Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 262: The Most Important Rule for ADHD Brains Trying to Get Their Homes Organized

Transcript

262: The Most Important Rule for ADHD Brains Trying to Get Their Homes Organized · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Let me guess, you have a great vision about exactly how your home should look.
• 0:06
  You have done the planning. You know exactly what you want things to look like
• 0:12
  and where you want things to live.
• 0:15
  And something is holding you back from taking action.
• 0:20
  Well, I know what it is, and I know how we can start to overcome it.
• 0:24
  And we're going to dig into that.
• 0:27
  A wise person once said everybody is
• 0:30
  a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to
• 0:32
  climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that
• 0:35
  it's stupid well fish quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned
• 0:41
  monkeys it's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current
• 0:46
  of your life i'm joy a professional organizer mom of four and fellow fish brain
• 0:52
  if If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
• 0:55
  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
• 1:00
  then I'm glad you're here.
• 1:01
  Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
• 1:07
  Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
• 1:13
  Okay, there's literally no need to drag this out. I'm going to jump right into
• 1:17
  what is holding us back when we are struggling with getting our house to order,
• 1:21
  in order, and that is rules.
• 1:24
  And what I mean by rules is all of those decluttering, organizing,
• 1:30
  cleaning rules that we know that we can't possibly follow,
• 1:36
  at least not consistently, and this well of disappointing ourselves,
• 1:43
  or our family, again,
• 1:46
  keeps us stuck.
• 1:47
  And so I want to get into what these rules are all about. So let's think.
• 1:52
  We've got the, you need to create your cleaning schedules to follow consistently.
• 1:57
  Oh, but wait, make sure you declutter first.
• 1:59
  Actually only have exactly what you need in the life you're currently living.
• 2:04
  Put anything that you are about to put down, just put it away every single time.
• 2:10
  Don't ever put anything down.
• 2:12
  If it only takes two minutes to complete, then don't wait. Just go get it done.
• 2:17
  Make sure you have a home for everything and that you're always putting everything in its place.
• 2:21
  Only keep what is useful right now. There's no need to look into the future
• 2:25
  or the past. You need to know exactly how your life works right now.
• 2:29
  And that is the only thing you need to be keeping.
• 2:32
  Also, make sure you create systems that are not going to fill you.
• 2:36
  If you get the right system, then when life gets crazy, even if it falls apart,
• 2:41
  you'll be able to get everything back together in just a matter of hours.
• 2:44
  And then your system will be
• 2:45
  working for you just on autopilot because you're so used to that system.
• 2:50
  And make sure that you are consistent and that you teach your kids how to be
• 2:54
  consistent and you teach your spouse how to be consistent.
• 2:57
  We are hit with all of these quote-unquote simple pieces of advice when we are
• 3:04
  surrounded by our own chaos and our brains just put on the brakes and shut down and say enough.
• 3:14
  I don't blame us. I don't. We are fed so much content and it leads us from frustration to despair.
• 3:25
  It would be lovely if it was, oh, oh, I can do that one piece,
• 3:31
  but then we swipe again and we see another piece and we swipe again and we see
• 3:35
  another piece and we swipe again.
• 3:36
  And next thing you know, we're three hours into all the exact right ways to do it.
• 3:42
  And all these people have done it. And we are seeing people in the middle or
• 3:48
  the end of their journey out of their own mess.
• 3:52
  And it is so hard when you were at the beginning to listen to people who are
• 3:57
  at the end because they forgot how hard it was at the beginning.
• 4:01
  And even if we found somebody who maybe recorded from the beginning or logged
• 4:06
  from the beginning and we're like,
• 4:08
  okay, I'll go back to episode one and I will listen or I will watch and I will
• 4:14
  do exactly what she does, but I'll be able to fast track because I can binge.
• 4:18
  I can do seven of these in a day, not remembering or realizing or understanding
• 4:25
  that the person you are trying to follow from the beginning...
• 4:30
  Weeks, months, years to get to where they are.
• 4:34
  And all of that feels very defeating when you realize all of this.
• 4:39
  And then there you sit, stuck.
• 4:42
  All the great ideas living in your head and none of the action happening in your home.
• 4:48
  So what do we do about that? Well, I'm going to give a little personal antidote here.
• 4:57
  When I decided to start this podcast, I sincerely really believed there wouldn't
• 5:03
  ever be anybody listening.
• 5:05
  So it took away a little bit of the fear and I
• 5:08
  got the reinforcement because you can see your downloads that
• 5:12
  nobody really was listening certainly not in the beginning and so it was very
• 5:17
  easy for me to be brave and and figure out how to it's not that hard to be brave
• 5:25
  when you're sitting in a room by yourself speaking into the air not really knowing
• 5:30
  if there's anybody on the other end of that microphone.
• 5:32
  But when you're doing something where you don't really think anybody's listening
• 5:38
  or watching or noticing or bothering, you can try things.
• 5:44
  You can be a little gutsy. You can mess a few up.
• 5:47
  You can just keep moving on because you've got not the best memory in the world.
• 5:54
  And I have never done any part of this podcast correctly.
• 5:59
  Again, I'm using air quotes here because I
• 6:02
  was in a class learning how to podcast and my
• 6:07
  podcast leader who is amazing and awesome is a go-getter and she has a very
• 6:13
  clear path to follow and believes you know you can follow those steps and have
• 6:18
  this great success and she's not wrong I'm sure it's not the path I took.
• 6:24
  I was supposed to be consistently posting at least once a week probably twice.
• 6:29
  I was supposed to be also posting on my social media,
• 6:33
  and I was supposed to be getting active in my Facebook groups,
• 6:36
  and I was supposed to be sending out email newsletters every week,
• 6:39
  and I was supposed to be pitching myself to be a guest on other podcasts,
• 6:43
  and I was supposed to be active, active, active, active so that I would have
• 6:50
  all this great success. Okay.
• 6:53
  That's not at all how this path has happened. It has happened in,
• 6:58
  I can't do anything on some forced schedule.
• 7:03
  The few times I tried to actually write out and then read my podcast thoughts, it was horrible.
• 7:12
  If you've ever listened to my trailer, it's probably the worst thing I have out there.
• 7:17
  And I recorded that, not going to lie, probably 20 times just trying to make
• 7:24
  what I was reading sound remotely authentic.
• 7:27
  I could only hit record when I had an idea that I really wanted to share,
• 7:34
  when I had a thought that I just felt compelled to talk about.
• 7:38
  And so I got into this rhythm, not a routine, not a system, into this rhythm
• 7:45
  where if I thought of something, I would hit record, and then I would immediately
• 7:49
  edit, and I would immediately publish.
• 7:51
  I wasn't batching. I wasn't scheduling.
• 7:54
  I wasn't consistent where y'all knew something new was going to come out on a Tuesday at 6 a.m.
• 8:00
  Like, and yet, somehow,
• 8:03
  I've done more than 250 episodes now. A lot of people quit way sooner,
• 8:11
  like to the tune of less than 50 episodes in.
• 8:15
  I have 435,000 plus downloads right now, which is not me bragging.
• 8:23
  It's me saying I'm not doing this with nobody listening anymore.
• 8:28
  And yet you will discover there are gaps in my postings. You will see gaps of,
• 8:35
  I wonder what's up with her, why hasn't she downloaded anything recently?
• 8:39
  One is I need to have those sparks of inspiration because I have to feel authentically
• 8:43
  sharing. I can't have this log of ideas and then just decide to talk about one.
• 8:49
  I try that. Sometimes that can work, but not really.
• 8:52
  I need to have these spots of inspiration where I just want to share with you.
• 8:57
  The biggest difference for me is that I quit caring about the arbitrary rules
• 9:04
  and the arbitrary definitions of success.
• 9:08
  I didn't care if my downloads were consistent week over week.
• 9:12
  I didn't care if I was having the right number of opens on a newsletter that
• 9:18
  I sent out or the right number of responses.
• 9:21
  I just, what made it real for me was having a really great review that was so sweet to hear.
• 9:30
  Shameless plug, if you've never reviewed this podcast and you enjoy it, please do that.
• 9:33
  It makes so much difference to me personally, but it supposedly helps others like you find me.
• 9:40
  It made a difference when I started having my membership and ladies started
• 9:44
  joining and I started seeing faces on the other end of this microphone.
• 9:48
  It made a difference when somebody would email me and say, hey,
• 9:53
  I listened to episode 229, and
• 9:56
  I can't believe that it sounded just like what was going on in my head.
• 10:00
  Thank you for voicing that out loud.
• 10:04
  It's this desire to show up every Tuesday with women who have become my friends
• 10:09
  in our group and getting excited about working with them.
• 10:13
  It's being able to see a before and after in my community of somebody celebrating
• 10:19
  something that they tried after listening to one of my podcasts.
• 10:22
  That has nothing to do with consistency and following the rules and checking
• 10:32
  off the checklist and following the system so that I could have the right kind
• 10:36
  of quote unquote growth.
• 10:39
  The growth happened, but because I cared about the right stuff.
• 10:45
  So when we go back to that list I said of all those rules that are so arbitrary
• 10:52
  that you've heard about cleaning, decluttering, or organizing your home,
• 10:56
  remember that none of that is what you're looking for.
• 11:00
  You're not looking for evidence that is based on what they said was the definition of success.
• 11:08
  You don't care if every night you go to bed and your sink is clean for 37 days in a row.
• 11:14
  You don't care that you were able to find something that you were looking for
• 11:20
  and you clocked it in under two minutes.
• 11:22
  And you don't care that you can pick up the tiniest little twist tie and know
• 11:28
  exactly where it goes because you have a home for everything and everything has a home.
• 11:33
  Would all of those things be lovely? Absolutely.
• 11:36
  Are any of those things wrong?
• 11:38
  No. But the measure I want you to stick with is just, who are you doing this
• 11:46
  for? Why are you doing it?
• 11:48
  It has nothing to do with these random rules. It's not about so you could post it.
• 11:55
  It's about being able to sit down at night and watch the latest show that you're
• 12:01
  in love with, with your spouse, and knowing you're not sitting on clutter,
• 12:06
  that you actually had a way to scoot some of that out of the way during the day.
• 12:10
  And it felt really great to sit down with your feet up. It's that you walked out.
• 12:14
  Down from your bedroom in the morning to start your cup of coffee,
• 12:19
  and the coffee pot wasn't already dirty from last night, and you didn't have
• 12:22
  to start by washing it, but wait, the sink is still full.
• 12:25
  And so now you have to empty the sink to be able to clean the coffee pot to even get a cup of coffee.
• 12:31
  If that is still the place you are, you need to have the bravery to do it wrong,
• 12:38
  to do it messy, to do it inconsistently.
• 12:43
  The only thing you have to be consistent about is being inconsistent.
• 12:48
  You have to give yourself permission to have fits and have starts and have good
• 12:53
  days and have bad days and have things that you try and they didn't work out. It is this,
• 13:00
  Effort again to say life is a grand experiment and I am no longer in pursuit
• 13:06
  for the right way to do anything.
• 13:09
  I am in pursuit of what will make me happy and make me feel better and make
• 13:14
  me see progress in the next 15 minutes.
• 13:17
  So what is your action right now? What I'd love for you to do is while I'm in
• 13:21
  your ears, literally stand up, scan around the room right now,
• 13:27
  find any surface, any, just zero in on a surface.
• 13:30
  Grab your phone, because I know you're listening on one, and snap a quick picture.
• 13:35
  Now take that same phone, set a timer for 15 minutes.
• 13:40
  All I want you to do is to make that space a little better.
• 13:46
  If it is covered with stuff, literally just look around. Is any of it trash?
• 13:52
  Just grab the trash up, carry it straight to the trash can, and walk back to that same space.
• 13:58
  Start stacking things together Are there a lot of papers?
• 14:01
  You don't even have to look and see if the papers relate to one another.
• 14:03
  You should take everything that is papers or magazines or flyers or whatever
• 14:10
  and stack them all into a stack.
• 14:13
  Now look at what's left. Is there anything that is, oh wow, I don't even know
• 14:21
  how that got there. That actually has a home. That has a home.
• 14:24
  Okay, I'm going to pick that up and walk that to the home. It actually lives
• 14:28
  over here. Take that over.
• 14:30
  Oh, there are two things here that I know I can live the rest of my life without.
• 14:35
  Are they worth throwing away? Are they worth walking to your car and dropping
• 14:40
  into even a grocery sack to donate?
• 14:43
  You don't have to look for a cardboard box. You don't have to look.
• 14:46
  You can even carry them out there with nothing and still drop them just in your
• 14:50
  hands. It doesn't have to be a container.
• 14:53
  And then see if the timer's gone off.
• 14:56
  And now grab that same phone and snap a picture and take your phone and go back
• 15:03
  and forth and back and forth at your own little private before and after.
• 15:09
  If this makes you feel great, say it out loud if you have to.
• 15:14
  Share it in our group. Just tell it to yourself, but something to the extent
• 15:19
  of, wow, that wasn't so bad. I could do that again.
• 15:25
  I could do that again.
• 15:27
  And then set another 15 minutes, snap another picture after you've picked another
• 15:33
  little space and try it again.
• 15:36
  You may be amazed that when you give yourself permission to say,
• 15:43
  who cares about the role There's nobody's rules that I care about.
• 15:48
  My goal is, can I, today, in 15 minutes, make a little spot better than it was?
• 15:58
  That's the only thing I want you to even care about.
• 16:02
  When it hits you that maybe you
• 16:05
  should be doing something and you start to
• 16:08
  spiral into the screen of
• 16:11
  let me find some inspiration or let me put a video on or let me find the right
• 16:15
  podcast or let me just say I gotta stop I don't need perfection for this I just
• 16:23
  need a 15 minute timer and the decision to pick out a spot and make it a little better.
• 16:29
  I hope this helps. If you do ever want to reach out to me, I have all the links
• 16:35
  in my show notes, but I am joyatjoylovinghome.com on email.
• 16:40
  I am not consistent about replying, but I will get to you.
• 16:44
  I have my free community at bit.ly slash joylovinghome community.
• 16:50
  I have my $10 a month membership where we have Zoom calls for accountability.
• 16:55
  It is joylovinghome.com slash membership.
• 16:59
  And I have this podcast that if you've enjoyed it,
• 17:03
  please know that every time you take the time to reach out to me or to hit a review,
• 17:09
  it gives me that little spark to come up here and record another episode,
• 17:15
  even if it's 10.52 on a random Thursday.
• 17:19
  And I will have this published in the next 30 minutes against every role because
• 17:27
  the actual definition of success is me wanting to help anybody else feel less
• 17:34
  desperate about their home.
• 17:36
  You can do this. There are other fish brain like you out there.
• 17:41
  I am one too and I am in my messy middle, just like I know you are,
• 17:46
  and we can do this together.
• 17:48
  So until next time, continue to choose joy.