Decluttering with kids? 5 tips and tricks for a tidy family home (even if your kids are tiny hoarders) with Cara Tyrrell #107

Ever feel like your home is being taken over by toys, clothes, and clutter? Are your kids tiny hoarders, making tidying up seem impossible? You're not alone, and I’ve got solutions!

In this must-listen episode of Living Clutter Free Forever, I team up with conscious parenting coach Cara Tyrrell to bring you 5 game-changing tips and tricks for decluttering with kids. As a professional organizer, I've seen firsthand how overwhelming it can be to maintain order in a busy family home. But with the right strategies, you can turn chaos into calm.

Why wait to teach your kids responsibility? Research shows that involving children in household chores can boost their confidence and independence. Cara and I discuss how even toddlers can take part in keeping the home organized.

We’ll share:

• Practical ways to engage kids in tidying up without the usual resistance.
• Step-by-step methods to organize family spaces that even little ones can follow.
• Creative tips to make decluttering a fun family activity using the KonMari method.

Can you imagine a home where everyone pitches in? With these tips, tidying with kids doesn't have to be a battle. Instead, it can become a rewarding and collaborative process that strengthens family bonds.

Ready to transform your home into a tidy, peaceful haven? Tune in and discover how to declutter effectively, even with the tiniest hoarders around. Let's get organized together!

Grab your FREE Frustrated Parents Guide - How to get your kids to tidy up without them even realizing it!

Find out more about Cara and her podcast Transforming The Toddler Years HERE

Thanks for listening! For more organizational motivation, support and free resources:
Join my online membership Clutter Free Collective
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

Transcript

Caroline: 0:00

Hi there, I'm Caroline Thor, professional organiser, KonMari consultant, teacher and mum of three. I started off my life as a mum feeling overwhelmed, disorganised 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.

Caroline: 0:55

Hello and welcome to this latest episode of the living clutter-free forever podcast. I'm super happy to have you here with me today. The sun is shining here in Germany as I record this and I don't know about you, but it just makes everything feel a whole lot better and talking of things making things seem a whole lot better. The conversation that you're going to be listening to today in this episode was one of those moments. I had a chat a few weeks ago now with Cara Tyrrell, who is a conscious parenting coach, and she and I have known each other now. For probably just over a year I've been a guest on her podcast and I have been itching to have her on this podcast because I knew it would be such a valuable conversation. So sit back and listen and even if you don't have young children between the age of one and five, you are still going to gain so much value from what we talk about. Enjoy Welcome today.

Cara Tyrrell: 2:12

Thank you so much for having me today, Caroline. I am really excited you were on my show and now I get to be on yours.

Caroline: 2:19

I know I love this whole podcast swap thing. I think it's so much fun and I've been wanting to get you on my podcast for a very, very long time because I know there are so many of my listeners who are going to benefit from what you have to say. So, before we get into all the juicy stuff, tell us a little bit about yourself and where the business that you currently had started from where the business that you currently had started from.

Cara Tyrrell: 2:48

So my name's Cara. It's so great to meet all of you. I have flown and grown kids. My girls are 19 and 21. And, honestly, parenting was all I ever wanted to do and I approached it from a space of this heart led raising a human being thing and my science-based background in being a preschool and kindergarten teacher. And so now, on the other side of raising humans who are out thriving in the world, I decided it was time to create something for other parents to be that engaged and that inspired during their kids' zero to five years. So they knew they were setting themselves up for great success.

Caroline: 3:26

I love that because I think these formative years people don't realize what a difference it makes to the human being, the adult that that child turns into. You can instill confidence in them at that age that they then carry through with them throughout their whole life. So it's so important.

Cara Tyrrell: 3:46

Yeah, one of my favorite things to say is it's time to start overestimating our toddlers. We underestimate them way too much, especially in the area we're going to talk about today.

Caroline: 3:58

Yeah, absolutely.

Caroline: 3:59

And I, as someone who moved from the UK to Germany, I, as someone who moved from the UK to Germany, had a massive wake-up call when my kids went to kindergarten.

Caroline: 4:11

Here they were, from day one, age three, carrying glasses like glass glasses, crockery plates across the place. They were setting the table, they were getting sharp kitchen knives with supervision, obviously and chopping the veg and everything h3. It was like everything. And I was just like, oh my god, because I was used to the UK's way of slightly wrapping in cotton wool and doing stuff for them until much later. So I am thrilled to talk about this, because this is what I try to empower the parents that I work with as well that your kids are capable of so much more than you perhaps allow them to do or think they can do, and you're setting yourself up for, as they grow older, also having amazing helpers around the home as well, because that's what they're used to. Okay, so how can parents encourage a sense of responsibility in their young kids and we'll we'll say what sort of ages we're talking about in a moment without overwhelming them?

Cara Tyrrell: 5:12

Yeah, so this is well, this is it right? This is the peak question, the place to start. I and I feel like it's important that parents understand who their kids are, because that is really our entryway to everything. Then we have to set what I call reasonable and achievable expectations. So if you know that you have a kiddo who has some gross motor delays, well, you're probably not going to put the crockery in their hand. That is not a reasonable and achievable expectation to set your little one up, to get to the table and successfully put it down a hundred percent of the time.

Cara Tyrrell: 5:59

And what we're looking for are opportunities that we know we're going to get, to be able to cheer for them. On the other side, we want them to feel that sense of I did it and I did it all by myself, that achievement and that little dopamine hit that we all get when we successfully complete something. So for me, that is the perspective that every parent needs to be looking at. And there it is again right. There's that heart space. Who is the human I brought into the world, and how do I choose the experience properly so I can help them feel successful?

Caroline: 6:43

I love that and I totally agree with you because also, when you're looking at personality types of children, I have three kids myself and when they were younger I know that one child I would have trusted with perhaps trying to do a certain thing on their own at a certain age, but another child I wouldn't have asked them because I know they probably wouldn't have been successful because they weren't quite as far on with that particular skill. And in Germany kids are sent off to the bakery, for example, on their own at a very young age, like crossing a road off. You go age four for, for example, and I remember sending my eldest to the bakery on her own when she was four and it's it's this case of everyone around knows us, everyone's looking out for her. If she gets lost, someone will see her and know who she is.

Caroline: 7:39

It's all fine and we'd practiced it numerous times together and off she went and came home and she was so proud and then when my other child got to that age, I didn't send them for a very long time until they were nearer five, because I knew she would get distracted and and go off and do something different. And actually that did happen the first time she went she ended up in a friend's garden and didn't come back and I had to go and look for her. I was like this is taking a bit longer than I expected. So you're totally right. I think the skillset they have, you as a parent know what they can do. So what sort of things can we expect kids to be able to help out with at home and get involved with, to give them those wins, and what sort of ages are we talking about here?

Cara Tyrrell: 8:31

So I mean, it's your home, right? So everyone who's listening has different routines, different patterns that exist inside their home as far as tidying and just making sure that all the work is done. And so what I really, really want to impress on people is the idea is we want to inspire our kids. Well, first of all, I really want to tag on something you just said, which is your first daughter. She came home and she was so proud of herself. Now I know you had opportunities for your other child to have those moments too. The so proud of herself is the important part. As parents, we very often say I'm so proud of you. We project the pride back onto us. But we can't do that, even though that's what we're feeling. We need to switch our language to say you must be so proud of yourself. And when we do that, they become little addicts. They want more and more and more of that feeling that comes from within not to please us. So to your question when we're talking about around the house and you've got an 18 month old who is not just walking but running like this kid's mobile and capable not just walking, but running like this kid's mobile and capable Then you're putting away laundry.

Cara Tyrrell: 10:09

Give them a piece of clothing. This is a shirt Go put it in the shirt drawer. These are pants Go put it in the pants drawer. Is it going to be folded by the time you get there? Nope, is it going to be in the drawer? Uh-huh, that was the goal, yeah, and every time a piece of something gets dropped into a drawer maybe not even the right drawer, but who cares? You did it. You must be so proud of yourself and you are creating that cyclical feeling of when I take action because I want to, I get the reaction I want from inside my own body and spirit.

Caroline: 10:50

Yeah, I love that, and this is where, when I'm working with families and we're organizing kids rooms, it's so important to make sure that things are accessible at child height so they can help. There's no point having where they're going to put their shirts away so high up. They can't get involved even if they wanted to, or they can't tidy up their toys because the boxes aren't accessible to them.

Cara Tyrrell: 11:16

So that 18-month, two-year-old space that is your happy place. Parents, because they want to help. That's all they want. All they want is to be near you and helping, and we often use air quotes for that because we're like, oh, they helped me do this, but in our perspective, what we're actually saying is they made more of a mess than helped me clean up.

Cara Tyrrell: 11:42

If you can really tap into that relationship that you're setting up of, I trust you to be a helper in the way that you are capable of right now. When they hit that next learning leap, that next phase, and they go strong into toddlerhood and all of a sudden they are pushing back. Well, I don't want to do that right now. They've got complete language. No, thank you, I don't want to. Maybe they're even throwing your good language back at you. Now you are able to refer back to. I know you're capable, I've watched you do this so many times and bring in and we've talked about this before you and I bring in the family language. It's not your three. So when we're using pronouns, keep them plural. It's not you are supposed to do this, it's we. Clean up our house so that we feel calm and safe inside of it. We put the dishes away so that we have dishes to use next time we make a meal, and so the accusatory tone completely disappears and it's a communal mindset.

Caroline: 13:15

Yeah, and I think very often and I hear this a lot from parents and I've actually heard it in a conversation I had this morning with somebody they're very reticent to involve the kids because it's going to take longer and because it's not going to be done properly. But these teachable moments are so important and, yes, it might not take, or it might take longer than if you did it on your own, but it is an amazing time of connection for you and them. You can talk about things while they're running backwards and forwards with stuff. You can make it fun and you're providing them with a skill which is going to help them and the home as a whole further on down the line, because they'll see it as something normal that they have to come and pick up their clothes and put them back in their room once they're clean.

Cara Tyrrell: 14:11

And that. So let's talk about time for a moment. Right, kids don't have a fantastic concept of time in general, let alone the time expectation that you as a parent have decided that you want to meet to get these jobs done. So a couple of things here. That initial time investment that you're talking about, I like to think of it as the first time you make a new recipe. It takes three times as long as the fifth time that you make that recipe. That initial investment in time to teach your child not just the task, not just what it looks like to be completed, not even the negotiate like all of it put together. The half-life of that is that someday and because kids learn ridiculously quickly when you give them consistent opportunities to do the same thing over and over someday soon all you're going to have to do is say it's time to fill in the blank and they'll just go do it and so that time investment from 10 minutes became 10 seconds, yeah, and they don't get bored with it either when they're little.

Caroline: 15:26

No, I mean, they see it as fun every single time because, for the reason you said before, they're spending time with you. They don't see it as a job like we do. They see it as I'm doing something fun with mama, and this is great.

Cara Tyrrell: 15:41

Yeah, and so let's. I'd love to play my own devil's advocate, so back to that three and a half year old.

Cara Tyrrell: 15:48

Now there, maybe they're four and they're just like oh you know they've got their, their toddler teenager angst going on. I've done this 47,000 times. I don't want to. Well now, you know they can do it. You know they can do it efficiently and quickly and it'll just be done. Our temptation is to call them out on that. If you just took 10 seconds, you'd be done. You've spent the last five minutes whining at me. You could have been done 5,000 times already. Right, that's our temptation.

Cara Tyrrell: 16:22

Let's use time differently. No-transcript should is a very limiting word and it's a very accusatory word. You should have just done this last night and you wouldn't be in this mess this morning. Right, should have picked your clothes. You could have picked your clothes last night. You chose not to. There's that ownership and responsibility that you asked about earlier. Yeah, so will you do it right now or will you do it after breakfast? Now, we've given them some grace and space to make a new choice, but it's all inside of them. It needs to happen now, or before or after breakfast, but you choose today's plan of action. I just it feels so much better when we talk to them like that, yeah.

Caroline: 17:20

And also when, when children are perhaps in their room on their own and you've asked them to do something like, can you put all the Duplo blocks into this box and you go out of the room and leave them to it. Of course they're going to get distracted and maybe start playing with something. As you said before, they have a different time scale to you. Their, their day just is like big and long and wide and they haven't got to get to appointments by certain times as far as they're concerned, and it's just all. I think, as long as it happens eventually. We're always putting our time pressures onto the kids that it has to be done quickly because that's what we have to do. But if they're enjoying it and it takes longer because they start building something and then what they've built gets put into the box or the bricks end up going in a bit later, then what's the harm in that? They? They've done it, they've they've achieved their goal and we should still celebrate that, however long it's taken them.

Cara Tyrrell: 18:19

Absolutely, and from the teacher's perspective, when you set things up like this for your kids at a very young age, what you're really doing is teaching them cognitive planning and problem solving, and what you're really doing is helping your child become someone who doesn't procrastinate the task. And as someone who teaches at all levels at this point kindergarten up through high school I can tell you the number of middle schoolers that I've worked with in the last 12 months who, in self-reflection mode, say I wish I had just started it sooner and then it would have been done sooner. And you, at these tender ages of one to five, are helping your children do this in teeny, teeny small bites that will add up to a kid who then goes to school, comes home and says I have a project. Here are the steps I need to take to complete my project. If I do one a day for the next week, my project will be done, yeah.

Caroline: 19:39

Yeah, and, as you say, by helping them and supporting them with these tasks in the home, we're teaching them those amazing skills. My brother has actually talked in another podcast episode with me about how his stepdaughter was struggling with her bedroom and tidying it up and he has become director of tidying, so he will go in and they'll do it together and it's fun. He doesn't do the tidying for her, she just wants to be told okay, what's the first thing I should do? To break this down into little chunks so it's no longer overwhelming. If she's had everything out like, okay, let's do all the Barbies first, so she does that. And then she's like right, director of tidying, what should I do next? And it becomes like a game and it's all fun and it gets us, but she's learning how to break projects up into little chunks to get through to the end goal, which is just fantastic and it's so beautiful all of All of that the relationship building, the time spent and the outcome.

Cara Tyrrell: 20:38

Another cool tip that I often offer families, especially ones that have this communal goal, is have a family meeting once a week, write down all the tasks that need to get done and open it up. Who thinks that this is the right task for them to complete this week? You know, in preschool classrooms they take this from the other direction. They put all the classroom tasks and then they assign a child to each one and every week they rotate the kids through the tasks, so they have the experience of doing them all. That's good, but in your home, flip it, open it up. You're at a community meeting this week is vacuuming carpets in the basement. Who thinks that's the right job for them? When somebody volunteers, they've already mini bought in. Whether or not their motivation continues, whether or not they need some help to get there, they've already bought in. And you are now a team instead of a dictator saying this is your job and this is your job a dictator saying this is your job.

Caroline: 21:56

and this is your job? Yeah, absolutely. And I've got a wonderful lady in my online membership and she has a son who's a bit older but he has autism, and what she's been doing is trying to help him be more involved with the family and organizing things, and she's created this wonderful checklist to help him go through and see what he needs to do in his room to get it ready for Monday mornings when the cleaner comes in, so that it's all ready. And I said to her yesterday actually this looks amazing. And then obviously we need to look at how he is on that day, is on that day, and this is the same for any child.

Caroline: 22:40

If they seem a bit out of sorts or a bit disgruntled on that day, perhaps say to them what's the one thing you could choose from that list to do today, rather than the expectation that it's always all done, I think we need to be happy with going, because we're not all in a great mood all the time. We don't feel like doing things all the time, and kids certainly don't, and I think if you notice that a kid is really struggling with their with their emotions on a certain day, then it's not worth pushing it because it ends up becoming. Tidying your room or helping out in the home is something that we're going to get. You know, we're going to put some pressure on. If this isn't going to work, it still needs to stay light and fun. So, okay, how much of this can you do today? What would you like to do to help us out and then do the rest for them, and next time they'll probably be in a good place to do all of what you need them to do?

Cara Tyrrell: 23:28

Absolutely. And you know you touched on something that's really important, which are the multi-sensory approaches to feeling like we did our job. So with littles particularly involving and all the senses, the, the visual, having a visual organizer. Right, they can't read yet, so it's going to need to be picture based and then having a tactile kinesthetic component. Uh, there are all these tools now that you can grab online, but you know it, it's a red button and then you slide it over and it turns green. So now your eyes have said I did it, your fingers have been participated in I it and it's gamified in a sense, because now you want to see the other slide tabs turn green too, but you've got to do the task before you can do it tiny, trying to just get them involved in anything and everything, because I was going to have to do these jobs anyway, so they might as well be with me and have fun doing it.

Caroline: 24:42

And we had. It was awful. We had ceiling to floor windows in our living room, which when you have little people is just not good and one of my daughters her favorite thing to do was to help me by while I was doing whatever job I was doing, she was cleaning the windows and they just look terrible all the time because she was permanently spray with water because I didn't want to having chemicals and stuff on. Her was doing an amazing job and our windows just permanently looked terrible and I decided well, I'm just going to have to live with them like that, because I'm not going to set to and clean them every day. I'd rather she's happy and feel she's involved.

Cara Tyrrell: 25:23

And if you did clean them every day, what would she have felt?

Caroline: 25:27

Yes, her job is not good enough, right.

Cara Tyrrell: 25:30

Yeah, yeah. I was hanging out with a mom and a one-year-old yesterday and mom said it's time to clean up and this one-year-old started picking blocks and putting them back in the container and mom's beaming like, look, my kid can follow directions. And a cool 10 seconds later, this one-year-old is dumping the bucket out again, because that's what they do. And so her instinct was to no, no, no, we're cleaning that, let's do the cleaning still. And I said gently how about we celebrate the cleaning? That already happened. Yeah, right, that did happen. In a one-year-old's world, 10 seconds is an eon. Yeah, 10 whole seconds of putting things in a bucket. That involves celebrating, and then we'll do it again.

Caroline: 26:21

That is so true and I remember that so often with with my kids because we had tidy up time every evening to music, um, to a guy called Mika who has like totally bonkers music and he's actually playing live in our town this summer and we're all going to see him because we, my girls, are like we have to go see him. We tidied up to his music. They even remember so crazy. Um, but I mean, nothing was ever put away in the right box, it was. It was all just sort of higgledy-piggledy but it was gone. It was. You know, it was good enough.

Caroline: 26:56

And we need to let go of this perfection because our kids do not see that. They're not looking through Instagram and seeing all these picture perfect living rooms and toy storage and God forbid, home edit colour organised Lego bricks. I mean, who has time to do that, quite frankly? So we just need to let go of this perfection and lower ourselves to our kids' standards for what they can do, because what they're doing is good enough for them and it's going to have to be good enough for us for as long as they're that age and we just accept the fact things will improve as they get older.

Cara Tyrrell: 27:34

Yeah, and it's interesting because it's exactly what you asked me at the beginning of this podcast, except in reverse. You asked how do we help the kids understand the responsibility level and the achievement level, and what it really means is that the adults need to shift their expectations and their perspective of where that bar is. And then everybody just keeps winning over and over. And what a beautiful household to be inside, a celebration household where it's all getting done, or most of it's getting done, every day.

Caroline: 28:12

So when we are trying to encourage our little people to get involved with tidying up we've already talked about gamification and like touching things and moving things and being able to visually see things Can you give us some other ways of how we can make this fun for them? What do this sort of age group respond well to?

Cara Tyrrell: 28:36

Well, you kind of tapped into the music piece. That's a different type of audiological input. So we tend to become that teacher from Charlie Brown, because we're using our voice as the directive, over and over and over, and very often we don't actually shift up the words that we're using. Our tone just changes. So now we're getting more upset, more frustrated, more overwhelmed, more irritated. Well, music is processed in a different part of the brain than speech and it lights up a creative space in a different way. So I love you certainly put on music. You made it a ritual. That was your family's thing. I love to tell people to sing their directions. Well, I can't sing. They say it doesn't matter.

Caroline: 29:31

No it doesn't matter if you're tone deaf?

Cara Tyrrell: 29:33

They do not. That's not what they're tapping into when you start singing, pick up your shoes, put away your backpack and then it's time for a snack. They don't have a choice but to turn off that one part of the brain that was getting overstimulated by your voice and turn on the other part of the brain that now is going to process this melody and the words and their meaning along with it. So you kind of hijacked their brain a little. It's kind of a cool trick. And then they stop and notice I sang three things. I always do three. Right, yeah, they're probably only going to tap into the first one, but now you've got their attention again and sometimes they sing back and it's absolutely hysterical. And then we're in this like singing tennis match Um, but yeah, that that's a really great way. If you're just at the end of your line and you can tell they're approaching meltdown, start singing.

Caroline: 30:42

I think that is such a great tip and I've seen this happens in kindergartens that when they're doing tidy up time, there'll be very often a song for tidying up.

Caroline: 30:50

The teacher will sit there and sing the instructions as part of a song for tidying up. The teacher will sit there and sing the instructions as part of a song and everyone's following along to it, which is really lovely, and I think we are. We very often make the mistake that we feel like our tone is calm and, as some as someone with a child with autism myself, he has got a sixth sense to me being frustrated, even if I think I am portraying the calmest person in the world. And kids pick up on this. They sense the stress in our voices or our body language, especially when we're trying to get tidied up because someone's coming over or we've got to leave the house or we need everyone to get their coats and shoes on because we're going out, and we don't realize that we're actually creating stress within our kids just by how we're speaking to them and therefore making the whole situation 100 times worse.

Cara Tyrrell: 32:01

I know I used to be guilty of that when my kids were little, absolutely and I mean this is true for typically developing kids, but for kids who are outside that box in either direction, they're hypersensitive to it. My daughter had my baby. She has you don't get rid of it, unfortunately. Had my baby. She has you don't get rid of it, unfortunately audio processing disorder. So she can hear everything just fine.

Cara Tyrrell: 32:20

But when it hits the brain it often gets misprocessed and misunderstood and part of her struggle was understanding tone and temperament in vocal quality. So you never wanted to use sarcasm with this kid because she truly couldn't access it. But she did get to a point pretty early on where she was self-aware enough to be able to ask the question are you being serious right now or was that a sarcastic remark? So where did she learn the self-awareness? Where did she learn the verbal strategies to check the information that was coming in? That all happened during her teeny, tiny years and all the work that we had to do on the relationship building and the direction following had to do on the relationship building and the direction following.

Cara Tyrrell: 33:20

So everybody gets this opportunity. Whether you have an autistic kiddo, whether you have one with a learning challenge. It doesn't matter. You get the opportunity to set them up for that level of self-awareness. Are you starting to get frustrated with me? Is that your cranky tone? Is that your angry voice Encourage them to ask those questions of you? Or, if you realize you're in the middle of it, just fess up? Yeah, I started yelling. I didn't mean to, I didn't want to, but I did. Let me take a few breaths and get myself back together and talk to you like I usually do.

Caroline: 33:54

Yeah, absolutely. I'm also a big advocate as well of, if you find that you perhaps have said something in a way that wasn't appropriate for the situation, to go back and apologize and say I'm really sorry, that came out really badly, I shouldn't have spoken like that. I wouldn't expect you to speak to me like that and you know, like cause, that's a teachable moment as well.

Cara Tyrrell: 34:22

And here's why it's so important. It's hard for us because owning response, owning things as adults, gets harder and harder. Your kids will forgive you in a millisecond. That's not the hard part. The hard part is taking the action and going saying the words. If you don't do it, you're is when things get really tough, not just in the relationship space. But now they believe that the expectation that, aligned with your angry voice, your angry words, your reactionary behavior, is the new expectation. Yeah, and chances are it wasn't a reasonable one. And chances are it wasn't a reasonable one because you ended up in a tough space. Yeah, so by going in and repairing it right there, you strengthen the relationship. You can trust me enough to always come to you and say when I did something wrong, and you reset the expectation to a space that is then achievable again.

Caroline: 35:30

Yeah, and also I think it's so important I have a feeling you will agree with this it's so important to show them that sometimes we're not OK, that sometimes we're struggling and that we can get frustrated and it's OK to feel angry about things, but it's how we then deal with other people while we're feeling like that that we need to learn how to control and need to take ownership of, so that we don't end up hurting people's feelings just because we're dysregulated.

Cara Tyrrell: 36:04

Absolutely, Absolutely. I have. I'm not sure what you're thinking here, but I have a story with my oldest that kind of brings us all the way to what this looks like in adulthood, if you want me to share?

Caroline: 36:20

Oh yes, please do. I love a story.

Cara Tyrrell: 36:23

Okay. So my oldest is 21 and she moved out of the house last summer. She started her adult life in another state and her lease is coming to an end. She's like, nope, this wasn't the state for me. I need, I'm, I, I want to reset and figure out where my next step is. And so she's coming back. She's coming home, and right, but only she's coming home for six months, okay, and then going to the next destination, she's, she's playing destination ping pong and it's a pretty great time of your life to do it in your early twenties. And she asked if she could come home.

Cara Tyrrell: 37:10

We had a whole family conversation about what it meant to be an adult reentering your childhood home for a short period of time. Everyone's on board my husband, myself and her, all good. And then this past weekend, randomly, I saw an apartment come up available in our tiny little town. Well, this is shocking. There's no housing anywhere. Anytime Like I was just shocked by the fact that there was actually an available apartment in this area, so I texted it to her. She got really upset and sent me a message that said mom, even though I already asked the question about if it's okay if I come home for six months. I'm getting the feeling that you really don't want me there. Can we talk about it?

Caroline: 38:05

Good for her right.

Cara Tyrrell: 38:08

And I on the other side was like and this is where you know texting can be tricky and I love voice memos for this reason so I opened up my voice memo and I talked to her and I said, oh my goodness, no, I was just so stunned.

Cara Tyrrell: 38:26

There was actually something available that was a rental and not an Airbnb in our area that I was just showing you and I want you home. I'm excited to spend time with you again and help you make the next choices for your future. And then she responded maybe I overreacted to it, I'm sorry, and I apologized and we were good. And this all happened in the span of I don't know 15 minutes and I sat inside of it afterwards and I realized how awful that could have been if she didn't feel comfortable enough to have the level of self-awareness and advocacy it took to ask that really challenging question, not knowing what the answer on the other side might be. That is what you want for your kids and you start when they are babies and they will trust you to ask that question every single step of the way.

Caroline: 39:26

Yeah, and it builds the connection and the relationship between you and them as they get older. I had a similar conversation with one of my kids yesterday and we were talking about oh, I wonder when your first relationship will be, and because they're getting to that age, and she said I feel really happy that I can easily bring someone home, really happy that I can easily bring someone home and I would tell you straight away if I met someone I liked and I thought, oh, how cool is that?

Caroline: 39:55

because that's not something I was comfortable with. I was sort of hiding it when I was her age and things like that. You want that connection, you want those conversations and like with your daughter, especially when they're no longer near you. You need to trust that that connection is still there and if they need you they will ask.

Cara Tyrrell: 40:16

Yes, yeah. And so to bring this all the way back, for parents of littles, the pants that end up in the shirt drawer are the very first moment that you are saying to your child I trust that you can do this. I believe in you to help me. I am here to celebrate with you. You can tell me anything, it doesn't matter if it's perfect, and we'll be honest with each other. That's what this is really all about. If you really got to switch it later, go for it, but it is in that moment that you are building your future with your kids.

Caroline: 40:56

I think whatever we say after this would not top that. So I'm actually going to suggest that we stop this conversation here because it has just been amazing. And I know we were planned in to talk about organization, and we have, and that's great. But I firmly believe that, and I've always said this that using organizing as a way of connecting with your kids is the biggest gift that you can use it for, and I love that. That's what's come out of this conversation.

Cara Tyrrell: 41:31

Yeah, the magic. You know, on my show we don't script anything, I don't even have questions prepared, we just run because the magic is in that, and so I'm really, really glad this felt like a magical moment and I'm really glad that I got to have that with you.

Caroline: 41:50

Thank, you and thank you for your time today. So how can people find out about you if they want to learn more about what you do and how they can connect and work with you?

Cara Tyrrell: 42:01

The number one place to hang with me is actually on my podcast. It's called Transforming the Toddler Years and I put out two shows a week. Guest it's called Transforming the Toddler Years and I put out two shows a week. They are small teaching episodes 10 minutes, easy bite size for toddler parents. And then I do bring on amazing guests a couple of times a month and allow them to share their wisdom and knowledge as well. So come, follow the show, listen to it and whatever you find you would need on the other side. All of those links are in the show notes and you can tap me on the shoulder there.

Caroline: 42:36

Perfect, so I will put the link to Cara's podcast in the show notes for this episode so that everyone knows where to find you. Thank you so much for your time today, cara. It's been an absolute joy talking to you, as always, and I hope we can do this again in the future. I think there is a lot that my audience could learn from you.

Cara Tyrrell: 42:57

I absolutely agree, and talking to you is always so joyful your accent makes my day, so for me, the time of this recording is early morning, so I now have a great day ahead of me, thanks to you. Oh, you're very welcome.

Caroline: 43:12

Take care. How great was that conversation. I just absolutely loved it. So please go and check out Cara's podcast If you've got young kids between the ages of one and five, it is gold.

Caroline: 43:28

And you can also, at her podcast, have a listen to the conversation that we had a while ago. And if you know that you need a bit of support with getting your kids to get involved with tidying up, whatever the age they are, then you need to grab my frustrated parents guide how to get your kids to tidy up without them even realizing it. So if you would like to grab that, then all you need to do is go to caroline-thorcom forward slash kids and you will be able to grab this free guide, which is full of fun and engaging techniques that will work for kids of all ages. You know you need it, so go and grab that. Okay, until next time.

Caroline: 44:18

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 organizing 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 Organizer. Thanks for listening and I look forward to guiding you on your journey to find your clutter free ever after.