Mystie Winckler on Habits, Routine, and Mindset for the Homemaker

Feeling overwhelmed by visual clutter, cleaning, and daily homemaking tasks? Pile that on top of homeschooling and feeling overstimulated, and the stress is REAL.
Join Mystie Winckler and Whitney as we talk about baby steps toward do-able routines and habits.

... AND how we make accidentally make plans for other people’s habits in our family and don’t even tell them.

–Importance of regularly reassessing routines

–3 daily home routines to help find baseline and stay engaged where it matters

–addressing the evening to-do list that gets in the way of rest

–how an “all or nothing” mentality keeps us from starting

–using time limits to your benefit

–an alternative to “rage cleaning” 

–problem of filling a planner with wishful thinking or buying a planner with the wishful thinking done for you!

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About Mystie:
Mystie and her husband Matt are both second-generation homeschoolers, living in Idaho, with two graduates, three still at home, and one grandbaby. Mystie is author of the book Simplified Organization: Learn to Love What Must Be Done. She helps moms beat overwhelm & perfectionism through simple baby steps so they can love being homemakers.

Grab Mystie's Free Family Tidy Habit resource here:
"Every day, we live life in our homes and things get messy. Every day, we have to reclaim order and reset our stage. Get Mystie's Free Guide to a Daily Family Tidy." Habit: https://simplyconvivial.com/ehap

Be sure to check out her book Simplified Organization.

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Transcript

 Welcome back to the Sensational Moms podcast today. I am so excited to be here with Misty Winkler as we kick off the start of the new year talking about household management and habits. You might be familiar with Misty's resources, her books, and her membership support through the convivial circle, but maybe you're like me and I first met Misty through Scollay Sisters podcast years ago.

If you haven't met her, let me share a little bit about Misty. Misty and her husband Matt are both second generation homeschoolers living in Idaho with two graduates. and three still at home, and one grandbaby.  Misty is author of the book Simplified Organization, Learn to Love What Must Be Done. She helps moms beat overwhelm and perfectionism through simple baby steps so that they can love.

being homemakers. Baby steps. That is perfect.

Yes.

what we need as we are staring down the new year, right? So welcome today, Misty.

Thank you so much for having me on Whitney. 

So many moms are easily overwhelmed by the visual clutter and messes in our homes. And as we're looking at the new year, We're looking at all of these shiny new tools that are going to fix our overwhelm, right? These are sure shots, you know, one stop shops, but they often really sell us short. But the problem is real because it affects our mood and it affects our interactions that we have with others on a daily basis. 

But we have a hard time figuring out how to manage the daily Thank you. responsibilities that can be so overwhelming as homemakers. So as we enter a new year, January screens decluttering, right?  It is everywhere. And we have a tendency to do that, right? Throw everything out, donate it, trash it, and then a few months pass by and we are staring the same problem in the face. 

I wonder why. So I'm happy to have you here with us today because you are passionate about homemaking and mindset. And mindset is so easily overlooked in the search for that one stop shop that's going to fix all of our problems and never does. Right?

Yes, it really is. I, one of the things that I like to, uh, point out is what metaphors we use to talk about ourselves and our life and that clutter situation and the like start of a new year and wanting to be whole new people

Yes.

one of those times where we really need to look at that and say like, what are we trying to be or do and what do we really want our home to be?  And, and sometimes the, Like whole fresh new system and clean and organize the whole house. That's the goal which  like doesn't actually ever happen. 

Right. Right. Certainly not all at once.

Yeah, is just is too much,  and it's so easy to slip into that all or nothing  and thinking that we have to set things up as if life runs like a machine. And if I just installed the right software.  everything would go without a hitch. And that's not the way life is, especially home life with a bunch of kids, especially homeschool life.  We just have to be very responsive and adaptive, more like we're working triage at a hospital than like we're running a machine. 

I love that metaphor. That is spot on. Yes.  Yes,

think of it like an emergency room triage, like every day. It's a lot of times chaos there, but that's their job,

right. And balance, I think, is another one of those words that can draw us in with this lore. Um, I don't know that we will ever achieve perfect balance as humans, nevertheless, homemakers and mothers. So, um, triage, again, yes, figuring out what needs the most of our attention at that time and leaning into that. 

So, can you share a little bit with us about Your shift from looking for that perfect system or software as you were talking about, um, to realizing that it really, you have to start with the heart and the mindset. 

Yeah. When I was,  um, you know, before I started homeschooling, just having babies in the little years,  thought that my. I would spend my time then getting everything set up just right  so that then I wouldn't really have to think about it.  Looking back, what I really wanted was my home to be clean and dinner to be on time and the pantry to always be stocked and the laundry always be done without  me thinking about it.

And really, preferably without me doing it.  And since I was going to have to do it, was trying to get by with as little as possible  to still keep things running. And so it was kind of a desire for efficiency,  but it was actually a  disrespect of the work and a desire to not have to do the work at all.  And what I came to be convicted of  was that I actually had to  the work that God gave me to do. Not just do it begrudgingly because I had to,  not just try to pass it off thinking that the important work was,  you know, basically my pet projects. Because I was always trying to do as little as I could.

of the homemaking and housework and parenting as I had to,  so that I could do the projects that I had on my wish list, basically, as if only doing those was being productive,  other stuff was, like, have tos, that I'd just try to get out of the way as quickly as possible.  And 

I can really identify with that, Misty. I really do.  And the other things really have those projects are beautiful because they often have a beginning and an end.

Yes, you can check them off

Yes,

really ever check off laundry.

exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so, like you're saying, that certainly does have a place in our lives,  but where is our focus, really? Yeah. Yeah. So I can imagine, it sounds to me like that was not a, an overnight realization sort of thing, right?

Like most things,

that.

it was just over time, um, the holy sandpaper of motherhood, probably. Yeah. Yeah.  But I love how you leaned into that. And, you know, as I started reading your book, Simplified Organization, and I really have appreciated the encouragement. And the,  I would say, you know, in, in the conviction, you know, really, but from a place of love,  you know, I can really hear that in your tone, um, that you have a heart for encouraging moms.

So thank you for, for passing that, you know, from maybe making that, that realization a little bit easier for us and sharing that with us.  So what advice can you share for overwhelmed moms looking to just totally overhaul habits for household management in 2025? Like you're talking about new year,  new you, and we know that that's not, 

It

that's not

you're

reality.

same you when you

Yes,  yes. And you know, if you're anything like me, my kids don't even sleep well the 31st because of all the fireworks. And so New Year, new me is not  New Year sleep deprived me from staying up all night. So, yeah. So where does, does someone who's just totally overwhelmed,  where, where do you start when you're looking at habits? 

Yeah, I think especially during the intense homeschool years, like when everyone's at homeschool age, Uh, I know one of the biggest  problems I fell into was I made that big plan for how our day was going to be made over. Not just my habits, but of course other people's habits. I had a

Yeah, because we

habits.

right? We can control it. 

If I just make the list good enough, it will work.  that's not true.  so I would, you know, we would get started,  that's the beginning of a school year or the beginning of a new year. Right. And I had been thinking and planning for weeks about how  we were going to get started and everything would just be amazing because of my awesome plan. And it would  hit the kids like a ton of bricks because  They had not been thinking about how they were going to wake up different on Monday morning.  They didn't know that mom had a brand new plan for their life. 

Yes. 

And so they would have resistance and a hard time and I, it took me a couple years before I realized like, oh, this is, this is actually a me problem, not a them problem.  we need more than just the perfect list in place. And that's true for our kids. It's true for ourselves as well. Just finding the right checklist  doesn't mean you're going to wake up and do it, no matter how much you really  want to or know that it  would help.  Because we can't go from zero to 60  and also  checklists that someone else has put together for a different place and a different life and a different family just aren't going to work right out of the gate. 

But they sell so well, Miss C.

they do.  Because we really want other people to do the thinking for us. If we can't, if we can't get out of the work, maybe at least we can get out of the thinking.

Mm hmm.

But if we,  baby step into routines.  We can adapt them  to our actual family and circumstances  and that paying attention and  putting your own personal effort into it is part of what makes it actually stick and begin working for you. When you, when it's a part of you and not just,  know, an outside drill sergeant kind of thing. Sometimes we think that's what we need and it really isn't. What we really need is to be personally engaged with the process ourselves, 

So, leaning into the routine,  but the routine isn't handed to us  on a silver

right? There's not a perfect routine that's going to magically work right out of the gates.  even,  you know,  that works for a short amount of time or for a period isn't going to work forever either. So even if you've found a routine that works.  some point, it's not going to work anymore.  that's not a problem with the, it's not a problem at all. Actually. It's just the reality that  either we move and our homes change and need different kinds of maintenance. Uh, our kids change, they grow,  they are able to do more chores, different chores, no chores. Uh, there are more of them. They eat different, they have different activities, like home making and home management really is about being. Just personally engaged with managing  life, which is,  you know, always growth, always changing. 

Right. So, because it's always growing and changing, it sounds like we need to be intentional about putting in that Um, review time to look at those routines that we have in place as our Children grow as things get busy or maybe less busy, um, adjusting as needed

Mm hmm.

in that, 

yeah, and not thinking that that's a problem, that something's broken.  Change is just needed. 

yeah, yeah, there's so many other things in life that are once and done, but  household management is not one of those things.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.  So what is the top habit that you would recommend as a starting point for a mom who feels like the day to day demands  are just drowning her with it when it comes to the household management? 

Um,  I have  three home routines. They're daily home routines, but they are all  15 or 10 minutes each spread out in the day. But I think if you put these in place,  everything's not going to be magically clean or indefinitely. Everything is not going to magically go your way,  but doing them helps you kind of keep that baseline  it helps you stay engaged and be  in your home paying attention  than  looking elsewhere and getting distracted by trying to find  all in one package system that's going to solve everything. Instead, just taking these small steps  day in your own home.  And that's  15 minute morning routine, a 15 minute evening routine,  and then a transformation 10 is what we like to call it.

Okay.

but the, the 15 minute morning and evening routine is different for everybody.  But the important thing is that it's  15 minutes.  It, because it's so easy to, you know, make a list  and to think of all the things that you would love to get done every morning. And everything would be amazing if I did all these things every morning,  but then that never works.  You never get to all the things. And so you quickly give up on it  it's actually too much to do most days.  so if you kind of take the opposite approach and  out. By trial and error,  what the most basic, the minimum morning and evening routines are,  then you stick with those. And you actually  begin getting traction and are able to add more on  because  you're doing the basics. It's easier to build on that later.

Yes.

like to get to a, like, clear and clean space. Like, I have to scratch everything. I have to start fresh. And everything has to be clean.  And then I'll be able to do a new,  you know, routine system or a new habit, but everything has to be  ready to go first. And  that's one reason why we never get any  in places.

Cause

Yeah.

that just doesn't happen in family life.

Yeah, it certainly yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah. So instead  you just say, well,  um,  for 15 minutes in the morning, I'm going to,  you know,  maybe just take care of the breakfast. I'm going to spend five minutes taking care of the breakfast stuff.  five minutes in my bedroom, making my bed, doing a little tidying,  uh, start a load of laundry.  And if you do that,  it's, it's not enough to  keep everything rolling, but it's enough  keep the basics going. And you have to figure out what that is for your family. Cause like we,  you know, mine isn't taking care of breakfast stuff because my kids do that.  So I do five minutes in my bedroom.  And five minutes in a bathroom.  Uh, so I just pick whichever bathroom is the worst one. That's the one I spend five minutes making better, but it's just five minutes. It's not even clean the whole bathroom. It's like, I have five minutes. And when you get yourself under that timer feeling,  you end up choosing the most important things to do  when you have that time pressure.  And it's like, oh, well, I'm not going to be doing this forever. I don't have to figure out what done is. I don't have to keep cleaning until there's nothing more to clean. I'm just going to be in here for five minutes.  What's the most I can do in that time?  and that ends up giving you a practice in seeing what matters most. And that's where the real help in being engaged in the process comes from. 

yeah, I can see that being especially helpful for me in the evenings,  because in evenings, you know the children are in bed.  Eventually, and, and it's so tempting to then stay up until.  Way too late. And we all know how important sleep is. I talk with moms all the time about how important sleep is. And before you know it, you know, you sure you spent an hour cleaning and you're going to wake up to a clean living room or whatever the case is, but you're going to be so exhausted that you're going to lose your patience more easily with your kids and you won't feel any better.

Certainly. Yeah, I like that. I think I'm going to take that and use it, especially in my evenings.  to just make myself stop and rest. Um,  so that you said there were 15 in the morning and the evening and then there was a 10.

transformation 10. So this is kind of instead of like the grand home cleaning plan,  whatever version of that, you know, you want to be trying in the new year instead of  to figure out the schedule to keep ahead on cleaning. It's every day in the morning, look around and  Notice what area is driving you crazy that day.

Like, what's the worst?  And then you, you identify what's really bothering you or what place is the worst, what really, what have you been procrastinating on.  You pick that  thing that's irritating you and you spend ten minutes on it.  And  by doing that, you actually gain a lot more momentum and traction  you're taking care of those things that are bothering you. So you're starting with those things, and you get a real sense of control, self control

Yeah.

by doing that.  And then  all the time we hear from ladies that they can get so much more done in 10 minutes than they ever thought. Because so much of the time you look at all the things and you're like, I don't have enough time to do all of it. You know, this, I'm going to have to wait until I have two hours before I can tackle anything. And it just kind of cuts through all those excuses. And that buildup of tension and anxiety about the house. And you just say, Nope, just 10 minutes. So I don't have to  know what clean is. I don't have to know how long the job is going to take.

I don't have to know what the parameters of the job are.  just going to  tidy my pantry for 10 minutes. I'm just going to wash dishes for 10 minutes. I'm just going to fold all those laundry baskets for 10 minutes and we'll see how far I get.  And when you approach it that way, a lot of times you end up working faster  because your time is limited. So you get a lot more done in that time. And then I think it's most effective if you do just move on. Sometimes we have ladies where, you know, it's just getting started is the hardest part. And the timer helps get started because it's like, okay, here we go.  And then they want to keep going.  Which can be fine,  but sometimes it's actually very helpful to just move on and do something else after that and just notice that 10 minutes was  enough to make progress.

And you can always do 10 minutes later and to give yourself that sense of time control instead of waiting for the  obsession to come on. I know that's what I do.

Yes. Yes.

just want to get, go all in on something and that's actually

sustainable. It is. It is.

Yeah.

And it ends up, I was actually, I was talking with my, with a friend about that this morning and it ends up creating a feedback loop that's not good because we teach ourselves, Oh, well, it feels really good that now this area is totally clean, but you've fed yourself with a habit that is not sustainable.

And. Yeah, in the long run, it doesn't serve you and it teaches you the opposite

Yes.

what you're really going after. Um, yeah, in fact, as I'm sitting here thinking about what you said, Misty, two things really stand out. One is, I just need to do what I tell my kids. And here's what I mean by that. Um, I have a kid who has a really hard time cleaning his room.

And  I Have used that approach with him, you know, just give me 10 minutes of focused attention. It is, as long as you were doing your best for 10 minutes, then you can move on and we can come back to it later. You know, just use that for myself, right?  Yeah. Yeah, that, that really, that really stood out to me.

And also,  you know, like you're saying, sometimes that obsession hits you. I'm not sure if you can identify with this, but there have been days where we've been doing lessons and I look around and the mess just kind of starts yelling at me. Right. Um, and we, we will call it off. We'll call off, you know, I can't deal with this anymore.

We have to clean. This room, we have to get to the bottom of this and  that's not sustainable,  but also to acknowledge the fact that it's okay to realize that we feel so visually overwhelmed by how much stuff is in the way. And we do need to do something about it. Right. But if we use that timer and those minutes and in those moments, right.

And just say, I'm going to honor the fact that this is driving me crazy, but we're going to only do it for 10 minutes and then we're going to come back, you know, um, I can see it being useful then as well.

That's true.

I call it rage cleaning. I don't know if that's a thing, but  rage cleaning is not sustainable. 

well, sometimes you look around and you're like, well, at least I could actually probably clean that table  when, you know, teaching fractions to the child seems to not be working.

Yes, yes, I can

it's,

that I, 

cleaning or procrastination cleaning sometimes.

yes.  And then I could feel like I did something.

Yes. 

Thank you. That's so helpful.  Um,  yeah, those are, that's so helpful as we look into, as we look into the new year instead of chasing the, the shiny new planner. I almost, um, I almost bit that advertisement the other day. I won't say what planner it was, but, you know, it had the cleaning schedule, you know, On it, and I'm sure many of those have it.

Many planners have it now, but  you know, as you're as you're sitting in the clutter of the end of December, in the wrapping paper everywhere and ways that haven't found a place.

Yes.

It's so easy to just think, okay, well, there's going to be a magic bullet and this must be it. I'll just do what it tells me to do.

You know, I know it says Monday to mop the floors. Never mind Monday that we are never home in the afternoon. You know, you know what I mean? And then it starts to

Yes.

pile up and then at the end of the week you look at it and you think  What did I what did I do? You know, I didn't any of these boxes. None of these boxes got checked and that's something else that you've talked about.

Um, I know with convivial circle talking about the importance of actually using our planner,  like we often will buy, buy a planner and write everything down and then, you know, sitting down and actually checking in with it and using it as a skill. Um,  so making that time,  whether it's the morning routine or the evening, you know, figuring out and actually using that is important.

So important.

Yeah. You have to, it turns out you have to write things down and then look at what you wrote down. if you do that, pretty much any planner is going to work. But the other problem is just filling our planners with wishful thinking or buying a planner that already has the wishful thinking filled in for us, which is what those cleaning checklists are. I think you just feel like a failure because you didn't do all these. extras that you basically signed yourself up for, but you did actually do the important work, which was parenting your children, homeschooling,  you know, dealing with whatever things came up.  If you did that, that was your job,  all the others  weren't, but that's what's written down or, you know, pre populated on your list,

Yes.

or we fill up our lists with our wishful thinking and not with reality, and then our planar doesn't work. 

Yes. And our planner ends up becoming another form of visual clutter and then add to the mental clutter because we haven't really sat down to clarify what is important in that moment and we're dealing with layers of expectation that might not be important at that time. 

Well, thank you so much Misty for for joining us today. I know that as  after our conversation, I have at least two action steps that I can take as I'm prepping for the new year and looking at looking at things that I want to improve in our household and. Most importantly, you know, my own mindset as I'm leaning into that personal growth that we are looking at starting a new year.

So,  I encourage all of my listeners to take just one small action step and to show up faithfully, and you will see encouraging results as a result of that. So, Misty does have a great resource to share if you do need a place to start. This resource is all about her daily family tidy habit.  So, you describe it like this, every day we live life in our homes and things get messy.

And that is so true.  Every day we have to reclaim that order and reset the stage. So, that resource that you have is available, I'll put it in the show notes with the link. And that sounds like a great thing to take advantage of too, as a, as a starting point in that transformation this new year. So, thank you so much, Misty, it's been, it's been a pleasure talking with you.

Well, thank you so much for having me.