of goals, having some type of direction of when I want to go. Is that the first step in actually managing my time? Because once I get down to the granular, or you know the individual tasks that I need to do, it's a lot easier to manage my time. And Prioritization I have to know what is a priority, because I can't do it all. So I really Follow the 80-20 rule, so anything that falls in that 20% is something that I Need to put my focus on and everything else needs to be delegated or just stopped altogether. I also utilize time blocking. This is a really great way to stay Focused, and you know it does. It's not always perfect, but I try to follow this because it's a really great way to Stay on task and then know what's going on in my life, because I can't keep everything in my head and if I write down the things that I'm gonna be doing on a you know, 30 minute or one hour basis, it just it gives me kind of like that freedom to not have that all swirling around in my head. So time blocking is a really great way to manage your time. You also want to deal with procrastination head on. Now, we are not procrastinators, we just procrastinate. So number one thing is to take that label off and Don't identify yourself as a procrastinator, because you're just gonna bring more of that. So, dealing with procrastination, think of some of the things that you can do that you can avoid procrastinating. And Another thing is to have an effective to-do list. Sometimes we feel like we need to create a to-do list. That is super long, but for me, at least three things on my to-do list is what I do daily and Weekly. So you know, a bigger project can be divided into three parts, or it could be three individual things that are not huge For the week, and then the daily things. Just my top three things. All right, let's move on to another area and that is your digital life. Many times we start off with the most annoying and overwhelming thing in the world and that is our email inbox. So managing our emails and Not letting them overflow is a really great way to kind of organize your digital life. My husband is excellent at this. He will get emails and he, when he checks them, he goes through them right away. Now, this is what works for him. But once he goes through it and if he flags some of them that need to be, you know there's there's more time that needs to go into them he will flag those, but then the rest he just deletes or he archives them, and he always has an empty inbox, and I'm so jealous, but this is the system that he's created for himself. So think about something that you can do so that when you open up your inbox, it doesn't give you that emotion of overwhelm. Another tip is to organize your files and documents. If you open up your computer and you see on your desktop is an absolute mess, start there, start deleting things, start I archiving things. Look into digital storage and just remove the clutter from your desktop. I and I talked about this in a previous episode, about how much time you spend online and how that can affect you. So just be mindful of how much you're using digital devices so that you don't feel that constant stress. Okay, so now let's move into routines and systems. Now I love my morning routine. I mean, it's the thing that really sets me up for the day. So having a morning routine and an evening routine can really help you stay organized and keep you stay on track with some of the habits that you want to either continue or start. Meal planning and prepping is another way to stay organized. It can avoid the stress of having to know what you're going to make for dinner or what you're going to eat, and can avoid the trips to the drive-thru. Another system is to have a coordinating calendar for the family. This way, everybody knows what's happening during the week or during the month, so you can all be on the same page. So, like I said before, this is something that you're going to have to do on a regular basis, but if you do create a system of organizing your life, the benefits are going to be avoiding stress and anxiety, improving your productivity, enhancing your time management, having a better work-life balance and increasing clarity and focus. And, of course, it's not going to be perfect. We're going to have setbacks and we're going to have certain challenges, so we can deal with those as they come. But don't forget to celebrate those small wins. If you get an area that you can organize and declutter and maintain it, celebrate that, because it's not easy to live your life in an organized way. All right, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.