071. Simple Routines for an Unrushed, Low-Stress Fall

Fall is creeping in—school forms, Q4 chatter, and (somehow) Halloween candy in August. If you’re feeling pushed forward in time, this episode brings you back to center with two grounding routines and a few mindset helpers so you can savor the season instead of sprinting through it.

We’ll look at:

• the 12-Week Year approach to calm goal-setting (four mini “years” = fewer last-minute scrambles),
• micro-decluttering (tiny, sustainable edits over heroic overhaul days),
• and simple “anchoring adventures” that help you actually experience this season—at home, at work, and with your people.

You’ll learn:

✅ How to treat fall as its own 12-week “year” (and add one personal goal on purpose)

✅ A micro-declutter routine you can keep up (inspired by the Washington Post’s low-lift challenge)

✅ Why the viral “poop rule” gets clicks—and what actually lasts for busy families

✅ How to plan one big adventure/year, one monthly outing, and one mini at-home moment each week

✅ A low-stress way to steady your work life (coffee chats, small wins, and weekly “inside your role” mini-adventures)

✅ What to do when uncertainty hits (rescinded offers, lease panic, or the news): build routines that hold

Resources mentioned and links:

• Fox LiveNOW report on 2025 grads and a tough job market (uncertainty is real): https://www.livenowfox.com/news/college-grads-job-market-2025
• The 12-Week Year by Brian P. Moran & Michael Lennington 
• New York Post coverage of “poop rule” decluttering (not my favorite for long-term sustainability, but a good conversation starter)

✨ If your kitchen is still your stress hotspot, hop on the waitlist for my free class: 3 Simple Steps to Painlessly Declutter Your Kitchen in Just a Weekend (So the Clutter Doesn’t Come Back) → https://fireflybridge.com/update

Get on the wait list for my FREE class: 3 Steps to Painlessly Declutter your Kitchen in just a Weekend! This is how you get no-cry mornings and calm evenings in your kitchen. And I'll show you how you can do it in just a weekend without overwhelm and without getting stuck. And, of course, you'll learn how to make sure the clutter doesn't come back with minimal effort. Go to https://fireflybridge.com/update and get on the wait list!

Connect with me:

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Email me: zeenat@fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Fall is here. Not officially, but definitely the feel of fall, the essence. School’s about to begin, we’re entering the final quarter of the year at work, so you’re hearing all things Q4, I’m sure, and we were at a CVS pharmacy late last week, I was looking for some specific candy to take as a little gift, and the lady in the store had a container full of Halloween candy. They were already putting out Halloween candy the first week of August.

So yeah, sometimes it feels like we get pushed forward in time a bit, the seasons get hurried.

I don’t blame it all on retailers though, because sometimes it’s just us, we’re looking forward to a specific event or holiday so much that our focus is on that future date.

Throughout the summer, there have been a number of articles out in major news publications about various methods to declutter, or how to curb impulse buying, kind of all in the vein on getting a handle on our Summers.

I loved reading some of these - others I kind of questioned - but the truth of all of this is that we are looking for ways to get organized and keep ourselves organized. Again, not for the sake of having a tidy home, as I will keep saying, but so that we can live a Beautiful Life in our homes, with our families, our friends and neighbors, and at our jobs.

And I feel like as we transition to each new season, right now it’s summer to fall, we sometimes have a bit of a sense of regret - “Oh my gosh, summer just flew by!” - and a sense of foreboding - “Oh, I’m not ready for fall, for Q4, for the end of the year.”

So I think today is the perfect time, at the end of the summer season, to talk about how to have an unrushed, low-stress fall that doesn’t run away from you, that you savor and enjoy and remember.

Hey, welcome to Organizing for Beautiful Living, the podcast for working moms and entrepreneur moms that provides sustainable organizing tips for your home, work and life.

I’m Zee Siman, Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant, and I’m here to share simple ideas that don’t take a lot of time so you can love your home, excel at work, and have the time to enjoy both without stress or overwhelm. 

Ready to get beautifully organized? Let’s make it happen!

Fall can feel like a sprint for a lot of working moms.

A lot hits at once at the end of August and the beginning of September: back-to-school routines, Q4 pressures, earlier sunsets, and for some families, real uncertainty. 

A recent FOX LiveNOW piece talked about college grads still struggling to land jobs months after graduation, which tracks with what I’m hearing from friends. Offers were rescinded after you know the kid signed their lease, the scramble to cover rent or negotiate out of a lease, the “what now?” conversations at the kitchen table. It’s a lot.

Well, when life feels wobbly like that, some gentle structure is a gift. And today I’m sharing two stabilizing routines that help me change seasons without panic, and then I’ll add a third routine that my daughter just told me about that I really think will help us to really savor this time so it doesn’t feel like it whooshed by, ok?

Routine #1 is to Plan your year as four 12-week “years.” And I’ll tell you more about this in just a second.

Routine #2 is to keep your home steady with micro-decluttering, which is tiny, repeatable wins. Yes, including the recently famous “poop rule,” which I have thoughts on.

And Routine #3 is to Anchor adventures so the season feels savored, and not sprinted through.

Right.

Routine #1 is The 12-Week Year, and I use this so Q4 doesn’t have to carry the world.

I love this idea from the book The 12-Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington. It’s about treating the calendar as four short 12-week-long “years” instead of one long calendar year with 4 quarters carved into it. And here’s why it works.

The short windows of 12 weeks focus the mind. You stop betting everything on a heroic Q4 push, and we know Q4 is a big time for anxiety?

You also make real progress in spring, summer, and early fall, so the last few months of the year isn’t as much of a  stress storm while you’re also in the middle of the holiday season.

And you get more “wins” across the year this way, because you’re actually taking action towards goals for each 12 week period that feel like year-end goals, which keeps motivation alive.

You can read the book to understand precisely how to set up the 12-week year, but I’ll give you a short synopsis here.

1.   So the first thing you can do is to name one meaningful work goal and one personal or home goal for each 12-week season. Not five. Just one and one.

Some work examples might be “Complete the client case study,” or “Pilot a Tuesday no-meeting block,” or “Present and negotiate for a promotion.”

Some personal or home examples could be “Clear the pantry and keep it clear,” or “Walk 100 miles this quarter,” or “Host two casual dinners.”

2.            Then, you’ll break each of those goals into 3 to 5 stepping stones. Now, if it’s going to take 14 steps to complete a goal, it’s too big. So you’ll need to shrink the goal, ok? So if the client case study requires let’s say the input of 5 other people, then statistical analysis from someone else, then editing and rewriting, you get the idea. That may be too big a goal for this particular quarter. So shrink the goal, find a goalpost that’s between starting and completing the case study for this quarter.

3.            OK, next you’ll Calendar the stepping stones. Literally schedule the stepping stones. Don’t let them float. The book goes into detail about this as well.

4.            And finally, add a weekly 15-minute review. You’re checking for what moved? What didn’t? And you do this review weekly so you can nudge the stepping stones if something didn’t get completely done. You don’t abandon them.

And if you’ve got a recent college graduate in uncertainty, like many of my child’s graduating class, or maybe you’re the recent grad?

Well, you can set your 12-week work goal to create momentum under uncertainty.

Maybe in Week 1 you update your résumé, your portfolio and your LinkedIn banner.

Week 2, complete 5 informational outreaches.

Week 3, create a simple budget and a contingency plan. Can you find roommates? Or sublet options?

And Week 4, aim to apply to 10 aligned roles and 2 stretch roles.

And Repeat that four-week loop because progress beats panic, right? And you know, I know that if you have a college grad, they’re probably doing all of this, they probably are planning. It’s just such a fraught situation, so gentle listening is always a good option, isn’t it? The stress is high. Having to settle for a less-than-ideal position is a reality. Listen, I’m sending hugs your way, ok?

All right, Routine #2 is Micro-Decluttering.

You’ve probably seen that “poop rule” article from the New York Post making the rounds. The idea is would you choose to keep something if it had poop on it? If you would, then it’s worth keeping. If you wouldn’t, then it should be something you can consider getting rid of, getting it out of your home because it’s not essential enough for you to keep. 

Do I think that this is a sustainable method for all clutter? Not on its own. It’s a great interruptor for decision fatigue, but it’s a bit simplistic all on its own. You still need gentle, repeatable rhythms so your home doesn’t yo-yo between “fine” and total chaos.

So what I suggest is micro-decluttering. You can choose from the two ideas that I have for you here, or mix and match them to see what works for you, ok?

First, think about The Daily 2×5 Reset. That takes 10 minutes total, and I spoke about it in a previous episode. But basically, you’ll take five minutes after breakfast, and five minutes after dinner.

Pick one thing or area you’re going to tidy. Maybe it’s a surface, or the kitchen floor, or a hot spot like the mail pile, or the coffee table, or the entryway.

Set a timer for 5 minutes and just tidy that one thing.

When you do just these two micro-decluttering 5-minute tidies every day, your decision fatigue drops, your mornings feel lighter, and your evenings run more smoothly.

And by the way, it doesn’t have to be the same tasks every day, right?

For me, one day it’s the kitchen floor, another day it’s fold a load of laundry for 5 minutes.

And the second idea is to focus on One Micro-Edit a Day.

These are literally tiny little tasks you choose to do, and start with just one a day.

You can find a bunch ideas from a lot of those low-lift challenges you’ll see online. The Washington Post has a Clean Start challenge that you can follow, if you want to look for one. I’ll link to it in the show notes. It’s super simple. 

The types of micro-edit tasks I’m talking about here are things like

Toss the three dead markers.

Recycle the takeout menu you that always look up online anyway.

Match lids to the food containers and get rid of any “orphans.”

Move the medications back to the one cabinet.

And these tiny micro-edits prevent big, crazy seasonal declutterings you only do once or twice a year that wipes out your energy and just really annoys you and your family, too, right?

So where does the “poop rule” fit into all of this, if you really want to think about that as a decluttering method?

Well, use it as a friction-breaker. Use it to make a difficult decision that you’ve been struggling with. And you know, it doesn’t have to be the poop rule. It can be something like if I didn’t own this piece of clothing already, would I buy it from a store today? Right?

And routine #3 is to Anchor Adventures so the season doesn’t blur away from you.

When we only look ahead to one big thing we have planned, like a big vacation, well, the seasons feel like they vanish. They rush by. So let’s schedule savoringon purpose.

A couple that my daughter saw online on Instagram had a lovely rhythm. And I’m sorry, I couldn’t find their account again, so if it’s you, thanks for the idea. But here’s what they do.

They schedule one big adventure each year. Maybe a big vacation, a wonderful trip.

Then, they also plan one small adventure each month, something that’s out of the house. 

And finally they plan one mini-adventure each week, and this one is at home.

So we can do a grounded, working-mom version of these adventures, ok?

The yearly big thing could be a trip that you really want to take.

The monthly small adventure could be checking out a new coffee shop, or a neighborhood walk, or doing some bookstore browsing with a kid, an outdoor concert, things like that.

And the weekly mini adventure at home can be a puzzle night on the floor, setting up a taco bar with a new salsa, or backyard stargazing, or movie and popcorn on a blanket.

Now I think you can do the same at work so it’s not all pressure and metrics, but you’re savoring the time at work as well.

Monthly, you could schedule having coffee with someone outside your immediate team, maybe. Ask what they’re building, learn about who they are.

Your Weekly mini adventure could be to read one smart article, or offer mentorship to a junior employee, or join the lunchtime walking club or pickleball club, or just book a quiet “deep work” hour for yourself.

So these anchoring adventures slow time down. You’re planning these so you’ll remember your fall not as rushed time but as lived time.

OK, so here is a gentle challenge you can do if you want to take some action tonight.

Name your two 12-week goals one work, one personal or home and calendar the first stepping stone.

And Schedule three anchors. One monthly adventure, and two weekly at-home mini adventures.

That’s it. That could take you 20 minutes tops.

Just remember, fall doesn’t have to be a sprint. With a 12-week focus instead of a stretched out year-long focus, micro-decluttering that actually sticks, and small adventures that anchor your weeks, you’ll feel steadier and I really think you’ll remember more of the good stuff. 

If this episode helped, send it to a friend who’s staring down Q4 with big, anxious eyes, ok?

Have a beautifully organized week. I’m Zee, and I’ll see you on the next episode.