Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - I'm Craving a More Peaceful, Slow-Paced Lifestyle - Here's What's Working | Clutterbug Podcast #266

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

I'm on a mission to juggle a full-time job and three kids, while still finding time to indulge in the little pleasures—like cooking with fresh ingredients, arranging flowers, crafting and enjoying a slower pace. In this podcast episode, I’m sharing practical time-saving tips and honest insights on living more intentionally. If you’re craving extra hours in your day to focus on what really matters, join me and let’s uncover a more peaceful, purposeful life—together.   Thank you to Caraway for sponsoring today's podcast. Visit Carawayhome.com/clutterbug you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners, so visit Carawayhome.com/clutterbug or use code Clutterbug at checkout.      You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast #mondaymotivation #mindsetshift Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I've been watching With a Love Megan on Netflix, and I gotta say I love it. And what I've really taken from this show is that I need to be more intentional and I need to slow down so I can speed up joy. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to talk about ways that we can live a more intentional life, like slow down and really appreciate the moments that make us the happiest. and bring us the most joy. And if you are anything like me, you probably feel like every day is just a rush to the finish line. You know, it's like this rat race we're stuck on of going to work and doing the housework and cleaning and taking care of kids and being there for our family. And there's very few and far between moments where it feels like,

ah, this is lovely. And I think I can only speak for myself. I think what's really going on for me is I'm so caught up in the trying to keep up and catch up that I'm missing out on those little things that actually make it feel worth it. And I'm not saying my life is horrible. It's amazing and I'm so, so lucky. But I do spend a lot of my time feeling very frantic, feeling like I get up in the morning and I'm rushing to get ready for work. I start work at nine. If the kids miss the bus and I have to drive

them, it's like, oh, it's taking extra time out of my day. Now I'm behind. I get back. I'm working. I'm checking emails and making videos and recording podcasts and doing interviews and just there's a lot of like prep stuff behind the scenes that I'm, I feel like I'm doing. And then by the time I'm done work at five, oftentimes I work later than five. It's quickly make, dinner, help my husband make dinner, we get things on the table, we feed the kids, we clean up after dinner, and then we have like maybe an hour of family time or even alone time. And then it's the nighttime rush. And then we just get up and do it all over again. And I'm not, I don't want to be like, oh, poor me. But I was watching this show while on the flight, we took a week off. We went on a

cruise. And I was so rushed the week leading up to going on vacation because as a business owner, me being off for a week means I have to work twice as hard leading up to that. So I still have all the same things going on the week that I'm away. So filming twice as many videos, recording twice as many podcasts, making sure all of my meetings and interviews are scheduled the week before and the week after. And so I was, and then packing and just, I felt like, ugh, I got on the plane. And I was like, my heart was racing. It was just like, oh my gosh, I've just been in go mode for so long. And I had downloaded a few episodes of this show on Netflix with Love Megan. And I decided to watch that on the plane. And I have heard and seen so many

negative reviews about this show. I was almost like prepared to hate watch it. Like I was prepared for this to be like me to watch this out of anger and be like, oh, must be nice and loaky, be, but that is not my reaction at all. I watched this show and I watched her slowly preparing a crudite platter, which is just a fancy word for a veggie board. Or like making these like sun teas and bagging her own tea and doing all these really beautiful things in this slow, loving way. And instead of watching that and rolling my eyes and like thinking a negative thought about her, I thought, what a beautiful thing that she's doing. And I felt like I want a part of that too. And reading a lot of the reviews of this show, you will see people saying, oh, like she spent $40 on one jar of jam.

She spent hundreds of dollars on one floral bouquet. And I definitely noticed that too. I mean, she's a duchess, man. She's rich. So, yeah, she definitely spent a lot of money on things that the average person, we can't afford to spend on. But that's not the point of the show. And I mean, I recognize that, but there was so much good that I definitely didn't

care about that. the good was the idea that I saw the joy that this was bringing her and I felt joy watching her and I wanted to experience that too. So we're going to talk in today's podcast about how we can actually free up more time for that because walking away from watching that show, my biggest takeaway was I don't got time for that. I just, I want it, but I don't have time for that. but that doesn't mean I can't have any of it. It doesn't have to be this all or nothing. I can still slow down and enjoy these little moments. I just need to do a little shuffling of my time. So we're going to talk today about identifying the most common time wasters. We're going to talk about

how to automate your life, how to delegate more, how to really use blocking, blocking time. to maximize efficiency. And I'm not talking about cramming more into your day so that you feel even busier than you are. This is about you feeling more relaxed than you do right now. And also having time to slow down and really appreciate all these little things that bring you joy. And it might not be you know, flower arranging or making jam or cooking. But there's something. There's something. There's something in your life, I know there is that you wish you had more time for to do slowly. Maybe it's doing puzzles or crossword puzzles or maybe it's gardening. Maybe you wish you could bake more or knit more.

We all have something. And for me, it's just the home stuff. Does that make sense? Like I wish I had more time to bake home. made bread every now and then. Not every day. I'm not crazy. I'm not getting up in the morning and milking my cow and making sourdough. But yeah, it would be nice to like, hmm, you know, whip together some dinner rolls or slowly fill the crock pot in the morning and slow cook some stew throughout the day. I'm saying these things because this is literally what I did this morning.

I've been I've been practicing being slower and more intentional. It's so amazing. I'm going to share with you all the things I'm doing. But my point is, I think we all have something we're craving. And watching this show showed me what I want more of. I want more of setting the dinner table in fancy ways before we eat, lighting candles, picking out beautiful flowers at the grocery store and making a flower arrangement for my kitchen counter. I want more. more homemade soup and I want a garden and I want bees and I can't have all of that and still do all the things I'm doing. Something's got to give. So I'm going to share the things that I'm switching around and hopefully you'll feel inspired to do the same thing. Let's get real that nothing's going to

change if we don't change things. You know, we want something different. But if we're always doing everything the same way we've always done it. How can we possibly have new and different things? So that's been tough for me to really realize that I'm kind of stuck in this habit and this routine of the way I've been doing things. And then my thought was, I just need to add more onto my plate when the truth is, I need to take some things off of my plate. So I think like I want to eat healthier and I want to like cook more nutritious meals and snacks. And two nights ago, Joe, we finally got done work. It was nine o'clock. We go to bed at 10. We had one hour to spend together. And he said, let's watch Severance, which is a show we're watching together. It's an hour-long show. And he poured

himself a bowl of chips. And I thought, okay, I'm just going to make a really quick snack and I'll meet you upstairs and we'll watch it in one second. And my quick snack was like mango pico de de gallo because we had some mangoes and they were going to go bad and we had these like golden Kiwis that I bought and we had some fresh ginger I wanted to shred and we had tomatoes. Anyways, so I'm chopping up onions and tomatoes and peppers and mango and golden kiwi and it's lovely and I squeezed fresh lemon over the top and I grated some fresh ginger in there and put it all together, grab some corn tortilla chips, went upstairs and Joe was asleep. Why? Because it was almost 30 minutes for me to whip together this quick, healthy snack. And so I instantly realized, like,

well, now we don't have time to watch a show. And the poor guy already ate his bowl of chips and his sound asleep. And yeah, it is a lot faster to grab something pre-made, like some Oreos or a bag of chips for a late-night snack because we only have so much time before we have to go to bed and get up and do it all over again. So I felt a little defeated. But then I thought, man, I could have prepped this earlier in the day. I could have done this on Sunday and made a big batch to have for the whole week. So it isn't that I can't have this fresh pico de gallo. It's that I have to rearrange the schedule and do a little bit more planning and let go of some of the things I'm doing that are big time wasters. So I can have it all. Or not all of it, but some of it.

I can't have some of it. Okay. So let's identify some of the biggest time wasters. Definitely hands down number one is clutter. Clutter is the biggest time waster of all, period. And I declutter all the time, and I noticed in my messiest, most clutterist life, that was the thing I noticed that had the biggest impact was when I started removing bags and boxes of things from my home. I suddenly was like bombarded by how much extra time I had in the day. I had like, it feels like the opposite, right? It feels like if your house is a mess, it's because you're not spending enough time cleaning and tidying. But the truth is, when you have less stuff, you spend drastically less time because you're not managing the mess. You're not looking for things. You're not moving things around.

You're not stuff shuffling. This is so ridiculously time-consuming. And you don't know until you know. You don't know until it's gone. When we got back from the cruise, we washed all the clothes. And I said to Abby, okay, we're going to put all your laundry away. And she's like, Mom, I don't even have hangars. I have no room in my closet, period.

And it has been a long time since she's decluttered. She's 16. She doesn't want to do that. So I just said, like, we're going to spend a half an hour. I'm going to do what I do with a client. she did not want to. She was like complaining the whole time. I took every item out one at a time. Like I held it out and said, do you want this? Yes, no. If it was no, it got tossed on the floor. If it was a yes, it got immediately put back in the closet. Then I just put all the short sleeves

together, all the hoodies together, all the, you know, long sleeve, nicer clothes. And then a section for her like play clothes, her, you know, whatever. It did not take that long. It was probably an hour total, which I know is a lot of time. Listen, but we got rid of three trash bags full of clothes to donate from her closet. And the entire time, she's like, this is such a waste. I don't allow to do this. She was complaining and grumbling. The next morning, she went off to school. She came home from school that day. She immediately came up to me and said, I had the best morning. Honestly, Like, I'm not just saying this. She was like, I had so much extra time because I just opened the closet and all my clothes were there. She was giddy with how easier her morning was. She immediately, like, decluttered and cleaned the rest of her room. She did her drawers. She, like, got rid of a bunch of other things under her bed in her bedside table. She did all these things because she felt it. She felt that, that overwhelming, crazy time. I'm saving how much easier it is when you have less stuff.

So I'm just throwing that in there, decluttering. It feels like, oh, I don't have time to declutter. And it feels like maybe one bag isn't going to make that big of a difference. But I promise you it all adds up. And the more you get out, it adds up to more time and just an easier simplified life, period. And you might think that all the stuff in the closet and the drawers and is not actually adding to your time, but it is. It really is, friend. You got to try it and you got to trust me. Okay. The second number, number one time waster is something that probably is the thing I struggle with the most. And that is internet scrolling or games on my phone. I've been playing Settlers of Catan on my iPad. And I also just like get caught up in the TikTok or Instagram reel or even Facebook reels sometimes. I'll go on it just to check something. And then before you know it, like an hour

is past. And it isn't even an hour of fulfillment. Like I don't feel fulfilled. I could watch an hour of maybe like with Love Megan, you know, and like feel like I've learned something or got something. even watching YouTube videos, I feel like at least I'm getting something from that, but just mindlessly scrolling the internet, these like 30 second and under TikTok reels, it's mindless entertainment that does not fulfill me, even in the short term, let alone the long term. And it's such a huge time wasteer. I got to get real with myself on this. I have to limit this. Maybe I get like half an hour before bed or I don't know, scream time on my phone so that I can't do it at those key pivotal times in the day where I could

be doing something that feels more meaningful like a hobby or crafting or baking homemade bread, doing something that fills me with pride that genuinely brings me joy with that precious amount of time instead of scrolling the internet. So I'm working on that. The next biggest time wasteer is multitasking. Oh man, multitasking. It feels like you're getting two things done at once, but what you're also actually doing, what you are actually doing is task switching. So you are going from one test to the other, back to the other, back to the other, back to the other, back to the other. You're not actually doing two things at one time. You are doing both things a little crappier than you would and a little slower than you would if you just focused on the one thing at a time.

Now, there are things that I multitask that I feel like I justify. So if I'm cooking, I'll watch a show in the background. This is mostly because I have ADHD and I will wander away. But also, it makes the cooking a little bit more enjoyable, but in all honesty, this does slow me down. But the other forms of multitasking, so trying to do one thing while also checking email or trying to work on something while also working on something else, studies have shown time and time again that it actually is a way less productive and more time-consuming way to tackle tasks, even though it feels like it would be faster. Okay, the next one, you guys, I'm just going to say it. Perfectionism. Yep, there. I'm going there. Such a time-waster. I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to just throw my husband under the bus here.

We got back from vacation. We washed all the clothes. We had just suitcases and suitcases filled with clean clothes in baskets all over the place. And we came back and we immediately had to go to school and work the next day. So it was a day or two later and I was feeling really stressed about all the laundry that had to get put away. So that's when I was helping Abby with her closet. And I asked Joe if he could put his clean laundry away. And I would do mine after. So that full hour that I decluttered three trash bags with Abby and I reorganized her closet, color coordinated it, put everything back in zones, so play, blah, blah, blah. I come out, Milo had put away his clothes, Isabelle had put away her clothes, I walk into the closet and Joe is so proud because he had organized his underwear

drawer in that hour. Not only just organized it, he decluttered, but then he folded all his underwear and neat little like triangles and everything was like all lined up and all looking so pretty. And then he made room for all his undershirts and he rolled all those neat and folded. And then he had a section on the side for like his under like his like, what do you call them? Like long underwear because we live here in Canada and he plays hockey. So he wears like long johns and things like that sometimes underneath his clothes. So we had a whole section of those. He had decided on some underwear to declutter and he had a pile of those.

and he had a pile of those that he was going to get rid of, and he had not put away any laundry from the cruise. He had spent a full hour micro-organizing his underwear drawer, friends, folding everything in this meticulous way. And he is such a cricket, But this is such an example of, for me, like, I'm going to just be judgy, but that's such a time wasteer for me to look at that and think, but now all the other clothes didn't get put away. And I'm the one who puts away your laundry 90% of the time. I'm not going to use that method. I'm going to toss them in over top because I don't have time to meticulously fold underwear

into triangles. And so it was like. completely a waste of time. And I see this with perfectionists time and time again, dedicating an exorbitant amount of time to a task that in the grand scheme of things is not going to be long-lasting and is not going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. If you have the time and effort and every time you open your underwear drawer, that truly brings you joy, then do that. Okay, do that. But if you're turned around and your whole closet it looks like a disaster and you can't find your shirt and your pants because you don't have time to put all your clothes away.

What the heck are you doing, spend an hour folding your underwear? It doesn't make any sense. We have to triage our time. We have to prioritize our time. What is the top priority here? And if the top priority, of course, is putting the laundry away. And if you get that done and still have time, then we can go and make your underwear drawer purse. perfect. But on the scale of what's the most important, that's low. And I think this is so hard for

perfectionist to understand because the whole idea is if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. So when they start a task, they want to do it perfectly and make it the best that they possibly can, even when that task is not that important. And there's so many other things that are way more important. Why not just toss the underwear into the drawer and then put away all the clothes. And then like I said, if you have time after, we go back and we make it perfect. We can always make it perfect tomorrow, friends. We got to do the top priority stuff good enough to move on today. The next biggest time wasteer is actually procrastinating the big stuff. and why I wanted to include this is because this is something I struggle with.

If there's something I really have to do and it's like a big thing and I don't want to do it, I will like do little stupid make work projects that again like are not top priority as a way to justify not doing the big thing. Or I'll even zone out and totally like scroll the internet. I will waste hours and hours and hours procrastinating because I don't want to do the thing It's going to take two hours. And what I should do is just eat that frog and do the big thing. So then I no longer waste time with the dread. The dread and the, oh, I don't want to, ooh, I got to, but I don't want to.

That is such a time wasteer because we just do nothing. We do nothing while we wait for the motivation to do the something. So we either need to say if we're really dreading it, we're like maybe it's just not today and we just do other things or we need to eat that freaking frog, man. We got to get it out of the way because the rest of the day is going to seem like a piece of freaking cake, you know, after the big bad thing is out. Okay. So the other thing that's a huge time wasteer is not prioritizing.

Just like with Joe, not prioritizing putting away the laundry. putting away all the clothes from the crews and instead he was prioritizing folding his underwear. I think this is so common in so many areas of our lives. There's so many things we want to do. And when we can't identify or don't identify the one or two or even three like big, important tasks we do in the day, it's very easy for us to just spend all our time doing the low hanging fruit stuff. a lot of which doesn't actually even need to be done. It's just make work projects. And then the things that actually do need to be done

were left rushing and not having enough time to do it. And we feel like, oh my gosh, I've worked all day and I've accomplished nothing. And I know you feel that because we all feel that. We work all day. And yet we can't even tell you one thing we did. Why? Because we're not prioritizing. And last but not least, we are not batching. And so this kind of ties in with the multitasking, which is we are not like creating big chunks of time to do a lot of things all at once, whether it's batch cooking. For me, a big huge time saver was doing errand day. So every Friday

is an errand day for me. If I have to get my haircut, it's on Fridays. If I have to get my hair cut, it's on Fridays. If I I have to go to the post office, I do it on Fridays. If I have to make a doctor's appointment, it's Fridays. I leave the house and do all the out of the house stuff one day a week. One day a week. And at first it was tough because it was like it just wasn't my normal routine and habit. I did things when I had an opening. But now when I'm calling, I'm like, do you have any openings on Friday? And if I have a doctor that can't, and they're like, the only time we can't, get you in for tests or something is like Tuesday, then I'm like, what else can I batch on that Tuesday? Because I'm leaving the house. I'm driving past the grocery store. I'm driving past all these

places. How can I batch my errands? And just changing the way I think about this and kind of thinking about leaving the house as batching has been such a time saver because I do. I live like 20 minutes away. But even if you don't, getting in the car and driving to someplace and coming back is like, it's like 40 minutes of my day, man. So if I can batch that, I am saving 40 minutes every time I go somewhere. I am literally saving hours in a week by batching my errands. Hours and hours by batching my errands. And there's lots of other things we can batch. And we're going to talk about those right now, later in the podcast. We're going to talk about, we were eliminated some of the time wasters. Hopefully you've thought about this and like identified one that you could maybe work on.

I'm working on definitely internet scrolling. I got to work on that. And I do have to do more batching of cooking and cleaning. I've got to really focus a little bit more on that. But let's talk about some other things that we can do that will free up more. time to do other things that bring us joy more slowly. I have to take a second to thank today's podcast sponsor, Caraway. I have Caraway's cookware set and I absolutely love it. I got rid of all my old Teflon pots and pans. Caraway kitchenware is all crafted with sustainable non-toxic

materials like birch wood, stainless steel, ceramic. It's all naturally slick non-coated because if you're using something like Teflon pans. Anytime you have even a tiny scratch in that pan, it is releasing over 9,000 microplastic particles and you are consuming at least the height of the Eiffel Tower in microplastics over your lifetime. Do the math. There's no better time to make a healthy swap to Caraway. And right now, you can visit careaway home.com slash clutterbug and get a additional 10% off your next purchase. This is exclusive just for our listeners. So visit carawayhome.com slash clutterbug. Use the code clutterbug at checkout to get non-toxic cookware made modern. Before I get into more tips, I want to tell you a little bit about my last

few days. I just genuinely feel like a little bit happier. And I know it's because I watched the stupid TV show. I know that's why. But, um, I'm, um, I'm, I'm. I've tried to be more intentional with slowing down. Yesterday was Joe's birthday, and I worked all day, and then when we got done, I knew we were getting takeout, we were having like sushi delivered for him, but I was going to run out and get him a cake. But then I thought, okay, it's 20 minutes to drive, probably 10 minutes to go in and get the cake and buy it, 20 minutes back, that's almost an hour to get him a cake. I looked in the pantry. I had a cake mix and I had a bunch of icing and I was like, I'll just make this.

And making the cake was like 10 minutes and that freed me up a full 40 minutes. And also I felt like really proud of myself for baking a cake and the house smelled good. And there was just so much goodness out of that. So then this morning, like before I was going to bed last night, I thought like how what else can I do to get that same feeling of like slowing down enjoying instead of it feels faster to run out and get something or do something what can I do at home that fulfills me a little bit more but I still get the same result so I went in the kitchen this morning I got up a half an hour early I set my alarm for half an hour early and I loaded the dishwasher and ran it I put in a load of laundry I started all the Roombas in the house. I went in the kitchen. I put on some relaxing music.

This has been something I've been doing. I have my Alexa play relaxation music. That's like slow. And just like, oh, soothing. And it does something to my soul. I feel a little slower. And I looked around my kitchen and thought, what's an intentional thing I can do today? Can I start dinner? What can I do that like right now that's going to save me time later, but also make me feel like proud? So I went in the pantry. We had carrots that looked like they were kind of rotting. A few old sad looking potatoes. So I grabbed some meat out of the freezer.

It was still frozen. Listen, I don't know if it's going to turn out, but I grabbed some beef out of the freezer, threw it in, chopped some onions, got the rot off the carrots. They're fine. and chopped up the carrots, they look good, threw in some potatoes and some beef broth, and I'm like, yes, stew. Ooh, you know, it'd be good with stew rolls. And my brain immediately thought I can run out to the store and get rolls.

And then I was like, you know what? I know I have some package of instant yeast. And I just grabbed my recipe from my recipe book and quickly made some dough. And right now it's rising upstairs. I don't know if it's going to turn out, friends. but you know what? Oh my God. I put on my apron. I started stew this morning, laundry, and ran the dishwasher and made freaking bread from scratch while it's rising. I don't know if it's going to turn out. And still made it to work on time because I work in the basement. But that's not the

point. That extra time allowed me, I saved time not doing my hair, and I saved time. I saved time. getting up a half an hour early and now dinner will be ready when I'm done work. And more than that, I started my morning feeling really proud of myself and being filled with genuine like relaxation and joy. And I'm happy. I'm not rushed to get to work. I'm not dreading coming to work. I feel relaxed. In fact, I feel more chilling. and relax than I did when I was on the cruise and the vacation. And maybe making bread isn't going to make you feel that way or making stew in the morning. But I know there's something that you can do that's a little slower, something you can take your time with, something you can savor and enjoy

while maybe relaxing to some nice music or listening to some of your favorite other kinds of music or there's just there's ways that we can slow down to speed up the joy. So how can we carve out more time in the day? Let's get just let's get tippy with you now. Let's bring some tips. Automation. Automation is my favorite go-to cheat of all time for getting more time. so I cannot stress enough how life-changing robot vacuums have been. I know I say it all the time, but I'm just going to keep saying it until the day I die. Robot vacuums is nuts because I hardly ever vacuum and I hardly ever mop and I don't have to dust my surfaces as often and yet my house feels clean.

You know? Like I run them compulsively and I will admit. that. I run them all the time, multiple times a day. My robot vacuums go. But it's like such a time saver, especially on the dusting. It's life-changing. And I get really stressed when I notice like piles of dirt or goo on the floor. Like I'm just like, ugh, ugh, you know, like it bums me out. It's a bummer. And so eliminating that without me having to do the work has been such a time saver. Another way that you can automate is grocery delivery. Now, I can't do that here. I'm so jealous of people who can have groceries delivered to their home. We live too far out. But when we were living in New York, this is something we did

all the time, and it was an amazing time saver. Now what we do do is we have Amazon, some items that are like a good price. They auto deliver. We have that auto ship. And a lot of the times, Joe will order things on the app at the grocery store. It's the same things we always do, and we'll just do pickup. But I'm still going to the grocery store once a week because I like to pick out my own meat and produce, and that's okay because there are some dry goods and things like that that are a great price that we have auto delivered. So if you live in a place where you can have your groceries delivered, just give it a try. Just give it a freaking try. Such a huge time saver. Okay, so menu planning? Oh, meal planning. Such a time saver. And I'm using this new method. It's like a theme day.

It's like gamification for meal planning, which is helpful for me because I have ADHD and because cooking's boring. And because like I want a lot of options, but I also don't want to have to have options. I don't want to have to pick because it's stressful to decide from a ton of Like, what's for dinner? You got to rack your brain of a thousand things. But I still don't want to eat like just tacos every Tuesday because what? No. So anyways, this theme dinner day is super helping me. I made a printable for you. It's free. You can go to clutterbug.com. It's called Miracle meal planner. And every day has a different theme. And then there's 25 meal ideas within those themes to choose from. So it just helps eliminate some of the decision fatigue. It makes coming up

for what's for dinner a little bit more fun and flexible, allowing you to not get to like five o'clock and have that what's for dinner panic. It kind of bakes it into your schedule. And it's been really effective for me because I'm not a natural meal planner, man. I really struggle to remember. Okay. So the other thing that's a great way to automate your life to save time is to set up reoccurring meetings with yourself or reminders that are on apps that go every day. So for us, like, I pay the bills the same day every week. We do errand day the same day every week. We have different theme day for dinner every day of the week. And then I have reminders in my phone. can probably hear vibrating. That's my phone with all my reminders right now. I should have turned it off.

So there's all these like ways that I don't have, my brain doesn't have to remember my phone and my schedule will remember for me. And they batch these things together so that it's saving time. In the most like, it's like, this is the best time to do this. This is the best time to do this. And it's all kind of baked into my schedule. So I'm loving that. All right. Another thing, that we can do to save ourselves time so we can be slower and bake bread in the morning, or maybe do puzzles at night or make flower arrangements, you know, after dinner. How can we do all these wonderful things? Well, we can delegate the stuff that we are currently doing now.

There are so many tasks and chores that you do that I know for a fact you have family members who are capable of doing it. It is not our job to do everything. what can we pitch to them? And guess what? Your kids, your husband, they might not be happy about it when you take a chore off of your plate and you put it on theirs. But it's not our job to worry about everybody else's happiness all the time. Sometimes it's okay to put ourselves first and be a little bit selfish because we need it. We can't do for everyone when we're having an empty cup. We can't feel other people's cups when ours is empty. We have to take care of ourselves first. We have to feel

joyful and relaxed because let me tell I can only speak for myself, but when I'm overwhelmed and burnt out, I am miserable. I am a worse mother. I am a worst wife. I'm a worse friend. Nobody wants to be around a grumpy casse. if I really want to be the best mother and wife and friend and daughter and sister that I can be, I have to stand up for myself and put boundaries on myself and say, I'm not doing this for you. You have to do this for yourself. I have to say no, and I have to say this is your job. And delegating chores like the laundry, scooping the cat litter, the vat, the vat.

vacuuming, doing the dishes, cleaning up the dinner after dinner. Cleaning up the dishes after dinner. That might feel mean. It might feel like you're not being, you know, nice by putting it on them. But we're not doing anybody any favors by being a martyr. We're not teaching anybody life skills. And we are miserable. Share the load, friends.

Share the load. Last but not least, let's talk about. batching. Some examples of things that we can batch are definitely on the weekend we can batch cook. So if we're frying ground beef, why not fry twice as much and put half aside for another meal? Or if you're going to Costco to get a rotisserie chicken, pick up two, pick up two or even three. Shred them, freeze them, have the extra chicken already cooked and ready to make a meal in the future. batching is also like batching our time. I only check emails for 30 minutes in the morning and I have a timer that goes off and I'm not allowed to check emails again. I got to batch my email time or else

all throughout the day. I'll like, oh, I'll just going to check my email real quick. Just going to check my email real quick. Oh my God. Like it's such a time suck, man. Nope. Don't do that. Batching that. Batching that. e-mails, batching cleaning. So I'm all about doing a little bit every day, but it's got to be a batched time. And then how can we do like the big clean that we have to catch up on all at once? Is it every Saturday at two? Is it every Sunday at 10 a.m.? How can we batch that cleaning and bake it into our schedule that repeats every single week so that we never get so far behind that we have to spend hours and hours scrubbing or catching up on all the mess. And how can we batch those errands, right? Picking an errand day or if we do have to go out on a random day,

what else can we get while we're out? What else can we do to batch that drive time to save time on another day? Power hours are your friend, man, thinking about things in like chunks of power hour time so you've got out, I don't know, the blender, you've got out like your food processor, you've got all the cutting board and all the stuff out. What else can we prep? Choping one onion, you're going to need to do it again tomorrow. Why not chop two right now and put the rest in a dish to use for tomorrow? Thinking about your life this way, it's, I think it's going to take practice to change our mindset maybe a little bit and be more intentional, but that just freeze up. It frees up time tomorrow. It freeze up time today. And you're going to end up just feeling more joy

when you have less rush. Taking the time to say this is important, this will make me happy. How can I savor this? How can I slow down? I'm thirsty. Can I just stop for a second and slice some lemon and put it in my glass of water. I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to throw this dinner together. Can I put on some relaxing music and can I really savor chopping? Can I grab some herbs and put those in? Can I take time to just go a little bit extra and add a little more love to what I'm doing, a little bit more happiness to what I'm doing?

And I totally recommend you watching this show on Netflix with love, Megan, and try not to be cynical while you watch it. Try not to like hate watch it and think of all the ways that like she's out of touch. And instead think of all the ways that it makes you feel inspired. And how can you add a little bit more of that to your own life? And what can you eliminate from your life that isn't making you feel that way to make room for that. joy. Thank you guys so much. I hope you're feeling inspired to slow down friends. Slow down and get rid of things and have a little bit more of an intentional life. We'll see you guys next time.