I was feeling overwhelmed a few weeks ago and started to get flustered, impatient, and restless during the night’s sleep so I took a moment to tune into what was happening. Luckily, as a life coach, I have been taught the tools for a scenario like this so I went to work on myself. One of the things that seemed to be an issue was the all-of-a-sudden more-than-usual clutter in my house. The devil on my shoulder tried to argue with the angel on my other shoulder about what came first, the chicken or the egg, and the house was a mess because I was overwhelmed so how was I ever going to clean it up? Well, luckily the angel and the coach inside of me won this argument. I requested two hours’ worth of a babysitter for the following day to take the kids outside while I got to work. That initial two hours was the catalyst I needed to get back into gear. After those two hours, things seemed so much more manageable, so the daily cleanup each night after the kids went to bed was much more obtainable and sustainable. This minimal effort action plan had an exponential impact on my feeling of overwhelm and my overall mood. I sit here now, taking on a third party view of the situation and it is so cool to see what happened: a problem was identified, an action plan was figured out and then implemented, and then the magic happened; this magic is part of why I became a life coach in the first place.
If any of you have young children in your house and are in need of some ideas to help organize and declutter you space, below are some of the things I tended to the other day so as to ease my sense of overwhelm; the domino effect it had on my mood and interactions with my children have since been priceless.
- Bins bins bins bins bins bins! Always have some extra empty bins lying around. I am not a big shopper for the usual clothes/shoes/accessories, but boy do I love a good bin! Once stocked up on extra bins, as clutter builds up around you, a specific need may start to come to fruition. For example, maybe your son just reached the Lego age and prior to a few weeks ago this was never an organizational issue of yours. You go and grab one of your empty bins and now deem that bin ‘the Lego bin’. Yes, there may still exist some semblance of clutter inside those bins, but looking at a living room with beautiful storage décor is a lot more soothing to your overwhelm than having the contents of those bins thrown around all over your floor. In my 2 hour tidy up day, I grabbed a small basket from my garage and now use it for all the random small toys my kids had acquired over the summer (for example, temporary tattoos, finger puppets, small bouncy balls, etc.); my house now has a ‘small toy basket’ on the bottom shelf of my end table and the happiness it brings me is strangely huge.
- Less is truly more. I know that kids are more interested when they have less toys; I actually know this from careful research, reading, and experience, but I have an extremely generous extended family and even cave sometimes myself, so my kids have a ton of toys. Something I have implemented, though, since they were babies, is having a rotational system where every few months I rotate the toys from not only room to room but also in and out of storage. Rotating these toys keeps my kids from getting bored. Every few months, when they see these previously stored toys, it is as if I just spent hundreds of dollars on new toys when in fact all I did was ‘hide’ these from them for a few months! Most of my two hours that day were spent on this rotation and boy was it beyond worth it!
- Giving to others feels amazing. Brainstorm the people or places to whom you could give or donate some of your items. For example, maybe you have a friend with a new baby boy so you can plan on giving her your son’s clothes as he grows out of them, or maybe there is a nearby consignment shop or goodwill, etc. Once you have this list in your head, for each person/location, go buy a bin (of course!) or use an extra large garbage bag and keep these in an accessible place so it’s not a hassle to get to them on a daily basis (trust me this is key). Every time you encounter a shirt or shoes that all of a sudden don’t fit your child, figure out who it is going to be given to, and place it in their bin (or bag) real time! Don’t put it back into the dresser or don’t throw it in the corner to deal with later; instead, go to that easily accessible bin/bag and file it away!
- Always have room for growth. What I mean here is don’t have so many clothes in your child’s dresser that you have to jam them in each drawer before you can even close it. Or in the closet, don’t have every single hanger in use; be sure there is enough room in there that you can move the clothes from left to right on the bar a little bit. If these things are not the case for you, either get rid of a bunch of clothes (see previous bullet) or get a bigger dresser/closet! Every single time you shove those pants in that drawer, you may not realize this, but you get a little bit more overwhelmed. Or, if someone buys your child a new outfit for a birthday, and you have no room for it, your mind will race subconsciously in a state of overwhelm and you may miss the moment of joy your child experiences when opening this new gift. Room for growth is an amazing tool to a more decluttered lifestyle.
A lot of life’s changes should be looked at as marathons and not sprints so if the above steps seems too scary at first glance, don’t worry. Even tiny changes over time will prove beneficial. The key here is that if you are feeling that growing sense of overwhelm, there is a reason (and usually many reasons) behind it and with the right resources, you can nip that overwhelm in the bud and work your way to the patient, present, and amazing mama you know you can be.
