119. Intro to "Organizing for Single Moms (and those who feel like one)"

I've been wanting to do a series like this for a very long time, and with this episode, I'm starting it. I am a single mom - an organized single mom at that - and even though I organize for a living, it still took a lot of trial and error to get my own life manageable, especially in the beginning. In this Introduction, I will talk post-partum to perimenopause, juggling everything on your own... Which is WHY I also included the moms who maybe aren't single, but they sure feel like it. In the three-part series that follows, we will talk organizing... food, clothes, money, schedules, stress and health - for starters - then try to paint a realistic picture of what it would look like to be a single mom who IS organized, and has everything in her life structured to where it benefits her and her child(ren), because that is what's most important, when you come out on the other side.

Transcript

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Happy Fourth of July, everyone. It is about 457. I'm about to get my PJs on. Just kidding. But I am really tired. I just walk through Target for two hours and I'm exhausted. But I really don't do that often. I try to do it maybe like once a quarter. And I'm doing it for a number of different reasons. Uh today I wanted to go through and look at a lot of different sections because I am going to record an episode on Target, which is similar to the container store and IKEA episodes. And I'm going to try to do that tomorrow. I'm assuming the Sunday after 4th of July, no one is going to be in the conference room. So I'm going to try to get the conference room and I'm going to try to have my items. And it's a mix from the container store and IKEA. You know, I obviously had specific items from that store that were organizing related. And with Target, it just is everything. Target is everything. Now I'm not always happy with Target. There are a number of times where I find that I'm not really happy with the things that they do in general. But I will say that when it comes to organizing, they have really stepped up their game. I mentioned that in the IKEA episode tomorrow when I record that, I'm going to show you. And I'm just going to actually be pretty honest and strict with them. The store that I go to in Franklin, Tennessee, it's the Cool Springs Target, is in horrible shape. Now, anyone that's been there may be like, oh, I thought it, you know, looked fine. If you actually go down each aisle, which I didn't go down every aisle, but I went down the majority of aisles, it is a mess. And there's tons of people working. It is a ghost town for holidays for the most part, at least for the summer. Normally Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, all those stores are pretty empty just because everyone is at the lake or down at the beach. And so you had little old me walking through on a holiday looking at organizing stuff because that's my life. And honestly, I am totally fine with that. I promised my child we could do a snow cone for 4th of July. We had an absolute monsoon yesterday. It was terrible. The weather was terrible. And we were going to try to go around like three or four. I had a curbside pickup from Target. And I was like, okay, well, it looks a little bit cloudy. Let's just check the weather. And it was severe weather for the next few hours. And so I said, okay, we'll go tomorrow. We'll just plan on meeting your dad there. He has definitely met us in a Target parking lot. So his favorite snow comb place is Blue Monkey. So shout out to Blue Monkey. They have a lot of natural flavors, which, if you've heard me talk long enough, my very first paid job was at a snow comb place in Indiana. And we had thousands of flavors because they were all fake syrups. And so we could make any flavor that we wanted, but we probably had like a hundred flavors. Blue Monkey has, I think maybe I don't know, 10 or 12 because they're made from fruits and they're actually not too bad for you. And that's actually his favorite place. We actually have our snow comb places ranked, and that's a consistent number one for us. But anyway, back to Target. I'm gonna be recording that episode tomorrow. The store was in shambles, but the actual items themselves, the displays themselves, like this isn't a target corporate problem. This is not their fault, I should say. It is their problem because these individual stores can look really, really bad, which obviously mess up the whole look of things. But that also shows you just how good the products are when people will kind of comb through everything to get what they want. And one problem with Target is that they do have a lot of like dirty slash broken items. Like if there's a lid that comes with a tote, sometimes the lid is cracked. There was a shirt I looked at today. It was the only size left, and it was a white shirt, and it looked like it got ran over by a cart. And so I was like, well, that's unfortunate. But anyway, I will get into more of that tomorrow. The reason I came home and got on the microphone right away was because I have been wanting to do an organizing for single moms episode for a long time now. And today was one of those days that just felt like the right time to do it because we met my son's father in the Target parking lot. We did our exchange. He went to, my son went to the dentist this last week, has two cavities. And so you're like, why are you taking him to get snow cones? It's like, well, we're gonna get them fixed on Tuesday, and it's summer. And he has kind of been slacking, I know, on his toothbrushing skills. So just like the dentist said, sometimes they have to have this moment where, you know, getting that needle in the gum and the cavities filled, and it's a lesson you don't want them to have to learn the hard way. But I know that I had to have tons of extractions when I was a kid. I actually had a very full mouth of teeth. So they had to take out four teeth, not the wisdom teeth. I had those taken out later. I had to have four teeth taken out just to make room for braces. And so I remember, trust me, I remember being in the dentist chair, in the orthodontist chair. My mouth was in pain most of my childhood. So at least he's not in pain. We went and had his July 4th treat because he doesn't like a lot of other sweets. And so he went with his dad. And for single moms, you will understand what I'm saying. As soon as your child leaves you for the weekend, for a holiday, for a random Wednesday, whatever it is, you, you know, wave goodbye. I love you, I love you. You know, you shut the car door, they pull away, and then you're like, okay, what am I going to do? Like, yes, there's that feeling of, okay, I can go be an adult for a while. I can do whatever I want. Technically, I can do whatever I want. I can go anywhere I want. I'm single, like I'm truly a single mom, meaning I'm not even dating anyone right now. So it's like I I literally can go do whatever I want. And I chose to run a couple errands, come home, and hop on this microphone. And the reason that I did that was because this has been an eight-year journey for me. My son's father and I split up when he was four. And the other part of this episode is the last part of the title, um, because the title is organizing for single moms. But if you notice in parentheses, it says, or those who feel like one. And that's the part that was tough because his father and I were together from zero to four, and I still felt like a single mom. So really it's an organizing episode for all moms, but I'm kind of excluding the moms who get a lot of help, whether it's a nanny, whether it's your husband, whether it's your mom, whether it's a sister, whether you have multiple nannies. I mean, living in Franklin, Tennessee, there's lots of families that have a house staff. And so I'm not trying to be exclusive. I'm not trying to say, okay, you can't listen to this episode. What I want to do is make sure that I'm really focusing on the single moms and the moms who feel like they're single, even if they're married or in a relationship, because it is a completely different kind of stress. The type of organizing you need to do isn't gonna be the same as someone who either has a lot of help maintaining the projects that get completed, or you don't have the budget. Okay. And so that is a very, very important component. And the reason that I feel like I'm the best person to talk about this is because I'm a single mom. I've been a single mom for eight years. Again, for four years, I pretty much did everything on my own at home. And financially, that part was a little bit easier for me. His father has other children. And so even though he was my only child, there was still a lot of child support going out for another household. And so it wasn't like I was in a really cushy situation and was able to do a lot and didn't have any stress and had a lot of help. That wasn't the case at all. Um, we did do a Mother's Day Out program. I think we started out at twice a week. And then after a year of that, I think I went to the three-day a week. And a lot of those start out from like a nine to 12. So when they're really little, if they do like a Mother's Day Out program, whether it's at a school or a church, I think ours was at a church. I think we did two different programs and both of them were at churches. And so we started out from like nine to 12, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that went okay. But then you only have three hours. So you drop them off at nine. Maybe you go run a couple of errands, maybe you run back home, but then you're watching the clock because depending on how far away the school is, you know, you may have to turn back around at 11:15 or 11:30 and start heading back towards the school. But it is definitely, definitely a good break, especially if you are having postpartum issues. I didn't realize it at the time, but I do feel like I had some postpartum. I can't even tell you now that I'm way past the baby stage, but heading into the menopause stage, I just can't even tell you how similar those stages feel in terms of hormones. Okay. Now, if some of you men have listened this far, I'm gonna go ahead and call you out, but in a good way. I feel like if we've got some men listening to this episode, either you're bored or you can't reach the button to change to a different podcast, or you're listening because you have a single mom in your life, or maybe your wife is dealing with some mom issues, hormonal issues. And so I applaud all of you who are still listening who don't have to be here. And this is where I try to be very raw with my experiences, because just like the last episode that I did with Sean Lemon, where I talked about how unorganized I am in the digital world, which, as a professional organizer, for some people that may not look good. It's like, well, if she can't organize her files and her emails and, you know, her task management, why do we want to hire her? Well, I'm really, really good at organizing physical items. I hate clutter. And it actually messes with my brain. And so for those of you who live with someone who's very OCD or is dating somebody who has to have a place for everything, a lot of us truly are traumatized. And this is our way of trying to keep everything controlled and together, and it just feels better. Like mentally, it just feels better for some of us. I say that because now I'm gonna talk about the single mom part and how hard that can be. And so, as somebody who quote unquote should have it all together, I don't always have it together. I'm really good at walking into a home and measuring a space and listening to what the client needs and picking out products and making everything look great. If someone truly wants to become a minimalist, then obviously we have to get a little bit aggressive with getting rid of stuff and making better decisions as far as bringing new things in, etc. And I know, I know deep down, I am one of the best moms that you're ever gonna see. And I am perfectly fine tooting my own horn because it has been the top priority in my life, almost to the point where people have commented, like, you should probably try to do something outside of your child. And I do, and I have. And he does go with his father, and he's going back to school this fall. He got into a really good academy. I'm very, very proud of that. I worked really, really, really hard. I spent a lot of time doing the application and the testing and pulling all of his stuff together for him. And so when I look at how much I've accomplished in the last 12 years and especially in the last year, getting him into the school that I really felt like he would excel in, and then working on, you know, financial aid and, you know, the tour and the meetings and the interviews and and all of that. And so, and we tried doing that before. And since we were homeschooled, since he started kindergarten during COVID and went to school, and that was a complete mess during that school year. Then we did some homeschool, then we did some hybrid homeschool, then he went back into public school. It's just been a lot. And so now that he has turned 12 and I am going into perimenopause, I am in perimenopause, I'm going into menopause. I'm trying to be very transparent with all of that because I've got a preteen and my hormones are starting that loop-de-loop all over again. Because when you have a child, and for those of you who have never had a child or maybe you're pregnant, let me tell you don't be scared. Don't let me scare you. But the postpartum thing, I think a lot of people think that you have control over that and you don't. Your hormones are all over the place. Again, now I've got a preteen. My hormones are all over the place. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you're sad a lot. For me, I'm not sad that often. That's also one thing that I've worked on a lot over the years is if I truly am sad about something, then trying to get to the bottom of that and trying to take the time to stop and actually meditate or work out or talk to someone. I think that's that's a completely different category. Postpartum hits you in a way where you obviously don't know what it's like to be a mom until you quote unquote have crossed over. Okay. Once you've crossed over to the other side, you've got something totally amazing in front of you, something that I know I wouldn't take back for the world. I would not change anything, but it is the hardest thing you will ever have to do. And you're also fighting your own mental health and your own body. So without getting too much into the postpartum and the paramenopausal side of things, I just want you to know where I'm coming from. Like I said, whether you're a single mom, whether you're a mom that feels like you're doing everything with no help, this episode is for you. Okay, you guys, I think for today this is a good place to stop. I know that this is just an introduction. We haven't even touched on the actual topic yet, but what I want you to do is I want you to start thinking about your current situation and maybe some things that you've been struggling with and writing them down. I think that's a really good place to start. So whether you're someone that likes to take notes on your phone, if you actually like to sit down and write in a journal or a notebook until the next episode, which is gonna be in the next couple of days, I want you to just think about as you go about your days while you're parenting, I want you to think about some of the things you struggle with because we are going to talk about a few different categories coming up. We're gonna talk about budget, we're gonna talk about time, we're gonna talk about stress and health and money and all of that in this series that is titled organizing for single moms, and those two often feel like single moms as well. So stick with me, try to write down some stuff so that the next time we come back together, you feel like you know what some of the things are that you're struggling with specifically, and hopefully we will cover that in the next couple of episodes. We're actually gonna have three different parts in addition to this introduction. So just hang in there in the next couple days. We're gonna have part one, and within the next week, we're gonna have all three sections released. So thank you all for joining me, and I will see you in the next episode.