Declutter Your To Do List. 3 Strategies to Boost Productivity and Prevent Burnout with Naomi Tucker #077

Are you on the brink of burnout, juggling household chores, family responsibilities, and your career, without a moment to spare for yourself? If you nodded in agreement, then this episode, featuring Naomi Tucker, a burnout and productivity coach, is your much-needed respite. With over 25 years under her belt, managing large teams, and catering to the ever-increasing demands of the event industry, Naomi brings a wealth of knowledge to the table.

No need to feel guilty about your cluttered workspace or overflowing digital inbox. We've all been there! Let's talk about de-cluttering and organizing. We share our experiences and tips on how to manage your digital clutter and how it can drastically enhance productivity. We will discuss the importance of creating an environment that serves you well and how clutter impacts your mind. We will provide practical tips to help you lead a stress-free lifestyle.

As we delve into the issue of life balance, we'll discuss how various stages of life require different needs. We explore embracing imbalance, creating teachable moments for family members, and having meaningful conversations with the right people. Naomi and I will be sharing how to be intentional about creating household systems, making organizing less daunting, and leading a life you enjoy. So, tune in, lean back, and let's unravel the secrets to leading a fulfilling life.

Naomi Tucker, CMP is the Founder, Business Strategist & Coach of Planners on Purpose, and a Past President of MPI Wisconsin. She has more than twenty-eight years of experience in managing meetings and events. Today, Naomi not only supports corporations with business strategies for their meetings management programs, but she also empowers driven and ambitious event planners out of burnout and overwhelm and into being more confident, productive, and well-balanced planners. Naomi also serves on the Knowledge Committee with the Event Industry Council, as an advisor for the Fox Valley Technical College Event Management Program, and was recently recognized by Cvent as one of “20 Event Professionals You Should be Following”.

When she’s not managing events, recording a podcast episode, or holding a book club, Naomi enjoys fun Friday nights with her family watching Star Trek episodes, or soaking up some sun and sand on the beautiful beaches of Wisconsin!

Naomi's website www.plannersonpurpose.com

Naomi's Banish Burnout Challenge : www.plannersonpurpose.com/banishburnout
Naomi on Instagram: Naomi | Event Planner Coach (@plannersonpurpose) • Instagram photos and videos

Thanks for listening! For more organizational motivation, support and free resources:
Join my podcast Facebook group Living Clutter Free Forever Podcast: KonMari® Inspired Organizing | Facebook
Visit my website www.caroline-thor.com
Come and say 'hi' on Instagram @caro.thor
Follow me on Facebook @carolineorganizer
Join my online membership Clutter Free Collective

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Hi there, I'm Caroline Thor, professional organizer, konmari consultant, teacher and mum of three. I started off my life as a mum feeling overwhelmed, disorganized and desperately trying to carve out some time for me amongst the nappies, chaos and clutter. One day, one small book called the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying changed everything and I began to learn strategies for making everyday life easier. Today, I have the systems in place that means life can throw almost anything at me, and I want to share them with you. If you're an overwhelmed mum struggling to keep it together, then this is the podcast for you. Grab a coffee and settle in for a quick chat with someone who gets your reality.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Living Clutter Free Forever. I'm Caroline, a Konmari consultant and professional organizer, and today I have an amazing guest. You are going to love listening to her. She's got some absolutely amazing insights that I had personally never even considered, so I hope you get as much out of this episode as I did Enjoy. Today I'm talking to Naomi Tucker. Naomi is a burnout and productivity coach for event professionals, which apparently is one of the top industries that experience high amounts of stress, and she's got over 25 years of experience in the industry. She's led large teams, raised children, volunteered, served on boards, it sounds. I don't know how she's done it, but we'll find out in a minute Sometimes at the same time, all while managing her household, naomi welcome.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here. This is a treat, so thanks, caroline.

Speaker 1: 2:30

You're very welcome. I am excited to talk to you today because the people who listen to this podcast spend a lot of their time feeling overwhelmed and stressed and they are going to want to know how you've discovered this magic of how to deal with all of that. So, first of all, I've given a little potted thing there at the start, but tell us a bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Well, thank you again. I live in Appleton, wisconsin, so in Tundra land I don't know if anyone knows where that is it's not too far from Green Bay, so if anyone are Packer fans with the Green Bay Packers, that's where I currently live. But a little bit about me is I have a company called Planners On Purpose and, as you mentioned, I'm a coach there. I'm also a business consultant and I work with event professionals and I help them to remove burnout and incorporate effective prevention strategies in their lives so that they can ultimately live a life that they enjoy. And I often like to say, lead a life that you enjoy. And I just love what I do.

Speaker 2: 3:37

And I started working via a hotel. So I used to be in a hotel and work there. I think it was coming out of college, needing to be financially stable, needing a bit more work at a hotel, and I really worked my way and we've my way up there through the ranks and started to be in charge of their meetings and their events and executing those, and so my journey didn't really stop there. It went on to say, hey, I really love this thing of being an event professional. So I started to be an in-house planner at corporate organizations. I was managing over 150 events a year or more. That was a lot of events. And then I went to a third party organization where I directed teams to support meetings and events for Fortune 100 companies. So, yeah, I've done a lot and, like you mentioned, that's not it. It's like I'm a wife, a mother of three, having to manage your household. I'm definitely familiar with it. You can have so much to do with a limited amount of time.

Speaker 1: 4:45

And this is the problem, we all have the same amount of time in a day, but for some people it's actually harder to sort of organize their time and work productively, and we'll come on to that in a little bit later. But how did you end up identifying the need for burnout and productivity coaching for event professionals?

Speaker 2: 5:08

So this need me figuring this out was probably way before the pandemic, and a lot of it had to do with the teams that I was currently leading. We had an amazing amount of pressure that we were dealing with, not only from just the amazing events that we were creating, but then also our clients were getting pressure from the market as well. I think every business can tell you that in 2019, a lot of businesses were at the height and the best of what they ever had been, and we were definitely feeling it when it came to events. So I was hearing little pieces of information from my team about being burned out. They're just exasperated. They're going from one thing into another, and it was a struggle because, even as a leader, knowing the, let's say, the demands of our industry, the demands of the company we were at, we did have to continue to keep pushing. So it's just this cyclical pressure that continues, and it's really hard for them to be able to really manage their lives on top of managing their career.

Speaker 2: 6:20

So I just felt like there was this need. So, when the pandemic came around, I thought it was obviously devastating with everything that was happening, but I did see that a lot of people were taking different opportunities in their life and, like me, I ended up, thankfully, continuing through the pandemic. My job wasn't really affected, but there was so much grind. Even when you didn't have a lot to do, there was the grind of keeping things moving forward. That also created lots of stress and lots of overwhelming attention. So I just knew that I needed to be more involved with that. I cared about it so much and I wanted to be involved in ensuring that people can have a safe space to have these burnout prevention techniques be practiced so that they can manage the busy but then also be there for their families too.

Speaker 1: 7:23

And I think the one thing that stood out for me that you just said was this cyclical pressure, because it doesn't matter whether you're in the industry that you're talking about or whether it's somebody like me or whether it's a stay-at-home mum. We have all got this cyclical pressure happening, especially as women, because we're juggling all the balls, we're thinking for everybody in the family, we're perhaps trying to hold down a job as well as running the home, as you and I do, and it just never ends. You're on call 24 hours a day, there isn't a break, and I often joke and say that for me, going away on holiday isn't really much of a break, because you end up doing the same stuff that you do at home, just in a different location.

Speaker 1: 8:11

I think the only time I've ever really felt like I had a break was when we actually stayed in an all-inclusive hotel and I didn't have to think about food. Exactly Because even when you go on holiday, don't you? You're still thinking about meals for everyone. Oh yes.

Speaker 2: 8:29

You're thinking about the meals you're organizing when we go to what? Yeah, absolutely yeah. I love all inclusives, Like go and get what you want at any time you want.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Yeah, I think that could be on our agenda for 2024.

Speaker 2: 8:45

I can see it, yeah that, or a cruise Cruises are nice too, for that.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Ah, I've never been on a cruise.

Speaker 2: 8:51

They are so good because there is that all-inclusive type of thought premise too, and they can order things from room service and it's not necessarily charged, Everything's included. So that was also a really good vacation being on a cruise, so you might put that on your list too at some point.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Or at some point in the future.

Speaker 2: 9:12

Definitely.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Definitely Okay. So, when we're thinking about this cyclical pressure, what have you noticed? How does the effect of clutter in our physical space and our digital space? How does that contribute, in your opinion?

Speaker 2: 9:32

In my opinion, it contributes greatly for me when I've noticed high levels of irritation, just feeling unorganized. That usually comes from my environment. So it's really important to have those feelers out there, to be very aware of yourself and what's bringing up certain feelings for you, because sometimes it's not necessarily the task you're doing at hand or the project you're working on. A lot of times it is how things are organized, how the process is working on a specific thing that's preventing you from actually doing it to your best. So when it comes to physical clutter just your office space where you actually are doing your work To me I love making sure that it is welcoming to me.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Is my space serving me? I guess that's kind of what I like to say is is my space going to serve me and how can it serve me best? How would I like it to serve me best? So sometimes I love it. I like clean counters, right, and I like a clear, clean desk. I like to have my colorful post-it notes. That brings me joy and once in a while I like to light a candle right here in my office and those things really contribute to, oh, making me feeling good about what I'm doing and I can do what I do best and do it with joy, so it's really important. When it comes to cluttering your space, it can be very helpful and freeing to your mind and allow you to think about other things that you perhaps can't hold space for because of cluttering your outside space. It's very interesting how it connects.

Speaker 1: 11:17

I totally agree. I've had it so often with clients where we've perhaps done clothes and we've then done books and then we're ready to move on to papers and they're very, very resistant to doing papers because it means we're going to have to go into the area that they perhaps use as an office space, or that might be the dining room table, if that's what they're using as their workspace in the home, and things have got piled up and there's organisation, but in their mind they know where everything is, they know in which pile that piece of paper is, so there isn't really a need to organise it and tidy it and they are very resistant sometimes to doing this work. But once we have cleared the piles and they have a workspace, that's completely clear. It's not until you actually do that that you realise what a difference it makes.

Speaker 1: 12:10

You think you're fine, and I think this is the problem that a lot of women have in their homes.

Speaker 1: 12:16

They think it's okay. They don't realise that the kitchen being this cluttered or the hallway being this cluttered or the kids bedrooms being in total chaos, they don't realise the impact that is actually having on them internally until they do something about sorting it out and as they start to breathe and relax and start to feel joy in their home again. It's only at that point that they realise how much they've been suffering up until this point. So I think you're spot on when you say that clearing the clutter away frees you to think about other things and think in a completely different way. Can I just ask you about digital clutter, because it's not really something we've ever spoken about on this podcast, which is why I was so excited to get you on. So we are all really getting better at perhaps removing the physical clutter from our homes. Things like our cell phones and our laptops and our tablets are getting in such chaos, especially with things like photos, things we've downloaded, screenshots we've made.

Speaker 1: 13:27

They're all just sort of randomly in there, and emails as well. I mean, I did a thing a few years ago where I got my inbox down to zero.

Speaker 1: 13:36

Oh that's huge. It was huge because it was at thousands. It was at thousands and I've kept it sort of within 20 now, and that's been for a few years now. So that's been really good, because everything's now got a folder that I drop it into when it arrives. So that's worked really well for me. So what's the mistakes are people making when it comes to their digital clutter, and can you give us some top tips on how to get on top of this so that we're more productive?

Speaker 2: 14:08

Sure, no. Thanks for that question. So digital organization is huge and because we are now in a world where technology is taking, you know, that front position, ai is everywhere. There's so many areas where we're just storing up things and it goes. I mean, it can't even go down to your Amazon wish list. You think of that? You think about your Netflix watch list? We are.

Speaker 2: 14:35

We are definitely storing all sorts of information and we end up being digital hoarders. So what mistakes we might make is thinking that all these things are just going to just take care of themselves and I'll just keep adding things to my watch list and, you know, nobody's going to remove it from the watch list. So that's pretty much the mistake. Or the emails that come in we have the junk folder, or we know that there are things that should be moved to junk, but we just kind of keep it there. But then meanwhile it also can cause a little bit of stress. You continue to get that email that you no longer want to be on that list, but instead of scrolling down to the bottom and hitting unsubscribe and just kind of allowing that to be removed, we just keep it there. So there's so many ways that we are, I guess, making some mistakes with digital organization, but it's easily fixed and I feel like it's easily fixed in the same way that we have to pay attention to our physical clutter in our homes. It's being intentional about it.

Speaker 2: 15:42

There's this book that I love. It's by Casey Davis and you know you probably have read it. It's how to Keep House While Drowning. It's a really great book and it's great for a person who's, let's say, not a professional organizer, because it allows you to do just gentle, gentle tasks. It just makes it okay for you to have gentle tasks and doing those things around your home instead of having it be such a hard. You know a hard thing. You know out of a lot of grind that you have to clean your home, but the idea of it is just when you're in a room okay, maybe the counters have something on there, maybe before you leave that room, you take the things from the counters and you put them where they need to be. So it's kind of like you're gently cleaning or doing this task work instead of having it be like okay, now I have my gloves on and I have my Lysol and I'm going to get after it. It's just doing it when you're able to, at a point where it feels good.

Speaker 2: 16:44

So when it comes to digital organization, it's a similar thing. If you're in your email and you check your email, let's say maybe once an hour or every couple hours, take that five extra minutes and say, okay, well, I'm going to go in and clear out. You know some of these emails, I'm going to unsubscribe to emails for the next 10 minutes. It's just a simple task like that Going into those downloads, maybe once a week, because we download a lot of things and they just stack up and they store on our computer. So making sure you're putting that time in your calendar to be able to say, okay, I'm just going to go through and delete some of my downloads or organize some of my files so that I'm just a little bit better.

Speaker 2: 17:30

And another tip is just really being aware of how your brain thinks and processes with storing and making sure that you're organizing files in accordance to how you like to have them.

Speaker 2: 17:43

So, for example, I love taking photos and so I can have a lot of photos in my iPhone, but I take the time to get them off my iPhone, put them in an external hard drive or a space that I know that there will be or a cloud, but having it organized to how it's comfortable for me to do that.

Speaker 2: 18:01

So, if you know, my husband turned 40 on a particular year. I go to the year and then I go to the event. I like organizing my things by the event so it allows me to pull up the moment really easily. So those are just a few tips. There's so much more to be able to dig into that, but the more you do it, and if you do it, take the small steps you know every week, you'll find that you're a little bit more organized digitally and you'll also feel a little bit less stressed there too, because, yeah, there could be spaces that we're hoarding the stressing in my like, oh, I have to take care of that, I do have to organize that, and it just holds space in you and so you just want to free yourself of that.

Speaker 1: 18:47

I am completely in line with you with everything you've said. I talk often on this podcast about breaking things into small, manageable chunks, that you don't need to have a whole day set aside for a project. If you've got 10, 15 minutes, then use that to work at something. And when I was doing my email decluttering, I actually used time when I was on the school run and you know how sometimes you get to somewhere or soccer practice or something. You get there too early and you're stuck in your car waiting.

Speaker 1: 19:18

I would have my podcast playing that I was listening to, because I'm always listening to something and I'd just be going through my emails and it was an absolute revelation for me this was a few years ago now when I did this that I hadn't realized at that point that you could scroll down to the bottom and hit the unsubscribe thing.

Speaker 1: 19:36

I don't know how this had passed me by, but maybe someone else listening won't know that either. So you've got these emails that are continually coming into your inbox and you just delete them without reading them. Every week we'll open one of them and, as you said, naomi, you scroll down to the bottom and hit the unsubscribe, and I was using these little pockets of time to do this digital decluttering, when I was sitting there waiting for one of the kids to come out of something, or if I'd gone to a client's and got there too early, then I would just sit there doing a bit of digital decluttering, so you don't feel like it's a massive chore. And then suddenly one day you're like oh, I'm down to zero, I've done it.

Speaker 2: 20:17

And it feels so good.

Speaker 1: 20:18

Yeah, and it's not the sort of thing you can sit and do in one sitting. It would drive you crazy. It would give you such a headache looking at the screen for that long. So it was a great thing to do. And, like you were saying with organizing photos, that's something else you can do while you're sat there. If you get your folders set up and you can just swipe stuff into folders as you're sitting there in the car waiting somewhere, or if you're sitting in the doctor's waiting room. There's all these little pockets of time we have where we start scrolling through social media because we don't know what to do to fill the time. Well, naomi and I have just given you something you can do. You can start organizing your digital clutter.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Brilliant. And I love as well that you said about setting calendar reminders. I think that's something I often talk about here. I love that. And then the third thing you said I am so pleased to hear you say this about how your brain thinks, about what your style of organizing is. This is something that my husband and I disagree on, and he's very, very logical, very logical. If I've got to look at something that's like in a flow diagram, flow chart, I just go like a rabbit in a headlight, I just switch off. That's anything like that for me, is just horror. So when we've come to storing photos, I've been storing by event as well, but he wants to store everything by the year and he gets very annoyed with me. But you can never find anything. And I was like I can because I know my system. That's how my brain works and your brain works by years, and that's great for you, my dear, but I can't think like that. So that's interesting that you said that. That's cool.

Speaker 2: 22:14

I like how you bring your husband into it I guess that's another tip too is especially when you're in spaces like your home and you're responsible for, like the home organization, because I do, let's say, bring in my husband's photos with my photos and we kind of combine all the pictures to the event because they're stored that way, but just letting them know how you're getting on the same page and aligning with. Ok, this is how it's working, this is how I've laid it out making sure that you have alignment, because they may have to reference some things at some point in time. So it's important to bring in the people that you need in order to just know where things are.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:55

We've had another thing like that recently, because you'll find this very weird, naomi, but people that listen to this podcast regularly know this.

Speaker 1: 23:03

I am naturally very disorganized, like really disorganized, which is why I think I understand my clients so well, but I feel very fortunate that I've discovered the Konmari method and discovered a system that works for me to help me stay in control of everything.

Speaker 1: 23:20

It literally saved my life, and because one of the things that I really struggle with with organization is finances, I really genuinely find that a difficult thing to keep on top of my brain, and numbers is just not a good combination. My husband very kindly agreed to take over the finance side for my business, for my organizing business, and so I passed over to him all my records and he just couldn't make head or tail of it. I don't know if I've done it at all, but my filing, my digital filing system that I had used using clients names, and he's like you can't do this, you'll never find anything. So it is really fascinating how our brains work really differently, and we've always got to take that into account when we're trying to create a system in a home, whether that's a digital system or a system in the kitchen. We've got to know how everyone works best and what's going to become a solution that will work for everybody.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Yeah, absolutely. Especially, like you mentioned, in a business it might look different because in a business things might have to be organized. You have so many different people that need to reference certain things and, like you mentioned, they're not all thinking the way we think. So it then comes down to probably some more logical reasoning on how we actually organize those things whether it be by a client number or a job number, things like that so that everybody has access to those things.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Yeah, I hadn't thought that far ahead in my disorganized little brain, but that's fine, we've got it under control now. But I think it's also for a lot of women or a lot of families. Even there tends to be one person within the home that perhaps is responsible for home paperwork. So where are the insurance documents? Where are the bank stuff, rather than everyone knowing where everything is and how it's stored? And it's so, so important that everyone has access to that and understands how it's working so that, if God forbid, something happens and someone's not available for a bit, then you can still find the things that you need in an emergency.

Speaker 2: 25:35

Yeah, and I have to remind my household and people in my household often like, okay, so you know, this is where this information is especially. Let's say if they're asking me about it, it's doing the redirect and saying you know, this is a good opportunity to have you walk through getting that photo on your own instead of relying on me. Let's make this a teachable moment. Let's go through the process so that you know what to do, because sometimes it's easy for people in your life, because you do it and you do it well, because you do it all the time, to continue to rely on you, but that also can build up that stress and overwhelm. So sometimes we just need to know when those teachable moments are, how we can bring people into the fold, talk to them, teach them how we do it so that they are able to be more responsible, and it's helping to enable them to get what they need.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Yeah, we've talked about this often on this podcast, and you're not going to have people within your home able to do things just because you've said it once. It needs to be something that, as you say, is a teaching thing, that you regularly repeat the information until you realise one day they've got it. And, yes, you've had to take the time to do that teaching, but in the long run it frees up your time completely because they're not going to be bothering you about stuff anymore or they're self-sufficient, which is brilliant. And that brings us nicely onto my last question that I had for you, naomi, which I think is going to be so key for everyone listening what advice do you have for women who are trying to balance demanding careers, family responsibilities, household management? How can they find that balance?

Speaker 2: 27:26

So this is a good question and I probably have like changed a little bit on this and my position on this. But I really feel like really ask yourself is what you're seeking truly balance? Okay, because when you really look at a wheel and you put all the areas of your life on this master wheel, balance really means maybe I'm equally doing everything, and really balance can make you mean that we have no traction, right, if we're completely balanced, like when you look at one of those balancing scales, there's just no movement either way. Is that truly what you want in the season and life that you are on? And some people yes, that is absolutely what they want. They just want it to be just smooth and nothing going either which way.

Speaker 2: 28:20

But sometimes we are in seasons of our life where we do need to focus on things, focus on different areas. So you might see, oh, maybe there's one area, like my family, that needs more attention and love right now, and because of that, the scales have shifted. That, to me, is an imbalance. So I would even say embrace your imbalance as where you need to be too. So I think it's two parts. It's really evaluating your life and seeing, okay, is balance what I really need, because that means I'm focusing on everything equally technically and am I embracing now a season of focus, which means I'm a little bit imbalanced, and I'll be okay with that because what I'm going to do is allow something else on the other side of the scale to be lighter, or that I'm not contributing as much to it, and being okay with that and making provision for that. Talking to the right people to say I'm sorry, I can no longer take this project right now because I have something else that's, you know, I need to really focus on right now, and that's just the season I'm in and, you know, thank you for thinking of me. Having those conversations, I think, really will help people feel better in their lives.

Speaker 2: 29:37

So that's usually what I would say when it comes to balance, because I've noticed that there's been times where my career has taken really its front and center, but usually when that happens, what's happening at home is pretty stable. People know what they're doing, things are pretty routine, Everything's running like a well oiled machine and I can give that focus to my career. But sometimes things shift and you know things shift in the home. It can be anything. It can be your husband gets another position. It could be your child is going through like something very hard and then you do need to shift and have some more focus on that thing. But that's what I would say for now. Yeah, to start.

Speaker 1: 30:22

I love how you explain that. I've never really thought of it like that, and you're totally right. It's like deciding what are the priorities at the moment and agreeing to let other stuff take a bit more of a backseat. Today is actually in our family on the day we're recording. This is one of those days.

Speaker 1: 30:41

My husband started a new job today and it's away. So from today he's away for the whole of the working week and we'll come home on Friday evenings and we've had him at home since COVID started. He was working from home since COVID started and for the last six months he actually didn't have a job. So I've had him at home full time doing everything while I have concentrated on my business. So from today I'm shifting my priorities in that I have to move back to putting more of an emphasis on the family and the household. Then I have done in the last six months because I have literally with the family. Obviously I've been very involved, but household I've done nothing. I've hardly cooked a meal, I mean, it's just been. It's been an absolute joy for me to have six months of complete focus on my business. But yeah, but that I'm going to have to make that shift. Well, I have made that shift as of today.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Just to add on to what you're saying. It's like sometimes we do have that shift, but then that doesn't mean that you have to release all of it, because sometimes things just need to happen Right. So we have our businesses and those just need to move forward. We don't want to lose traction. We want to continue to do things and scale things Well.

Speaker 2: 32:02

How you handle what's on that other side is is pretty important, and it could mean well, I need now a housekeeper, I need somebody to still do this. I can't do it, but it still needs to get done. So then how am I going to enable it to be done? Maybe it's not done through me, but maybe it's done through technology, maybe it's done through another person, and I think, as women, sometimes we want to just do it all. I don't know what it is, but we want to make sure that we do it all.

Speaker 2: 32:31

But there are people that are absolutely happy to come to your home and clean it once a week or every other week, and there are people out there that will be willing to come in and paint if you needed to have things painted. It doesn't all have to be. You create your team even at home, and I think that that's something that I do also help my clients with. It's like who's your team, not just at your office, but who's your team at home, because you have these big dreams for yourself. How are you going to get them done? But then also make sure your home is taken care of too, and I think that women should embrace that. I really do.

Speaker 1: 33:10

Yeah, I think you're totally right there, and this is where, as well, ensuring that we are creating those teachable moments all the time for members of our family mean that as these children get older, they are going to be responsible, they're going to be self sufficient, and then things do run more smoothly than they would do if they're reliant on you for absolutely everything the whole time.

Speaker 2: 33:36

Absolutely yes. I believe in that yes.

Speaker 1: 33:42

Someone once said to me about we have a few too many bathrooms in our house. And someone once said to me about you know how do you get around to cleaning them all? I said, well, I had three children for a reason. Yes, yeah. I'm cleaning those bathrooms.

Speaker 2: 33:59

And make it easy for them. Like again. Just I came to revelation of like, why not just have a cleaning, you know caddy upstairs in our basement and on our main floor? Because it makes it easy, because sometimes the struggle is going to get the thing in order to do the work. It's like it's right there for you Make it completely easy for them to do what they need to do, so there's not that much of a struggle. So that's also another tip too. It's like make it easy for everybody that's doing this so that they can help contribute.

Speaker 1: 34:33

Definitely I've, even now. I've got a vacuum cleaner on the floor where the bedrooms are. I've got a vacuum cleaner in the cellar. I've got a vacuum cleaner in the ground floor. I don't want any child to say to me no, I'm not going to vacuum my room, I can't be bothered to carry it up. Yeah, it's there, it's in the hallway upstairs in a cupboard. You have no excuse, child.

Speaker 2: 34:56

Exactly, I love it. We think the same. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:00

Yeah, yeah, it is very cool, okay. So, naomi, thank you so much. It's been brilliant talking to you today. So we now know how to sort out our digital clutter and we know why we start to feel overwhelmed, and I love what you said about balance just then. I think that was brilliant, so thank you so much for sharing that with us. Where can people find out more about you?

Speaker 2: 35:24

Well, I am at plannersonpurposecom and I'm pretty much on every social media channel except for TikTok at plannersonpurposecom On Twitter. It's plan on purpose, but if you just type Naomi Tucker, planners on purpose, you should be able to find me. So thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 35:43

You're welcome and I will make sure that all those links are in the show notes for everyone as well, so they can find you and check you out. I always think it's fun, when you've heard someone on a podcast, to go and check them out on video and see what they look like in real life and interact a bit and perhaps send Naomi a message and let her know what you thought of the episode today. I'm sure she'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 2: 36:05

Yes, yes, absolutely, thank you. I love that.

Speaker 1: 36:08

Okay, thank you very much, naomi.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 36:11

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed listening to us chatting away there. That was recorded actually a few weeks ago, and I've been looking forward to bringing this episode out. I really have been giving a lot of thought since then to this idea of balance, and I think before I spoke to Naomi in this episode, I really had been trying to work out how I could balance everything, that I could give as much emphasis to my business as I do to my family and to my home and to my friends, and it's really made me reassess, and I'm very grateful to Naomi for that. So I hope you get as much out of it as I did.

Speaker 1: 36:54

I know that Naomi would love to see you on Instagram as much as I would, so come and say hi to both of us. The links are in the show notes. Follow both of us and then you will be able to find out and keep up to date with everything that we're doing. So until next time, if you've enjoyed this episode, please send the link to a friend you know would appreciate it, subscribe and leave a review. I look forward to bringing you more organising tips next time, but if you can't wait until then, you can go to my website or find me on Instagram, at carrowthor, or on Facebook at Caroline organiser. Thanks for listening and I look forward to guiding you on your journey to find your clutter free ever often.