5 ways to simplify your life! How to change your life through organization #93

I want to invite you to a special workshop that could change your life! If you're interested in learning how to tidy up and feel more focused, then this is for you.  A FREE 3-Day Workshop from Chaos to Calm: Home Organizing For Busy Women. Join me, Caroline Thor, and others who share our goal of living clutter-free. Let's work together to make our homes and minds feel peaceful and organized.

Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff around you? Well, I've got just the thing for you! Check out my latest podcast episode where I share my secrets to conquering clutter and getting your life back on track.

You know that feeling when everything seems to be a mess? Yeah, I've been there too. But don't worry, I've figured out some awesome tricks to help you clean up the chaos. From dealing with a sick kid to managing social media drama, I've been through it all, and I'm here to help you through it too.

In this episode, I'll spill the beans on how I went from living in a cluttered disaster zone to enjoying a peaceful, organized life. You'll learn all about the KonMari Method® and other amazing strategies to keep your home neat and tidy. Plus, I'll show you how to get your whole family involved in the cleaning process.

But wait, there's more! I'll inspire you to tackle your own messes, tips on staying positive when things get tough, and fun ways to make cleaning up a family affair.

So if you're ready to say goodbye to clutter and hello to a happier, more organized life, then grab your headphones and tune in now! You won't want to miss it!
And don't forget to book your place on the workshop! https://caroline-thor.mykajabi.com/workshop

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. Hello and welcome back to this episode of the Living Clutter Free Forever podcast. I'm so happy to have you here with me. It is a super windy day here in Germany as I'm recording, so I hope that you're not going to hear that in the background. Let's see how that works out. And I have had the craziest week just like really crazy. Everything that potentially could have gone wrong has, and this all while I am trying to launch my three-day workshop that is happening this coming weekend. So what crazy things were happening. One of my kids decided that they weren't feeling very well and needed picking up from school early on Tuesday morning. Then didn't manage to go into school on Wednesday and Thursday, and I am normally not recording this late in the week, but today I'm recording this on Friday, ready for you to be listening to from the following Tuesday. So it's just been completely bonkers. And on top of all that, on Tuesday, facebook and Instagram so the meta platform went down for a few hours and when it went back on again, I was locked out of my accounts and could not access Facebook anymore at all, which is not good when you have a membership which is housed in Facebook and you have set up a Facebook group private Facebook group, private Facebook group, especially for all the people who are going to be doing your challenge to join. So talk about having a panic. Anyway, it took two and a half days of me battling around trying to work out how on earth I got back into Facebook. Believe me, if you ever get locked out, it's not easy to get back in, but last night it happened. I managed to get back in and I have breathed a sigh of relief and I am so excited to be meeting everyone in the Facebook group in a couple of days time.

Speaker 1: 3:28

When this recording goes out, it will be on Thursday that the doors to the Facebook group will be opening, and then the following weekend Saturday, sunday and Monday it's going to be my three day live workshop. It is going to be amazing. I have put so much effort into creating this workshop because I want to be able to move the needle for you and anyone else who comes along, and there are going to be amazing little mini challenges for you to do so you can actually start to see how you can make these changes without having to give up a huge amount of your time. And there are going to be prizes. There is going to be a crazy prize in a raffle for anyone who shows up three days in a row live. And if you manage to make perhaps a couple of the sessions but then miss one, don't worry, because the recordings will be available. So if you haven't signed up yet, I don't want you missing out on this experience, because it's just going to be fantastic. You can go to caroline-thorcom forward slash workshop and reserve your place, if you haven't done that already, and join me and all the other amazing women from around the world who are going to be coming together to discuss organizing, decluttering our pain points, how we can move past the struggles that we have. I'm going to be doing loads of mindset coaching, helping you understand how to get the family on board. It's just going to be packed full into one hour sessions each day, so I'm not going to be taking a lot of your time away. I would love to see you there.

Speaker 1: 5:11

So on to this week's episode. I would like you to imagine what it would be like for you if life would be easier. What would that be like? Can you imagine being able, for example, to get rid of all the mental checklists that you have spinning around in your head every day? Or knowing exactly where that important piece of paper is that you need? Or the laundry taking half the time it takes you at the moment. Or not having to look for your keys before you leave the house. Or this is a big one the kids getting excited when you say it's time to tidy up. Or being able to wrap a gift without having to first search through the whole house for scissors and tape. Or not buying things when out shopping because you think you might need them, only to discover when you get home you've already got three of that item in the cupboard.

Speaker 1: 6:13

What would it be like if your life was easier? I used to wish that my life was easier and I didn't know what it would look like. I just knew that I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed. My kids were little. I was living in Germany. I was still learning the language when I had my first child, I still didn't speak German and I had no family nearby to help out. And if I had visitors coming to stay, there would literally be a week of tidying and cleaning in preparation, because I crazily thought that it had to look like I had it all together. If only I had known. And one day all that changed and I've actually checked back this week to my Amazon account.

Speaker 1: 7:04

On June 22nd 2014, I ordered the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo 2014, june 22nd, and it was because on that day, I had read an article in British Good Housekeeping that my sister had sent me, and it was an article about the Konmari method, which I'd never heard of. I'd never heard of Marie Kondo, and I read this article and something about it inspired me and I thought I have to have this book, and I literally went straight and opened my laptop and ordered it June 22nd 2014. And that day became the catalyst for so many changes in my life. Not only did I, over the next year, go through the book and declutter and organise my whole home, but by doing that, it made me a calmer mum. It definitely made me a much better parent. I was less stressed and I had more time for my kids, and that was definitely as a direct result of having decluttered and organised the home.

Speaker 1: 8:25

Crazy though that sounds, I can say hand on heart that was the catalyst for that and as a result of that, I started my own business at the time because I suddenly felt I had the mental capacity to cope with doing something outside of the home, and I started my own business at that time, teaching classes to expats and their toddler kids in the town where I lived. I actually started off in my living room to start with teaching these classes. Things just sort of have grown from there. Not only has it changed my career so I got trained as a kormari consultant because I believe so passionately in this method but it also inspired me because I thought, if this method can make such a difference in my life, what else out there is available to me that I haven't ever considered, and I did look at things like peaceful parenting courses and reading books about mindset changing and life coaching and habit building, and all of these things have sort of come together in this amazing package that now supports my life and my family's life and my clients and the people that come on this journey with me when they join my online group coaching program or my membership, and so I feel it's really interesting, because sometimes we have opportunities available to us and we can decide to take them or not to.

Speaker 1: 10:18

If I hadn't bought that book that day, my life would not be what it is now. There is no way I would have gone on to start a podcast, to develop an online program, to have a membership, to be working one-on-one with clients internationally as well as one-on-one in people's homes. There is no way any of that would have happened if I hadn't made a decision on June, the 22nd 2014, to order a book. How crazy is it that just that one decision come completely changed not only the trajectory of my life but also all the lives of those people that I now come into contact with.

Speaker 1: 11:09

I find it absolutely mind-blowing and the reason I trained to become a Konmari consultant is because I felt very strongly that the benefits that I had had from the Konmari method I wanted other women to understand that life can be easier, that it doesn't have to be that your home is dictating how you feel, and that is why I do what I now do, because I feel so very, very passionately about it. But I'm also discovering that what I'm doing has become a version of the Konmari method in that, yes, I teach people how to use the Konmari method and, yes, I believe wholeheartedly that this is an amazing way to declutter and organize your home and it will change your life. There is a life-changing magic in tidying up. But because of all the other learnings I have done now on mindset and habit building and because of all the amazing people I've got to meet through my podcast and I've started to learn things about MBTI and personality and boundaries and all this sort of stuff, and because of all the work I've done on parenting, I feel now that I am in such a good place to support people not only with declustering and organizing, but also in a bigger way than that, because I can support them with their mindset shifts that they need.

Speaker 1: 12:51

I have seen through the membership and through my course members that I do have a bit of a knack for motivating people and inspiring them that they can do this on their own, and I think a lot of people think it would be great if life's easier. But I don't have the time to do this and I don't have the motivation and I don't necessarily have the skills. But I'm here to tell you that you do. You absolutely. You have just got to make the decision like I did back in 2014, that you're going to give yourself a chance to do something different, because if you carry on doing what you're doing now, nothing is going to change and you may not even realise how much easier your life can be, because you haven't even tried to make those changes yet. But if you bet on yourself, if you make a commitment to yourself that you are going to try to do something different, you will start to see the changes and I promise you, life will become easier. So I said at the start what would it be like if you didn't have mental checklists spinning around in your head every day? I absolutely do not have that anymore.

Speaker 1: 14:15

I have found a system that works really well for me so that I don't have to hold everything in my head, and it has reed up my mind so that I can actually feel calmer. And when I'm calmer I deal with things on a daily basis much better. And it means that I am much more productive, because when I am working on something I am really focused and concentrated on it. I'm not distracted by all the stuff flying around in my head. I know now where every piece of paper is that I need, because I have a system set up in my home where they go to when I have filed them, and I know where I'm going to find them when I need them. And that, again, is a huge difference, because in the past I used to be like driving somewhere and I'd be thinking I need to find that piece of paper when I get home. I don't know where it is, and then I'd get home and get distracted with something and then a bit later I'd think again oh, that piece of paper, I need to find it. And then I'd start going through piles of papers looking for it and start to. You know that stressed feeling you get in your stomach when you start to feel a bit panicky because you know you're not finding it and you really need it. I don't have that anymore. So this sort of stressed, panicky feeling that I used to have has gone. We have now enough clothes to get us through a week, but no more, which means my laundry is much quicker, because the laundry pile can't get really huge. So that's really good, and I have a place now where my keys always go when I come in and I'm never having to look for my keys before I leave the house.

Speaker 1: 15:55

I have not yet managed to get away of not putting down my mobile phone somewhere in the house as I'm wandering around, because I'm always losing my mobile phone. So somehow I've not managed to sort that one out yet and I really don't want to have it hanging on me on a cord. So my phone is still an issue. So if anyone's got a top tip for how to find your mobile phone, unfortunately mine's always on silence as well, because I don't like it distracting me, so I can't even call it and find out where it is in the house. So that one still is very irritating, but I'm hoping to get a handle on that one this year.

Speaker 1: 16:31

And then shopping. I always have a list with me and it doesn't happen that I end up buying things that we don't need or buying things that we already have at home. So that makes a massive difference now, and also to our bank balance, because I'm not spending money on things that we really, really don't need. So my life is easier now, and this is what I wish for you as well, and that is why I would love to see you at my workshop at the weekend and, if you are able to attend, I promise you you will start to see the life-changing magic of tidying up.

Speaker 1: 17:14

It's going to be more than just about the Konmari method. I'm going to be sharing my tips on how to find the time to do the tidying up, how to maintain it, how to get the family on board and so much more, and there are going to be all these fun prizes and challenges. So I would love to see you there. So for an hour each day for three days. I would like you to prioritise you. I would like you to put yourself first. You can say to the family this is important because it's going to help all of us, and I would love to see you show up for yourself and be there. So until the weekend.

Speaker 1: 17:56

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 carothor, 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.