Simplify your life; Eliminate physical, emotional and calendar clutter so you can focus on what matters most. with Special Guest Emily McDermott

Welcome back, No Problem Parents. Hey, today we're going to talk all things eliminating overwhelm from your family, both for you as the parent and for your kiddos. Is your calendar and your to-do list causing you to feel overwhelmed? Well, my guest today defines overwhelm as too much, too much stuff, too many to-dos, and too many thoughts distracting us from what's truly important.

Too much stuff causes choice overload and decision fatigue. Meet Emily McDermott, owner of Simple by Emmy. She's going to share with us how learning her Eliminate, Delegate, Automate framework can help us free up our most important resources of time, energy, focus, and attention. She says addressing clutter is a key step to eliminating overwhelm.

Physical clutter, calendar clutter, and emotional clutter not only impacts our health as parents, but it also affects our children's health and well-being. Emily is going to help us today to kick Overwhelm to the curb with her five steps to overcoming Overwhelm. Grab a pen and paper. You might want to write these down or no worries if you're driving in your car right now, there's going to be a link in the show notes for you to download her free five steps to overcoming Overwhelm. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Finneman. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling?

Whether you are at your wits end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman. Welcome to the show, Emily. I am super excited to have you here because we're going to talk about all things clutter, which I'm one of those people that, you know, I used to think I was a procrastinator. And now I've learned that I'm more of a perfectionist and I like things to be in a certain place without being OCD, but just like clean countertops, you know, everything kind of in there in its place. I think I function better. So I'm super excited to have you on today to share with us your tips and tools for how to kind of eliminate clutter and all things overwhelm.

so thank you for being on the show. You're so welcome. I am so happy to be here, and I love talking about these topics. I'm the same. I like to have everything in its place, so I'm happy to share anything that I know. You talk about overcoming overwhelm. Well, how do we do that, and what is overwhelm being? So I see overwhelm as kind of being in three different areas. If you were to look up a definition, they would kind of fall into these three categories. The first would be too much stuff. So you're literally being buried or drowning in stuff, right? And we can all kind of relate to that at different seasons in our lives. The second is too many to-dos. So one definition that I found is to load or inundate someone with an excessive amount of something. So we know when our to-do list is just never ending and there's people asking for our time and our attention. So that's kind of the second area. The third is that actual feeling of overwhelm. So to overpower completely in your thought or your feeling. And that's more when we get into our thoughts and distractions and so forth. So that's kind of how I define it. Kind of these three areas,

the too much stuff, too many to do's and too many thoughts or distractions. Those feelings of overwhelm those thoughts really can kind of take control. And we end up thinking that we are too busy or there's too much stuff. But I think sometimes if we just stopped and did the thing, instead of thinking about it, like constantly, that's one of my issues is that I'll think I've got so much to do, which maybe I do have a lot to do, but often it just, it's like, just get it done.

right? So what do you see as the connection between overwhelm and having too many choices or decisions? So there is this concept in psychology called choice overload. And this concept is that, you know, as, as Americans, you know, we value choice, right? The freedom to choose. It's one of our kind of core values in our culture. And to a certain point, choices are good and it increases your level of happiness. But when you get to a certain point, too many choices actually causes you to become unhappier because it's very difficult to make a decision among too many choices. So the example I like to give is if you went to the supermarket, for example, and let's say you're in the cereal aisle. And normally if you're like me, you make a beeline for the cereal that you always choose. Right. But today you decide you're going to look at every single label on every single cereal box, and you're going to compare the nutritional information and, you know, the calories and all the other stuff you would be there forever. First of all,

and second of all, you would go crazy probably because it's just this over abundance of choice and it makes it super difficult to make a decision among those choices. So I see this choice overload concept then filtering into decision fatigue, which is a term that's more familiar to people, which is that as the number of decisions that you have to make go up during the day, the quality of those decisions go down. So when you have so many choices, you wake up in the morning, you're picking what you want to wear and you have 50 shirts and 40 pairs of pants and 60 pairs of shoes. It's a lot harder to make that decision first thing in the morning and your decision making muscles for lack of a better term are taxed first thing, even before you go downstairs for the day, you're getting fatigued by the number of decisions based upon having that overabundance of choice. So that's kind of how I see the connection between overwhelm coming from too many choices and then too many decisions among those choices. I mean, it seems simple, like,

you know, just get dressed in the morning, but how many of us actually do that? We think we have an idea of what we're going to wear that day. And then we go in and it doesn't feel right. You know, I need to be comfortable. And so we end up putting on two or three outfits before we even leave the bedroom. So starting out the day that way, you know, kind of good point. How about clutter? Well, I would say that when you have clutter, that's like more, more choices. So like using the closet example, if you have a closet full of clothes and you don't wear half of them, you know, the half that you're not wearing is actually cluttering up your closet.

And then it makes it more difficult to kind of make those decisions. So that's kind of how I clutter is preventing you from being able to make decisions effectively, which causes that decision fatigue. The framework that I use in the course I created, Moms Overcoming Overwhelm, first I work with the moms to define their deepest why, because you need to understand your values and what's important to you before you know how to move forward. And then we eliminate what doesn't serve you, delegate what you can and automate the rest. So the first step of it is the eliminating what doesn't serve you. And while this does fall into the different categories that we talked about initially, stuff, to-dos and what I would call like the mental clutter, usually people start with the physical stuff because it's what you can see all around you, right? So when it comes to this idea of eliminating clutter. There's lots of definitions for clutter. Some that I like are anything that you don't need, use, or love. Having too much stuff within too small a space. Or the one that I love the most is the physical manifestation of unmade decisions fueled by procrastination. That's definitely my favorite because it's representative of what's going on on the inside, you're holding on to what you don't need for a reason. So it's kind of that physical manifestation of either an unmade decision or a sentimental attachment or something

where you're just not ready to let go. So that is how I would define clutter on the physical side. But there's also, you know, mental clutter and then the calendar clutter, which is just having too many things, cluttering the calendar, not having white space, and it impacts the health of us as parents, but also our children's health as well. As parents, it's affecting us, but then also as our children. So talk a little bit about what is the impact on not only ourselves, but on our kiddos. So this is where I'm talking about kind of aligning with your deepest why. For me, when it comes to my health and the health of my kids, that is what motivates me to live, you know, a clutter-free life to the best of my ability. There have been studies that show that clutter actually raises anxiety and the cortisol stress hormone levels. And in the studies that were done, it did impact women more than men, mostly because the thought was that women And we're kind of still the main people that were managing the household.

So you have, you know, this rise in cortisol levels, inability to sleep because, you know, all of the stuff and all of the to do's. So it's yeah, it's pretty eye opening. That clutter actually is kind of making us sick in that way. But when it comes to our kids, I'm sure that you and your audience are maybe familiar with Simplicity Parenting, the book, and it's one of my favorites.

But he talks, the author talks about how color is a visual stimulus overload for children, especially for children as their brains are developing, which I think you, I know that you know the exact age, but I know it's up until your 20s that your brain is developing. and so he says that there's a certain pace or volume of stuff that may be tolerable for adults but it's intolerable for children because they're so tactile they live by their senses and if every drawer every surface every closet is filled with toys and clothes and books and stuff it's just too much and it can cause them to do what I call like the dump and go where your kids just take the toys and they dump them on the ground and then they say they're bored or it's just they're,

you know, they can have other behavioral issues due to that visual stimulus overload. And I would be interested to hear kind of your thoughts about that as far as how kids are impacted by their visual environments. Yeah, absolutely. And I work with families on this all the time, especially families who have kiddos with sensory processing disorders, or, you know, maybe they're on the autism spectrum, or ADHD, you know, all of those things that having too many toys or having a very cluttered, disastrous room is it's just, it's super overwhelming for the kids. And oftentimes, you know, my no problem parenting is all about how to turn problems into a no problem, you know, how to make sure that we're only giving problems as much attention as they deserve and not creating more problems. So let's say it is a messy playroom or toy room or bedroom. We can, you know, tell our kids to go clean up. Well, if it's overwhelming for us, it's definitely going to be overwhelming for them. And so how do we expect them to be able to go in and clean up the tornado on their own?

And so often that structure, kids really need that structure. And when we need to be making sure that we're teaching them to put things away after they're done playing with them. Now, we don't have to be super strict about that, like all the time. But when you get to the point where your kid's room is an absolute disaster, we have to kind of stop and think, wait a minute, what maybe we're relaxing on as a parent to allow the room to get to that point?

And then what can we do to go in, help pick up, help organize, and then start again and try to not let it get, you know, to that point. But what ends up happening is with a super messy area or playroom, and especially if your whole house is like this, you know, it causes more problems. So it's not just about picking up the toys. We tell the kids to pick up the toys. They throw a fit. They don't want to. We're overwhelmed by looking at the disaster and the mess. Now what we do is we end up getting in a battle, this tug of war of resistance with our kids, right?

over picking it up and they're not going to pick it up. Now they're throwing a fit. Now maybe they've, you know, spilled their juice because they got mad or they're begging for water or they run out the door, you know, to try to get away from you to not have to clean up. And it's just like this big mountain is created out of something that, you know, really could have just been handled much easier if we just stayed on top of it. Really, I do think it's important for our kids to have a, an area that they can play in, but they also know that when they're done playing, they put the stuff away. Right. Um, they have the space and the ability to play unstructured.

Talk to us a little bit, why it's detrimental for our kids to, to be overscheduled or to have like too many to-dos themselves. Yeah. So too many scheduled activities, um, is detrimental to kids. And it's interesting, my oldest is five and I'm being kind of presented with all of these options for activities that I could get him involved in, right?

We have sports, we have music, and I'm in an area near DC where there's a lot of options and there's a lot of competition. So the question is, you know, how do you decide boundaries and parameters around the scheduled time, because if they are overscheduled, it can cause them to be, of course, overly tired, but also as they grow older, just not being able to be, you know, I know some older kids that have been kind of overscheduled, um, in my opinion, and it's like they lose the ability to be bored, right? They just kind of feel like they need to be doing something all of the time. And we weren't, And we being adults or children, we're never meant for kind of that constant busyness.

But there is this feeling, and I struggle with it as well, even though I have been practicing kind of a simpler, more minimal life since before I had kids, this tug, like, well, what if I don't get him involved in sports now when he's five, right? What is that going to look like when he's 15? Or my husband is a musician. What if I don't start the piano lessons now? What is that going to mean? So you have to really define the values for your family with very young children. And as your kids get older, they're going to define their own values about, you know, how they want to spend their time.

But really knowing what is a value to you. Is it that on the weekends you are going to these, you know, soccer games or practices through the week, or is it that you're having this intentional white space to be able to actually just be with your family. And it is hard because our culture tells us, get them involved, the kids, get them involved in all the things. If you're not doing an activity, you know, every night or every other night, then like, what are you doing?

Um, but I know my five-year-old a full day of kindergarten has been a really tough transition for him. And I don't really want to be adding a bunch of other stuff on his plate right now. So I kind of get on my soapbox about this one, as you can tell. Well, and I think, you know, everybody it's for everyone, it's different. So some kids really need the extra activity. They have a lot of energy. It really helps them to be in the sport or to, to have lots of, lots of activities going on other kids, like, you know, maybe your son after a full day of kindergarten, it's just, it's too much. And he needs that downtime there. I don't believe there's a right or wrong. I really believe it's about, you know, each, each kid, I think when it becomes a problem and it's so funny,

because when you were talking, I was, I'm making notes and I wrote down board is okay. because I think we feel like sometimes as parents, like you say, with competition and what's the other fan, what are the other families doing? We need to keep them active all the time. That's not necessarily the case. And, or it could be because you might have a kid who's super interested and that's, you know, that feeds them to have, have, um, have the extra activity.

So I think we have to kind of just know our kiddo, allow our kids to be bored sometimes, especially if that's what they need. And if our kiddos want to be in the sports and the activities, and it's like, you know, a few days a week, or maybe it's every day of the week, I think that's okay, too, as long as it's okay with you as the parent first, you know, like making sure that you're not overpacking your schedule, just to make sure that your kid gets into, you know, these extracurricular activities, because if you're overwhelmed with the schedule, and you're going to be running late or pushing the limit that gets reflected onto the kid. Everybody gets up in arms about it, you know, or overwhelmed or stressed by it. And then really what's the point, right?

It's like, Oh, definitely good activity just turned into, you know, an argument between us or, you know, an overly stressed family. And that's not, that's not necessarily great either. So I think it's just really good to recognize that. And that's why I like your program so much why I was so interested in having you on the show. You talk about five steps that you would recommend to overcome overwhelm in our lives. So let's, let's get through those five steps.

Yeah, definitely. So what I have my students do first is kind of defining some non-negotiables for their day. And in order to make it not too overwhelming, we start with just kind of a time block, like thinking of the time block in your day that might be the most stressful or where you feel the most frazzled, for example. So I'm just going to use the example of from when you wake up to kind of the mid morning, maybe that could be when you're dropping your kiddos off at school or, you know, right before you start work or whatever the case may be, kind of figuring out, okay, what's going well right now, what's not going well, you know, is your kid waking you up in the morning when you would rather do an alarm? You know, is it that you can't even remember whether you put makeup on? Like what, you know, what's going well, what's not going well. And what are the things that are kind of the top three things you want to accomplish? Now I'm not talking about huge things and maybe that's because I'm kind of working with women with kids five and under.

And so, you know, we definitely have some survival mode going on in there, but maybe it's that you want to make your bed. Maybe it's that you want to have, you know, some journal time or some reflection time. Maybe it's that you just want to make sure you wash your face. It could be very small, but just defining those, you know, what those things are. So you have the first thing, which is look at your time block, what's going well and what's not going well. How do you feel?

How do you want to feel? That's kind of a big thing. And number two, deciding those top three things that you want to actually accomplish during the time block. Some of the things you might be doing already, some of the things you might not be, and you want to. And I always say, try to assess rather than judge. It's really easy to get down on yourself and be like, oh my gosh, you figure that I could just make my bed every day, but I can't even get that done. Like, don't be getting down on yourself. Just kind of do that assessment. So that's number one and two.

I like that assess rather than judge. I think we do that way too much, right? If we, if one of our non-negotiables is that I want to make my bed before I start my day and there's a day where you get up late and you don't get your bed made and you start rushing around, don't beat yourself up for it. You know, it's, it's all right. Don't throw it out. It's just like new year's resolutions, right?

People do well the first week or two, and all of a sudden they fall off the wagon for three days or something, and they throw the New Year's resolution out the window. It's like, no, just pick up where you left off and keep going. Yeah, definitely. So I love that you say that. All right, what's the third one?

So the next one, it kind of goes back to our eliminate discussion, which is what decisions can be removed from that time block so you can start making room for those three non-negotiables. So let's think about some things that could be removed from the morning to make it a little easier. Maybe you could pick out your clothes the night before or try a more limited wardrobe where I'm not telling you, I will never tell you get rid of all your clothes or get rid of all your stuff, but maybe put some of those things that you aren't wearing, you know, aside.

So you're kind of experimenting with a capsule wardrobe concept. That way you're making, right, you have less choices. So the decision is easier. Could you have the same breakfast maybe a couple of days in a row, reuse the same weekly meal plan, which I really love that concept because that way you can kind of have a whole week of meal plans and then just reuse the whole week later on.

So anything that you can simplify for yourself, also for your kids. I always want to mention this to parents too. If you have littles and you're picking out their clothes, can you reduce the number of clothes they have and they all go together so that it's easier to get them dressed? Can you reduce the number of, you know, steps of things they're doing in the morning? How can you streamline their day by making choices, less choice for them? And so I do that with my kids with clothes, with their food choices, and just kind of making it easier so that our mornings go smoother. So that is number three. What decisions can you eliminate to make your life easier? We love that, right?

Yeah, no kidding. Anything that can make life easier is good. It works for me. So then you will need to eliminate or delegate anything that doesn't need to be done during that time block.

So that might be more having to look at your to-dos and asking yourself, okay, does this actually have to be done by me? And that's kind of hard, especially for the moms that I work with, because they'll say, well, you know, my significant other doesn't really know how I pack the lunches for the kids. Or, well, you know, they just don't do it like I do. Well, that might be the case.

And I have, you know, no doubt that you do it, quote unquote, better. But the question is, do you actually have to be the one doing it? And the answer to that is most likely no. So is there someone within your family?

Is there someone else that could be helping you with some of these things? And that's kind of where the delegate comes in. And also it might be a matter of shifting something to another time of day. And this could do with your energy levels.

It could be based upon your chronotype, which is your circadian rhythm personality. So you have peak energy times based upon kind of your circadian rhythms. for moms, for women, it might be based upon kind of cycle syncing or your menstrual cycle. There's a lot of things that impact your energy levels. So something that you have put in your morning block and you think, you know what, I just never want to do this when the time comes, can it be shifted somewhere else? And that's another way to make room for your top three.

That is also a really valid point. If you know that you're typically tired between the hours of one and three or after you eat or something. I mean, there's lots of things you can look into with that, but paying attention to what are your most productive times of the day and what are the biggest tasks or the things that are going to take your, take up most of your energy or a good chunk of your energy. Um, and, and really lining those up. We have so many questions. Let's get to number or five before I start asking them. Okay. So after you've eliminated what you don't need, delegated what you can, shifted things based upon energy levels and some of those other things we talked about, you hopefully have some more bandwidth to be able to start incorporating your top three. So you want to start doing that until they become a habit. And I am a habits geek,

so I could talk about habits all day long, but there's different ways to do this. So you can start, you know, maybe developing either a routine. So you're kind of have an anchor event. You know, the one that people think about the most is, okay, after I brush my teeth, I floss, you know, that's a good kind of example there.

Or you have a rhythm, which is you still have kind of an anchoring event, which might be something that you do every single day without fail. So you make your coffee every day, no matter what, but the next events that are happening that you want done in the time block don't necessarily happen in the same order. And that might be better for someone that doesn't really like the idea of routine that thinks it's too, you know, structured or boring or whatever. So you're developing those in a variety of ways, through kind of habits, science, which is, you know, setting up your environment for success, and kind of having that anchor event and doing something right after. And then of course, you know, the repetition and the reward is that you've deemed that this is a non-negotiable and you're going to get that happiness dopamine hit, you know, every time you make your bed and you're like, okay, awesome. I made my bed. Right. Or every time you wash your face or whatever the case may be, which is another reason why it's so important to have those non-negotiables start small because you are already overwhelmed. Don't make your non-negotiables more overwhelming, it's okay to start small and have those be just tiny incremental things that then they're easier to turn into habits. And then you have those quick wins and the momentum so that you can keep going and adding on from there. Well, I just love that. That's so great. So you

have these five steps to overcoming overwhelm in a workbook and you're actually, that's a freebie. So I'll put the link in the show notes. How long would you say it takes to kind of develop these five steps or to implement them? I would say, you know, when you're doing that initial assessment, I just have something very simple, which is kind of like the basic things you're doing in that limited time block and how you felt.

I really stress the importance of kind of the emotional component to it. So, you know, again, what's working, what's not. I recommend doing that one or two days, because obviously not every morning or every day is the same. And then some of it is some of that reflection, right? Deciding what's important to you, the non-negotiables, that could be done relatively quickly. Thinking, brainstorming about decisions that could be removed. And then the eliminating and delegating, that's more reflection and thinking about how things that could be shifted.

So that might just take maybe a day to kind of think through that, depending on how much time you have to devote to it. But then once you're experimenting with it, then it might be a week to see, okay, is this working? Is it not working? What do I need to eliminate? What do I need to shift?

and making it an actual habit, even though the conventional wisdom is 21 days. The research I've seen is that the average is 66 days, but some habits are easier to maintain than others. So there might be a range there. So the actual like making it a habit part obviously will take a lot longer, but the setup I would say would take about a week, a week and a half total.

Okay, that's great. That's doable. focus on that to start before you move on. All right. I love that. That is so great. Thank you for all those tips. Now, before we go today, people can go to your simple by emmy.com backslash five steps to get that free workbook download and check out all the other options and resources that you have on your website. They can also follow you on Instagram or Facebook. You're also the author of the children's book called Little One. Tell me about that. Sure. Well, I actually have a side job or a side hustle as a poet. I have been writing poetry since I was little, and I actually do custom poetry for people that find me from Google. So this was a poem that I wrote to my friend. Gosh, it's been almost 15, 16 years ago when she was having her first son. And before my first son was born, although I didn't know he was going to be a boy, I decided, you know what,

I've always wanted to do a children's book. And so I did it independent publishing, hired an illustrator and took the poem and made it into a book called Little One, which is about a mother's joy as she's anticipating the birth of her son. And the kind of funny thing is the illustrator, I didn't really give her any guidance, just that I wanted these illustrations to reflect the love between a mother and her, you know, her child. And the cover picture looks very similar to what my son looked like when he was little. So it's pretty, yeah, it's pretty, pretty interesting. But yes, I actually just finished another poem in hopes I can make a second children's book all about children and decluttering. So be on the lookout for that one. Anything we can do to help moms declutter and whether it's their, you know, the physical clutter in their home, the emotional clutter or the calendar clutter. I'm just so happy to share all of this with my listeners today. And I just thank you for being on the show with me today.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I do. I love connecting with other parents to kind of see how we can simplify on this journey together. So thanks again.

Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show.

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