Welcome to the real mom's playbook where balanced becomes a lifestyle brought to you by our premier sponsor the Breakfast Club Coffee Co. In season three, we are building good foundations with your Monday morning wake up. So fill your cup grab a notebook and let's get going

Welcome to episode 4 of the real mom's playbook.

I'm your host Lisa Autry. Today we are moving into the first of our three pillars of success, the home. And we are going to turn your spaces from stressed to blessed, so I hope you're ready.

Per usual, I want to thank The Breakfast Club Coffee Co. for their sponsorship.

Without these amazing faith based mamas, this season would have not been possible. I want to personally invite you to grab their Foundations flight so you can sample all of the flavors that I talk about in this season and tell me which is your favorite cup. So what's in my cup today?

I had to try another flavor within the Eden collection, which is their clean and natural coffees. Today's is the Mexican Altura which is a medium body coffee with those subtle sweet and fruity flavors. My barista Ava made mine today with some organic sweet cream and raw sugar and she used my frother to give it that airy feel.

So amazing. Make sure you head on over to the show notes to grab Mexican Altura and shop all of their awesome products.

Today we are moving on to the next foundation, our home, aka our physically chaotic spaces. Your home is your beautiful foundation, but currently you may be feeling like it's anything but beautiful. If you use the terms messy, chaotic, sticky, overwhelming, cluttered, then this episode is perfect for you.

And we're going to be building on some good foundations, some envisioning, and moving through the spaces strategically.

So society tells us that in order to make memories, our home needs to be a breeding ground of physical chaos. But I'm here to tell you there's a good balance between being lived in and being tidy.

The balance within the home that you ultimately desire is one that we're going to determine today. And over these next two episodes, we are going to dive into the process of discovering and creating your peaceful spaces.

Studies actually find that clutter in the home psychologically stresses us out, it heightens depression, and makes it harder to mentally resolve an issue.

Clutter overwhelms our minds with excessive stimuli, making us work overtime in processing, which can often result in us snapping at the ones we love.

A lot of physical stuff is also a signal to our brains that the work is never done, something us moms need to be able to release in order to elevate to our next level of motherhood and confidence.

Clutter also hinders our creativity and productivity. Something throughout this season I want to challenge you on. Motherhood and life can be fun, but when we are bogged down with stuff, it feels like anything but that. All that physical stuff is holding us back from the life we ultimately want to live.

More stuff is more stuff to manage, meaning less time to feel fun, free, and flowing. Not to mention the simplest of reasons is that clutter inhibits us from finding what we need quickly in order to move on to the next task, which elevates our stress and anxiety.

Even the things that bring us joy and we love cause us stress because for every item we have, it's an item to maintain. The more we maintain, the more stressful it becomes.

I've linked a great article in the show notes if you want to dive in further to the psychology behind our stuff and what it does to us mentally.

First off, I don't want you feeling guilty about feeling like you hold cluttered spaces. Most of the time, our busy lives cause stuff to kind of just pile up to the point of not knowing where to start. It's that overwhelmed feeling that causes you to stand and stare at these piles before giving up, avoiding it all together, and putting those blinders on and moving on.

When I begin working with clients on decluttering, the biggest stressor they face and they tell me is they say, I've been so overwhelmed, I don't even know where to begin.

The excessive stimuli actually bars us from making actionable steps forward. But today is going to be your first step forward. I want to give you the tools to move through those spaces.

I honestly believe there is a good balance between a well lived in and loved home And a tidy home. A tidy home I simply define as a home in which everything has a place.

We use this phrase around our house in order to reset our house, put it in its home, so it's not alone.

More on that in the next episode, but write that phrase down. It's really catchy for young children.

The truth is a tidy home can be cozy and comfy. It doesn't have to be sterile and empty. So how do we achieve this? This is done in three main steps with smaller steps in between.

Step one, envision your ideal life and compare it to your current life. So this step helps you understand what target you are striving for. This is an extremely important step, one that we're starting together today. So don't worry if you don't understand how to go about it or what I even really mean yet, but we want to look at our ideal life and compare it to our current life so we know the target we are striving for.

Step two, declutter and organize. This is the action step of moving through your spaces categorically and decluttering, and determining what sparks joy in your home and life and what does not. After the decluttering of a category is complete, then we go through and organize, and that's the fun part for people, making it look pretty, right?

But we want to declutter in full before we organize, so we understand how much we are maintaining. This is the step done within my program, Define. I walk you through decluttering stressful spaces to help build your momentum. The art of decluttering is simply building momentum in order to achieve your desired goal.

That's all it is. It's one step at a time, one day at a time that compounds over time. Define is in the show notes so you can begin on your stressful spaces immediately after the homework for today's episode.

And then lastly, step three. Maintenance Maven mode. This is my favorite step, because this is where the creation of systems comes into place so you can maintain your home.

Systems are sexy, and they help you work smarter versus harder in your spaces in your life. The goal of this is for the home to operate without you even really thinking about it.

So let's review the steps again, and then we're gonna dive into our homework. Step one, envision your ideal life, and compare it to your current life. Step two, declutter and organize. And then step three, maintenance maven mode.

Now that you know the why behind decluttering and the steps of the whole process, let's move into step one and envision together. This is a really important step to understand the goal you're going to create and you desire to achieve in your spaces.

Remember, you're not creating a Pinterest board. You're creating a well lived in and loved home, which is going to look different to every single one of us. Do not look online and say, okay, that's what I'm shooting for. You can gain inspiration and gain excitement. We're going to talk about this in a second, but you also don't want to create unrealistic expectations for yourself.

Everyone's comfort zone of decluttering and realizing their spaces is different for everyone. So today's activity is setting the tone for you and creating your ideal life.

So let's answer the following questions and feel free to email them to me or to share them on your stories and tag me at the daughter diaries, make this fun because if this is a fun activity, it's going to help build momentum to take action.

So question number one, envision your ideal daily life at home. So I want you to use all of your senses. How does your home look? How does it feel? How does it sound?

How does it smell? Hey, that's a real thing when you're a mother. How does it smell? Okay, I want you to write all of these down. Really get in depth with it. You can also take it a step further by kind of creating a vision board or a collage to inspire you and keep you on track.

The vision board is meant to be inspiration for you of something that you can actually achieve and you really want to look at your home as the sounding board moving forward and that's why we start with envision your ideal daily life and what your home looks like. We begin with the end in mind so that our action steps get us closer to this goal.

Question two, how far away are you from achieving this lifestyle? Now here it's time to be really honest with ourselves. How far away are you from achieving this desired lifestyle? Write down some of the stressful spaces that keep you from this desired result. It may be the kitchen, bedrooms, craft spaces, or your home office.

Try to get really particular about what is stressing you out instead of saying all of it. Because when you look at all of it, that is a huge mountain to climb. It could be, The toy room is unbelievable, or my kids bedrooms, or even my bedroom is not bringing me peace.

And in particular with this, high traffic areas like the kitchen seems to bring the most stress because they are transitional dumping grounds, which means you and your loved ones dump their items down and run. Don't worry though, if you and your loved ones struggle with the dropsies, we're covering systems within the next episode, so make sure you are subscribed to listen, because that's where you're going to see success as systems to make sure you're working smarter versus harder in your home.

Question three. Do an inventory check of your spaces that are particularly stressful for you. So if you haven't yet, make sure you go around your home, literally with a clipboard and a piece of paper and take note and inventory of your stressful spaces.

So what's in these areas? What makes them stressful? What are possible solutions you might have? And this is often where a lot of people get stuck because we have our blinders on. We're like, it's all stressful, so I'm not going to look at any of it. But I want you to really look and say, okay, there's a lot of paper stacked up here.

I'm going to write that down. Okay. This is the mail I have not gone through for a while. Here is where our dirty clothes pile up, or here's even where our clean clothes pile up. Once you start writing those things down, you're actually creating nice action steps for yourself.

And if you haven't yet, feel free to grab a roadmap call and we can discuss your plan of action if you're getting stuck, because we are not taught how to tidy a home.

We are not taught how to maintain a home. Some people really struggle with this and that's okay. There are people like me and then other professional organizers that can help break down a huge objective into tiny little action steps and having an outside perspective really helps because we don't have emotional ties to your stuff like you do.

So we can help you objectively move through it and ask yourself the right questions. I got my KonMari certification four years ago now, and there was over 800 certified KonMari consultants and we are actually taught how to ask you specific questions to Help you determine what sparks joy.

So it's really great to be able to have access to people that have that consulting certification to help guide you. Because a lot of times when we look at all this stuff, we're like, I don't know where to start. And then we drop it, right? We want to move forward with it though. And we want to say, okay, what's the real problem here?

And how can I make action steps moving forward? And the consultants can help you do that. So that's a great thing to have.

And then question four, ask yourself what changes need to be made. Really dive into this question of how you function in your home. So, what do you need to do differently in order to live the new standard that you're going to create?

Think about ways in which you come into and leave your home, how you manage your home in between tasks, And how you close out your home for the evening. So separate that out. So how you come into and how you leave your home, how you manage your home in between tasks, we call those transitional tidies, and then how you close out your home for the evening, put this to the side after you do this, so that you can bring this into the next episode cause that's where we're going to dive into the systems. Now that I've given you ladies a bunch to think on, it's time to go and envision your spaces so we can create a whole new tone for your life. It's time to build those good foundations. Who is ready to live tidy and live peacefully in your spaces?

Before I close out today, here are some reminders about your home. Number one, tiny steps starting with your mindset help you start the process with ease.

Number two, tackling stressful spaces will give you simplified control and build momentum for harder, more in depth decluttering. And number three, creating systems will be your lasting success and help you work smarter in your busy life and spaces. So next episode is all about creating systems in your house for success.

That's it for today. Until next time, I'm Lisa Autry. Thank you for joining me for the Real Moms Playbook, which has been made possible by our amazing sponsor The Breakfast Club Coffee Co. Make sure you check the show notes for links and access to the resources from today's episode.

If you love this podcast, make sure you subscribe, rate, and share. See you next time. I'm Lisa Autry.