Decluttering Your New Year: The Goal for Overstimulated Moms

Before you respond to that "new year, new you!" pressure, consider decluttering where it really matters so that you can have the flexibility and resilience that the sensory overload of motherhood demands of you.

In this episode, we'll dive into 3 ways you can cut back or simplify as you head into the new year (or really any time!):

• Personal expectations (especially considering time and other people's expectations)
• Daily decisions
• Curriculum that isn't serving you

You'll also find out why it's helpful to do this BEFORE setting personal transformation goals.

Have you set goals or are you holding off?
Join in the conversation in the private facebook group or on instagram.

If you want help getting clear on what matters to you as a mom struggling with overstimulation, book your free consultation here.

This podcast is not meant as medical advice or a substitute for any medical advice. Please contact your health professional with any mental health or physical health questions or concerns.

Transcript

 How are you doing this New Year?  If you're listening soon after I record this episode, maybe you have New Year's goals on your mind.  But even if it's not New Year's, setting goals is something that is especially important for us as moms if we continue to have a growth mindset throughout motherhood. 

Many of us are thinking about goals in January and setting habits for the New Year.  Is that you?  Maybe you feel optimistic about the New Year.  Maybe a little overly optimistic,  or maybe you feel leery about changes in the new year.  Maybe you choose intention words. If you find this practice helpful, I invite you to share what your intention word is for the year. 

In the show notes, you'll see a link that you can use to text me directly.  So if I'm being honest with you, this year, I'm not really feeling the whole New year, new you pressure. And it feels pretty good too.  Personally, because of homeschooling and business stuff, I can't totally ignore setting goals in January.

But as far as personal transformation types of goals, I'm holding off on those until spring.  I'm leaning into winter instead.  Or at least my short lived winter here in the south.  My short stint up in the Midwest introduced me to winter.  And I started to learn about embracing the practice of winter.  So as far as those personal transformation goals, they will have to wait until spring.

When I actually have the energy, like the rest of the created world,  to do the regenerating.  Instead, right now, I'm leaning into cutting back.  And simplifying instead.  Most of the clutter in life happens  almost without our awareness,  clutter of all kinds, physical, mental, emotional, you name it. And if you are a highly sensitive person like me, you're probably picking up other people's variable clutter too.

And you don't even know it.  And all of that clutter can be such a heavy burden. Leaving you with less energy to spend on the flexibility that motherhood requires of our sensory systems.  Then before you know it, you are one overstimulated, impatient, and reactive mom.  So happy new year, right?  I invite you instead to join me in this cutting back journey, January, to help you clarify what matters to you and save energy for the extra sensory demands of motherhood as you move into the optimism of the new year. 

Have we met yet? Here I am getting all personal with you and maybe I haven't even introduced myself.  I'm Whitney. I'm a sensory occupational therapist, turned mom, turned surprise homeschool mom.  I chose this life because of what it offered for my kids, but I did not realize how demanding it would be for me personally as a highly sensitive homeschool mom. 

So now, instead of using my training with kids, I use my training with the sensory and nervous systems on myself.  And my family is all the better for it.  And I also coach you through your own sensory overwhelm and provide resources to help you along your way, including this podcast and others, which you can find on my website sensationalmoms.

com.  So today I am sharing three ways that I am focusing on cutting back. I hope that you find it helpful to consider these things before you enter. Into personal transformation goal setting.  The first thing that I am simplifying and cutting back  is my personal expectations of myself.  We are creatures bound in time, right? 

And there is nothing that we can do about that.  So as I move into the new year, I am considering  what is realistic?  And instead of starting with your to do list, which is really probably more like a wish list,  maybe you should start with what time you actually have.  An easy way to do this is by conducting a time audit for yourself.

So a time audit is basically a journal of how you're spending your time throughout the day.  And it can be really overwhelming to think of doing that for a whole week, but if you can do that for at least one weekday and one weekend day,  you would find that practice really valuable to figure out how much time you have and where you're actually spending that time. 

So, starting with the hours and minutes in your day in a week is actually the better place to start when you're thinking about what you're capable of doing.  Block off time for non negotiable things like sleep,  eating,  making meals, resting, daily tasks before you think about the day. what sorts of goals and accomplishments you would like to achieve in the next year so that you can help yourself set realistic goals instead of feeling disappointed with yourself. 

Remember to put margin in your day.  Back when my kids were younger,  I would intentionally leave about 30 percent of my day unplanned.  Now it's more like 25%, so I plan for about 75 percent of my day. daily things that need to be done. And when you sit down and look at how  little time you might have left  to accomplish those extra goals,  don't be hard on yourself.

You're probably in a very busy phase of motherhood.  So the limits of time aside, we can also be putting increased expectations on ourselves because of what we sense others expect of us.  Sometimes these perceived expectations are true.  A lot of times, they're not.  Maybe it's just the standard that you've absorbed from the media or social media. 

Either way, we absorb these expectations  all the more readily if we are highly sensitive. So, being aware of these felt expectations is really important.  Then,  deciding whether it's an expectation that we actually want to adopt is important.  Does that expectation serve you?  Does it reflect what you actually value? 

If not, then cut it out.  An example of this might be cleanliness in your home  or tidiness.  January is a big time of year for cleaning and decluttering. If this serves you well, then great. Do it.  I know I'm doing a bit of it myself,  but if you're surrounded by social media or people that you feel have perfectly tidy and declutter homes,  and you start to feel stressed about what your reality is,  ask yourself if it's really serving you. 

Get clear on what matters to you and define what standard of tidiness or declutter serves you right now.  I can tell you from my personal experience that one of the biggest signs of feeling dysregulated for me is feeling like my eyes are literally panning the room and zooming in on the mess around me. 

I know that when this starts to happen, I'm getting dysregulated, and it's not usually even the mess that's to blame.  Usually it's a culmination of things that result from living with five other people.  And I feel much better after stepping outside,  stretching, deep breathing,  and then I come back in. And do one thing  about that mess, if it's still bothering me.

And a lot of times it's not.  And then I move on with my day  because having the utmost level of cleanliness is not a personal value of mine. And it can't be,  even if I wanted it to be,  I live in a house with four kids.  I don't pay a house cleaner. And we spend a lot of time here.  But what is a personal value of mine? 

Deep relationships and quality time.  A clean home can help us foster that, but being distracted by cleaning and decluttering won't.  I can't adopt the value of tidiness and cleanliness that is thrust on me this time of year as a mom.  And that's me. That's my story right now in this little snippet of time. 

Maybe you've had a similar experience of absorbing someone else's values and expectations. I encourage you to spend some time with a journal and explore this question for yourself, whether you are listening to this episode in the new year or not.  That's one of the things that I really enjoy doing with you when we are engaging in a coaching session, is helping you clarify whether how you are spending your time is a reflection of what you truly value, or if it's something that has you stuck in a stress cycle.

Whether it's clutter of any kind, or whether it's just the chaos around you, if you're having a hard time finding clarity through that,  I offer a free coaching session to all moms and you can find the link in the show notes.  So in addition to cutting back and simplifying my personal expectations of myself,  I am also cutting back on the amount of daily decisions that I have to make as a mom. 

That might sound kind of strange, but bear with me here.  Maybe you are prone to overthinking and overanalyzing like I am.  If you combine that with the mental load of motherhood,  then you could have a recipe for disaster because we are called on to make a lot of decisions day in and day out.  And when we're home with our kids,  that's even more decisions.

Every meal, every daily decision that must be made.  Relying on a routine instead is something that I'm trying to return to.  So that applies to things like meals and meal planning,  clothing choices for myself,  what to clean next, you name it. And if you get bored with their routine, Then you can change it up with a different routine so that you can rotate back and forth. 

And not because I love systems, I really don't. I don't love organizing and planning those things, but I do enjoy the freedom that they give.  Charlotte Mason talks some about how decisions can be fatiguing for kids. We think we're doing favors for them a lot of times by offering choices.  But that's not always the case. 

And I think that the same can be true for moms. We are required to make so many decisions, and a lot of them are on the fly, right? But a lot of them aren't. So the ones that aren't, if we can put them into a system or a routine to ease the mental faculty that is spent on those decisions, then that gives us more mental ability to be resilient and flexible as a mom. 

I know that figuring out a routine in those little things that actually fits your unique family  and checks all those boxes can be a huge headache. That's one of the biggest benefits of coaching is that we can work together to figure out something that might work for your unique and ever changing situation. 

A little word of warning though, you'll see a lot of pre made types of to do lists online, whether it's someone's cleaning list or someone else's morning routine or evening routine. And it can be really tempting to  grab one of those, whether it's free or whether it's a paid resource and  assuming that it's going to work in your situation.

But  nine times out of 10, you will find more frustration. Then help.  Because It's so important that you do that first step that we talked about, about getting clear on what matters to you. I find that a lot with home cleaning checklists, right? Um, I'm just not really in the phase of life right now where I'm going to consistently have clean baseboards around my house.

Uh, and I'm okay with that really. Instead, I've chosen other things that align more importantly with my values, and my baseboards might get cleaned once a year.  And I'm okay with that.  So if you find those checklists helpful, go for it. But if you try it and find that it doesn't work for you, and it generates more stress, then drop it. 

Okay, the last thing that I am focusing on cutting back in January is Cutting back curriculum that does not work for us.  By this time of the year, many of us have a better feeling of what's working and what isn't working in our unique homes and with our kids.  Maybe you tried some changes in the last term and maybe they were helpful,  but maybe they weren't. 

If it isn't working out,  if you can't find the time to do the thing,  Maybe that's a clue that it isn't a good match for your personal homeschool values. Maybe it's just not meant to be right now with other variables in your reality of this current season in your life.  Saying no for now doesn't mean that you will never do those things. 

I think that it's all too easy to jump into character judgment of ourselves that, oh, maybe we are just not self disciplined enough to figure out how to get this thing done.  Sometimes that's not the case at all.  What if instead of never getting to that one thing,  you just purposefully say no for now? 

Finding peace and joy in our lives often means saying no or not right now to good things.  Having an all or nothing or perfectionistic mentality might be holding you back from embracing the joy of the present season that you're in.  So if you are looking at your winter homeschool and picking up the books again like we are,  if there are a few books or studies that You're not looking forward to resuming.

Don't just assume that it's a lack of discipline or not a perfect routine.  And please, don't just power through.  Instead, take some time and see whether that thing is really serving you and your family right now. Or maybe you should just say no.  Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of Sensational Moms. 

In the bustle of your new year, I really appreciate that you have shared some of your time with me, and I hope that you have found something that will be helpful for you in your journey toward a more connected and peaceful motherhood.  I look forward to sharing the next episode at the end of the month.

It will be the first guest interview episode for Sensational Moms.  So be sure to come back in two weeks and check that out as we discuss routine as homemakers and how mindset and routine can help you overcome the feelings of overwhelm. that we can have as we are starting new habits in our home.  If you'd like to stay connected between then, be sure to sign up for my newsletter where I share one step that you can take in your own self regulation journey as a mom, as well as some stories.

And you can also sign up for some free resources that you will find on the website through that newsletter as well. The website link is in the show notes and until next time.  Keep riding the waves.