Time to calm our space and our life

In this episode we are diving deep into the art of finding serenity within the chaos of everyday life.

As mothers, we wear many hats, and our lives can often become a whirlwind of to-dos. In this episode, we're exploring a vital aspect of harmonious motherhood: bringing calm to your space and your life. Because when your environment is calm, it has a magical way of soothing your mind.

The world we live in constantly bombards us with the message that more is better. More things, more stuff for our kids, and even more stuff for ourselves. But have you ever stopped to think how all this accumulation can overwhelm us? The truth is, our homes can quickly become crowded with things that add to our stress and create extra work.

In this episode, we're not just going to talk about decluttering; we're going to uncover practical steps to create a haven of tranquility in your home, preparing you for a more peaceful holiday season.

Our journey begins with your wardrobe. By streamlining your closet, we'll make daily life smoother, laundry a breeze, and decision-making in the morning a snap. Say goodbye to the "I have nothing to wear" conundrum.

We'll explore how these principles apply to your children's clothes and toys, helping them embrace simplicity and organization from a young age. Plus, selling items you no longer need can be a savvy way to earn extra cash as the holiday season approaches.

Then, we'll delve into the importance of giving each item a designated home and assigning specific purposes to your rooms. Clear boundaries make it effortless to identify when something is out of place and to regain control over your space.

We wrap up by sharing a simple yet transformative nightly ritual. Imagine starting your day with a serene, uncluttered environment, allowing for peaceful moments over your morning coffee or tea. 

The changes we'll discuss in this episode are more than tidying up; they're about finding calm in your surroundings and, ultimately, bringing peace to your soul. Small steps, big impact. 

Transcript

This week, we are going to be talking about bringing some calm into your home and into your space.

I mean, we are absolutely chockablock with stuff, aren't we? The, nature of the world that we live in means that we're buy, buy, buy. And the more stuff we have, the happier we'll be, and our kids need all these things to be happy. And because we're so busy and we haven't got the time to give them, We give them stuff instead, and it just fills up our home. And when we're feeling down, maybe we buy ourselves something, and that makes us feel better. And suddenly our homes and our, you know, lives are filled with things, and they can cause us a lot of stress. They can, bring in a lot of extra worries, extra work for us to do. We've got to take care of all these things. So I'm gonna talk about some ways that you can calm down your space.

Okay? I'm not gonna go into decluttering and all because that could be a whole episode on its own. But I am gonna touch on it a little bit. The reason, that I think this is gonna be helpful is because if you can do some of it now, then it means coming up to Christmas when a whole influx of things are gonna be coming to you in the in form of presents and things. This this might help you if you create some healthy, habits around this stuff now, then it can really help you when that busy time comes. So let's start off with your wardrobe. The benefits of reducing your wardrobe. And I'm not talking about taking out a few I'm talking about really reducing it by about a 3rd. Okay? Start with really having a clear idea of I'm gonna get rid of some of these things.

It will mean that it's easier to look after your clothes. It's easier to keep things tidy in your space. It's easier to organise your clothes. It's gonna be easier for you to stay on top of, the laundry. There'll be less of it for you to do. It'll be easier for you to put away. Also, it's gonna be easier for you to make decisions on what you can wear because you'll be able to see it. It'll be there in front of you.

How many bits of clothes, jumpers, and, you know, how many pairs of jeans do you have or shoes that you love, But that you don't even see and you forget you have, and they're sort of hidden in the wardrobe in this mass cluster of things when you open it up and you just see this wall of clothes and you go, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna wear. If we reduce that down, then you actually have the space to see it, and it'll be easier for you to make those decisions on what to wear. Okay. And if you don't wanna get rid of items right now because, you know, you think, I'm gonna lose some of this baby weight. I don't have much to lose. I really love that dress or those pair of jeans, especially items like Fancy shoes, that maybe don't get wore a lot anyway, and you think, well, maybe if I have a night out, I wanna wear those shoes or I want to wear that pretty dress, Then just put them away. Put them in a case.

Put them under the bed. Put them in a wardrobe in another room. Get them out of your space. Okay? So that that when you're looking at what your wardrobe on a day to day basis, you're not looking at them. 1, they make you feel bad. You feel sad that those clothes don't fit. And 2, you're not gonna wear them, so you don't need them to have access to them in that space straightaway. So put them away somewhere else, and It's gonna help you feel calmer about going to your wardrobe, about making those decisions.

And once you start to do it, Okay. You're gonna notice what items that you're always drawn to and what type of things you're always wearing. And so it means that when you go shopping, you'll find it easier as well as to what to shop for. You won't be tempted by what's at the front on the model or what's in the window, or what pops up on your Instagram or your Facebook, or social media feed because you'll think, oh, I wouldn't wear that. I know I would like it. It's it's really nice. I'll buy it, but you never wear it. So You'll be much clearer on the types of things that you do wear, and that will help you, especially when it comes to going forward as well.

Because once you start to do this, It's a little habit that you start, and then you'll start to see things. And maybe a jumper will be in your order to go, do you know what? I don't really like that jumper anymore. And you never wear it, and you can get rid of Mall then. For me, I've just started, putting some things on Vinted to sell, and I'm really surprised that people pay for these things. I wasn't, It wasn't something that was on my radar, and it was just I had, a mum over. We had a coffee morning, and I had some of the mums over from school. And one of them was telling me about selling some of the things for just for her son. She was selling bits and pieces, and I was really surprised.

I was, oh, people are paying for all this stuff. And she says, yeah. Absolutely. It's so easy. Have a go. And I I just listed some boots and things that I hadn't been wearing, And I was really surprised. So if you need to make some extra cash as well and they run up to Christmas, then maybe that's another way of bringing in some extra income. So, yeah, have a wee look into Vinted.

That's what I've been using. But there's other ways as well, eBay or there's other apps, I'm sure. But, yeah, that's something that you could do. And it also works, the same sort of principles, if you like, of reducing things down is also gonna work for the kids' clothes, and it's also gonna work for the kids' toys. Okay. So you can, you know, reduce those as well. Do they need as many toys as they have? Are they playing with them? Are there some books and things that maybe they aren't really appropriate anymore. They're too young for them.

You can quickly get those things aside, put them in a shopping bag, put them in the bit of the car so you can drop them at a charity shop. You know, get them out of the space. What we're doing here is calming your space so that when you're in a space, it's calmer, and you're not looking at things that make you feel bad or that you have to take care of. Okay? We're reducing that down. So that's that's the first thing I wanted to touch on. The next thing is that we need to give items a home, and we need to give each room a purpose. Okay? This might seem really obvious, But in our modern world, the lines of what a room is actually used for often get quite blurred, especially in spaces like the kitchen and dining spaces. They become multipurpose, and so a lot of random stuff ends up accumulating in them.

You know, if a space has a purpose, then it becomes really easy to identify when an object or an item doesn't belong there, and then you can move it out of the space. My kids are an absolute nightmare for displacing items around the house. Toys end up in all random places upstairs and hallways. You know, my bedroom, they'll have things they'll bring in with them and then they'll get left. Food as well. So there'll be cups or empty water bottles, bowls with some food in it left in random places.

So yeah. Things naturally get displaced around the house. They naturally migrate to different spaces. So if you know Exactly where that item does belong or what that room's purpose is, it makes it very clear when you spot an item that it's out of its zone. It's It's not where it's supposed to be. A really useful way of staying on top of this is if you just have an empty box. So you can have it maybe, in the kitchen.

So when things are piling up in the kitchen, you can just pop the things in the box, and then you can, when you do have the time, whiz round and put them where they're meant to be. My mum always used to put things on the bottom of the stairs to take upstairs that you know, things that maybe migrated down. That's one of the most annoying things as well though because everyone walks past it on the stairs, don't they? And don't take it up. It's only you that goes that needs to go upstairs and bring it upstairs. But, it's a it's a useful one because you then see it when you're going up the stairs. So you grab the items and you take them up. So having a little box around that You can quickly tidy a space, and you can quickly put those items that don't belong into it, and then it can move up. So, yeah, giving items a home and giving each room a purpose.

That's gonna help you identify and clear out what doesn't belong in a space, and that's gonna calm the space down, which is what we're trying to do. Okay? Another, thing I wanted to touch on is to do a reset before you go to bed so that when you start your day, It's calmer. Okay? So what I mean by reset is that you will clear and wipe down the Countertops in the kitchen and in the living space. Just go around, pick up anything that's thrown about on the floor or on the sofas, and pop anything that doesn't belong in the area into a box that can be moved later, which means that, you know, you're coming down to a really clean, calm space in the morning, And that's gonna help you set off your day to a proper start, a calmer start. So you're not instantly coming down looking at the mess that's been left from the day before thinking, oh, I've gotta do this. And you have to tidy up before you can even have your your warm cuppa in the morning. You know, you can start your morning having a nice coffee or a tea with your breakfast And just start on that calmer foot. Okay? So, yeah, a reset before you go to bed of just whizzing around and tidying the space, making sure the lights everything's ready so that when you come down in the morning, it's a nice calm start.

It's a lovely way to start your day. Okay. That's one way of bringing calm into your space is by just making sure that you're starting off the day right. Because when we start our days already in a flustered sort of state of looking at all the things we have to do. It can bring us down. It can set the day off on the wrong tone. And Just having that calm moment to start the day, especially because in the mornings, the kids could be calmer. They just want their breakfast.

So you can quickly give them their breakfast, set them up, and you can have your cup of tea or your coffee in a moment to yourself, a little bit calmer, before you then start the school routine and the nursery routine. And all of these things that you have to do to get them out the door and start your day off, you can have those moments of calm. So, yeah, those are some, tips that I've got just to help you bring some calmness into your space, and that will hopefully help you reduce some of that overwhelm that happens without us even realising it, that the space around us can make us feel overwhelmed without us even knowing that that's what it is that's causing that overwhelm. So so I hope that you found these useful. It's things that I do touch on. So you might have heard me mention them before, but I just wanted to put them in this context of calming your space because that way it's focused and you can think, okay. I am going to take some of these steps. I'm gonna do some of these things.

And even if it's just putting a box, you know, at the bottom of the stairs that you know you can throw things in, You know, just one little thing, and then from there, you can add in more. You don't have to do everything in one go. It's all these little steps that then add up, that we can use to help us bring calmness everywhere in our life. So we can calm our home, and then that helps calm our mind. So yeah. I hope that, these were helpful. I hope they resonated with you. I would love to, get your thoughts on this.