Discover the unexpected link between decluttering and mastering your schedule, as I explore this game-changing strategy that's perfect for the hectic life of an SLP or mom.
From less stress to better sleep, there are so many benefits of decluttering your home or work space. Tune in to hear my top 5 benefits of having less clutter.
And now throughout the month of January, we are doing a decluttering challenge in our Facebook community. Come join us for a little extra inspiration and motivation to get $h!t done!
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
Discover the unexpected link between decluttering and mastering your schedule, as I explore this game-changing strategy that's perfect for the hectic life of an SLP or mom.
From less stress to better sleep, there are so many benefits of decluttering your home or work space. Tune in to hear my top 5 benefits of having less clutter.
And now throughout the month of January, we are doing a decluttering challenge in our Facebook community. Come join us for a little extra inspiration and motivation to get $h!t done!
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
This is your speech path mindful time management for the busy SLP. My name is Teresa Harp and, as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnout and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in. Hello SLPs, welcome to episode 30 of the podcast. If it sounds a little bit different today the audio that is it is because I'm recording this actually from my car. I'm not driving and sitting and waiting for one of my daughters to get out of a piano lesson and I thought I would make the most of the time, so trying something new. This is definitely not where I will be podcasting from regularly, but for today's episode that's what you've got. So I'm wanting to talk about decluttering. We had a podcast episode last week about it was actually a rebroadcast episode and it was about decluttering and this week's episode is going to dive into the what I'm going to call surprising benefits of decluttering and the reason why I feel compelled to share this is because I think sometimes people think of, like you might hear these podcast episodes about clutter and decluttering and wonder how it's related to time management. But it is very much related to time management, and that's what I want to illustrate for you today. So I am going to go ahead and dive right in. I've got five benefits. I actually might have a bonus one that I'm going to throw in there. Who knows? I don't know. We're just going to see where this episode takes us. So the first benefit of decluttering a space whether it's a physical space or this could even qualify, if you're talking about the digital world, a digital space, electronic space is that you will feel a greater sense of peace and calm, and this is not just anecdotal. The research supports this wholeheartedly. It is very clear that people do report feeling an improvement in their levels of anxiety. Anxiety is going down, they feel more calm, they feel more peaceful in their space. When it is decluttered, you'll even notice uh, you know improvements in your mood, just overall improvement in mood, and I mean, who doesn't want a nice mood boost these days? I think I will take that for sure. I'm, I'm on board. So for me. I noticed this when I declutter a space and I'm using let me pause here.
Speaker 1:When I say declutter, I feel like I should define it. I don't necessarily think that. Think of decluttering as one level of you know. Cleaning, organizing, purging, donating, like this could be something as simple as a drawer, a desk drawer, or this could be something as big as, you know, your entire house. If you're doing like a move out, you know something like that. So it can mean it can mean different things to different people and I want you to think about what your definition of decluttering is as you're listening to this episode.
Speaker 1:For me, I think about decluttering as removing items that are not benefiting me, not serving a purpose, not bringing me joy, to pull a page from Marie Kondo's book. Remember her. So it is in my mind. That's what I think of. When I think of decluttering, it doesn't necessarily mean everything's going into the trash or everything's getting sold or donated. I mean it could wind up in different places.
Speaker 1:But no matter what area I am decluttering, whether it's big or small, I do notice a difference in my mood. When I'm in a space where clutter is present, it is immediately there's this underlying sense of anxiety, of agitation, restlessness. You know I'm just not feeling at ease, and sometimes it is so. If you've been in a space that is cluttered for long enough, it is very easy to overlook the feelings that clutter is leading to I don't want to say causing, but the feelings that clutter is leading you towards, because that's just sort of your reality, right? If you're in a space for long enough, you probably, if you're anything like me, you start to become used to it. You don't notice it as much visibly and so you aren't as visibly aware of the clutter, but you are aware of it on an unconscious level, on an underlying level, and it is causing tension.
Speaker 1:Okay, this weekend in the Facebook group, the SLP support group if you're not in it, the link is in the show notes if you want to get in on this because January we are doing a decluttering challenge. That is what we're focusing on. So we're doing 60 minutes a week and that can be consecutive or cumulative, and this weekend was the end of our first week. I had not done any decluttering all week long, so I spent a few minutes over the weekend in different like pockets of time just decluttering little areas. So when I went in to, you know, pulled out the drawer in our bathroom after I was getting out of the shower and getting ready. I quickly just sort of went through and edited the drawer. You know my makeup in it and my you know bath stuff and like shower stuff, face wash, all that kind of stuff. I had stuff in there that had been expired for like three years, no joke. So I didn't realize how frustrating that was to like look at that every day until the next day when I opened the drawer and it was different. It was organized, it was clean, I could move around in it. So definitely felt better about that and think about the cumulative effect of that. If you do that in lots of different places over time, that will lead to a long lasting shift in the way that you feel. Okay. So that's the first one.
Speaker 1:The second benefit of decluttering that I'm going to talk about today is related to distraction. So there is also evidence that supports this benefit, and it is that when you are in an area where there is more clutter, you are more likely to become distracted and you are overall less productive. I notice this all the time. I think many of you who are listening probably notice this as well, I hear it from my clients a lot where it's so easy to pick something up, like when you have a lot of things around, you look at it, pick something up, just surround with it, then it leads to this, then it leads to that, and next thing you know you're just kind of hopping from item to item, not really actually getting anything accomplished. Another way that this shows up is you might find that, oh, this space is really chaotic. I can't work in it right now. There's too much stuff on my desk. I need to clean everything up.
Speaker 1:And then you go down rabbit holes of well, I forgot I have to pay this bill. As you pick up a statement, oh, I have to go pay this bill. And then you go to login to pay the bill and you don't have your password. So then you go to get your password and you pick up your phone and you realize that you have an incoming text message or phone call that you have to answer to, and so on and so forth. You get the idea and then you wind up obviously getting less done for getting what it was that you were even doing to begin with.
Speaker 1:I also see this when I had my office. In my private practice. This would was true for kids as well. I don't need to tell any of you this that have kids or that work with kids, but you know I think it's so worth saying, as you know that when you are in a therapy room where there's a lot going on for a lot of the children on your caseload, it can be distracting Even. I remember a student that I was working with privately, but I remember going into her classroom doing a consult and just sitting in the room looking at the walls. They were covered in like all these really nice bright artwork and charts and posters and you know sayings, and it was all with the best of intention and it was really fun to look at, but it was also really distracting. I mean, my mind was racing, my eyes were going from one thing to the next, and so even just visual overload like that visual clutter, can be problematic. But I know when I had in my office and I had all my toys, I really needed them to be at a site out of mind, otherwise I was losing children in the session. I was losing their attention, losing their focus. Same thing goes for the parents. I always had parents in my sessions, and it just tended to be a more distracting session when I hadn't properly, you know, put everything away from the session before. So that is. Another benefit of having less clutter is that you are then less distracted, or, to put that another way, you are more focused and more productive. Okay, so we've got feeling more peaceful and calm, wasting less time with distraction.
Speaker 1:Now on to the third benefit of decluttering, and that is and stay with me here it is related to gratitude, being able to appreciate what truly matters. So one example of this is I'm thinking of my kids and how, in our playroom in the basement, when we had a ton of toys out, they would like hop from toy to toy, or they wouldn't really play with toys, they would play with the things that were there. It was very hard for them to take something out, stay focused on that toy and get engaged. You know, stay engaged in the activity, because there are so many other toys competing for their attention. And what I noticed was, as we start in times where we were better we're not so good right now, but in times when we were really good and conscious of modifying the number of toys that were out, not only did my kids play with them longer, but the joy and the appreciation for the toys was also greater and that really stuck with me, and I noticed the same thing for myself.
Speaker 1:When I'm in a place where there's less stuff, I become very aware of the things that truly mean something to me, the items that actually matter to me, and I can focus on them. I'm more aware of them, I appreciate them more, I take better care of them. It's just sort of like a trickle effect and I've been really conscious of the emotion of gratitude and I would think of gratitude even also as a verb, as an act, and this year in particular, I've been focusing on gratitude and being grateful for the things that already exist in my life and recognizing them in moments where my brain wants to go towards what I don't have yet or what I think I'll never have, or what I think I need or what I think I want. Getting out of that space and staying in a place of gratitude is something that takes effort but really has been paying off for me, and by having less stuff around it's really easy for me to become more grateful. For example, this morning went down to my office before the kids were awake. I was gonna do some journaling and I had taken the time on Friday before I left work like walked out of my basement office, but before I packed up for the day and shut down, I just did a quick like tidy and put everything back where it belonged and just kind of set things up for so that they'd be ready for the week. And when I went down there this morning I was calm and peaceful. I was less distracted. You know benefit number two and when I sat down to journal I could come, I could think more clearly, and so I came up with a number of things when I was journaling on gratitude, that had I not been in a decluttered space, had my space looked the way it looked on Friday afternoon, I don't think I would have made it through the journaling exercise of gratitude. So that's another sort of example of how this has been showing up for me lately.
Speaker 1:Okay, number four the fourth benefit that I'm going to talk about I love this one because it reminds me of my daughter is that you will waste less time specifically searching for things, trying to find things that you don't know where they are. This happens. This is a theme in our house. Maybe you can relate. If you have young kids, for whatever reason, I seem to be the person who holds all the knowledge of where everyone's items are at any given point in time, and so my family. If they are looking for something, if they don't know where something is, they ask me, and usually I know the answer usually right. But what I've been trying to do is train my kids, teach my kids, how to start paying more attention to where they're putting their items, and that way I don't have to get bombarded with these questions as often. And so one of the things that we've been talking about is how much time we spend looking for things and how, if we had number one, had less things. Number two if the things we have move to their home, they make it to the place where they need to be, where they belong, then we would not have to spend time looking for them.
Speaker 1:I hate looking for things. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. I actually kind of enjoy the challenge a little bit, to be honest, but I personally don't spend a whole lot of time looking for things Because I have. Everything has its place, and what I have found is the things that tend to be clutter, like the clutter buildup that escalates in our house tends to be not always, but tends to be things that don't have a designated home. So that's just an added little tip for you is that you need to have a designated space for the items that you have, like, for example, sunglasses, keys, like those things need to go in a certain spot all the time, and that will help you limit the time that you spend cleaning up, because if you just put it in its home right away, then you're good to go and then it will help reduce the amount of time that you spend looking for things, because you already know where things are overall.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is number four. So I've got I said I had five, I'm pretty sure I've got a benefit a fifth benefit in here, it kind of goes, or, I'm sorry, a sixth benefit in here, and they kind of go hand in hand. But number five, the fifth benefit of decluttering is less decision fatigue. That's the way I'm gonna describe it. So what do I mean by that Less decision fatigue? So decision fatigue is what happens when you are making lots and lots of decisions day in, day out and your brain starts to protest. It's like I can't make another choice, right? Many of you I'm sure have heard this term before, but in case you haven't, that's what I'm talking about. So, decision fatigue If you have a lot of clutter, those are.
Speaker 1:Clutter is unmade decisions. Really, that is what it is. Clutter is it's delayed decision making, it's things that you haven't decided on, whether it's you haven't decided to put it away yet or you haven't decided what to do with it. Those things, even when you aren't in the process of actively making the decision or actively considering those questions, your brain is at work on an unconscious level, thinking about it, particularly when your brain notices it. When your brain notices the item, then it's this quick thought of oh, where does that go? Or oh, shoot, am I supposed to drop that to donations or is this something I need to keep Like? What are we doing with this thing? Right, and it might just be a fleeting moment, like a passing thought that pops in your head when you see the clutter, but over time, with lots of clutter, it adds up. Imagine if you had that brain space freed Just freed up to do, you know, more important things, more fun things, beneficial things, more creative thinking, all of that. Right, it's just less. It's taking less of a mental energy demanding less of your mental bandwidth when you have a clutter free space.
Speaker 1:Okay, and going along with this, I'm going to share now the sixth and final tip that I'm going to talk about today Better sleep, okay, and I guess the really the way that this goes with. This is the word fatigue is really related to sleep, but in my brain this was a bigger connection when I was thinking about it earlier. So better sleep is a nice, I think, byproduct of a decluttered space. Have you ever tried to go to sleep in a room where there's just crap everywhere? It's really hard for your brain to slow down, for your mind to get quiet, for your body to, you know, slow down and become still. It's really hard to start to settle down and settle in for sleep when you have all of those things around you, all of those unmade decisions surrounding you, right, versus when you're in a place where there's very little on the, let's say, your nightstand or your dresser or your closet right, and it's just. You know there are a bunch of things on the floor. It is so much easier to fall asleep, to stay asleep and to get better quality sleep when you're in a space like that.
Speaker 1:Now I'll share this example. Well, two things. Number one I think men might be immune to this At least my husband doesn't. Doesn't seem to matter for him. He seems to have no problem falling asleep or staying asleep regardless of his surroundings. But I don't know, maybe it's a male thing, I don't really know right. But I, on the other hand, do struggle.
Speaker 1:And the other thing about this that I will share a personal sort of I don't know story, whatever one of the goals that I have, one of the sort of focus areas for 2024 in my house bucket. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I do. I think about goals and time in terms of time buckets. There's lots of episodes. There's several episodes about this that you could listen to. You can also come into the Facebook group and get information there, because we talk about time buckets a lot in the Facebook group.
Speaker 1:But my I have a bucket for house right, household stuff, household goals and our one of my household focus areas for 2024 is our bedroom, because over the years, that has just become the place where things go to stay forever and they don't really get tidied and put away as often as the other spaces in the house, and so for a while that was okay with me, and now I'm getting to the point where I no longer want to fall asleep and to like settle down in that space. I want our bedroom to be a place where I walk in, I feel calm, right. Going back to the first benefit I'm not wasting time getting distracted. Going back to the second benefit I'm able to appreciate what truly matters. I can sit down and journal and find myself sort of like dropping into gratitude. I am not looking for things in the bathroom drawers anymore because it's organized. I'm not, you know, faced with these unmet decisions because everything in the room is in its place, it's where it's meant to be right. And when I think about that, when I envision that that is what I want, that's what I want to create in our bedroom, it is absolutely like full disclosure, total transparency. Not our reality right now, but it is my focus area, one of my focus areas for 2024.
Speaker 1:And I will report back on the quality of sleep that I get. I think the biggest thing for me is going to bed will be more enjoyable, will be easier. Sometimes I think I even subconsciously avoid going to bed at night, like I'll be downstairs on the couch doing things and I might hesitate going upstairs to go to sleep because I don't, subconsciously, I don't want to go up there and see the chaos, see the clutter, see, you know, the, just the stuff that's not where it's meant to be, where it's supposed to be. And, on the other hand, if that space was really decluttered and inviting, I would be happily skipping off to bed, going to sleep, settling in really easily, unwinding without a whole lot of tension and underlying low-level anxiety at the end of a long day. So I'm sharing that I hear, just to be transparent and to let you all know that I am by no means telling you that my house is totally decluttered. Quite the opposite.
Speaker 1:This is not an all or nothing thing. Please don't get stuck in all or nothing thinking when it comes to decluttering or really when it comes to anything. Clutter is going to come, clutter is going to go. That's the way that life works.
Speaker 1:But I wanted to share these benefits with you in case you ever find yourself struggling with the clutter and maybe thinking that it's not a good use of your time. Maybe you feel some resistance to pausing and spending the time, taking the time to declutter a space, no matter how big or small it would be. This is just me sharing with you the benefits of doing that and how, in the long run, you might actually be able to get more done with your time when you are in a decluttered space. All right, those are the benefits. If you want to get in on the decluttering, come and join the Facebook group SLP support group, and I would also like to invite you to think about how you can take this information and apply it to your week. So what is one thing that you're taking away from today's episode and what's one thing you want to commit to doing this week? You can always share it in the Facebook group. We are there for support and accountability. All right, that's it for today. I will talk to you all next week.