Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Summer Sanity Saver - How to Relax and Have More Fun | Clutterbug Podcast # 233

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

In this short and sweet podcast, I'm sharing ways to make your summer meaningful and relaxing. From outdoor movie nights to day trips around town, this fun podcast will inspire you to make memories with your family this summer!  Four Thousand Weeks By Oliver Burkeman: https://amzn.to/4d7LVtq     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     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many summers do you think you have left on this earth? The answer might surprise you. Welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. If you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you know, I'm pretty much obsessed with time management. I want to get a lot of cool stuff done in a short amount of time without having to work hard. So I'm always looking to new books and to experts for new and, interesting advice that I haven't heard before. So when I recently purchased a new book called

4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, I was excited because this is supposed to be time management for mortals. And it got great reviews. So I'm like a new time management book. You're going to teach me to be more productive. Check, check, a minute to win it. How can I get more done? and here's where it gets crazy. This book has nothing to do with getting more done. It's actually inspiring you to get less done, question mark, or more importantly, to really focus on what matters, because the whole premise behind this book is that the average lifespan only has 4,000 weeks.

You only have 4,000 weeks on this earth. And when I read this, it really stopped me in my tracks because I had never thought about this before. If you were to just say to me to guess how many weeks I have in my life, I would think it would be like a hundred thousand, like a huge number. 4,000 is terrifyingly small. So reading this book, I kind of, I don't want to say I got sad, but it definitely took me out and made me step back and really reevaluate some things. You know, I've recently lost my stepfather and my mom is aging and Joe's parents are aging, my dad's aging. And when you get to this point in your life where you're in your mid-40s reaching that big 50s and you have aging parents, you start looking at your parents' life a little differently and asking yourself, how long do I have with

them? How much longer until I don't have them anymore? And anything can happen and life sneaks up quickly, but the average lifespan is only 78 in the U.S. My mom turned 70 this year, which made me think I may only have eight summers left with my mom. Eight summers. And then I thought about my own life. If the average life expectancy is 78, I only have 33 summers left myself. And then looking at my children,

who now Izzy's going to be 18, and she is going to college and university here in our town, but Abby, who's going to be 16, is planning on leaving and going away to school, which means I only have two summers left with all three of my children living at home. Two. Two summers left with little kids, all of my kids in my home. That really was a punch to the gut. Because the older we get, the faster time goes. And if we're not making time for what matters, if we're really caught up in the hustle and bustle in the rat race, and I know I'm always telling you, like, do all these cool things

and have big goals for yourself. But also, maybe we can pump the brakes a little bit when it comes to making the most of our summer. So what does this look like? How do we make the most of our precious summers? I only got 33 left, man. I only got 33 left. Man. I only have two with my kids. What am I going to do? I kind of panicked. I did something really drastic, but I decided for the rest of the summers to take every Friday off. I'm just not working Fridays. And I'm going to rearrange my schedule and I'm going to have to work a little bit more maybe in the weekdays. But I want to have family Friday fun day. And I just, I cleared my calendar. I messaged my assistant, asked her to reschedule everything that I have on Fridays going forward,

and I am committed to doing something fun with my family every Friday this summer, even if it's just for an hour, which means I took it a step further, and I made myself a summer bucket list. And in this podcast, I want to talk about ways that you can have a more relaxing, more fun, more meaningful summer too. We're going to talk about lots of little things that we can do to take some of the pressure off and to make the most of it. But I want to start by talking about a bucket list. I hope I didn't scare you. I hope you're not curled up in a ball right now thinking about how many summers you have left like I was. I had like a little crisis about that. I feel like I'm over it and I'm moving on how to make the most of it. But I just kind of dropped that bomb on your head, didn't I,

during this podcast. So first of all, I apologize for that. You're probably tuning in thinking, ooh, Cass is going to motivate me to clean my house and declutter and organize things and I'm going to put away laundry. And now you're like rocking in the corner like, oh, I only have a few summers left on this earth. Sorry about that. Listen, truth be told, we could all get hit by a bus tomorrow. So we don't want to stress about how limited the time left that we have is. But that being said, I'm really good at for myself and for you trying to be like, let's make goals and let's break them down and let's achieve them and let's get all these things done and let's be proud of ourselves and let's tick off all these boxes of all these amazing accomplishments we want. But wait a minute,

we also have to make sure that we're prioritizing relaxation, family, and fun. We can't get so caught up in achieving that we forget the stuff that's really important, which is the memory-making moments, and just literally spending time with people that we love. And if we don't be intentional, if we're not intentional about having fun and spending time and doing that, we can easily keep putting it off till next week, next month, next year, next decade. Because time just is like a blur, man. So we have to make it a priority. So here's what we can do.

We can start by making a bucket list of all the fun things you want to do this summer. And don't go crazy pants. Make it realistic. I'm going to share my bucket list with you right now. Something that I've always wanted to do for years and years and years is go stargazing with Joe. One of our very first dates, he took me to a beach and it had like this wooden structure. I think it maybe is like a stargazing structure. I don't know. But we climbed up to it. He brought blankets and a picnic and it was late at night. And we laid down to the stars and there just so happened to be a meteor shower. And this was my first time ever seeing shooting stars.

And I was maybe 22, 23 years old and I'm on this date with this amazing guy. And this guy is just filled with shooting stars. And it was so magical. We just laid there and held hands and watched the stars. And a few years later, that's where he took me to propose. And we've never done it since. And that place is far away. And I can see us like not driving there and you don't know what the cloud coverage is.

But we recently moved to a home in the country. And every night I take the dog out late at night, I look up and the sky is so clear. And I think, ah, Joe and I should come and lay out here with a blanket and watch the stars. And yet I never remember to do it. I just don't think about it. So that is on my bucket list. and I immediately put that on the calendar for every Thursday night. Now, Joe might not always want to just lay in the grass and look at stars in me every Thursday night.

And maybe it'll be cloudy or stormy sometimes or maybe we'll have other things to do. But if I make that a priority, I'm reminding myself I'm putting like a little alarm. I can like maybe a couple of times it will actually happen. if I don't put it in my calendar and I don't set reminders and I am not intentional with booking that, it will never happen because I'll keep forgetting and I'll keep putting it off. So I'm putting it in the calendar. Another thing that I've been saying for years and years that I want to do is go to an outdoor movie.

We have a movie theater close to us called the Booneys where it's a drive-in outdoor movie theater. I've always said I wanted to take the kids. I've never been to an outdoor movie theater myself, and I've never done it. So I just went on their website. They are actually closing. This is their last summer. So I looked at the calendar.

They have the quiet place coming out. Milo loves the quiet place. I know he's young. Don't judge. He loves those movies. There's a new one coming out, and it's coming to the drive-in movie theater in two weekends from now. So I have booked that in for us to go and take him. We're going to fill the back of the pickup truck with blankets and pillows and an air mattress and bring tons of snacks.

And it's on the calendar and I've invited Joe and it's happening. I am being intentional. I am not letting one more summer go of not going to a drive-in movie theater because life is short and I don't want to regret that. And it's closing. So again, we're going to Canada's Wonderland. I want to go to a roller coasters. I don't even like roller coasters, but my kids do. I want to make sure we scheduled that.

We said last year we were going to go. We just never put it on the calendar, never picked a day, and it never happened. So that's happening. And I want to go to the beach. And I want every Friday to be a family fun day. So I'm going to look at the community calendar and see when there's community events and festivals and fairs and and all of those type of things so I can make sure to book time and put those into the calendar and set reminders.

So while you're listening to this, it's going to be a short podcast. Don't worry. I want you to think of your own summer bucket list. What's something that you've wanted to do that you just haven't got around to doing? Maybe it's a family photo shoot on the beach where you're all wearing. blue and white. Oh, those always look so good. Go ahead and call your family, book a photographer, and make that happen. Maybe in this fall you want to go apple picking. Make sure you get that on the calendar with your big extended family. Set a date with yourself. Do you want to go to the beach? Do you want to have a little, I don't know, rent a cottage for one weekend with your family? Do you want to just go fishing with your kids? Or maybe just do you want to just go fishing with your kids? Or maybe

just fishing with your friend or a spouse. When's the last time you've had coffee with an old friend? Is that something we can put on your summer bucket list? I know you have things that are kind of rattling around in the back of your mind that I want to do. That would be nice. Ooh, I should. Now is the time that we get organized and actually book a day to do it. actually put it in our calendar so that we can make it happen. And I don't want to put more on you,

and this is what this can feel like, okay, well, now I got a schedule fun too. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, let's talk about some things that we can get off your plate, some summer sanity savers, so that you will have more capacity to add some fun into your calendar so that it doesn't feel like another chore on your to-do list, something else that you have to check off, so that you're leaving space. And the first thing that we need to do in the summer is prioritize flexibility. So when I say every Friday is going to be family fun day, I want to leave the whole day open for spontaneity. Anytime I talk about being spontaneous. My husband's like, yeah, you're real spontaneous, Cass. You're like, okay, I'll be fun and spontaneous, but when does the spontaneity start?

What do I need to bring? And exactly what time is it over? I don't do well with that. So flexibility means that on the Friday, maybe we'll do something in the morning, like just going for brunch. Or we'll leave it open. Maybe we're doing something at lunch, like a quick little trip to the beach. Or maybe in the evening, we're going to go to a little festival. or go to the movies together. It doesn't have to be the entire Friday, just something during the day,

and I'm leaving flexibility in that I can pick at that moment. And taking every Friday off might not be a possibility for you, but how else can you add flexibility into your schedule? What can you say no to? What can you take a step back on that you're doing, whether it's volunteering or work just for the summer, how can we create a little bit more flexibility in your schedule? And the next thing that we can do, I think, is something I'm jumping on. And I heard this from Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone. She said she doesn't do any big meals in the summer. That her meal planning for the summer is all about flexibility. They eat a ton of just toast and scrambled eggs for dinner. They just have hot dogs.

They'll have like homemade pizzas a couple nights a week that they'll just put together. And I, hearing her say this felt like I was getting permission from her to do the same thing. To really just embrace fast crappy dinners in the summer. Take some pressure off having to make this big meal. And something I've done in the past that maybe you could do as well is, is one day a week making a lot of bigger salads, like pasta salads, potato salad, they last for days and days and days, or just cutting up cucumbers and tomatoes, maybe some red onion and putting some Greek salad dressing on there, maybe a little feta cheese. Again, this is something that

can last for days and days and days and then just having a sandwich with salads or hot dogs with salads or grilling a hamburger with salads and using the same salads all throughout the week, that's a really easy way to make meal planning and feeding you or yourself and your family in the summer a lot easier where it's all about simplifying. And another thing that we can do this summer is embrace the paper plates. I recently went to Walmart. I bought a bunch of paper plates and throwaway cutlery and paper towels and I put them in this, like, little dollars to our caddy. So we can just at dinner, we're just grabbing that, going outside, barbecuing, and not doing dishes for dinners. Just not. And I know it's wasteful. I know we're

contributing to the garbage. We're throwing it in the garbage. I don't care. I need summers to be easy. I need these summer sanity savers. And if that means I'm eating on paper plates, I'm putting liners in the air fryer so I don't have to clean the air fryer. I'm doing these things. Because I only have so many summers left and I don't want to spend it doing dishes. I want to spend it outside with my kids. Putting together a summer essential kit is another thing that you can do really quickly and that's just having band-aids and bug spray and sunscreen and maybe some like aloe vera gel and just putting

it all in a bag and having it by your door. So if you spontaneously are like, hey, we should just go out hiking or let's go to the beach or let's go to this festival really quick that's happening in our community, we could just grab that bag and go. Just grab that bag and toss it in the car. So we're prepared. We don't have to have that friction in those roadblocks of, well, we better pack the bag and we better grab the sunscreen and we better have the bug spray and we better, nope, we have all the things we need for this summer, a summer essential kit, just packed and ready to go at the back door. If we're going to the beach, we'll throw in bathing suits and some snacks, maybe some towels. But the basics like the sunscreen, the hats, the bug spray, the band-aids, people always cut

themselves in the summer, always packed and ready to go. And absolutely taking time right now, because I'm going to end this podcast quick, right now, to look up your community's parks and recs website. So like what's going on this summer in your community? When are their festivals? When are their fairs? When are they like those art shows in the park? We have art in the park here.

When are they doing farmers markets? When are their outdoor concerts? Take a second right now to look up your community calendar for this summer and see if there's anything that tickles your fancy, anything that you would like to do by yourself or with a spouse or with your family or with your big extended family, and put it in your calendar right now. Put it in the calendar. Set yourself a reminder. Invite people in your family. I invited my husband. I put like a bunch of stuff in the calendar and then I like invited my husband. Like, by the way, we're going to the outdoor movies and he's going to get a calendar

invite. If we don't do it, we'll forget and we'll go another summer without doing the things that we really want to do, making the most. You want to go on a picnic. What's the day? Plan the day, put it in the calendar so it actually happens. I only have a couple summers left with my kids. I only have 33 summers left myself. And I probably only have eight or nine summers left with my mom or dad. I'm going to make sure I'm making the most of them. And I hope you're inspired to do the same. If you want to check out the book 4,000 weeks by Oliver Bergman, you can check that. I'm going to put a link to that in the podcast description. You can listen to it on Amazon, on Audible, or you can get the book, you can probably find it in your local library as well. It was eye-opening.

It really reminded me to slow down. You can't do everything, friends. But you should do what's really important. And that's hang out with the people you love. Thanks so much and I'll see you guys next time.