Tidy Up Before 2025: Reflecting on small wins and organizing for the New Year #134

🎄 It’s Christmas Eve, and I know you’re probably juggling a million things—wrapping presents, hosting, or just trying to catch your breath. But let me ask you this: What if you could start 2025 feeling calm, in control, and clutter-free?

We all dream of a home that feels light, peaceful, and supports the life we want. But here’s the truth: clutter doesn’t just take up space—it takes up energy.

✨ The Problem: Between the holiday madness and the weight of unfinished organizing projects, it’s easy to feel stuck and overwhelmed. Sound familiar?

✨ The Solution: In this episode, I’m sharing my top declutter strategies to help you reflect on your small wins from 2024, overcome the overwhelm, and step into 2025 with clarity and confidence. Whether you’re tackling holiday decluttering, tidying up with your family, or rethinking your approach to home organization, these tips will set you up for a clutter-free new year.

✨ Why You Need to Listen:

• Rediscover the power of small wins—how they build momentum and lasting change.
• Get simple, actionable declutter strategies to jumpstart your home organization.
• Learn how intentional living can transform not just your space, but your mindset.

What’s standing between you and the clutter-free home you deserve? This episode will help you take the first step—and celebrate just how far you’ve already come.

📲 Hit play now and let’s tidy up for 2025 together. Your clutter-free life starts here. 💫

Get your home tidy in just 15 minutes a day! Grab my FREE 15 Minute Declutter Kickstart Guide 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

Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Overwhelm
• 17:49 Holiday Greetings and Next Episode

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:00

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.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Hello and welcome to this very special christmas eve edition of living clutter free forever. I cannot believe that it is christmas eve. It is totally crazy, and I'm going to respect the fact that you really don't have much time to be listening to a podcast unless you've got me in your ears while you're wrapping presents like a crazy thing. So I'm going to keep it brief today, but I really wanted to spend this episode reflecting on a clutter-free year, celebrating the small wins and what I would like to take into 2025. Oh, 2025 sounds weird. It always takes me a while to get used to saying the new year, but that's just me. So I'd like to start off by just saying how 2024 has been such a year of growth for me, both as a professional organizer and KonMari consultant, but also in my business and also in my personal life. I have really stuck to my word of the year, which, for those of you who listened in January will have known it is intentional. So I was trying to be very intentional this year about everything I was doing, and the main thing that I was actually being intentional about within my business was growing this podcast I wanted am so, so excited that we have gone from being in the top 10% of all podcasts worldwide to being in the top 3%, which is just huge, and I am loving getting all the amazing feedback from you.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Now you may or may not realize that you can actually send me a message directly from the show notes. There's a place where it says you can send me a message and I can then see on my podcast hosting platform what you have written to me, and I am loving getting your messages. The only problem is that I cannot reply to them there, so I'm going to be giving a few shout outs from now on, and the first shout out is for Danielle in Kentucky, usa, who wrote to me on December the 7th and she said Hi, caroline, I just wanted to tell you how thankful I am for you. I have tried many decluttering and organizing podcasts and yours is the absolute best. Your positive, hopeful voice and spirit lift me every time, and your tips are so useful and long lasting. I can listen over and over again to your episodes and gain hope each time I do. Thank you. Well, thank you, danielle, for taking the time to actually write to me and let me know, and what I loved was she then went on to give me a couple of ideas for future podcasts, and I so, so appreciate that, because I want this to be a podcast where you are benefiting from it. So, if you have got any thoughts on the podcast, please drop me a line by clicking the link that says send me a message. I'd love to hear from you and maybe we can make sure well, not maybe, definitely we can make sure that in 2025, there is even more content in this podcast that you relate to and that you need to be hearing. So, thank you. Thank you, danielle, and for everyone else who has reached out to me this year. I will be making sure that you are getting shout outs.

Speaker 1: 5:43

I had another message back in August from Susanna and she said she was listening from Athens, georgia, usa. And she said Caroline, I'm thrilled to have found your podcast. So, susanna, if you're listening to this episode, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to give you a shout out, but there you are, I haven't forgotten about you. And I also had a message from Susan in Tacoma, washington. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I appreciate your podcast and want to say keep up the great work. That was all the way back in June and I don't believe that I gave Susan a shout out at the time, so I apologize. I won't go any further back than that because otherwise it's getting a bit historical, but I just wanted to make sure those people were recognized.

Speaker 1: 6:41

You can also come and see me at Instagram at karuthor. I post a real daily giving tips and tricks and some insight and hopefully, a bit of relatability to what is going on in your life, so it would be great for you to come there. I get lots of messages there too. One recent message was from Monette, who messaged me and said I've been listening to your podcast and finally found motivation to crack on to declutter and tidy up. Thanks to you and your podcast, I'm now reading the life-changing magic of tidying up, and the great thing is, when you message me on Instagram is we can have a bit of a chat because I can message you back there. So that has been really, really fun, and it means I get to know a little bit about you and how I can better support you through this podcast, and I get to find out fun things about you. So last week I heard that someone's daughter fun things about you. So last week I heard that someone's daughter, scarlett, was going to be making a gingerbread house and they were going to be decorating that, and we had a bit of a chat backwards and forwards, which is really lovely. So keep it coming. It really really makes my day when I get a message from one of you, because it makes it worthwhile putting all this stuff together for you.

Speaker 1: 8:06

So let's carry on by celebrating some of the small wins, because it's the small wins that matter and the small wins are the things that add up to make big wins. And one thing that I am always talking about in my online membership Plot of Recollective is not worrying about the big goal, because that can become really overwhelming, but to break it down into really small goals. Take little steps and eventually you get to a point where you have reached your big goal and that's just a wonderful thing. So we're always celebrating the little wins because they build a momentum, they're reducing overwhelm and they actually create long lasting change, because if you try to do too much in one go, it becomes really overwhelming and very difficult to then maintain.

Speaker 1: 8:57

So I have been working this year on areas of our home. Now you may well think well, that's great, caroline, you're here telling us that we need to declutter and organize our homes and how we should do it, and you're still working on your home. It's never finished. It's great. We love our home. It's manageable, it's organized. But there are always things that happen. So the biggest example this year has been that my youngest child decided they didn't want to play with Lego anymore. This was right. At the start of the year they moved all the Lego out of their room and it's been sort of stored together. So we have been painstakingly finding all the Lego bricks for the sets and building them back together and because, in the build up to Christmas, people are looking for great gifts for their kids, we've been selling them and my son has made a huge amount of money selling his Lego online and to friends of ours who've wanted stuff for their kids, and it's just meant that I have started to see some space appearing back on some shelves where all this Lego has been taking up space.

Speaker 1: 10:06

I have also been overcoming obstacles such as perfectionism, the mental load, using manageable strategies and my suspected not diagnosed, but suspected ADHD tendencies. I have two kids with ADHD and they have to have got it from somewhere and it definitely wasn't their dad. He's super organized and super calm and super under control with everything. I'm the opposite of that and that's why I've really had to find the strategies that help me, and I really feel like this year I have got a handle on that. And the biggest thing I think that I've really got a handle on this year is my calendar keeping it manageable, not overwhelming myself and overloading myself with too many appointments, and being really intentional about what I choose to attend and go to and also if I have got something in the calendar that I've said yes to, but when it gets to the day or the day before and I notice this is going to just be one thing too much. This week I haven't had a problem saying I'm really sorry I'm going to have to postpone or cancel. Could we find a new date? And because my friends are super supportive, then it's never been a problem and it has meant that I have felt a lot calmer and in control of things this year.

Speaker 1: 11:36

And also the other thing that I have really been working on with people in the membership and also applying to my own life is the power of the 15 minute declutter sessions. Now it's really something that you need to work on. It's not something that we're used to doing, thinking that we can get a lot done in 15 minutes, even thinking that we've got time to find 15 minutes for little decluttering sessions. But this is something that I feel really passionately about and if you go to the link in the show notes, you can grab my declutter guide. It's not going to be available for very much longer, so you can grab that and that will help you get started on using 15 minutes to declutter.

Speaker 1: 12:24

And I wanted to share some small wins from Clutterfree Collective. Um, it's such a range of members. I have people in there who are retired. I have people in there who have young kids. I have people in there who have no kids. I have people in there who have kids with autism and other neurodiversities. I have people in there who have neurodiversities themselves, have people in there who have neurodiversities themselves, and we are all working together to support each other and make progress. And that, to me, has been the biggest win of the community this year the support that everyone has been giving each other, which has meant that everyone has seen successes somewhere in their decluttering journey. So I am so, so proud of everyone. They know who they are. If you're listening, I think you're all amazing and I can't wait to see what we manage to achieve together in 2025. I am so excited about it.

Speaker 1: 13:27

So my biggest key takeaway is I just want to acknowledge that even the smallest step towards a clutter-free home is a victory, and how these small wins add up to bigger transformations, and that the best way to do that is with support. And talking of support, I would not be able to do any of what I do without my amazing husband, ralph. He is just my rock. He takes over so much in the home so that I have time to be able to work on my business and record these episodes. He's just popped in as I was recording this and said I'm going to take the dog out for a walk, so you'll be finished when I come back and we can have a cup of tea together.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Amazing, this is what you need, and I think another massive win this year, especially for the people in the membership, has been being able to get family members involved in decluttering, whether that's partners, kids. There has been a massive shift in some families and I am so, so happy for that. I actually had a member last week who had written in the Facebook group on a Monday evening that she was so excited she couldn't sleep because her husband had suggested himself that they declutter the office in their home in the new year, and this is a massive shift from where they were even a year ago. So things like that are just so cool, and I really feel that we've been creating homes that support our ideal lifestyle. We've simplified systems and it works for everybody, even if you have a neurodiversity yourself or you have kids with neurodiversity, and as someone who has a child with autism and kids with ADHD, this is something that makes me super happy because I know what a difference it can make. There is such an emotional release through decluttering and allowing you to find mental clarity and peace and freedom, and that is what I wish for all of you that you feel at home in your homes and not stressed out by them.

Speaker 1: 16:04

So my intentions going into 2025 are going to be to continue with more of the same and to grow all areas of my business, to grow this podcast. The best and easiest way and it's going to sound really strange, but the easiest way to grow this podcast is for anyone who listens, especially on Apple, to leave a review or some stars. So if you can do that, it will mean that the funding algorithm that they use will push this podcast out to even more people, and that would be incredible. So I'm going to put it out there. It's really hard to move from the top 3% to the top even 2.5%. So I am going to put it out there that by this time next year, we and I say we because I include you in this, because without you this podcast wouldn't even exist we are going to be in the top 2.5 half percent this time next year and let's see how quickly we can make that happen.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I cannot wait to see what we can achieve together in 2025 in your homes, because that is the most important thing how your homes are going to transform themselves but not only your homes as a result of that, your life, and I just cannot wait to see what 2025 is going to bring for you all.

Speaker 1: 17:49

So I am going to stop there, because I think we're getting close to the 15 minute mark and I think, for Christmas Eve, that's quite enough. So, on that note, if you celebrate Christmas, I wish you and your family a wonderful time, and I hope that everyone has a peaceful holiday season, and my next podcast will be on New Year's Eve, so I will see you then. 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 organizing tips next time, but if you can't wait until then, 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.