EP 16: Feminine Freedom Part 2 - Reclaiming Your Time, Energy, and Sanity

It's time to stop doing it all. From remembering every little thing to cleaning up after everyone, the invisible load at home is real… and it's draining your energy, your creativity, and your joy.

In part two of the Feminine Freedom series, Carly shares a personal story that might sound way too familiar — a sunny Saturday turned into a cleaning fight with her fiancé. (Yep, we’ve all been there.) But instead of staying stuck in resentment, she made a bold move: she outsourced it.

This episode is a call to stop micromanaging your home life and start asking a new question: Who can help me? Not how can I do more. It's a shift that successful women make — and one that could give you your time, energy, and spark back.

Carly unpacks the conditioning that keeps women stuck in the domestic default, breaks down the emotional cost of doing it all, and offers real, doable mindset shifts that’ll help you reclaim your weekends (and your sanity).

Key Takeaways:

• You’re not lazy — you’re over-functioning: And it’s time to stop.
• “Who Not How” is your new mantra: Ask for help, outsource, delegate.
• Control is costing you: Let go of perfection and create more magic.
• Your time is valuable: Reclaim it. Protect it. Spend it on what actually matters.
• Let your home support you. Not the other way around.

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Carly): Foreign welcome to Coffee with Carly, your weekly wake up call to a happier, healthier life. I'm your host, Carly Shade, and I'm here to uncover how good life can get. It was a beautiful spring day and the sun was shining. And for those of you who are familiar with the Pacific Northwest winter, you know the kind of magic that just a sunny spring day can breathe back into your life. Plus, it was Saturday.

0:00:40 - (Carly): It was the kind of day that we dream of. And yet I was inside fighting with my fiance about cleaning the house. Not exactly the blissful weekend vibe that I was going for. Welcome back everyone to Coffee with Carly, your weekly wake up call to a life that feels as good as it looks. And if you're new here, welcome. You're also smack dab inside a special miniseries on my podcast called Feminine Freedom.

0:01:09 - (Carly): Think of this series as a new blueprint for sustainable success. It encourages women to stop fighting our nature and rewrite the rules that are keeping us tired, overwhelmed and broke. So this four part series, think of it. Think of each episode like a layer of a pyramid. Okay, so part one, last week's episode was your foundation, all about health. We talked about hormonal cycles, rhythm and flow. And part two, today is your home. The next layer of the pyramid, where your energy goes when you're not at work.

0:01:44 - (Carly): Where many of us are so silently drained without realizing it. So if you've ever felt like you're doing everything at home, the laundry, the dishes, the trip, planning, the birthday parties, just the simple remembering of everything, you're not imagining it and you are not alone. Women spend an average of 2 extra hours per day on unpaid domestic labor compared to men. And that adds up to about over a month of unpaid work each year.

0:02:15 - (Carly): And it's not just the cleaning. It is the remembering, the managing of it all, the mental load. And so studies link this invisible labor to higher stress, burnout, depression, and lower satisfaction in relationships. Clearly, this is something that we need to address if we're going to create a life that feels as good as it looks. You know, a life that isn't about surviving, but thriving. You know, last week I talked about just trying to stay on the accelerating treadmill.

0:02:44 - (Carly): That's not what we're going for. And while it's easy to blame society, our husbands, our kids, this is where I'm going to offer a little tough love. Yes, society has shaped this. Yes, your partner might be dropping the ball, but here's what changed for me is realizing that I was choosing to stay in the cycle. So there's this amazing book. You should all read it. We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rogers.

0:03:14 - (Carly): And in the book, she talks about these broke ass decisions or bad decisions, B A D. And you all know them. They're the ones that are keeping you emotionally broke, financially broke, energetically broke. You get the idea. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, bitter, frustrated by this invisible labor at home, it's not a personal failure, but it is a sign that it's time to try something different. And it's going to start with you.

0:03:43 - (Carly): Because you do 90% of the chores, even though you and your husband both work full time, that's a decision. You let your kids distract you 57 times a day and therefore those tasks that should take 30 minutes take you all day, That's a decision. You've somehow become the maid, the chef, the dishwasher, the laundress, the dog trainer, the therapist, etc. Your decisions got you there. And okay, maybe you're thinking, well, aren't women just better at this? Isn't this just part of what we do?

0:04:15 - (Carly): Let me be clear, everyone. Being stressed, overextended and exhausted is not part of being a woman. And actually planning, organized, controlling, those are all masculine energy traits. We've just consumed them. Okay, it is time to stop giving away our power. It's time to start over. Stop overextending and remember that your home is supposed to be this amazing place that supports you, not the other way around.

0:04:46 - (Carly): Right? Remember the Marie Kondo method? Like, your house should spark joy and it's there to support you. So when Matt and I first bought our house, it was a major life upgrade. Like years and years of bouncing around the tiny apartment. So small that even if you purposely tried to make a mess, you could clean it up in under like an hour. But now we have this living space that's twice the size and we own it. I mean, it's amazing. But cleaning takes way longer. And suddenly all those deep cleaning tasks that you kind of didn't care about because you were renting are now less avoidable.

0:05:23 - (Carly): And so here are Matt and I on a Saturday, our own only day off that overlaps basically, and we're fighting. Or if it's another Saturday and I win, we're wasting it cleaning. So this has been going on for a while. And finally I was just venting about it with a friend and they suggested that we get a cleaner. I'm like, what? A cleaner? Like a house cleaner? I was like, that feels so dramatic. Very extra.

0:05:51 - (Carly): Like we're perfectly capable adults. We can clean our own house. We don't even make that much. It just really felt out of reach. And I was like, no, this is sticky. This is not for us. But I couldn't stop thinking about what they said. And eventually it did lead to my who, not how breakthrough. So instead of asking, how do I fix this? I asked, who can help me fix this? Well, guess what? We hired a cleaner, and the fight stopped.

0:06:21 - (Carly): And we got our Saturdays back, and our relationship improved, and we gained hours of our life back. So this is the idea of who, not how. Okay? And I know, I know, I know, I know. I can already feel all your little objections wherever you are, in the car, in the house you're probably cleaning right now, let's be honest. I can feel your objections. The first one. Carly, I can't afford this. Okay, let's talk about it.

0:06:51 - (Carly): Let's say a cleaner cost $200 for four hours. Just to also give you an idea, our cleaner is less than that. So $200 is probably like a higher end budget, depending on the size of your house. But let's say a cleaner costs $200 for four hours. Could you do it yourself? Sure. Would it take longer and leave you drained also? Yes. So what is your time worth? What could you create, solve, build, or rest into those four hours that you just now got back?

0:07:25 - (Carly): Okay, so this is the energetic shift that successful women make. They go from what will it cost me? To what will it create for me? What is the value? What can I do with these four hours instead of cleaning? Because you are successful. You're smart, you're motivated, you're talented, you're creative, like, or you just need to rest. But either way, those things are going to put you on the path to feeling good, to being successful, to all those things.

0:07:58 - (Carly): Okay, so what is your time worth? $200 for four hours. What could you do with that? I guarantee that you could do a lot more than just cleaning your house. And so having my Saturdays back, it changed everything. I now had time to snuggle my man, go to the beach, write my next podcast episode. I got to do things that lit me up, gave me energy, and kept me creatively inspired. Okay, Living your life is good for business.

0:08:28 - (Carly): Successful women make. If we want to be supported, we have to give up control, even if it's done differently than how we might do it ourselves. So here's what happened when I let go of control and I let Matt do it his way. Matt and I travel quite a bit, and I was just sick of Doing a lot of the bookings. So here we are in Boston for a wedding, and I leave it up to him to book the rental car, and we show up and he booked it for the wrong day. And they're totally out of cars except one.

0:09:03 - (Carly): And it happens to be a Porsche. Was it double what we planned to spend? Yep. Did we still book the Porsche? You bet your ass we did. And I got to sit in the passenger seat pretending like we were old money rich, cruising down the coast like we owned the damn place. Okay? And you want to know what? Now I have a really good story. And that moment only happened because I let go, Because I stopped micromanaging and I let someone else do it their way, right? We want magic to come into our lives. We want to start receiving. Like we're ready to see how the universe can spoil us.

0:09:43 - (Carly): But if we're constantly controlling and planning and doing all of that and kind of stuck in this masculine energy, we aren't able to receive. Receiving is a very feminine quality, a very feminine energy, remember? And so it's like we're waiting for this magic and these surprises, but, like, we're not letting it breathe, okay? And so let go of control. It doesn't plan the way you want, but it still got to be a fun story. That's how life was.

0:10:13 - (Carly): And so I want you guys to know that this idea of who, not how, it can apply to so much more than just our homes, right? Like, you know that saying, you don't need to do less, you need to do more of what lights you up? Well, like, we see this in business all the time too. There's someone who might build a successful, you know, career business doing what they love. They're in their zone of genius. And then they think that to keep growing, they need to shift to start to doing all the back end stuff, right? The automations, the funnels, the scheduling. And all of a sudden, they're burned out and their business suffers because now 75% of their time is doing the stuff they hate.

0:10:50 - (Carly): What could they have created with all those hours? They got their time back, right? How much could you have made instead of what would it cost to hire an assistant? So remember, that's the idea of who, not how, not what will it cost me, but what can I create with this? Is it rest? Is it having the amazing relationship? Is it getting to spend time with my family? And then again, because you're happy, because you're spending your weekends lit up, you're energized, every other area of Your life will start to improve.

0:11:24 - (Carly): Living your life is good for business. And look, I get it. I've been there. I mean, you just heard all of my personal stories. Overwhelmed, resentful, carrying it all. I mean, even when I quit my job to intentionally create space in my life and explore and engage with life and just kind of figure out what's next, those first couple months after quitting, I let myself slide back into that domestic default and I let myself believe that, well, I'm at home more than Matt, so, like, I should absorb all these duties.

0:12:01 - (Carly): But that's not why I quit my job. I didn't quit my job to clean. And no one forced me to do that. It was actually just me against myself at home. And the truth is, no one is gonna come rescue you from your to do list, okay? So stop waiting for somebody else to give you the okay to to quit this to do list. If you want a different experience, you are going to have to make different decisions. You do not need to do it all.

0:12:29 - (Carly): You just need a new way of doing it. You need to ask who, not how. Okay? So let your home support you, not the other way around. All right, next week we are diving into part three of this feminine freedom, focusing on more bad brain broke ass decisions. And these are the ones that are actually keeping us broke because we're going to be focusing on wealth. So if you are loving this podcast, be sure to subscribe, follow, do all the things. Leave a rating.

0:13:01 - (Carly): You'll see it all on your podcast screen, wherever you're listening. And as always, if anything landed with you, I love, love hearing about it. I love co creating with you guys in this podcast. Like, I get inspired these series, these episodes. I'm living my life. I'm talking to my friends, I'm hearing their qualms, their problems, their stories, my own things. And that's kind of what inspires me to create.

0:13:24 - (Carly): So if things land with you, you know, I welcome the feedback. And if you just have ideas or you want to hear about something like, shoot me an email, send me a DM on Instagram, tag me in your story, share. I love seeing it. And as always, stay bold, stay balanced, and I will see you all next week. Bum.