Ep 65: How to Declutter the Toys with Jessica Barclay, The Lifestyle Coach UK

Today I am speaking with Jessica Barclay, a Lifestyle Coach who helps you to organize your life by starting with organizing your household.  She helps you to find ways to get rid of the friction points in your life, so that you have a sense of ease and not so much overwhelm.  Today she is speaking with me about how we can start to pare down all of the clutter and toys we have in our house.  

-We discuss how parents can create calm and allow things to flow more in the house with school starting.

-How can we take on the less is more approach with our children's things

-Is there a way to help our children apply the less is more principle with so many things coming at them

Jessica is a lifestyle and organization coach based in the UK. She is a public speaker on decluttering 

and time management. A mental health and environmental advocate. As well as the founder of A Happy Lifestyle Club private membership, where you can work on a number of areas to
help you build a strong foundational lifestyle for the life you want, were happiness,
in all its shapes and sizes, is the priority. She lives in Berkshire, UK with
her daughter and other half. Jessica loves lifting heavy things in the gym as
well as in clients' houses. Her former businesses include wedding and event
planning and her own personal training studio in London.

Club link - www.thelifestylecoachuk.com/club

FB Group - www.facebook.com/groups/decluttergetorganisedfeelhappier

Instagram - www.instagram.com/thelifestylecoachuk

Book Reference:
Growing Up Happy

Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

Welcome to raising healthy humans, a podcast created for busy moms, where you can easily find information on health and wellness for your family. Enjoy experts who share tips on how to raise children through each phase of life. Gather current information on nutrition and wellness and listen to Courtney, a health coach, movement specialist and founder of form fit and active and supportive community where she helps busy moms move more on raising healthy humans podcast, Courtney shares her personal life experiences, training, knowledge and conversations with other health and wellness experts, so you can raise healthy humans. Today, I'm speaking with Jessica Barclay, a lifestyle coach out of the UK, who helps you to organize your life by starting with organizing your household, she helps you to find ways to get rid of those friction points in your life, so that you have a sense of ease and don't deal with so much overwhelm. Today, she's speaking with me about how we can start to pare down all of the clutter and toys that our children have in our houses. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hi, Jessica, nice to meet you. Can you tell me okay, you are a lifestyle coach? Correct. And you work in organizations specifically? Or is that can you say that's like 60 to 70% of what I do is what would come into the thing of organization. So on my website, I will refer to myself as a lifestyle and organization coach. I think partly particularly here in the UK, the idea of a lifestyle coach is even more new and crazy than a life coach, I'm starting to get used to the idea of life coach and when people hear the word lifestyle coach, they're like, Oh, we must be on a similar ilk. And then I kind of specialize a lot more in the organizational side. So be it the physical, literally in people's houses homedir Marie Kondo esque type, vibe, and right down to helping people organize their to do lists and time management, setting up calendars. And I also help people get more organized in their businesses as well. So that's what I've been doing today, today, we've been drawing floor plans in a client's building site, basically, to make sure like the flow of things all work, and that they can stay organized with staff as well. So I'm kind of quite a broad spectrum, which is really hard to market. So okay, so as a lifestyle coach, you are not only looking at the person themselves, but whatever it is either their home, or their business, and making sure that that fits within its, it's how they want to sharp to the world. Okay, so that's what I'd say is it's making life making their life represent how they want to be showing up in the world. And the cheesy phrase, I guess, is death life, make sure they're living their best life. But it's finding a way that so much a lot of the clients I work with will be self employed, or at least dream of being self employed. That kind of ilk, where flow of work and home blend so much more. Or they're the stay at home parents where their work is parenting. And then they also want to have a life of their own as well. And I very much work a lot with flow. I mean, my membership subscription is literally called flow or focus, there's two what, okay. And the word flow happens in a lot of areas, it's making sure that life flows and taking out the friction. So the friction could be as simple as every time you put your washing on, you're spilling laundry detergent everywhere, because you're always in a rush. So there's always like gunky laundry detergent on the floor by a washing machine. And we look at how we can take that friction out. And sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes like you might think, well that's obvious. I'll start using tablets or I'll use we have a thing called Eco egg here in the UK then if you have that, and whatever else get switched on eco egg. And literally, you just have this egg and you throw it in the wash for 70 washes and you don't have to pour anything or deal with any liquids or powders or anything. And it takes the friction out and suddenly things flew better. And so that's like a small example. But you can do that in so many areas of your life and just make things smoother and calmer. And I'm neurodiverse I'm autistic and ADHD, I walk into things, I put stuff down and forget it all the time. I need things to be as smooth as possible. Otherwise, it just doesn't work. But the upside is that with clients, I have a brain that spots things that other people wouldn't like a neurotypical wouldn't necessarily see how I see things which is I think how I've ended up doing this as a career is I see things differently. It's was it Rain Man with the science but I'm like the organization or if you tweaked this, but it would be calm. Okay, okay. So this in America, what we're in New may be as well. Where I am in Naples, we have just started school, Naples, Florida. And I know many people are getting back into school. And this can be can be a very difficult time for parents creating, like routines and organization around that. Do you have like any tips right off the top of your head of things that parents can do to kind of create a more calm, flowing way of moving into the school year by chance? We love the simplification, I'm all about simplify. So this is I've Dubbed 2022, my year of less I have a no spend rules literally they're pinned on the wall behind me at work behind the camera. And everything I'm we're doing a project within our family as a whole that everything we touch metaphorically or physically we can we do this simpler? Is there a simpler way of doing this? So I think a big part of that has been taking away external expectations. What other people perceive the flow and calm and relaxation and simpler living would be and what do we perceive it as? So start there? What? What would it actually look like to you if it was if it was karma and having that, I guess that ideal image start with the ideal and we work our way backwards? I think we sometimes can shy away particularly as parents from like, perfect, because it's not obtainable. But you if you don't shoot for the moon, you'll never reach the stars. So I think it's good to start with how in an ideal world, how would this work for us as a family, not for Bob Jones down the road, but us as a family, and how would that work, and then start making the little changes towards it. So we don't go back until about a thing that's the seventh of September, my daughter goes back to school, some go back right the beginning of September, she goes back a little later. And we will start a couple of weeks before adjusting their time and adjusting wakeup time. And so she's getting into a routine and things like that, we will start to do we do reading at the moment, but we will do reading time sort of similar at the homework time. And he's back into it. And we are quite lucky a lot of clubs start back before she starts school. So she starts that little bit of a routine back in so it's kind of drip feeding it back in. So if you haven't gone back just yet, then you've got that option to drip feed it back in. And the other one that I think is trying to get an idea within your family of what ideas they've got. Because it really helps if kids have helped come up with the routine, they are much more likely to stick to it. And feel much more invested in a part of it as instead of just being told what to do. And so this would be as simple as if you've put in a shoe rack, letting your kids choose which the cubbies are going to be their shoe poles they will take a lot more pride in putting the shoes away and those cubbies if they've been a part of choosing that. So when we got a shoe rack, my daughter picked her ones. I picked my ones and my partner what was left. Because even had like two pairs of shoes. But she's really invested now in putting the shoes away. The client was helping today when I did the shoes for her and her little girls were there watching me build physically build the shoe rack, and they pick their shoe racks and they invested in it. So whether they're tiny, or whether they're teenagers, I think getting them involved in the process can really help knowing what you're stirring towards having that ideal and then getting them involved. Sit down and be like, right we want how do we want our mornings to feel together? We want things to be calmer. How can we do that? And you'll find that your family will come up with ideas that you just haven't even thought of kids like my crazy minds, they often see things differently and be like well, this I find this really stressful. So maybe it is that. You say when we get home when we get home from school. You don't have to unpack your bags for half an hour but you'll have half an hour of just relaxing grab a snack, and then half an hour and then we're going to unpack call backs and make sure that everything's gone back to where it is that we've taken out the letters, maybe your as soon as you get home. So if I, if I left, if if I put my bag down for five minutes, that bag will still be there the next day. So we have a rule in our house that bags as soon as you get home bags have to be unpacked. And some days that is painful, painful, all I want to do is dump my bags everywhere because I've only got that 12 I just want to dump them down and sit on the sofa and eat ice cream. That's what I want to do when I get home and I don't I hang the smelly stuff because I love the gym, smelly stuff goes in the laundry basket, the washing machine, the towels get hung up to dry, the food gets unpacked, the Tupperware goes in the single the dishwasher like everything happens. For me, it has to happen as soon as we get home or it doesn't happen. But I have got like my sister, they'll normally come in get settled, have that like half an hour window, and then they unpack because that's what works well for them. Whereas I will forget. Yes, you know, it's funny that you say that because that is one thing. My husband was very big on with my children. As soon as you get home, you take your lunchbox out of your backpack, and you get it in the kitchen and you unpack it and get it ready for the next day. And it never, it just it's one of those things that it just didn't sink in. Do you have recommendations for? I mean, I guess that at some point, you just have to go through it with them over and over and over again. And more than you even think right? Oh, yeah. My partner's always like, surely we shouldn't have to still be doing this. We're gonna be getting this for another 10 years, we're still going to be saying Don't say please don't say that. But we will still be saying it. And but if we stop saying it the times in between where we don't have to say it will just disappear. And so that is I would try and pair it with a habit of something you've got to do. So I don't believe in multitasking. multitasking is a myth. But we can pair habits together or we can layer similar things. So layering would be you could listen to a podcast while doing the ironing. But you can't write an email while reading a blog. Those are those are two things that that kind of thing. What could you do that is layered with your child, so you can still help with them unpacking that lunch box. But that also helps you so that you have a thing when you come home and you peel some carrots or you you are prepping dinner while they unpack now you might not need to prep dinner that early. But what could you do that the stays in the same vicinity as them, you can make sure they're still doing what they're meant to do, but allows you to do something productive as well. So it's not kind of wasted time. And then you can have chill out time together or you can do an activity together. And what what could you shift so you're doing something at the same time as them and now start to remember, oh, Dad's preparing dinner, I always do my lunchbox or my lunchbox out. Or it could be that again, like you said when they if they're struggling to do it when they first come home that you make it later on. So when I'm laying the table for dinner, that's when you come in and sort your lunchbox out so that there's some there's there's an eat an obvious trigger and you're doing something at the same time there's an obvious trigger for them. That's a good idea because I think sometimes you get caught up in the getting home from school and doing certain things but that dinner time situation might be a great opportunity for my family I'm thinking that would be kind of what would spark it for us. We're in even having them pack their next day's lunch while making dinner while we're you know, while I'm making dinner. Just a thought. It's a it's a nice thing to do together like we introduced this year. Sort of daughters just got to that age and we moved last summer and our kitchen is a lot more conducive with this now it was not last year was not a good? No, it was not a kitchen for cooking. It was a sterile, I used to live in London and it was a London kitchen. It was it was designed for takeaways. It was not designed and people that eat out a lot and we love to cook and so we've moved out of London so we can have a proper kitchen. So we introduced Saturday dinners, we pick a recipe together and we all cook it together and sometimes that just involves my daughter standing on the stool next to us while we do stuff but we usually try and get her to do something and it's such a lovely family time. It's such a nice thing. Like I don't really want to sit and watch Barbie with her. I will I like on my part and we all like cooking she likes cooking together. So it's it's not just a way of getting the dinner cooked. It's a way of having like a family activity together. And the same if you compare, when I cook dinner, you come and do a lunch, and then we know we're set for the rest of the evening and we can relax. Yeah, so that's bonding experience to Yeah, yeah. All right. So you work with organization. And I will tell you that many of my moms love learning about organization. It is one of the most listened to podcasts when I have someone on to talk about organization. So you had mentioned earlier about that less, like, as you're touching different things, having a less is more approach. So I'm curious, when we start thinking about toys and how our children, you know, have so many things over the year, do you have recommendations on organization, in bedrooms, or with toys strewn throughout the house, what type of things that we can can we do to help create a happier, healthier home for children by organizing or less is more approach with toys. I have some friends that I just don't know how they live in their houses, or how much how the toys everywhere ever. I never much stuff so much stuff. And so my first one would be have less space. And when I teach my organization, so I have a course a decluttered and organized course and I teach a five step process. And the second step is minimize, minimize is two things. It's turning off the tap and it's clearing up the flood. Okay, so starting with reducing what is coming in, and that can involve some awkward conversations with parents. This will sound weird, but I'm kind of lucky my mom isn't with us anymore. So I don't have that touring coming in from that. I mean, I'd rather have my mom but I don't have lots of stuff coming in from her. And my my dad's Very good. He does the same presents birthday and Christmas. Every she loves it. She has like bath bombs, or Christmas gifts. And it's usable. So I kind of have a limited stuff coming in which I found really helpful. But with my partner side of the family, they're all still there. And she's my daughter's the first looking one. So I understand the awkward conversations with the in laws of what I would willing to allow everything to come in and making that decision and communicating it well to family, friends, anyone that constantly brings stuff in. And we're trying this new approach. I've had clients blame me, which I'm quite happy to do because I'm never gonna. And then they their friends suddenly love their houses. And then they refer me on so it's fine. But they're like, no, no, no, my organization coach says I'm not allowed to have any more stuff coming in and resetting what's normal. And what you are willing to accept coming in that is, I think probably one of the hardest bits with kids. Actually people think that that trying to get the kids to tidy up is the hardest bit but stopping the amount of stuff coming in is really tricky. I mean, I'm, I'm fairly aggressive when it comes to it. And I totally blame my autism for this. But I will speak to parents before birthday parties and say please, we don't allow plastic in our house. So if the party bag has lots of plastic, just let me know. And I'll provide you something to put in the party bag. We didn't do party bags, like I rebelled a certificate of participation in my daughter's party. That was it. That was easy. But we've reset we've made it a lot more normal. And we've had a few parties where they've just come home with like one little toy wonderful soft toy or something instead of this bag full of tat, which we don't need. But yeah, there might be a few awkward conversations but it's really really worth it. And then we've family we've set up a like a Google Drive Excel sheet things that we do actually want so when it's someone's birthday, I mean I've had one for years because my partner always finds me a nightmare to buy for so I I've had an Excel sheet and he has the link and he can send the link to someone else and I have it marked on there whether it's a high priority and things and it's also my wish list so there's some really expensive stuff on there that I have no no one else is ever gonna buy for me but me but it's just all in one one place and you can do the same for your kids is have had like a running list that when there is stuff coming in and stuff they actually need and it's stuff that they actually want and normalizing not necessarily keeping gifts were given as well. I found quite a helpful way of reducing what's coming in. And so being like, are you really going to play with this? Or would you rather it went into the gift pile and we can read gift it on to someone else. And yes, it's tricky for kids to understand that, but they will get it. And I think once they are enjoying this space more, they've got space to play that really helps. And so yeah, reducing what's coming in then reducing what you've already got getting rid of some of the broken things, and we have boxes that she has access to, and then boxes that are away. And I find that quite a useful one. It could be literally you pull out the stuff that they are, they just don't play with very much, because they're not old enough for quite often I find people like well, they will kind of play with it. But it's actually a few years ahead, you might as well put it away for a few years time. And when they're gonna get the most out of it. There's been lots of studies done that show kids play better when they have less to choose from. There was a really good book called Growing up happy, which I highly recommend. It's actually brilliant. And it's 10 ways to improve the happiness of your children. And the lady goes through the science behind the principle and the how she uses it in her home, and then how she uses it as a teacher. So lots of examples and ways of doing it. And they do the thing, they literally locked up all the kids toys, and the child asked her which toy he wants to play with. And he gets to watch that occasionally, he'll need a second toy as part of the game. But she's more often than not, he'll just continue to play with that one toy. And it's gone from 10 minutes of playtime before he needs mommy's attention to easily 45 minutes an hour before he's going on board or any something else. And I find the same with my daughter, she will sit within our system when we only have Lego, it's only the box of Lego is allowed in the sitting room. And she'll she'll play easily our hour and a half doing things building new stuff and went here a pee in her bedroom, she has a few more toys. And it's often shorter pockets because they just get overwhelmed if she's if she's bought pulled both of her toy boxes out at the same time, she'll get overwhelmed and I will go in and put one away and be like now let's just focus on this box. And suddenly, the game lasts so much longer. So I've seen it in my own home. I've read research studies about it. And it's mentioned in quite a future child sort of rearing books and things as well. That having less they will it stimulates their creativity more. And also, particularly with the younger ones is having the less complicated toys, they can be multiple things like things like Lego, it can, they can make it into so many different things or Duplo, the bigger whatever the bigger blocks are in different countries and things that it can be so many things. And so even we've shied away from coloring books, more now, she has a couple that are sort of left at the back of the the arts and crafts cupboard, but mainly just doing plain paper. We used to spend so much time going through trying to pick which picture she wants to color in. Just takes the paper out. We don't even I used to have packs of colored paper. We've been stopping doing that and just going to white paper, but it's just been any just trying to work out which color papers too many decisions, right? Yeah, reducing the decisions for our kids makes life just so much calmer. And for ourselves. We don't mean your decisions. And so I found that really, really helpful. Okay, and then when it comes to the actual storage is deciding do I want my child to be able to access this by themselves. And do I want them to be able to put it away by themselves. So soft toys, so my daughter again, five, there's not much that I don't trust her with now, I don't really want her to get the paints out without me. But she knows that. But most of her toys, nothing. She's not sort of choker by age or anything like that. And so most of her toys are in boxes that have don't have lids and put them away herself. And they have quite simple systems. There's soft toys in one, there's Lego, and another. There's arts and crafts somewhere else. And then everything else is together. You've gone quite broad with her categories. But that also is a representation of how few toys because it's easier to group them together. The Lego for example, we don't want her to be able to get out without her at least letting us know. Okay, so she loves that. So that's got a lid on it. It's quite a heavy lid and it's got to catch. So for example in our system, if we've got people coming around and I don't want her to get the Lego out, I can just push the collapse shut and she can't open that. And same with if I set up arts and crafts box for clients. I'll usually put them in boxes that have the clip lids on them. padlocks in, some of them have little holes. So you can put a padlock in it as well, if your kids really are going to get into all we'll set it up in a box and the box will be stored quite high up. So that those are only things that are bought out by the parents when the parents can supervise or when they're happy to supervise those kinds of things. And making sure that they're put away in those lock boxes and then put away. But if it's anything you're expecting your child to put away, don't give it a lid, don't give it a door drawer, like make it as easy as possible flow, removing the friction. And it's like people have all the Legos split into so many categories. And it's just not, it's not gonna last, those beautiful ones where they break it all into colors. But it's not gonna last. And I'm always fascinated, like I love watching the home edits. But it's what I refer to as organizational porn. It's fun to watch, but it's not realistic. Not realistic. And if you look at the houses in its places where you're like they've got a housekeeper, they've probably got at least one nanny a couple of housekeepers, a cleaner that covers in probably afford to have someone dedicated to come in and rearrange the Lego every month and put it all under sections. Most of us can't. Like I, I sort of split my daughter's. So she's got like slap pieces in one box within another single with in one. And then all her sets are in one box clear that she's only got a couple of them. But it's like if we really needed to put a set together this one second is an old biscuit box. It wouldn't be too much to rummage through and find it now I'm getting so excited and hit my microphone now. But it won't be too much to kind of rummage through. But if I broke those all into like, just Yeah, it's too much I can't it's not fair for me to set up a system and expect her to maintain it, I have to be realistic to what she can do. And she's capable of doing. And it's like vif, I want her to put some of her clothes away. As long as it's in the right drawer, it might not end up in the right bits of the drawer. But as long as it's in the right drawer at five, I'm winning a life. And to us if I get it in the chest of drawers I'm quite happy when she's usually pretty good withdraws. And so yeah, simple organizational systems that they can they can access easily. It's not going to be a small, smaller categories as an adult would do. And kind of making it simple every now and again going in really helping them get it back to ground zero. I think we expect them to just be able to do it all the time. But just going in and giving them that extra be like oh, okay, we'll do a big clean and we'll do it together. I think we can we have so much to do as parents like so much to do as parents but if we want them to learn how to do it properly every now and again we're going to need to go in there and do it with them. And then that ties into my last tip because I'll talk forever but you have to shut me up with this specific question is you have to look like you are enjoying it's really hard because he wants is like it's gonna be great so we get a love cleared up today but try every time they see whether you're cleaning your space or cleaning their space. If they look if you look like you're enjoying it, my daughter thinks tidy is great because I was like yeah, we've got some music home we dug around to try and make it as fun as possible. And she's got used to thinking oh tidying up fun now I've got to tidy up and oh such a mess and it's always such hard work and it just becomes really stressful. So we I've really because I'm quite my autistic side really need everything to be in its place and it can be I get very overwhelmed by mess and I've had to work really hard on not letting my daughter see that because otherwise she associates nests with stress and she used to mess with stuff and I don't want the hair to see mess the stress because then clearing it up will feel stressful right? Whereas if like oh yeah we get to tidy up now so we can chill out on a sofa or in a peaceful sitting or watch a movie and like try to make it feel like a positive experience and oh great if we put this away then it'll be ready for next time and we can get to playing quicker next time and and things and trying to make it seem like a joyful experience. That has had a massive difference because yeah, she says she's helped me with cleaning. We were talking about getting rid of her like when the house in the garden because she's too big for it like she has to duck under to get in the door now. I know what she said. But Mommy, I love cleaning it Check this out. I'm the I'm the dusters and before anyone gets me it's not toxic multipurpose, I make my own so she could drink the stuff and it would be fine. I hope she doesn't like vinegar, but she takes it out. She loves cleaning. Because I'm always so joyful on cleaning day, I get to listen to my podcasts, I get a good meal. It's not that I love the cleaning, but to listen to great things I have music on. And it's it's really fun, right? So she thinks is really fun. It's hard, but he's off like massive. Dig deep, find the joy. And it pays off. Okay, so you, you were mentioning Legos. And it just makes me and I'm thinking about everything. I have two boys. They're older now. But when they were younger, Legos were their thing. One question I have for you is how do you keep? And this can deal with, like you mentioned, birthdays, holidays, things like that. How do you keep this less is more approach when it comes to like, they love seeing all the different LEGO creations whether it be, you know, all the different Harry Potter things you can do and the different I mean, my kids were into one of them had all the firefighter stuff, and one of them had all the police stuff. And, you know, they had so much we did not follow the less is more. When it came to Lego things, I mean, they still they have Star Wars, now they have them. Because we're a family of star, you know, my husband's very much into Star Wars my children are as well. So they have all these different things. And now they don't play with them. They're just kind of in their room. But how do you handle all of that, like, you know, commercials showing it and going into the store and seeing it is there a way to handle all of that. So photos are your best friend, your absolute best friend, it's suddenly got very dark, I'm just gonna turn the light on in case you actually need the video once. The cloud we're desperately hoping this darkness means it's gonna start raining. So photos are your best friend as parents. And because wherever we go, there are trying to sell us something you go to, like, go to or go on a ride. Fair thing. As soon as you come up at the exit, they make you walk through the shop. So we take pictures, and then we decide whether we're going to send it on to Father Christmas, or we're going to put it on a birthday list or we're going to put it on a Christmas list because that's the time we get stuff. And those kinds of things. And I do I find that because we have those you get Father Christmas you get from mommy and daddy at Christmas, you get your birthday. And that's it. It's by then when I do little bits in between, it doesn't get obsessive and it's so special. So it's not my birthday, I got something and that's really nice. And I found that that's been making sure I do little bits in between those special occasions makes those special occasions less about the presidents. It became a bit sounds a bit backwards. On occasions between the present giving occasions makes the present giving occasions less about presence. Okay, okay. Yeah. But taking those pictures and be like, we'll save it for later. So if we go to like, we went to the Natural History Museum for her birthday, and she'll spot something. I really liked that. I said, Oh, well, you've had your birthday presents. Now. Let's take a picture. And we can send it on to Father Christmas. And then my partner will take her to go and look at something else. And I will go and get it and like it. So we were saying big rocks. I went to Lego Land recently. And they mocked up on something and they gave us loads of free vouchers for the shop, which is brilliant. So yeah. So long story, but I did well out that trip to Lego. But she went through the shop and took pictures and you can get him to help you take pictures of the things that she liked. And yes, I could have gotten her not been given the vouchers I'd probably ordered it closer to Christmas, but I was able to sneak back into the shop to get my parking validated. And I got those things hidden in my rucksack and they've gone into a hidden box somewhere ready for those. So when you're faced with the actual thing, that's how you can do it. And you can put them all the pictures into a folder on your computer and then closer to Christmas. And they can go through them close to their birthday. They can go through them and see which ones or you could do say which ones do you remember? Which ones do you remember and we'll go through that way But you could use it as a prompt, and they can then sort out which of them will pry, which is more of a priority. Because I think when you're seeing like one thing here and one thing there, it's hard as an adult, let alone as a child to see the bigger picture of all actually, I'm asking for quite a lot here. Whereas if you've put everything together, and you've got all the pictures in one place, and you're like, oh, actually, this is a lot, I'm asking for a lot of stuff. Once they've got all the pictures together, they can pick out which of the, which is more important to them. And so you might set a parameter, you might, whether it's a budget, and then if they're a bit older, you might be like, Well, we do$200. And they can then decide how they want to allocate that$200 within their presence, or so we do three, she gets three presents at Christmas, I told her I was hardcore. Or not the baby Jesus, so there are enough for her. It's three presidents from us. But there's no we have no monetary limit. I mean, obviously, our income is the limit. But as far as she's concerned, there's no limit. She just gets to pick three things. And quite often she comes up with one and we come up with the other two. But three things. Father Christmas does 10 We wrote to Father Christmas when she was first born and said, Could it please be 10 things? Could you please avoid plastic and we were very happy if they were secondhand, quite eco in our house. So she hears the story every Christmas when she writes to Father Christmas about how we said this to Father Christmas right when she was born. And she gets 10 things from him and three things from us. And we actually do Secret Santa with everyone that comes to your house. So she'll get one other present. And this year, it was actually a magazine subscription. So she still gets. Yeah, so that that was really helpful. And but when it comes to as they get older, and you're looking at bedroom space, and this is the same whether you're a kid or an adult, whether you're talking about toys, or clothes, or whatever, is there's two ways of limiting two simple ways of limiting one is by space and one is by number. So you can be this is your shelf for Legos for built Legos, if it's full, and you want to and you make something new, you have to decide what's going to go being setting that ahead of time so that before they've bought new stuff in, they're realizing that they're going to have to It's like that one in one out, they're gonna have to let it go, right. And you could do this, you could have a basket and be like, you can have as many soft toys as long as they fit in this basket to the brim. And no further, you can have as many as you want. And it might be that then they want the 20 little ones or they're like no, I want one big giant unicorn, and that's going to be my parameter. My daughter's got a hammock in the corner, and she's not allowed any more soft toys than will fit in there. Okay, they all stay in there. So it doesn't mean like her giant unicorn and she just loves cuddling up with it. So it being stuck up in a hammock on the wall is pointless, she won't get any use from it. But once it gets to the point where they couldn't all physically fit in that space, she's not allowed anymore. Okay, so that that is a it's kind of sort of two sides of the coin. It's called the container concept. container, you can't keep it so I do it with my clothes. So for anyone seeing a clip of this on camera behind me, I have two small chest of drawers, a big chest of drawers and wardrobe, all of my clothes. So in season, out of season, jackets, shoes, everything can fit in there. I don't keep them there, because I don't need my winter coats right now. So I have extra space at the moment, they're actually stored in my loft, the rest of the time. Our shoes are predominantly stored downstairs. But that, for me is my limitation. I don't need any more clothes than what can fit in there. Whether I stole it or not, it doesn't matter. But that helps me decide. And I hate shopping for clothes at the moment. I just don't want to go in shops. It's just it's just the energy for it. So sometimes I'm really into it, but at the moment. And but knowing that I've got that boundary. So if I won the lottery, I would still be like, my doesn't fit in my chest of drawers, I've either got to get rid of something, or I'm just not gonna get it. So that I found is super helpful for limiting, limiting the space. So either space or numbers. So you could be like you're allowed 10 built Lego ornaments on your shelf. If you've built 10 And you want to build them, you're gonna have to let one of them either go or it gets taken apart and put back into the to the box. It doesn't matter. I mean, yeah. Well, it's helpful as well. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I don't really think of myself as an organizational person, but we practice this in regard to clothing. So it's how many hangers Do you have space for, for you know to add? Okay, that's how Many we can get. And if you don't have enough hangers, you either need to get rid of something, you know, or you don't get it. Yeah. And that's kind of what we practice. And till, you know, I have my oldest he can drives, just goes and buys more hangars, and like, no, that's not what we're supposed to do. I'm trying to bring less in the house, like you mentioned. But you know, once they're on their own, they kind of make their own decisions. So, I mean, I try, like I try and explain to my daughter a lot, why we do things, how we do so she will point out that there's space there, mummy and I have a, what is it that 8020 8020 comes up all over the place. But a space should only be full, a maximum of 80%, a bookshelf, a drawer, whatever, there should be 20% of space to be able to take the things in and out and put them back without it causing friction. If you go for the 80%, there's too much friction, and it will reduce the chances of you putting things back. Like if it's really precarious, like getting that glass jar into the back of the cupboard, you're just not going to do it, it's things will get broken, which ends up being more work costing you more time. I don't like costing people time. So it keeps 20% of space and space and empty space of very different things space, we want space. Empty Space is something that needs to be filled. Space is a thing and it's a noun. We need actual space around things. And I mean, there's the there's like a whole concept called the Empty Shelf concept that's linked in we'd like manifestation and, and all that kind of stuff that I'm not 100% Sure on but but I know people have used and I still use it is somewhere in your house, you should have an empty shelf. And it shows the universe God, Buddha, whatever you believe in, it shows that there is space in your life for something new to come in. And I've seen people fertility journeys use this newly empty shelf, empty shelf to show that there is space in their life for a new child to come in with finances, that there is space for more money to come in, and you're not going to keep the money on the shelf, you're gonna keep the baby on the shelf, but it's concept somewhere in your house is having that empty shell. And then you start doing it elsewhere. And you realize how nice the space looks when it's not full. And there's air flowing around it and you can reach the thing you want and you can move the thing you want and cleaning becomes quick and putting back things comes quicker. And just everything feels nice. Yes. And when you say that I think of like growing up, we had knickknacks everywhere. And that's kind of like how, you know when my mom comes down here. She's like, Oh, you know, I'll get a gift of a Knick Knack. And I'm like, I don't need to put it in all this space. And I'm like, no, no. Area is taken up with the space. There's something there that doesn't appear that way. But they're not like our parents as well. They they look at we used to accumulate things were an investment. And then not anymore. Like I'm still my sister and I still sorting through my mom's. So she passed away in 2015. And we are still sorting through her things. Oh my goodness. And the bad thing is a lot of the stuff that we found in the loft that she boxed up and put in there when she downsized is things that are worth money. She could have holiday. I mean, we didn't know she passed away so early. She had cancer, unfortunately. But she could have had Yeah, that could have been another there was a holidays worth of stuff when she put it it's not worth anything now stuff got damaged while it was boxed up. And either like this lovely pieces of family furniture and you're like oh we'll keep it or pass it down. And I don't know what it's like in other countries but secondhand furniture should say just antique shops selling an auction and stuff. It's not what it used to be these gem like I really love G plan. I don't know if that's a UK thing. But it's you can if it's a little like chester drawers and D plan you'll pay like 500 quid but the dresses people give away for free because nobody wants them. I think they're brilliant. dressers and sideboards are just not utilized here in the UK enough and I'm like, brilliant storage we don't want IKEA cubes everywhere but the Yeah, it's crazy. It's just not worth what it was any more. There's not the market for it. People want built in a lot. And I think from a storage practical point of view, but Alton is so much better, you get a lot better usage of the space and you can put the best configurations in and you can shut the doors and everything's good. And it's lovely. And a lot of the older furniture just isn't as practical with storage. But I do think that we are embracing space a lot, we value space more now. Whereas our our parents and our grandparents often valued the things because they weren't you were investing your money in the thing because they were going to increase in value and gone the other way. Now. I do not want to leave my daughter things. I've got a couple of bits that I'm I've labeled on the back. So I've got a picture, it was the first piece of actual art art, like someone painted it art that I ever bought. In fact, I haven't bought anything since it's the only piece of art I've ever bought. And then I got my it's of Audrey Hepburn. And then I got my partner one done with James Bond for one of his birthdays. So there's a little note on the in on the back of the frame that says Mommy bought this for daddy, and where which birthday it was and why I bought the James like the story behind why I bought it. And so she's got a couple of things like that. That doesn't mean anything else, right? It's just more stuff for them to sort out. There's a there's a comic strip sort of picture that went around social media, it's been run a few times, but it went on again recently. And it's this garage full of stuff like big garage doors open, it's just full, full falling out of stuff. And this old man saying to his son one day sadness will all be yours. Yeah, it's just junk. I guess just doesn't it just don't need it. I think we we we need to value our space more. It's a state of mind like empty space within our brains, I empty space within our homes, empty space within our lives, like less to do less to manage. And I think we'd like we've got a we've got room for it. So I'll have it. But actually, it's it's still got to be managed. It's got to be maintained, it's got to be cleaned, or the shelfs got to be cleaned or looked after. Still, there's always something to do with stuff. Right? It's like, right, it's just way if nothing else, it's like weighing you down, and I swear man's house, and we cleared that loft out. And the house felt taller, the house felt lighter. You couldn't see any of the stuff. It was all boxed up in the loft. But it did it was it was washing the house. Find that we're squashing ourselves with the amount of stuff that we've got. Excellent. Thank you so much. Can you tell us where we can find you how we can work with you? Let us know everything, all the things that you'd like us to know. Like. So I have a I have a Facebook group, where I try, I aim to do a monthly challenge. So there's something that people can Peter through, but it's just like a freebie. So it's just, it's more like I tried to do like prompt based challenges. So at the moment, we are doing a thing where you have to look for twins in your house, so duplicates of things, and each day rid of duplicates. So it might be you've got two notebooks that serve the same purpose and you'll get rid of them or maybe you've got them or just one of them. Just one it's okay, so I get rid of one because I haven't duplicate Okay, good. Because quite often we're like, Oh, but I use wine glasses. It's like yeah, but you don't use two sets of wine glasses to get rid of a set. That's because they are often the things we use. We look at it and we don't get rid of it. So that's the challenge we're doing at the moment. We did like 465 things. So we started on the first of June, we got rid of 30 items. Then the second of June we've got nine. It's called My declutter downfall. So we did like one each. And then in July, we did a thing about categories, what categories were in our space, we didn't physically do cost or anything. We just did some planning for the July challenge. So in the Facebook group, if you search it's called declutter, get organized, feel happier. Like my Facebook group. I have a like a private membership. And I think it works out about $15 it's 12 it's 12 pounds a month in the UK. So it's whatever. There's no contract or anything so you can literally sign up for a month and cancel but it's got all my courses or my downloadables or my principles. I do a workshop every month in there as well. I wanted it to be less than the price of a cup of coffee a month and very much I used to live in London and coffee was very expensive. Probably a month so yeah, it's 12 pounds, whatever that dollars the pounds not great but on Boris mucking everything up. We have so much fun. I do so I do one to one in person coaching and people live near me but I imagine that it's a More all over the world. So the online, the online side of things. And I find this quite useful when people can work at their own pace. And but I'm also there. So I'd say it's like it's the benefits of having your own professional organizer, but at a much more manageable budget. I've drawn funds. So did you have any way I do like working with clients in person, but it's not always feasible for most people, and also the time commitment, right? Doing it, I think with a membership people can do that slow and steady and make those slow changes. But we do a lot of stuff around time organization, and as well as defining what we want from life, what he said, It's not about just the things we want in our life, it's about what we want to be doing with our time, as well. It's called a happy lifestyle club. Finding the happiness through having less, okay. But yeah, that's just on my website. So that's WWW dot the lifestyle coach uk.com forward slash club that will take you through to the information all about the membership, but all my links for like my social media, and on my websites, that's as easy as that. And my Instagram, I try trying to do the reels. I didn't like promoting myself. But yeah, my it's my Instagram is the lifestyle coach UK. And I do put some bits and try and do real so if you want to come and have a good laugh, we try to do all right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day. Actually, one last question. So if you could leave our listeners with one thing, one step that they can take today to help them get more organized. What would that one thing be? Oh, sign up to my membership. That would be it. I would give to I'm gonna make it a two, two. Okay, somewhere to donate. But have I find clothes and then somewhere that's more like furniture and a Knick Knack things. A lot of like charity shops are split into here in the UK. So finding where things are going to go finding your a good charity shop for clothing, because that's something we seem to have a lot of. And a good charity shop or donation place for big items like furniture or Knick Knack type ornaments. And I think it's a lot easier to let go of stuff when we know where it's going. Just think it's going to rubbish it's going to landfill. But when we know where it's going, it can feel a lot the guilt list the guilt, the list the stress, and and it feels like we've given we've gifting it to someone else, as opposed to we're just getting rid of it. That's great. Thank you so much for taking the time out today. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast. I hope you found this information valuable, and hope that you can immediately use some of the information that was provided, make sure to check out the show notes for all of the links that we discussed today. As a mom myself, I understand that at times you can feel alone and are looking for a sense of community. It is my goal to help bring moms together to find each other to help support one another and also help raise healthy humans. That is why I've created a Facebook group. It is free for you to join and you can go to moms raising healthy human. I also have upgraded our membership portal for you. If you are interested, I now have three tiers because I want to make sure that everybody is moving more no matter where you are. So the first one if you happen to like our weekly movement snacks, you're gonna want to join our first tier, it's $5 a month and you will have a daily movement exercise that you can do. If you want to move even more, you might want to try one of our other memberships, where we go even deeper, and you can join us for live zoom classes. Remember it is my goal to help bring moms together in a healthy and supportive community. And I feel like that's what I'm doing with the forms that community so head to form fit s o r m SIT online.com To see our new website and To learn more