171. Get Organized With Your Spouse

Transcript:

Welcome to the Connected For Real podcast. I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business. And my mission is to bring God’s presence into your life, into your marriage and into your business. Let’s get started.

 And we are live! Welcome, everyone, to the Connected for Real podcast. I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, and today with me is Renee. Please introduce yourself, and then we’ll get into organizing and marriage. Wonderful. I’m Renee Allen. I also have a podcast for women with ADHD called Inspiring Women with ADHD.

And I’ve been married 37 years, have six children, but none of them are children anymore and seven grandchildren. So mothering is part of my life. So is marriage. And and I’m just branching out on business on my own. I’ve been teaching yoga for About 15 years, but this is something that I wanted to do separate, have more of an online presence.

That’s amazing. So, let’s talk about organizing in marriage because this is a big topic. It sure is. Yeah. So, I was thinking about it and I know some people go into marriage very much defining They will do and how they do it. And some people just see what group they fall into. That’s what my husband and I did.

We got married. We started living in the same home and he would say, I really like a clean car. And he would say, I like to deep clean and I’d like to organize. And we’d find our things that we loved to do in keeping our home or cars clean. And over time. You’d see that there were differences and there were similarities, and sometimes that’s okay.

And sometimes you have to work through or change what your definition of organized is to work together. But I just thought that it’s been interesting to watch in different marriages, because some of them are very open at the beginning to set up what is our system. And we didn’t, but your system can change.

Over the years, when you have children, when you move, when you have life changes, health changes, whatever. So, so yeah, it’s really fascinating to think about. I don’t know if we ever sat down and created systems or thought about our styles or anything. It’s just. Once we started bumping into things, then we had to figure them out.

And yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The one that I ran into that was so different for us was cars, because if I’m in my house, I need it to have a sense of order so I can function in it. And I also am affected by visual clutter. So that affects my ability to get work done. But if I’m in a car, if I can see out the windshield, I I’m fine.

And so when we had children, my husband say, the car’s too messy or they shouldn’t eat in the car. I thought, but we’re driving around, they need to eat in the car, you know, that kind of thing. I thought, as long as everything’s back there, I’ll clean it out every once in a while, but I don’t mind it because I’m not aware of it and it’s keeping them happy.

And, you know, so that was one thing that I wasn’t willing to change. But if we were in his car, we would, yeah. Not have food in it to help keep it the way he wanted Wow, that’s really cool. I can imagine if you had only one car it would become a real issue Oh, yeah. Yeah Well, and it’s actually more that way now because my car broke months ago and we haven’t been able to get it fixed But we don’t have kids in the car as often and I think that’s more understood but That even bothers me just getting in and the radio is on and I like to drive without the radio, you know, every time I get in, I think can it just be the way I left, you know, but it can’t because two people are using it.

So, right. You know, it’s that working together. Yeah. I think that organizing in marriage hits a couple of years in when you think you already established something and it still isn’t the way you want it and then you talked about it and you tried and then you know and something just isn’t working and there’s always a feeling of like one person is the one who knows and is giving the advice and the other person is the one that’s broken and can’t figure it out and.

That makes for a very icky feeling in the marriage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also when you don’t have the same system and it’s something that you do need to do together, it’s not going to work very well. And I’ve seen that with children too, that when I started to realize I’m trying to keep this system of order with the kitchen and the living room, and I’m just fighting them not being part of the system.

And I said to my husband one day, It’s like I have a whole bunch of people against me, not that they don’t clean sometimes, but I feel like we need to sit down and say, this is the big picture I have. Can you help me with that? And that could also take place in marriage where I, I would like this to be this way because I can’t function otherwise.

And then hopefully they can say they can help you with that or you work together on what you both could live with. Right. Yeah. Okay. So tell me about this organizing specifically for ADHD because a lot of the listeners. not necessarily have labeled themselves or want to be diagnosed or, you know, think of themselves in such a way.

But it seems like the skills that are being given to women with ADHD are helpful all around. And especially if you’re creative and you really just like to do things differently, they’re very helpful. So let’s get into some of that. Yeah, the, the simplifying as much as you can for organization is one of the key things because the more things that you have to manage or the more steps to any process, it’s going to be harder.

To function. And I think one thing that’s helpful is constantly having a mind of decluttering of what do I need? What am I managing? What am I putting away that we don’t need? Maybe not as many blankets, not as many this when you’re doing laundry and simplifying it as much as you can, because even if you think I don’t have a system here with laundry and it’s out of control, you really do.

But your system is I’m going to do laundry when it’s out of control. Or what I used to do with our family is I do the washing And the, not even the folding, I do the washing, the drying, and then just throw it in a pile. And then when I had time, I’d fold clothes. And so a lot of times I’d throw a blanket over it.

And that was my system. Was it a good system? Maybe it’s what helped me at that time with a lot of children that over time, you have to simplify your system. If that’s not working, we really need that space. Can the new system be? We have children start doing their laundry. They do their own or you know, that kind of thing, but anything that you can simplify or Just make it so it’s clear in your mind what’s going on or how many things that you’re working with is better, you know If you’re trying to keep your closets clean, but they’re always stuffed It’s going to be a lot harder to keep them clean.

Every time you have to put something away and you don’t have time and you put it in there, it piles up and it’s not easy to do to get rid of things, but it is super, super helpful. Yeah. I like what you said. Okay. So let me tell you about my laundry system because I’m really, I’m really proud. That’s wonderful.

I, we had a washer dryer stacked and a big mess to the side of it. It was, you know, the basket that overflowed and everything was all over the floor and there was nowhere to put anything as like the, and then there was like shelves and we were trying to like stuff stuff and it was just not good. So I dreamt up that I want them to be side by side.

but I don’t want them to be on the floor. I want them to be eye level. Mm-hmm . And in order to turn them on, I’m willing to get on a stool like this is the washer and dryer. Yeah. Yeah. I want them to be high because mm-hmm . I am. Yeah. There’s, it’s just, that’s how I decided was like, yeah, I need as much space underneath as possible.

And then I had you know, a professional build shelves underneath. Mm-hmm . The washer and dryer. Well, first he built that like holder, you know, like big, strong shelf for them. But then underneath that he put two shelves and I have three levels of baskets. I went into Ikea and I got nine baskets that are matching.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This makes me so happy. Oh, yeah. And they’re three by three. Right. So there’s like three on one shelf, three on the next shelf, three on the next shelf under that. And then I was talking to an organizer because I wanted to make sure that even though to me this makes sense, I want to hear from her, you know, what do you suggest and whatever.

And the organizer was like, maybe you should label each basket its own person in the family or maybe you should make it like. This type and that type and I don’t know what and then she made it so complicated. I was like, listen, lady, two step chick here. Like, yeah, we need to make it simpler. I can’t do it.

Right. So then I was like, nevermind with all of your beautiful, wonderful advice is never going to work. This is all going to be. Clean laundry. And so in our house, my husband loves to do the laundry. And then at some point he’ll either move it to the dryer or I’ll move it to the dryer and you know, then sort of rotate.

And because we have eight kids, we’re constantly rotating and constantly putting a new line, like there’s never ending loads and then they all end up in these baskets. And if somebody doesn’t have what they’re looking for, they can just go in a basket and like sort of rumble through. That’s fine with me.

As long as you put the basket back and you don’t leave it half open, but then twice a week or so we’ll, or when it gets to, you know, too full, we’ll take all the baskets and dump them on the couch and separate by person. And then each person gets to put their stuff away or I put away the stuff for the kids or whatever.

And. This is working. Oh, that’s wonderful. And for a long time, I was like, man, this is so complicated. I made such a weird system. Like who wants to do it this way? Right. But if it’s working, don’t break it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when we had all six kids home, we did something. My husband actually came up with it.

Our laundry room was small, but he said, if we buy a big cabinet, it was back when they had the big TVs, it was an entertainment center. And it had two, Cupboards at the bottom and then a big shelf. But so basically had room for six baskets. And I actually just wrote the names of the kids on there. Cause I thought I can take mine away.

I, my husband can put his, and I put their clothes and they’d either grab things out of them or take them up to their room, but I didn’t have as many to sort as you did, you know, so it worked with the six, but that worked really well because you have to have a place to put them and they have to be able to find their stuff and having some in between place between dryer.

And dresser or getting dressed is nice. And I think I went through a bunch of different options and a bunch of different systems before I was able to land on this one. And I saw a pattern. I really like having a lot of the same basket. And so like I visually, I just have all the baskets lined up and after I dump everything, there are, you know, eight baskets in a row or whatever it is, nine baskets.

Yeah. And I just throw, throw, throw, throw, throw. Yeah. It’s so satisfying. And then also. You see, you start noticing who has more clothes than who, you know, the boys have like half a basket of like barely any clothes and the girls like overflowing and they’re complaining that they have nothing to wear. So I just, you know, visually you show this to the kids and you’re like, okay guys this has been the laundry of the last couple of days.

Like a full week. It’s the last couple of days. That’s so great. That’s so great. Even just getting rid of things. I like doing that, you know, whether it’s paper bags from the grocery store that I put four out and one’s for trash, you know, even though I have a different trash can somewhere else when the containers that you put your stuff in, it looked the same.

It does feel more okay. This is relaxing. I can do this because it makes sense in your mind instead of. And what was that box for? What was I going to do with that? Right, and I my mother writes on the bags like if she makes a bag for giveaway She will write on it giveaway so she doesn’t have to remind herself what’s in the bag.

Yeah. Yeah, you know like she’s Already assuming that she’s going to forget. So, yeah, it’s like, how many times did you go through the same stuff just to make sure that you’re not giving away something that you don’t want to give away? Oh yeah, because if you look at it again, you might decide to keep it. I used to have a little holding place when my kids We’re younger and I would go through and think they haven’t played with this toy in so long I’m not gonna ask him about everything.

I want to get rid of but I also don’t want to upset them So we had one of those boxes on top of our van You know for trips and things and so I would take all the bags that I was gonna Donate to the thrift store and just put them up there for about a month and if they didn’t ask about it Then I’d take it There was only one time one of my daughter’s like that teddy bear and we actually went to the thrift store looking for it Never found it.

She was so upset with me Wasn’t even one that does she played with that much but you know Sometimes your system involves your kids and sometimes it doesn’t you know, or you have to find ways. Yeah, and it’s your home Yeah, you know the art project So one daughter just threw out the art project of the little daughter and it’s just makes sense, right?

Because the thing is ripping it’s not anywhere, it’s just on the floor. Mm-hmm . So whatever. And so she just like dumped it into the garbage and my 6-year-old comes and she sees it, she takes it out and she starts to like, you know, clean it up and Yeah, who put this in the garbage? And I’m like, I have no idea.

But honestly. I get why they did it. Yeah. Yeah. And you start to learn that if something matters, then it doesn’t belong on the floor and that maybe you should take care of it. Yeah. Take care of it quickly. Yeah. I think my mom used to do things like that. She used to say. You know, pick up your things or if I pick it up, I’ll charge you a quarter back when a quarter was worth a lot more, you know, I’ll charge you a quarter for everything I pick up and everyone would run and get their things.

It just doesn’t matter to me. It used to work with that first generation of children. I would say, if I pick it up, I’m giving it away and they would run and get it. And then one time, you know, with the younger ones. Like the middle ones, whatever. There’s the younger batch. I said that and they didn’t pick up.

So I gathered all those big blocks, you know, the big Legos, the mega blocks, I gathered them all up and I showed up at my neighbor’s house. And I said, here you go. My kids didn’t pick it up. So now it’s yours. And my kids threw a fit. You actually did it. Yes, I did. Because I am sick of picking them up.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m not doing that. I’m not going to just make empty threats. Yeah. And it worked because then, you know, she did the same to me. And we kept switching games because at a certain point, your kids are sick of their own stuff. And when somebody else’s Game comes in like, oh, cool. Look at this.

Yeah. So yeah, it’s good to have a good friend like that That’s great, so have you done any Systems with your kids like that you and your husband plan out. Let’s do this and let’s have our kids for cleaning organizing We used to have Saturdays be is is Saturday your Sabbath or a Sunday yours. Yeah Yeah, Saturday’s my Sabbath.

So that when you do that. Yeah. So, I find it really interesting that people say, just have your kids help. Yeah. And I’m like, mm hmm. Right. Yeah. Because the truth is you know, like when they say toilet train your kid, it’s really not toilet train your kid, it’s toilet train the parent, you know, it’s like, the parent has to be on top of them and remind them every so often and make sure that they’re drinking enough so that they need to go and whatever.

It’s like, it’s more they’re train the parent. So same thing. I felt like getting my kids to help would take so much out of me to be consistent and remind them and, you know, follow through and blah, blah, blah, that it just never worked for me. And it created such a. Icky atmosphere in the house like you’re not helping.

You should be helping. This is your job. This is the thing blah blah blah And we’ve done certain systems like we did, you know points and we did You know each kid has a chart and we did a whole chart for all the kids and we’ve tried all these different things Oh, you’re bringing me down memory lane Yes at the end of the day i’ll tell you what works Believing that the kids will eventually do it.

I got to a point where I’m like, you know what guys, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m going to expect you to look around and see what needs to be done. And one day you’ll be old enough to pitch in and start to help. And the cool thing is that it worked. So now that I have an 18 year old and a 16 year old and a 14 year old who actually help.

Yeah. And people say, how did you do that? How’d you get them to be so helpful? You know, I have my, my 18 year old when she was 15 out of the blue started to close shop in the kitchen every single night. Like she would, after we went to sleep, clear off all the counters, put away all the dishes, like start the dishwasher.

Does she really, it was like, Whoa, what just happened? And it was this like light bulb moment that she had. When she suddenly realized, Oh, I don’t have to just wait around for it to be done. I can take responsibility and it wasn’t me pushing her to do it and asking her and nagging and whatever.

It was just a moment that she had of like, Oh. I’m, I’m in. Yeah. And ever since then, it’s just been life changing, but I didn’t have any help until she was 14, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like at one point you think, Oh, this is never going to end. But then you also realize nagging them isn’t helping either.

So my biggest advice is talk about their, your kids. Even just at loud in front of other people or whatever. I was like, my kids know to step up and help when they need to. And they look at each other like, no, we don’t. I believe it. I believe you can. I believe you will. I believe, you are that type.

You just need to like, Step into it. Don’t worry about it. I have belief in you. And it’s amazing because the same thing happened with the next one who’s 16 now. So when she was, I don’t know, maybe 13, she suddenly started doing the dishwasher every day, like emptying. She owned a new job and just decided to do it.

Oh, I see here. Somebody is giving us an amazing Oh, that’s my, that’s my mom. She said my daughter helped the boys. Didn’t I have four brothers? Oh, there you go. Yeah. Cause I was going to say, my husband is one of four boys. And, you know, my mother in law, she didn’t care that they were boys. She’s like, you guys are going to have all the skills you need to be independent and survive.

It’s like, they all cook, they all clean, they all know how to do the laundry. It’s so great. You know, it’s so great. It’s super, super, super helpful. Yeah. I, one time I put a note, it was just on a three by five card that said, please keep the kitchen counters clean or something, you know, or the sink and kitchen counters clean, you know, like it just as simple as I could.

And cause I was just frustrated. Like I’m always coming in here And everything was clean for months. And one day I thought, I don’t need this card here anymore. This is amazing. And I was walking away with a card and one of my boys said, Oh, good. Do we not have to do that anymore? And I thought it.

It’s funny that the words made him think this is what we need to do, but without it, he thought that I changed my mind or something. I said, no, I, I still want you to do it, but you put back the card. I really hope. Yeah, I did. I put the card back because I thought if that makes a difference to anybody, I’ll keep it here forever.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I. Honestly, now with my six year old, I told her today, I said, pick up the spoon and put it in the sink. And she just looks at me and says, nah, and walked away. And I was just sitting there going, Oh, what does this mean about me? Why does she not want to say, okay, mom? Yeah. And you know what?

It’s, it’s important to realize it’s like, pause what just went through my head. Is what does this mean about me? What did I do wrong? You know, why am I whatever and it’s like This means nothing about you. It just means that she’s a six year old and she’s going through her own phase of finding what? What works, what doesn’t, you know, how do I deal with the world, whatever. Don’t let yourself go there because that’s just going to make it worse, not better.

Yeah. What did I do to cause this? Or what do I need to do to change it? Yeah. One thing I heard when my kids were younger, it was a mom who had teenagers, my kids were still young, but she said something like she told her kids, there’s four of you. And if each of you just do 15 minutes or a half hour of something to make our house look better during the day, then that’s one or two hours that I’m not having to do.

And when I realized that and mentioned that to my kids, they started thinking, you know, even if I’m just. Doing something for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes and. We know even with ourselves, we can start out, it’s going to be 10 minutes, but then we spend more time with it. Then it made a big difference because they saw that their little bit made a difference.

Even if they didn’t spend a whole hour, I’ve got homework. I can’t do that. You know, it was helpful to keep order in our homes because it can fall apart so fast. Really? Yeah. So let’s connect the back to marriage because when, when one spouse comes from a house where the mother was very on top of it and maybe she was more consistent, maybe she had her systems and maybe she was, you know, more worried about the mess than she was about spending time with the kids or whatever it is that is different than the other spouse.

Sometimes it comes to, why can’t you just get your act together? You know, I’m expecting a certain expectation of the home and it’s not happening. Something is not clicking.

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 Oh yeah. Yeah. I have a friend who said in our house every night, we clean the house before we went to bed and woke up to a clean house and that it was important to my parents to have our house be clean.

It’s like a temple, you know, it’s this wonderful, beautiful place. And his wife said. My parents said the house is just kind of our playground and we want it to be a place where we’re happy and we have fun together and we’re not going to spend too much time doing that because then we can have time to go to the park or we can have time to do these things.

And I thought what was helpful is that they talked about it because then that gives the one an opportunity to think, Oh, you’re just not ignoring it. You’re actually reading a book to our daughter or. She’s thinking you’re not just thinking this has to be so clean because you’re crazy. You grew up enjoying a clean home or enjoying and clean floor that mattered to have, you know, the sweeping and the mopping or the vacuuming done that it definitely happens, but it’s workable.

If you can either work on it together or decide, maybe we have enough money, we hire someone to come in and do this, or we buy a vacuum that goes on its own, or some of those things can be helpful, just to see, I feel like that vacuum would go crazy. I think of my house and I’m like, if I owned one of those things.

That machine would just stop midway and say, I am not cleaning until you guys pick up. That’s right. I know. Well, and that’s what anytime I haven’t done it that much, but anytime I’ve paid someone to come clean, I think the reason it works is because, and I just had this house, I only had her come clean bathrooms and it was every other week is you run around the house cleaning so that when she walks into that bathroom, everything else is.

you know, cleaner. And so it gets you to work faster before they come and do their half hour, hour, whatever, you know, makes sense. Yeah. I was just mentioning to someone that when a cleaner comes, they have no emotional attachment to your stuff. So it doesn’t take them as long because they’re not sitting there thinking and like, you know, fuming about this one who left his.

You know, coat on the floor and this one, why can’t she just put her stuff away and whatever it’s like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Next. You know? Yeah. I’ll throw this away instead of, Oh, she might want to keep it. Even though it’s just the package of their toy came in or all those things that we have that slow us down and make a difference.

Yeah. Yeah, my husband is more brutal with throwing things away and I have been known to take things out of the trash, I think I know that’s horrible, but I can use that box for something and something I need to work on to just let that be, but I think I can repurpose this or Oh, yes. Have you seen that real where it’s like.

I can throw this jar away. There are many jars, but like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, and like you put it back with all the jars. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And then you spend so much time washing the jar and thinking, do I need to keep this jar? I have so many jars and my husband throws away my jars and then I get really upset and then I start my new collection.

And then he throws them away. And I explained to him like, I really like the jars. I need them. He’s like, but you don’t use them. I’m like, I do. I just use them at different times. I got into a rhythm with the smoothies in the summer. I would make like a big thing of smoothie, but then because the kids are all at different stages now, they’re coming home at different times.

So instead of leaving that gigantic. Smoothie, jar in the fridge and then it’s like harder to clean. I just make it, jar it into different size jars, put it in the fridge, and then they can come and grab it. It’s worked so well this past summer that now I’m excited about. You know, yeah, doing it again.

And vertical space in the bridge is good. Have you heard about strawberries in a jar when you, do you have strawberries? You have strawberries where you are that when you buy berries, if you take them out of the container and put them in the jar and just rinse them off and they last probably five times as long they, and, and then it, it’s a tall, thin thing, it fits in your fridge, it’s easier to find, but once I learned that it’s saved a lot of, it’s prevented a lot of throwing away of things that like, Oh, we didn’t eat those fast enough. I love your mom. Hi mom. No, I love you. You just helped us out here is so cute. She says, I feel in retrospect, the idea should be that the whole family is responsible for the house, not just mom. , the family is not just there to help mom, which is so true.

If we could just, you know, yeah. It’s the same with like, oh, you know, how can I help you? It’s like, help me. Like, how can I help you? Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. But it’s kind of like the mom if, if she’s home more, you’ve assumed the role of the manager. So if you were at an office and you’re the manager of the office, you’re still gonna direct it.

Some degree and, and for you, that system was, I’m not gonna keep coming up with systems to get them to, to do work and, and hope that it works out, you know, and, and, and it has worked out. But they probably learned ways to clean and watched you or, you know, or that kind of thing. Or had some experience with it at some time.

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, sometimes we’re trying so hard to come up with systems and to figure out how to fix it. You know, how do I get my act together? How do I pull myself into shape when in reality things are sort of working and What you might need to change is just a couple of tweaks Yeah, we talked about that.

Do you have any practical tools that people can really? Step up. Well, what I think is when you’re going through your day And something’s taking longer, you know, like where you’re going in the house to get a blanket or something and you have people when they come to visit, they sleep in this room and you think you start to realize I keep putting the blankets way up there, bringing them down, bringing them up, you know, whatever your system is.

And that’s more an occasional thing, but if you have games for your children to play, and they’re in a closet, that’s not close to where they play them, then that might not make sense. And it may. Take more effort, not just to get the things, but to get things put away in a good way. Just like with your laundry baskets being so close to the washer and dryer, there’s not a lot that can prevent that.

So I look at that even in my kitchen with organizing. Whatever idea I had when I moved in, it might change a year later where I think, why am I walking this far to get the knives? Or why am I going this far from the dishwasher to put things away? And it’ll just help things stay more organized if your system is as streamlined or as practical as could be.

And, you know, just whatever kind of trips you up during the day or slows you down or just doesn’t make sense for the most part, it probably does make sense. But if you’re always going by things in a, you know, a drawer to get the one thing and then you realize I really never use these other things. Do I really need them?

Then you start to let go. Of maybe half of what’s in that drawer, so it’s easier to get in and get out the junk drawer, the junk drawer. All I could think about. So our junk drawer has a ton of wires. And so I take away the wires and I put them somewhere else. And somehow they always end up there because that’s where people are used to putting their wires.

And it gets in your way of opening the drawer, closing the drawer. You can’t even use the drawer because it’s full. It’s really a reprogramming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you have different people doing it a different way, it can be really chaotic. And one thing we didn’t, my husband and I didn’t do this at the very beginning of our marriage.

But when we realized, you know, every time you come home, you put the keys. in this one place used to be a hook. Now we have a drawer, one house. It was a bowl. We had our key bowl and now it’s the key drawer. But once you have that habit and if everyone in the family knows it, and nothing else is in there.

Like you said, sometimes other things are in there. It’s like, why is this in here? I can’t find my keys, you know, like let’s stick to the system, but it just makes things go more orderly. Cause that’s why we organize this because things aren’t. Going smoothly or they’re not functioning as well.

Yeah, you know, talking about this made me realize that instead of fighting the wires and taking them away, maybe I should take away everything else and leave the stuff that people are constantly putting in. Have that be that drawer and you put your things somewhere else. Right. If they’re using them often enough and they’re able to get them, yeah, that’s one of my things I do need to get rid of is the ones, all the charging cables or things.

That we don’t use as much. I’ve done things like put them in a Ziploc and, you know, so they’re easier to take out, but there’s so many because of technology changing that we haven’t used in a long time that I just need to donate or get rid of somehow. Yeah, totally, totally. There’s this one thing that I once saw on Instagram, maybe like seven years ago or something.

And it was this lady who said, like, she showed. Putting her stuff down and then putting it away and she just said over and over again Don’t put it down put it away Showed her purse like at the table and then no on the hook and then don’t put it down put it away I just did it with a yeah And then don’t put it down put it away and it just stuck in my head because you said it so many times with the visuals of each thing how she did the natural move is just Just throw it on the table or put it on the counter, but then the next like millisecond of just putting it on the hook or putting it in its place.

So I’ve been doing that more and more subconsciously because I watched that one reel. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good. I’m like, wow. I wish I could find her again and give her all the credit. Yeah. Oh yeah. So that, yeah. You can thank her for that. Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking too about women with ADHD. A lot of times if you have your keys or your glasses or your purse or whatever, wherever you’re going to put that away when you walk in the house.

You just do it really close to the door, but if you’re working on something and there’s something you need to put away that’s in another room, what happens a lot with the working memory Problem is you go in the other room and you forget you’re cooking dinner. I have all the time. I put things in the toaster.

I come back an hour later and think, Oh yeah, or put something in the microwave. I’ll forget if I go in the other room, I’ll get so distracted or just forget it. And so I usually. Take something to the edge of the room by that door or to the bottom of the stairs. Like you probably have things if you have stairs, you know, the bottom of the stairs.

So the next time you come up, you bring them and put them away. But just to prevent that distraction that you’re still doing it, but not completely because it might interfere with actually being productive. And yeah, I was also thinking back to marriage is. It is good, not just systems that you have, but to understand and respect and be okay with it being different.

The different ways people may organize, because like with my husband, it’s the throw things away, it’s the clean, it’s the quick at the end. With me, if I’m gonna Organize a closet. I make a much bigger mess first and then I go down, you know, go down the rabbit hole or when it kind of a hyper focus of, well, now that I’m in here, let’s reorganize the game.

So they stack up nice. You do these things to kind of relax you with the hard decisions to be made. And it’s nice when your spouse can understand. My daughter talks about this too because her husband, they’re both very, very clean, very, very organized and their kids just know whenever we finish something, we pick it up and we get things clean before the next thing.

They’re really good about that. But she said she’s more like me where she’s, you know, kind of in this la la land if it’s going to take a long time. But there’s a method to the madness and at the end, even the corners are clean because I’m not just going to organize it. I’m going to get out of cloth and scrub the corner, you know, so just respecting that your organizational style, your cleaning style may be a lot different.

And it may take a different timeframe and for some they do it together. My husband and I are more, I do mine, he does his, and that’s okay too. You know, like we do it together. It’s, it makes me a little more anxious to do it together. Cause I think, Oh, I can’t just, you know, relax, do it. Feel that way on my own.

Yeah. Yeah Are you very much like your husband with things like that? Are you kidding? When God was laughing he was laughing at this, okay, man We are So different is so funny. I am creative and forgetful and spontaneous and you know just Go with the flow, whatever. And, you know, like you said, hyper focused.

I could sit for hours and do my work. And he’s just like, How did you do that? And I’m like, I’m not working. I’m having so much fun. Like, she doesn’t get it. And then, you know, he’s so routined. So like a clock, he knows time in his head without looking, right? Like sometimes I’ll play this game, like, what time is it?

Don’t look. And he’ll tell me to the minute. And he knows he’s, I don’t know how he knows he hasn’t looked at a clock for two and a half hours. That’s like perfect pitch with a note, but he has the perfect. Time. Exactly. Exactly. And also he has that computerized brain thing. When he does shopping, he’ll go and he’ll tell you how much is going to come out before she even says it, like, you know, before he even goes through and, and he’ll be like, I don’t know.

I’m looking at the thing going, this probably is going to cost 347, 000. Around that. And then it rings up like 347. 5 or like ridiculous and it really shows like when I was going out, I was available and somebody said, Oh, I have this guy for you. So he went to the same school as my brother.

So my parents called my brother and like, you know, this guy, you know, cause like, I don’t know, we wanted to make sure it was like a nice guy. And my brother just described him as like, oh, he’s a walking computer. Oh, yeah, and It is so true. He knows everything. His brain is so filled with information. People will call him to ask him, what’s the source for this?

And he’ll tell you the exact verse, where to find it, how to see, you know, whatever. It’s like in this book, it’s on this page and you know, if you look somewhere else, it’s, you know, a different version. I don’t So smart. But like style wise, he He is so good at doing things repeatedly, you know, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, cleaning up, doing the thing, whatever.

And he’s also like his love language is acts of service. Yeah. So, you know, like people say, don’t say you’re helping your wife and you know, it’s not nice anymore to, to say it this way, but like, this is the way he loves me is by doing things. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not because, I mean, obviously. Yeah. Absolutely. We could say he’s doing it because it’s his house and he wants it clean too, but he really is using it as his way of showing love.

And so he’s like, I cleaned the dishes for you. And, so you automatically want to be like, for me, you clean the dishes for everyone. But I see what he’s saying. I have learned to pick up on that language where, yeah, his love language is acts of service. So he’s going to use any way of.

Service to connect back to showing love. Yeah. And, even if he does love it clean, cause I’m, I’m more like he is with that, where I love walking in my house and seeing it all clean. So when I’m cleaning it, I’m thinking when my daughter gets home from work, she’ll be so happy to see this clean, whether she is or not.

I’m imagining the joy it gives me is going to give her or my husband or anyone else. So you are doing it with them in mind, not doing it. So they don’t have to and doing it. So they enjoy it, you know, exactly. Exactly. I, you know, and it makes me feel very taken care of and very loved. And then I learned that my love language is words of affirmation.

So I can use my words. To appreciate what he has done and to really give it that space. So if maybe in the past he would say, Oh, I did the laundry for you. And I would say for me, what does it matter? Are you doing the laundry for the, you know, it’s like that my words are. So powerful and you know, if I could switch it and be like, thank you so much.

I feel so cared for. I love that you take the time, you know, you could have done any other thing, but you’re really, you’re so routined about it. You take care of me every single day you do the laundry and whatever. So I’m using my superpower to. Support his superpower. And that’s when it starts to work really well, it’s easier for him to remember that things have to be done every day, but it’s easier for me to get into that hyper focused rhythm that I have like once a month, I’m like, I’m in the mood for, you know, and then it’s like getting all the winter out, putting all the summer in, going through the corners, cleaning up really well, and then organizing it by color.

I can do that. Yeah. But not every day. Yeah. Yeah. And not all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it’s good too. You, you brought up something that, and it doesn’t sound like your husband has a problem with it, but me being the service, I’m doing this because I know it’ll make you happy. One of my daughters used to do that.

If I went on a trip without my husband or the kids, when I’d come back, I’d see the lines of the vacuum and you know, on the carpet in the living room, cause she’d think mom’s coming. Everyone come clean. They were giving me that gift of walking in. But for me being that way early in our marriage when my kids were too little to do that, I remember coming back from a trip and my husband was sitting on the couch with his brother and the kids and they were playing and there were toys around and I thought, You knew I was coming home right now.

I’ve been gone a week and it’s not clean. So I could walk in and have that gift because that’s what I would give. And that taught me in that moment, that’s not his way of showing love to you and that’s okay, just because it’s yours doesn’t mean that if it’s not clean, he didn’t love you, you know, but, but also I think it’s.

You know, we have to remember also a lot of times the programming in our brains are so different, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. We heard our mothers say, you know, I know a lot of mothers who are cleaning, and organizing, and doing, and doing, da da da, but the things they’re saying is, Nobody is helping around here, I’m doing it all myself, and you guys are so selfish, and blah blah blah.

So what happens is, you start seeing the teenagers that are growing up, and they’re doing it with this resentful energy, like, Nobody’s helping around here, I’m the only one doing it! It’s like Oh, it’s just copy paste of what you’ve heard. So it takes a lot of intentionality to own and be like, wait, I don’t want to sound like that.

I want to be really happy doing it for me and for the people I love. Not because I have to, not because nobody, you know, people are. And creating an environment that if they are helping, it’s. positive. I mean, we used to have our kids do something to clean on Saturday mornings, but we put on back then the CDs we put on a soundtrack from the parent trap or something and play the music and everyone will grab a spray bottle and we’d all be working to the music and it made it a happy memory.

Now, if we hear any of those songs, we think everyone we used to clean on Saturdays, you know, instead of we were saying you guys never clean. So now you have to clean now, you know, they were happy about it. And my husband also quote, I don’t know who the quote is, but he would teach them because he loves to work.

And I do too. I think we probably all love to be productive, but he would tell him work is the source of happiness, prosperity, and self esteem. And so if you do something, you know, like we kind of show, look, I just cleaned the windows or something. It’s something to be proud of or whether anybody’s there to see it or not.

And I do see that in my kids, they have different levels of how much they like to clean or how often, but they do remember that, yeah, I do feel good because I did something. I didn’t do it because there was somebody telling me you have to do it, but it can actually produce good feelings to have things be nice and clean and organized.

And, and that’s, yeah, I think, you know, for me, I grew up that the atmosphere is more important than the physical cleanliness. And my mother always said, like, your husband wants to walk in to see a happy wife and not a clean house with a miserable wife. And so like, it was either or in my mind, because that’s how she was saying it.

Like she made this very clear. There was a choice. You had to either be in a clean house and be miserable or be, you know, beautifully dressed and happy to see him, but like the house is a mess. And you know, it’s when I started learning coaching, I was like, Oh, you can have this and that. Look at that. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can be happy and have that. Yeah. And like you said, I like walking into a clean house. I think all of us do. And a lot of the women that I know, we have Pinterest boards are all this beautiful, gorgeous, like. You know, impossible thing to minimalist house with nothing in it. Exactly. It’s like all of our Pinterest boards are all minimalist, gorgeous, like this very nice pale, you know, turquoise background with like some, some plants and little bit of wood, whatever.

And it’s like. I’m never getting there. There’s no way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve heard that saying it’s something like keeping the house clean while the kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk while it’s still snowing. It’s like, the snow is going to keep coming down and your job will never be done.

And understanding that gives you a little bit of a break, like. Until they go to sleep. It’s funny too, because I used to, the kids would go to bed and when they were younger, I’d start vacuuming and I would vacuum in their rooms and people would say, you’re vacuuming while they’re falling asleep. And I thought they’re used to it.

I never had a quiet home for my babies taking naps, which just keep the work done, but I’d be in their bedroom while they’re falling asleep, you know, just cause I wanted to wake up to clean slate if I could, you know, for sure, for sure. And. You know, one of my kids said in my house, we’re going to wash the floors every single morning before we leave the house.

So when we come home and the house is clean, I’m like, go for it. I thought I was going to do the same thing. Like, I really like that. There’s something nice about washing floors and while everybody is leaving the school, but there is no way, no way that that’s happening. And you know why? Because I’m their anchor.

So when I leave with the youngest ones to go out at 730, that’s when they all get their act together to leave also and get their, you know, get to school by 8. So if I waited for them to leave, they would never leave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, they do it because you’re gone and you’re not going to do it for them or, yeah.

So it’s, I’ve, I found that my kids. Slow themselves down because they want my attention of like, okay, come on, go this, that, did you take your food? Did you, but if I’m not there, then they have to just get their stuff and go. And it works so much better. So ever since last year, I just, I started doing that.

I’m like, okay, bye guys. I’m out. And I’m, I’m in charge of the two youngest ones and we’re out of here. And everybody else just sort of like work themselves out by the time I get back. The house is empty. They’ve gone. They’ve made it out without you telling them you’ve got to go. I don’t know. Is it your daughter that’s the oldest that’s gone to college?

That’s left? Yeah, so she’s, she hasn’t gone to college. She went to do community service. So here, the girls can choose if they want to go to the army or do service instead. Oh, okay. And so she’s doing that and she’s also in like a seminary, like a learning program. Yeah. I was just curious if you saw any thing different with her gone, cause my youngest one, he was the one where I just couldn’t hound him about his room.

I couldn’t say you really need to clean up. You know, I just had to just go. And then every once in a while, kind of like me, and he does have ADHD, but every once in a while on a Saturday he’d clean his room for four hours and you know, get it all right. But it was funny when he went to college, he said. Oh, mom, now I know why you’d say, you know, put your plate in the sink, you know, don’t just leave it on the table or whatever my roommates do that.

And I’m the clean one. And he actually went and found one of those robo vacuums at the thrift store because he was tired of vacuuming all the time. And he even told me, he said, I’m sorry. What’s funny is he comes home and he’s not that person when he’s home. You know, kind of like when you were saying when he’s there, I went up, this is the room that he was in when he was here at Christmas time.

And every time I came in, you know, just all his clothes everywhere. And that. When he gets back to college, he’ll be the clean one in his room. And, you know, he said, I know no one else is going to take out the trash, but me, it doesn’t seem to matter to the other one, you know, that kind of thing. And I think you have that standard that you enjoyed.

And I think he does love to have some order. And it comes in spurts, but it’s just funny that when he came home, I thought, where’s this, always cleaning the kitchen that I hear about, it’s not happening here. We all revert back to ourselves when we go back to different locations, right? So, you know, if you ever get together with your siblings, does it like suddenly I’ll fall back into, Oh, you’re the oldest, I’m the youngest, you’re the troublemaker or whatever.

It’s like, why do we do that? We’re all adults. Right? Or the, or the humor that you enjoy with them is different than, you know, what you would with other people and that sort of thing. Yeah. And you know what? It’s a nice thing to have a place where you don’t have to feel like it’s all on you. I find. A lot of times I’ll sort of like make myself feel better about it when my kids come home and then they walk in the door and they start, right.

And everything starts to spill out because they were holding it in. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I feel like, oh, this is such good news. It means you feel comfortable at home to be yourself and to really let it out. And so like the same thing, like, you know, sometimes. You don’t have to be the clean one and it’s okay and it doesn’t mean anything about you It just means that you feel safe enough to just look, you know true.

That’s true Yeah, you have to assume that mode Yeah, I I like what you said about You know, we all like organized, we all liked clean, but there’s something about this perfectionism thing with like all or nothing it’s either my house is Pinterest or it’s like that messiest home on planet earth.

And it’s either I’m going to. clean it all up or not even bother, right? And like the, the medicine to that is just pick up the trash. Just like take a bath and start to pick up trash. Cause you’ll start to slowly just see things improve. Even if it’s not perfect, at least you’re not in a dump. Yeah. And there’s always this tipping point too, because you can clean your closet.

And maintain that. But if something happens, you’re sick for a couple of days or who knows, you just don’t have as much time you’re celebrating the holidays or whatever. And you start to throw things on this chair or whatever it is. It’s just like you said, it goes from looking really good. To just being a disaster and taking forever.

One day, it took me a whole day just to fold the clothes and not even just reorganize. It was just actually like catching up and it’d been a whole month since I’d gone on a trip and didn’t unpack, you know, all these things. And you think, what is, it’s kind of like when you’re filling up water and it gets to that point and then it really floods.

It’s like, where’s that point? Because each system that you create also has a maintaining system. And if you’re not maintaining it, it can slide away, which happens, and we have to be okay with that can happen sometimes, but sometimes just that tiny effort, like you said, putting something all the way away makes it, you know, putting it on its hanger or in the dirty clothes instead of just in the, I don’t have time to put it somewhere spot, it really just kind of takes a life of its own to, to disorder and all that.

Yeah. Yeah. So let’s come up with a couple of tips so that the listeners are like, yeah. That’s something I’m going to try or that’s something that I should really think about. Yeah. I would think whatever it is, let’s say you, you don’t think, you know, just one part of your house, your kitchen, your laundry closet, whatever it is.

And you think I don’t have a good system for that. Notice what your system is to begin with. And if there’s some way just to tweak that to make it workable, and if not, come up with a new system. So just define your system. Simplify what you have to manage if you can, whether it’s clothes, dishes. And maybe give yourself permission to do something different, like not wash things as often or use paper plates at times or, you know, things that you need to when it’s busier, because I’ve tried to have some standard, like you said, the Pinterest things like, Oh, we have to have used nice dishes for this and everyone comes and for two days, your kitchen’s a disaster.

And you think maybe we shouldn’t have done that. But, but yeah, I just, I think just kind of. Observing if you can just change the way you’re doing something a little bit, or if it needs an overhaul and then making it manageable to maintain. I don’t know if that’s specific enough, but it really depends on what you’re doing.

Something you said made me think about, you know, if you’re dumping papers in the same corner. Just put a basket there, you know, if you’re dumping clothes in the same chair, put a basket, like right by the chair and have this basket of things I’m going to get to, but at least it’s all contained or it’s sort of like.

This is where it goes. So then you’re, it’s, it’s still a one step thing, right? So like, when you were talking about hanging your clothes, it’s like, of course there’s going to be times when you don’t feel like hanging your clothes and then you’re going to fall back and the system, if it’s not working for you, it’s not working for you.

What if you could just have a drawer system instead of you just dump it all and go through, you know, go through it. Yeah, yeah. And even just with the paperwork, what’s really breaking the system, you know, and if putting it on one pile, then later you have to go through that pile. But you have a pile of junk mail that you can’t really look at yet, or you’re not sure what’s in it, but the other one, you know, you need to save.

And I, we were getting so many credit card offers and I have a shredder and I would want to open them and shred them, but you don’t always have time to do all that. And they put hard papers in there so it could break your shredder if you don’t open it. They do all these crazy things. And finally, one day I just thought, okay, this isn’t working well.

Is there a way to prevent? This credit card mail from coming and it took a while, but I had to go, you know, read a few articles, go online, fill something out, actually mail it with a stamp for me and my husband. And it took a few months, but it’s dropped dramatically. So sometimes if your system’s just really tipping over and you think, is there a lifeline?

Is there something I can do to make this not so hard to manage? Then, you know, sometimes it takes an hour or something to do something different to make that happen. It’s a good investment. Take the hour. You know, I was at a networking event and I met a woman who’s an organizer and she said, I want to teach you guys one thing.

Don’t take anything home. And I was like, what? I come to the networking events to get free pens. Are you kidding me? Right? Like this is the thing I live for is all the, all the papers and the giveaways and the cards and the thing. And it’s like, no, I just take a picture of the business cards I want. And I throw them all out and I leave them here.

Right. And I was like, what? It was the first time I ever heard anybody did that and it blew my mind. But ever since then for years already, anytime I go to a networking event, anytime I do anything instead of taking the card or taking the flyer or taking whatever, I will take a selfie with the person.

Yeah. And put it into my phone. What’s your number? Yeah. Boom. That’s it. Send them a message. Now we’re friends. And if it’s worth it enough, like if there was a person you met that you really want to keep in touch with, it’s going to be so much more helpful if they’re on, in your phone than if you’re, you know, that you have their card somewhere in your house.

Yeah. Yeah. That gets put in the key drawer or wherever else and make somebody else not be able to find their thing. Exactly. It was just causing clutter and then you feel bad throwing it out because, oh, come on, you know, you don’t throw out people’s business cards. It’s their name. I know. I know. They paid for that.

It’s their identity. It’s, you know, we get all like. Yeah. Yeah. All personal. Okay. Ah, this has been so fun. I just looked at the clock, went, how did the time fly? I know. I know. Wow. Tell everybody where they can find you, how they can work with you. So I do have a website. It’s renee allen.com, but it has a dash in between Renee allen renee allen.com.

I also am on Instagram, not very big presidents, but on social media inspiring women, a h adhd do.com, and that’s what my podcast is called, inspiring Women with A DHD. I hope to inspire them, but they inspire me too. It’s helpful to see people in a similar. Boat or, you know, experiencing similar things because in some ways you can talk to people and think, Oh, we all do.

This isn’t even that big of a challenge. And a lot of times you find out, no, not everyone faces these challenges and it’s. Really encouraging and supporting to come together with other women who are working through the same kind of challenges as you are in life. So, yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you for coming and for sharing. It’s been amazing. Thank you for listening and don’t forget to be connected for real.

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