Episode 238: Declutter Your Motherhood
Friends, welcome back to Live Free Creative podcast. You’re listening to episode number 238: Declutter Your Motherhood with Rachel Nielson.
Once in a great while, I love to invite a friend on to the show to share some different thoughts and perspectives with us. And today that friend is Rachel Nielson. She’s coming back to the show. She’s been a guest before. I’ll link her previous episode, which is called Delighting in Motherhood in the show notes so that you can reference that one if you’re interested in hearing more. That was a couple years ago, so interesting to have a similar topic a couple years later and see how things have emerged and grown and changed.
I’m excited to talk to Rachel about decluttering your motherhood this week that we’re celebrating Mothers. Mother’s Day can feel complicated for some people. For some of us, it’s just delightful and wonderful and we’re so happy to be celebrated and to celebrate our mothers and like end of story.
For other people, there are some complicated feelings that come up around motherhood, whether your own mothering is more difficult or challenging than you expected. Whether your road to motherhood or your attempted road to motherhood has been more challenging than expected. Whether motherhood is something that you don’t resonate with and haven’t chosen, and you must manage your emotions around the celebration of motherhood.
Beyond that, our own relationships with our moms can be different and can fall across the spectrum. I just want to acknowledge that right up front, that Mother’s Day is a time that can bring up all different sorts of feelings, expectations, and emotions.
The goal with this episode today is to talk about how we can use some of the same principles that we might use in decluttering a closet to declutter different roles and responsibilities in our lives like motherhood. We’re going to talk a lot about motherhood and mothering specifically because that’s what Rachel specializes in. Her podcast, 3 and 30 Takeaways for Moms, is an incredible show that’s been running for years, has a huge, devout audience, and she brings on experts every week to talk about different topics related to motherhood in every different season.
It’s a great resource that I hope you’ll take advantage of if you want to learn more about mothering and get some tips in your back pocket for that. Today we’re going to dive into a framework around decluttering your motherhood that Rachel’s been working on and sharing for years and has made available now as an online course, which is awesome.
She’ll tell you more about that at the end of the show. For now, I want to start us off with a beautiful pause for a poem regarding motherhood.
Segment: Pause for a Poem
We loved them.
We got up early
to toast their bagels.
Wrapped them in foil.
We filled their water bottles
and canteens. We washed
and bleached their uniforms,
the mud and dirt
and blood washed clean
of brutality. We marveled
at their bodies,
thighs thick as the trunk
of a spindle pine,
shoulders broad and able,
the way their arms filled out.
The milk they drank.
At the plate we could make out
their particular stance, though each
wore the same uniform as if they were
cadets training for war.
If by chance one looked up at us
and gave us a rise with his chin,
or lifted a hand, we beamed.
We had grown used to their grunts,
mumbles, and refusal to form a full sentence.
We made their beds and rifled through their pockets
and smelled their shirts to see if they were clean.
How else would we know them?
We tried to not ask too many questions
and not to overpraise.
Sometimes they were ashamed of us;
if we laughed too loud,
if one of us talked too long to their friend,
of our faces that had grown coarser.
Can’t you put on lipstick?
We let them roll their eyes,
curse, and grumble at us
after a game if they’d missed a play
or lost. We knew to keep quiet;
the car silent the entire ride home.
What they were to us was inexplicable.
Late at night, after they were home in their beds,
we sat by the window and wondered
when they would leave us
and who they would become
when they left the cocoon of our instruction.
What kind of girl they liked.
We sat in a group and drank our coffee
and prayed that they’d get a hit.
If they fumbled a ball or struck out
we felt sour in the pit of our stomach.
We paced. We couldn’t sit still or talk.
Throughout summer we watched
the trees behind the field grow fuller
and more vibrant and each fall
slowly lose their foliage—
it was as if we wanted to hold on
to every and each leaf.
The Mothers by Jill Bialosky.
Even though I don’t have kids that play baseball, that one hits for me the yearning to know them. And as they get a little bit older, the way that kind of feels slippery in your hands. The feeling emotionally impacted by their successes and their losses. It all just feels so real.
And this time of year especially, as we’re thinking specifically about motherhood, I know if you’re a mom, you think about motherhood a lot, and it’s interesting to have a weak, a weekend. That the attention of a lot of people is on motherhood. How are you feeling about it? How are you feeling in your motherhood right now?
That’s a question that this episode will hopefully help you answer, and if it’s not so great, know that you’re not alone. That motherhood can feel tricky. My own mothering lately has felt difficult and for lots of different transitions and things that. My kids and myself are facing, it’s feels like a target that’s just moving all the time.
I was telling my therapist that I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole and as soon as I’ve got something figured out that something else pops up that I wasn’t expecting in an area that I wasn’t expecting, and it’s exhausting. And so, I am also tuning in, not only as the interviewer and producer of this show, but tuning in as a listener with my listener lens of how does this information apply to me?
How can I use it to benefit me in my life? I hope that you’ll join me in that invitation to consider the ideas and questions and advice shared in this episode to benefit you in your everyday life.
Get to know Rachel
Let’s jump into getting to know Rachel a little bit better if you’re not already familiar with her. Her website offers a great insight in the form of an autobiographical poem.
As a former high school English teacher, Rachel loves doing poetry as a getting to know you tool, and so on her website, she offers this introduction:
Rachel aware, kind, scattered, honest lover of crossing things off her to-do list, catching an unexpected sunset and condensing meaty research into actionable takeaways for moms.
Who feels content with her head on Ryan’s shoulder, flustered when she can’t find her car, keys always, and fulfilled when she hears that her podcast made a difference to someone who needs snuggles from her kids’ conversations with her kindred spirits and think time for work projects every day.
Who gives care packages to friends who are hurting, half birthday cakes to her children, and an over easy egg to her dog every morning. (She’s a sucker)
Who fears loss of memories, loss of loved ones, and loss of integrity.
Who would like to see a third baby in her arms, a bestselling book with her name on the cover, and every country of the world with Ryan as her travel buddy.
Resident of a perfect little mountain town in Idaho.
Beyond her own autobiographical poem. I know Rachel as a generous and thoughtful friend, a kindhearted supporter and encourager. An incredible employer who loves taking care of the women who she has on her team, and a super effective and conscientious delegator who knows what she’s good at and assigns out the rest.
This is a skill that I love Rachel uses and something that I would like to do more of in my own life. Now without further delay, let’s jump into decluttering our motherhood.
Declutter Your Motherhood with Rachel Nielson
M: Rachel, it’s always so great to see you and chat with you. I’m excited to have you on Livery Creative today. How are you doing?
R: I am doing great. I am so excited to be here to talk to you. I feel like you are such a great example of decluttering your motherhood, which we’re going to talk about today. You are somebody that lives with so much intention, and I love watching the way you live. It gives me permission to live with more intention and fewer should and expectations of myself.
And so, you’re just the best person I can think of to talk about this, so I’m excited.
M: That’s so nice and it’s so interesting because sometimes I forget that it is an ongoing process. Our seasons change and things get cluttered back up again, and no matter how much we want to just set it and forget it.
It’s just not reality for that to happen. And so, with every new stage and I like to think of like the seasons of the year as reminders of what is changing out in nature? What is changing in my life and how do I readdress the reality of where I am, what my energy levels are, what my kids’ stages are, and how do we approach this new season with that level of intention that we may have already used six months ago that isn’t working anymore.
So, I think right now with the spring, I know it’s not as springy in Idaho as it is here in Richmond, but hopefully soon your snowball melt. Hopefully not too quickly.
R: I have three feet of snow in my front yard right now, everyone, so yeah.
M: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So hopefully soon you’ll have the same as robins building nest in your trees and flowers blooming. I’ve been feeling that spring cleaning feeling around here, like opening my windows and like letting the breeze come in.
I was out in the garden this weekend and it was so nice to put some things in the ground. It feels like perfect time. Just the regular rhythm of the year to be talking about decluttering and specifically about decluttering our responsibilities and our expectations of ourselves as moms.
R: Yes.
M: You’ve been talking about this for a long time. Can you give me a little background, first, for those who aren’t familiar with you and haven’t listened to your show yet, I highly recommend you put it on your list. Give us a quick introduction to who you are and what you do.And then and then we’ll talk about declutter your motherhood.
R: Okay, great. So, I’m Rachel and I host the podcast. 3 in 30 takeaways for Moms. Every episode is 30 minutes with three actionable takeaways. And I live in the mountains of Idaho where it, we’re recording this on April 17th and it’s still very snowy.
I have two kids, my miracle babies, Noah is adopted, and Sally was conceived with IVF and I came into motherhood thinking I fought so hard for these babies and I’m going to love every minute of it. And then found that motherhood was much harder than I expected. And that’s when I had to start this internal decluttering.
What are all the expectations that I’m putting on myself of the mother that I think I should be, that are making me unhappy? And how can I own the mother that I am? And this looks different than I thought it would look, and that’s okay, and I want to build. A motherhood and a life that fits me, not just with all of these should that I had carried around in what I call like an internal motherhood closet.
Like I think of it very much like a physical closet, but like it’s stuffed with. Should and mom guilt and all these things. And I want to go in there and sort through it the way that I would a physical closet to really figure out what fits me, what brings me joy, what do I want in this closet? And that’s a process I feel like I’ve really been going through personally.
Since my son was born 11 years ago and now, I am passionate about teaching other women how to do the same thing in their lives and in their motherhood.
M: You came and taught a workshop around decluttering your motherhood at summer camp. Three, almost three years ago, before the pandemic, you had been teaching a workshop on decluttering your motherhood in live in person, right?
It’s feels familiar to you as like a core tenant of who you are and how you talk about mothering in a way that fits people.
R: This all started for me when I had a friend come and ha help me professionally organize my home. At the time she was just doing it as a hobby. She has now actually started a professional, organized business. Her name is Candy Kidd.
When we were decluttering my physical spaces, I realized how much of my physical items, my physical belongings carried should for me, and I had to accept who I am and get rid of stuff that I wasn’t using.
And I thought, wow, this is what we do every day, or what we should be doing every day as women is looking at. Getting conscious about, because we don’t even think a lot about our internal clutter, about our should and stuff to hold those things in our hands and think, does this fit me or do I need to let this go?
And so that was in 2018 that my friend came and did this huge declutter of my house. Like we did every single room and closet over three days. And ever since 2018, I’ve been teaching these principles to women as more of a metaphorical. Closet of letting go, the stuff that doesn’t fit you.
M: Yeah, it’s so good. I’ve used the same, after our big minimalist challenge in 2017, and then writing about it and teaching an online course about physical decluttering, I realized the same thing. The metaphor of the tangible things that you like, pull out of a closet, and think, how did this get there?
You don’t even remember where it came from, where you bought it, what you were thinking at the time, why you invested, money and space and all of this into it, and the actual physical letting go of things and the huge breath of relief that brings when you recognize this is no longer for me.
And I think this used to be for me and it doesn’t serve me now. That’s such an amazing realization. And being able to do it physically, I think allows our human brains to bridge to what types of thoughts and beliefs and attitudes am I holding onto in the same way that I’m holding onto like my great aunts China, that I think that, lightning’s going to strike me if I donate this, but also, I didn’t ask for it.
Someone just dumped it on my porch. Yeah. So, tell us about the steps of decluttering your internal motherhood, you’re the beliefs and ideas that you have around the mother that you should be, that might not fit you anymore. Where do we begin?
R: Yeah, so I have really boiled this down into three steps.
I love the number three. That’s what my whole podcast is based around 3 in 30. I love to take big, complicated concepts and say, okay, how do we make this actionable?
How do we, in a way, declutter this big thing and make it simpler? And so, the three steps that I think through are sort. Edit and add when you are going through a physical space, but then also when you’re going through it in the internal space.
So, the first thing you must do is you have to get in there and take everything out of the closet and sort it into categories to get a feel. For how much you have and what you have of all these different categories. And when Candi taught me to do this, I was surprised. I thought can’t we just thumb through my clothes?
Like why would we take them all out? Let’s just thumb through the hangers and pull off what I don’t wear anymore. And she said, this will be so much more deliberate if you pull it out, get a good feel for it all and decide what is worth. Going back in, it’s a new level of accountability to yourself to do that process.
And she was right, and, in the end, I only kept one pair of pants and five shirts after that declutter. Oh, that was a big declutter. Yeah, it was. I have a picture and it is comical. You look in of my closet after you’re like, how is she did? Is there going to be anything she can even wear in that closet?
But the truth is that I was only wearing those five shirts in that one pair of pants. Anyway. B, those were the things I gravitated towards and grabbed because they fit me. I liked them, and the rest of the stuff was just in the way. And then once we got all the rest of the stuff out and I saw I only have five shirts and one pair of pants, I realized I have room to add here.
And so that’s why that third step for me is add, which I feel like a lot of professional organizers wouldn’t. Wouldn’t include that. They wouldn’t say and now you add a bunch of stuff to me, that’s the fun part. You’ve cleared out all this room and you can see now clearly what you couldn’t see before that I only have one pair of pants that fits me.
I need to go get some new pants and I can find pants that I really love. My five shirts that I had left were like black, white, and gray. So, when I looked in there, there’s a pattern here. It’s And it wasn’t because I didn’t like color. It was just like the I’d gotten; things had gotten boring.
Yeah. And so, I was like, I need to add some color to this closet, to this wardrobe. And I think of that with motherhood that sometimes we get in our drab routines with our life and our kids, and sometimes we need to clear out the junk, the routine, the stuff we don’t really love to do, and then say, now that we have a little bit of space as a family, what do we want to add that would bring color?
And magic into our life and into our motherhood beyond just what sort of society expects us to do. And we’re checking boxes, but we don’t really love any of it. Let’s get rid of that stuff and what fits us that would bring us joy. And that’s really what the last step of the declutter your motherhood process is figuring that out.
What would I want to bring into my life? Now that I have the room for it.
M: So, to create the room. I love that. And I’ll, I also want to rewind back to the beginning because what about I think so much of the should in our motherhood are. Things we don’t recognize.
R: Yeah, absolutely.
M: They’re built into us by culture. They’re given to us by our schooling, by our families, maybe by our partners in marriage. Maybe by just some offhand comment that a pediatrician made when your child was young, that you internalize and then you realize you’re following your kid around, trying to get him to eat more protein or something.
Because one time that one doctor mentioned that, and you’ve never stopped to think is this something that. Matters for right now, or is it applicable to me? What advice do you give to people who are like, I don’t really know what is in my motherhood closet. I don’t know what those should are.
I’m just doing the things that I think I’m supposed to.
R: Yeah. I have an exercise in my workshop where I ask women, I give them a whole list of influences. So, your family of origin, your expectations of your partner, your religious culture, social media, your friends, and social circle.
Look at these influences and slow down long enough to ask yourself consciously, how have those factors impacted what I believe a good mother is? And I have women sit and reflect and write underneath each of those categories. And anybody could do this in a journal or anything because. You do have to slow it down to even recognize what is in there and why I believe the things that I believe.
And it’s so interesting once you do that, the stuff that comes up, and in one of my workshops, a woman, we were having a discussion and sharing in a woman, Said, something that I would really love to declutter is that I feel so much pressure to iron my kids’ clothes, and I would love to stop doing that.
And I was genuinely bewildered by this because I had, I have taught hundreds of women this content, and I had never once heard another mom say that they ironed their kids’ clothes. Yeah. And so, I just was staring at her in confusion, and I asked her, first. First, I said, okay. Everyone in this room raise your hand if you iron your kids’ clothes consistently.
And not one mother in the room raised their hand and this woman looked around and she was like, what? Like I thought all the moms were doing this, oh my goodness. Yeah. We were all laughing. And then I said to her, where does that come from? Think back, where does that expectation come from?
And she said, She’s I grew up in Jamaica and in Jamaica, at least where she lived in Jamaica, there was a different expectation for the way that you looked and presented yourself in the way that children looked, and her father ran a dry cleaner. So those two things together, she’s It was very important to my dad that we were pressed and looked nice and everything.
And she’s I think I just had taken that with me and didn’t realize that in America, people don’t iron their kids’ play clothes. And just because this was important to my dad doesn’t mean that it must be important to me. And so, I think she felt a lot of freedom in realizing that. But also, she asked me, does that mean.
That when we go back to Jamaica, do I need to continue to not iron my kids’ clothes to like really to be myself? Am I being inauthentic if when we go back to Jamaica, I do iron my kids’ clothes? And I, my response to her was, that’s completely up to you. If you’re doing it from a place of alignment with your values.
So, if you think, when I go back to Jamaica, I know this is important to my dad and I want to do this to honor him and respect him, and I’m doing it as an act of self really. Versus when I go back to Jamaica, I want to please my dad and I want my dad to think I’m good enough and so I’ll do this there.
And I’ll never tell him that back home. I don’t do it because I’m hiding it, they’re two very different. Takes on this expectation that she had uncovered for herself, but she had never slowed down long enough to even know where that expectation came from, or the fact that she had a choice that she didn’t have to do that anymore if she didn’t want to, is a powerful realization for women.
M: Totally. I think that we often don’t allow ourselves the option of deciding that. Some of the things that we’re doing automatically are decisions there. There’s a little bit of maybe a little bit of vulnerability or challenge when we recognize. I think it can be hard sometimes to recognize that we are causing a lot of our own suffering.
The resentment that we’re carrying around doing things that aren’t that valuable to us or that we don’t care about, but we think we should and that should be given to us. And then when we realize I don’t have to do that, the reason that I’ve been feeling so bad about it is my own issue.
There’s like freedom and some challenge of responsibility in that of saying this is optional. And I know that in some of the relationships that I have with friends and family who do things that they don’t really like because they like the idea of the outcome.
So, an example might be making a really like special lunch for your child to take to school because you like the perception that the other kids or moms would have of you being a cool mom or you are making great lunches. But if you don’t really like it, but you like the outcome that comes from it, it’s a tricky, the there’s like a little bit of vulnerability in understanding that a lot of the should that we participate in are to uphold an idea of perfection or a status or a way that something looks that might be inauthentic.
It’s like an admission of humanity to say, I am, I’m just, I’m either not willing, not interested, or not able to be the person that I thought I could be or that I wanted to be, or that I thought I should be. And there’s maybe some like grief and loss that happens in that process that’s unexpected.
When you’re giving things away. I know that with physical belongings a lot of times, When I’ve worked with people, they’re giving things away, physical things that they don’t use, and they don’t like, and they don’t really need. And there’s still an absence when as they hand it off because that space that’s created is uncomfortable to not, it’s like a place of transition to not know if I’m not the person who has 40,000 teacups, then who am I?
They’re this in between. And maybe that’s step two. Maybe that’s what the edit is. Once you’ve taken everything out and you’ve looked through where all these messages coming from, you get to start making decisions around what aligns with me, what doesn’t align with me, and how do I feel about all of this?
R: Yeah. And I wish for like our internal closets that it was as straightforward as our physical closets. With the physical closet, you hold it in your hands, and you make a choice and you put it in the donations bin, and you take it to the donation center.
Now, that’s not to say that you might not feel, still feel a lot of angst around though. Cause I know, as you just said, you do sometimes feel that, but it’s much harder with those internal expectations of yourself when you realize. Okay. I think I want to let this go, but how? Do I just put it in a box and take it to the dump?
That doesn’t, how do I extricate the mom guilt that I feel right about this thing or whatever. And it takes a lot of internal work and conversations with yourself. And I think also it takes just trying things. Yeah. It takes taking the first step and seeing oh, the world didn’t collapse when I didn’t do this thing.
And it felt good, and I think it’s okay. So, I’m going to take the next step towards that thing. And we’ll see how that feels. And so, it’s not this straightforward, you’re done with this organization project in a day. It can take years to get to the point where you feel like, I’ve really stepped into the mom I am instead of the mom that me.
Thought I would be or should be. And things are feeling good and really decluttered. And so, it’s a process for sure to do this edit of the things that don’t spark joy. We hear Marie Kondo says that your physical items should really, you should feel like an energetic connection with them.
Almost Marie Kondo is a famous Japanese professional organizer and that you can also have that in your life where you have the things, the activities, the tasks in your life that you’re taking on Spark joy for you. Or the value underneath that task sparks joy for you, even if the task itself doesn’t, because a lot of stuff in motherhood isn’t necessarily fun, but the value underneath it is what really brings that joy for you.
So, you choose to do the activity anyway. Even though it doesn’t, that activity doesn’t necessarily spark joy because of that underlying thing that you really care about in your motherhood. It, but it takes so much intention and being con, being able to consciously evaluate why you’re doing things.
And it’s a long process to get to the point where you can get there.
M: Yeah. And it changes because at times some things that are, you’re feeling good about in your motherhood something changes either in your kids or in your lifestyle or, and then, it all I remember when my kids were learning to sleep, it’s probably like the most cliche example, but like the first time my, my baby slept through the night.
Milo, he was probably 11 months. Like we, we weren’t great at sleep training. And that was a whole other thing that I was like feeling bad about. Why is my almost one year old, like not able to make it through the night without getting up to nurse at 3:00 AM and like just all these things. He slept through the night.
This one night I didn’t wake up until six in the morning and thought, oh my gosh, we’ve made it. Like we’ve done it. And then the next night he woke up at two 30 to feed. Yep. And I thought, like what? The kind of back and forth before you’re in like a solid new routine. There, there’s things that are just changeable.
So, I love what you were saying about values because I think the. The way that our values manifest in our life may change with the seasons, with our own personal energy levels, with even like where we’ve lived, like I’m thinking of, we’ve lived in an 800 square foot apartment, a giant 3000 square foot home on a a half-acre of land back to a 1000 square foot house that was a rental into a little 1400 square foot house.
And now we live in about 2,400 square feet on, in the city with a little tiny yard and garden, and even just what my actual physical surroundings needed from me. Has been different every, like three to four years of me of my family life because we’ve moved so much that my surroundings, like physical surroundings, required different levels of engagement.
So, I am re remembering a time that we had a conversation. I think we were talking about time management for one of your courses a couple years ago and the phrase that I shared was everything is optional. And I think that just that reminder as you’re thinking through sorting and editing, that you really can try to put everything to the side and then, and some things like, I think everyone will always argue back against how like doing the laundry isn’t optional or doing the dishes isn’t optional.
Or like sending the kid with shoes on their feet isn’t optional. Even those things I think are like, are there ways to get through life without doing these things? You may not choose that, but backing up to where you have the autonomy, there’s just something that happens, I think magical when you give yourself this space to say, I don’t have to do it this way.
I have the option to do it however I want, and maybe some things are more reasonable or more financially possible or, but. Just allowing the space for women to feel like they have lots of options can be so freeing.
And then when you start to that editing process of how do I want to do it I don’t have, if I don’t have to do it the way my dry cleaner dad did it, or the way that my, super messy hoarding mother did it or whatever, like, how do I want to do it? Do you help people discover their values? How do you help people who haven’t done a lot of. Digging into what their values are.
What’s the, some of the process of just if someone’s I don’t really know what I care about.
R: There are some wonderful resources for figuring out your values. You can get a deck of cards; you can order it online. I have a favorite. And I recently saw it behind you when we were in a call from Lisa Congdon.
It was on your wall or your shelf too. I’m like, oh, Miranda and I have the same favorite values stack. It’s called, I think it’s just called Live Your Values. Live Your Values. Yeah. And you can, its ha it’s their Beautifully Illustrated cards and they have all the values listed on them. And then you can do a sort where you, I when I, you can do it however you want.
When I use those cards, what I do is I make three piles. Because the hard thing with figuring out your values is that. Most of the time you’re going to say this all matters to me. Like Totally. Yeah. If someone’s okay. What matters most to you? Honesty, creativity, adventure, integrity. Like love, yeah.
Success, hard work, humor. You’re like all of it. I want all of it. All of it matters. Yes. What’s great with this exercise is it forces you to say, okay, maybe it all matters to me, but what matters most to me? So, I make three piles and one pile I have doesn’t really matter that much to me. And there’ll be a few in there that I’m like, maybe I should care about that.
But I just really don’t. And that’s an easy Yeah. Then there’s a middle pile, which is going to be your biggest pile. That’s matters to me. And then there’s a, the last pile, which is matters most to me. And so, when I do this sort, usually I have a whole bunch in the middle and I must pick up that middle pile and go through it again and really get honest with myself and say, I’m not saying this doesn’t matter at all.
I’m just saying it doesn’t matter as much to me as this other thing that I put in my top pile. Totally. And it really does inform what you’re doing in your day-to-day life when you’re clear on your values, even before you know what your values are, you are operating from your values. Totally. And so, it can be interesting to look at that.
So, for example, I have said for a long time that I wish that we had better routines in our home. I wish that my kids were harder workers, that they helped more with chores and things like that. But the fact that I’ve been saying that for years and I haven’t done anything about it, and I haven’t prioritized it means that it matters to me, but it doesn’t matter to me as much as.
Other things that I am prioritizing, such as I’m really, I really care about teaching my kids emotional resilience and like social emotional intelligence. So, in the time that I could be teaching them about chores and hard work, oftentimes we’re having discussions about those things or we’re reading books about those things, or we’re learning about those things.
And so, I can see there my value. For this other thing is higher because it’s what I’m gravitating for towards, and I can stop beating myself up for the fact that I haven’t taught them as much as I would like to about chores and hard work. I’m not saying that isn’t an incredible value to have, and some women listening might be judging my values right now thinking how could she not have taught her kids to contribute?
That’s the most important thing. That’s the most important thing to you, and I think it’s amazing. I like incredible that you’ve taught them that, but I have apparently even unknowingly prioritized something else which matters more to me because we can’t all do everything right. Wow.
There’s a sense of forgiveness when you realize I forgive myself for not being able to do value everything equally and not being able to teach my kids everything, but I taught them what was most important to me, and that’s what makes a good mother. You have introduced them to the values that really matter to you and give built a rich life around those values for them as they were being raised. And then they can go into adulthood and figure out what their values are and that’s the beautiful process of life.
M: Yeah. I love this so much and it’s such a great example because we naturally are imbued with values and personalities and strengths that are unique to us. Not unique in that I have a value that no one else on Earth has, but that the way that things matter to me and the things that I’m naturally better at are going to be a unique combination to me.
And there’s this really dovetails beautifully with so much of what I’ve been learning about in my graduate program in positive psychology is that, when we do the things that we’re good at, we feel better.
We operate better every everything goes so much more smoothly when we allow ourselves to, to, rather than focus on the things we’re weak at and build those up to try to get everything to this standard. If we say, you know what? There are some things I’m not very good at, and I’m just not going to worry too much about those, I’m going to focus most of my time and attention on the things that I already am good at that.
I already know that I like those values that I’m already living. Those are the things that. Are going to feel easy and energizing, and they’re going to build this level of enthusiasm in our life that we just cannot muster for things we don’t care very much about. Yeah.
R: And a lot of times when we feel friction in our motherhood, it’s because the messages outside of us are telling us to care about things that we just don’t really care that much about.
And so, we’re trying hard to make ourselves care about these things that the church has told us. Or that our parents have told us, or that our spouse has told us, or that our, best friend across the street has told us are really the most important parts of being a mom. And we’re like, I just don’t want to do it.
M: For me it’s I just cannot get the energy required to like, sit on the floor, and play Legos or Barbies. I just, I cannot do it. I will try, I’ll give it like a solid three minutes before my Barbie must go to the doctor in the other room and I don’t come back for an hour like that.
And I love my kids so much and I just am not a play on the floor type of mom. I’m just not. And when I just allowed myself to say, this is something I’m just not going to do because I don’t want to, I’m not good at it. So, it’s less fun for my kids, for me to be a begrudging little mom who’s like making my Barbie like sick so I can leave than to just say, you know what?
You have so much fun. And when it’s time to go on a hike or when it’s time to plan a vacation or when it’s time to play a board game, like I’m all in it. I will smash my kids in board games, and they’ll love it. Like I just knowing what you’re good at and what you like and allowing yourself the freedom to say, this is good for me to do things I’m good at.
And transferring that same thing. I think it’s a beautiful value to transfer. To our kids, what are they naturally good at? What are they naturally liking or drawn toward? Rather than saying, this is the way that you will be child. This is the pathway you must walk. Saying, being curious about if I can do that for me. What am I good at? What do I like? How am I going to live my skills my strengths and my values to their highest potential?
Being curious about what that looks like for our kids rather than trying to. As part of the should of our motherhood, having our kids. Should be a certain way as well, oh, absolutely.
R: It’s so interesting and so relieving to say, okay, here are the things that matter to me. I’m going to just go hard on those. Yeah. And not worry so much about the others. Yeah. And one thing that I do in my course is I have women identify something that isn’t their favorite, that isn’t their strongest point, but that they do feel as necessary or good for their kids.
And I have them brainstorm. We make a massive brain dump list of all the options to get that need met outside of you. The mom being the one to do it. Love it. And so, like even with playing on the ground Legos, playing with you. Plum Barbies. If you feel as a mom, it’s totally fine to just say.
I’m walking away from that. It’s fine for her to play Barbies by herself done with that decision. But if that’s harder for you and you’re like, but I really think she should have like that, a playmate and she doesn’t have any other siblings, that’s not your case. But right. If you are a mom that you’re like, I feel bad that she’s an only child, so I need to be the one playing with her.
Whatever stories you’re telling yourself around that. Okay. What are some other ways you could get that need met? Let’s brainstorm all the options. Let’s open our mind to wild possibilities that in the end you might decide that’s just too far out there, but yeah. When you allow yourself to open your mind to other ways of getting something met, suddenly you get incredibly creative and you think, okay, we’re going to have a standing Barbie date with my friend who has a daughter who also loves this and we’re going to set it up on our calendar.
So, she gets that interaction time. Or I’m going to talk to my partner and see if how they feel about this task. And maybe I’ll find that my partner really doesn’t mind playing on the floor with my kids. And I’ll say, hey, how about if on, in the evenings you do the on the ground play and I will do all the cleaning of the kitchen, which I know you hate, and I don’t really mind.
So, you’re having this conscious conversation about let’s do, let’s each person in the family figure out. What we like to do and do more of those things. Yeah. And what are our less dreaded tasks? Like I don’t think anybody’s I love cleaning the kitchen, but honestly, I don’t mind cleaning the kitchen when I have music going and I’m by myself.
And I would much rather that my husband go play Lego, which I hate while I do that. So, you can start to have more conversations or figure out how this need can be met outside of. Me feeling like I must do it, even though I hate it and I’m resentful and woe is me. And motherhood is so hard when you can start, the more you can brainstorm other options, the less resentment you’re going to carry and less burden you’re going to carry as a mom.
M: Yeah, absolutely. And that opening it up to just like the innovation of there are, 50 different ways to get this thing done. I don’t have to be the only solution and. Again, just I want to acknowledge that for some women who base or up till now have based so much of their identity and their worth and their value on these things that they do, that realizing that they aren’t the only ultimate solution.
Might feel a mixture of relieving and grieving. Yeah. It may be like, oh my gosh, if I’m not the only one who can do this, then what am I even good for? And I think this is where your number three comes in strongly. That. When you’re creating space and you’re feeling like a little bit of a loss.
And I have to say, I didn’t ask my sister, but I don’t think she would mind me mentioning that. She, my, my younger sister got a divorce recently and she said it’s been really an interesting process because she has whole days where she doesn’t have her kids anymore, she has three kids. And just because of the way they’ve divided up, post-marriage, you usually don’t share your parenting duties at the same time because you’re, co-parenting.
So, they switch off. She has full days without any mothering duties. There’s no getting ready for school, there’s no doing the laundry, there’s no taking care of the kids. There’s no going on a walk around the block with them. And that space, although. A unique situation because of divorce and abrupt in that way has left her open to, wow, what do I want to do with my life?
What do I want to fill these days with? And for someone who, has shorter little bits of that, that maybe you decide you’re no longer ironing your kids’ clothes, that’s probably 30 to 45 minutes, a couple times a week that you’re like, what am I going to do instead? That I love? That I want to do.
So, tell us a little bit more about this third step of adding. You’ve mentioned it, let’s circle back around to close with this Adding in things that are just delightful and nothing else.
R: Yeah, I feel like you are so good at this, Miranda. You’re better at this than I am. So, you jump in and tell and give us advice on this.
I feel like I’m naturally like a serious person, like head down, do the work like, and so it’s been harder for me to focus on fun and say I want our family culture to be. Fun and like I want to add a little whimsy sometimes to our lives. And so, for me it’s incredibly conscious. I feel like for some people it’s more natural and they like weave those things in more automatically or easily.
Whereas for me, I must sit down with a calendar and say we can’t spend every single weekend doing projects around the house. I guess we can, and that’s my. Emo. Yeah. I’m like, let’s get stuff done. Saturdays are for like projects. I want to check my list off and I must stop and think. No, but I want there to be fun and magic in our life and in my motherhood too.
So, one Saturday per month. We’re consciously going to plan an ad in an adventure of some kind, even though that doesn’t necessarily come that naturally to me. So, building in some traditions. That will bring some of that life back to you can be a way to add some color to like your motherhood closet.
I think also just allowing yourself to dream wildly. Yeah. And say what would make me just out of control, excited to do by myself and with my children and making a big list. And I have the women in my workshops do this and don’t limit yourself and say, but I can’t because We’ll talk about that later.
We’ll figure that out later. To this exercise, if you could do anything, if you had no limits on your time, on your money, on your energy, what would those things be? You make your dream list, your brainstorms, and then later you take it to a trusted friend or someone and you say, can you see a way?
That I could start doing this in small ways now, how could I start bringing this in? Maybe I could sign up for that dance class. That’s always intrigued me, even though I’m in my forties and that feels ridiculous for me to go take a dance class or whatever. And so, you’re really challenging yourself to see outside of what is practical or expected or even socially.
The social norm and allowing yourself to start bringing in some of those dreams that maybe have gotten pushed to the back of your closet and you’ve forgot about them altogether, and you must dust them off and remind yourself who you really are underneath all the responsibility of life and motherhood.
M: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s such a good idea to just dream big, write it all down, because that, even just that step of having it down and like in a place that you can refer to later is helpful because you, you might not and actually I would also like add, do this a couple times because the day that you first brainstorm, maybe you’re like, Hormonal or you are a little bit less, maybe, yeah, maybe you’re outate practice like doing like that.
It might not be your best brainstorm depending on your mood. So, give yourself like a couple different shots at this of what do I really want to do or what do I love? Or what excites me or what am I interested in? And, I have an episode coming up on the way that jealousy teaches us.
But that’s another thing for me, I’ve noticed in my life that when I get really like that twinge of envy, I use it as oh wow, I must really like something about what this person is doing or accomplishing. What is it about that gel? Like the feeling that I get of jealousy is telling me there’s something there that I want, that I maybe haven’t paid attention to.
So, what is it that I want? And then working backwards from that. I don’t want her whole life, but there’s a piece of it that seems fun or interesting or that I have a yearning for that I didn’t recognize. And I can back myself into. How do I make that sort of a thing happen within the confines that I have in my own life?
Oh yeah. I also love that you said, Things by yourself and things with your kids, because I think decluttering our motherhood and this addition part isn’t only about what you do as a mom. That’s one role that we fulfill, but that the things that we add to our lives as individuals, as women, as unique, whole people.
Those benefit our kids. They benefit our family. They benefit every other area of our life simply because we are. More enliven us, we’re happier. And that is, we bring a happier person to our motherhood role, to our wife role, to all the other roles that we fulfill.
R: A woman after one of my workshops wrote in her like post class survey, she said before this class, I think I was separating the mom from my kids and now I’ve realized that. My happy is their happy. And I just loved that phrase of, she’s like doing things for my happy is it’s only going to bless my children. My happy is their happy.
And one thing that I often say in my classes is only you can give your kids. A happy and fulfilled mother. Nobody else can give that to them. It’s if you want your kids, in an ideal world, you’re like, I would like my kids to have a happy and fulfilled mom, which we all want that. Guess what? You are it. So, you better figure out how to become happy and fulfilled so that they can have that. And it’s not selfish to do the work to figure out what do I need to declutter, let go of and add.
That will make me a happier, more fulfilled person that will for myself as well as for the people that I love that want that for me.
M: Totally. Yeah. And your kids seeing you model what it looks like to live your values, define them. Not be encumbered. Or held down by all your responsibilities, but they’re thoughtfully choosing what you want to do.
You’re creatively making sure that everything is, everything that needs to be done is done, even if you are not the only one doing it. That teaches your kids how to be happy and fulfilled in their own lives. It teaches them that they are not being raised only to, g for give every piece of themselves over to the roles and responsibilities of adulthood and of parenthood, but that they maintain their ability to have delightful lives all the way through their lives. I think that’s something that we, it’s easy to forget sometimes that if we just, if we’re just holding on to everything that we’re given, people just give us all of them should, all their responsibilities, their ideas, and messages around what we are supposed to be doing, and we just hold it all.
We’re going to be tired and sad and so, decluttering our motherhood is a great place to begin sorting through, what am I carrying? What do I want? And then to move on from there.
I’m so grateful to have been able to talk through these principles and give people some places to begin thinking about what this looks like and what that process might be for them. For those who are ready to like, yes, okay, I really, I want to do this.
I want to do it with some structure and with a little bit of accountability. How do they get signed up for? Declutter your motherhood. This is an online course. You’ve taken your course, you’ve taught live, and you’ve taught for my campers, and you’ve finally, I think we’ve talked about it for a long time.
You’ve finally formatted into a digital course where people all over the country and world can get access and be able to learn from you. How did they get involved?
R: I for literal years have been saying I need to make this more widely available, and I’ve finally done it and I’m so excited about the way that I did it.
So, it is an audio course, so you don’t have to log in at a computer to a portal and watch the videos because I know that’s hard for moms. I buy courses all the time that then I like to do one module of, and then I. Can’t because I’m too busy or I forget. Not that I can’t, we just talked about that.
I choose not to because I get too busy. So, this is an audio course that’s going to be available on a private podcast feed, so you can just listen to it on your phone like you’re listening to this podcast Now. And it will move through these three steps, but in much more depth. And there’s a P D F workbook that goes along with it so you can listen while you’re doing dishes or driving carpool and get all the background.
And then maybe that evening you pull out your workbook and you apply it to your life with these guided prompts. These activities I’ve done with. Live groups. I’ve modified to make it work for the individual working through this on their own. And you can learn more about the audio course by going to three and 30 podcast.com/d my, which stands for Declutter Your Motherhood.
And you can get 10% off as a listener of Miranda’s podcast with the code live free. So, I would love for you to come over and learn. This has been years and years of. Work of me figuring out these are nice theories; how do we make this practical? Yeah. And how can I walk women through these steps and try to make it as concrete as if we were doing their physical closet?
And I’ve really done that in this course and made it as digestible as I possibly can. So, if you are interested, I’d love to see you over in the course three 30 podcast.com/me.
M: Yeah, I will make sure that’s linked in the show notes so that you can just click right over. And like I said I’ve experienced the course live, I’ve also talked to Rachel about it, for literal years.
We’ve been, we’ve worked together in different capacities for a long time and you’re just one of my favorite people to learn from. You have not only a background as a teacher where I think that’s what comes so naturally to you, this idea of what is that big nebulous thing and how do I make it livable?
Understandable and applicable. And you just, yeah, you have this level of expertise in teasing out what matters and being able to do that week after week on 3 in 30. Your show. So, I’m really excited to have people can join you in declutter your motherhood, it’s so needed.
R: I think that you’re the same as me, that you talk to women all the time who are just feeling frustrated and overwhelmed and like they’re not doing it the way they’re supposed to. And just the message of. Listen, there’s no one right way, and let’s find the way that works best for you and let me hold your hand through this process so that you can discover.
I’m not going to tell you what you should do. I’m going to help you discover what works best for you and what you want. And so, I’m thrilled that you’re. That you’re offering this to people can’t wait to hear how it all goes. Thank you so much and thank you for all the ways you’ve modeled for me how to do this.
I have learned a tremendous amount from watching you. I feel like you live a very decluttered motherhood in that you live with intention and purpose, and you are you. In all the different, in all the different places you go. You’re, you are Miranda. So, thank you so much for being my friend and for letting me come on your show to talk about this.
M: I’m so thrilled to have you here and to share you with my audience. So, thank you. And I will make sure everything’s linked where you can follow Rachel on Instagram and listen to her show that is released weekly and join her course. And yeah, if you’re not well acquainted, then you can get more.
Better acquainted and you’ll enjoy and love Rachel as much as I do. Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today, and thank you to all of you who are tuning in and listening for being here. I hope that something that we shared. Resonated with you and that you feel a little bit lighter, maybe have some motivation and determination to go in and declutter your own motherhood.
And if you could use a hand in that process, consider joining Rachel in her Declutter Your Motherhood online course. This year on Mother’s Day, I’m graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with my Master of Applied Positive Psychology. And if you want to send me a little positive energy, a little graduation gift, you can do that in the form of a five-star rating and a short-written review on iTunes.
It only takes a couple minutes and makes a huge impact. I’m so grateful for those of you who’ve taken the time to do that. I hope you have a wonderful week, a wonderful Mother’s Day, and I’ll chat with you next time. Bye-bye.
