Rachel Nielsen, host of the 3 in 30 Podcast, joins Wendy on the Fresh Start Family Show to discuss ‘decluttering motherhood’. Rachel shares her personal journey of feeling overwhelmed and the pressure to meet societal expectations as a stay-at-home mom.
She emphasizes the importance of inventorying your overwhelm, editing your expectations, and making room for more joy in motherhood. Rachel encourages moms to let go of ‘shoulds’ and embrace their own unique definition of a good mom. She also suggests getting creative and delegating tasks to lighten the load and create space for joy.
Tune in to be encouraged, inspired & motivated to unburden your motherhood by letting go of all the ‘shoulds’ you can in 2024!
Episode Highlights:
- Declutter your motherhood by inventorying your overwhelm and identifying the shoulds and shame that are weighing you down.
- Edit your expectations by letting go of the shoulds that don’t align with your values and finding creative ways to modify or delegate tasks.
- Make room for more joy in motherhood by identifying activities and experiences that spark joy for you and your family and finding ways to incorporate them into your life.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Rachel on Instagram
3 in 30 website
Catch Wendy’s interview on the 3 in 30 Podcast!
Enjoy a discount on Rachel’s Decluttering Your Mothering Course with this link and the code FRESHSTART10
Treat yourself to one of her amazing Flecks of Gold Journals and enjoy a discount when using our link!
Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!
0:00:00 – (Rachel): You.
0:00:03 – (Wendy): Well, hey there, families, and welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family show. I am thrilled to be here with today with my friend Rachel Nielsen from the 3 in 30 podcast and takeaways for mom. Welcome, moms. Welcome to the show, Rachel. I feel like I just butchered that. Let me do that again.
0:00:21 – (Rachel): You’re fine for me.
0:00:25 – (Wendy): I, when I go from being interviewed to then interviewing because I did two interviews this morning for me. You know what I mean? And then it’s like always a weird transition to then when I’m hosting. I don’t know if you run into that.
0:00:36 – (Rachel): Oh, and starting and stopping the beginning and ending my episodes is the literal worst.
0:00:42 – (Wendy): Yes.
0:00:43 – (Rachel): At the end.
0:00:43 – (Wendy): I agree.
0:00:44 – (Rachel): Well, thanks. It was cool. Bye. Like, I have no idea what to say once you get past the first five minutes.
0:00:52 – (Wendy): It’s good. All right. Daniel, my editor, thank you for ditching that part.
0:00:58 – (Rachel): Okay.
0:00:59 – (Wendy): Well, hey there, families, and welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family show. I am thrilled to be here today with my friend Rachel Nielsen from 3 in 30 takeaways for Moms podcast. Welcome to the show, Rachel.
0:01:13 – (Rachel): Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
0:01:16 – (Wendy): Yes. So, families today we are going to be talking about how we can declutter our motherhood, and Rachel’s going to speak wisdom about how we can declutter our shoulds in motherhood like you would a closet, which I love the idea of this. I’ve always thought that decluttering is such a great concept to bring into our mothering and parenting. And so I’m really excited to chat about this today, Rachel. But can you start us off by just telling us a little bit more about your story, how you became so passionate about what you do now with your podcast, which I must say, man, your show is incredible. Rachel, I know that you have also built a community of families who just adores you and loves your show.
0:02:05 – (Wendy): I had the honor of being on your show back on episode 266, where we talked about parenting strong willed kids, and I just had the nicest people message me and get to know my work through being a guest on your show. So I know you have curated a beautiful community and just put together a fantastic show that I’m so excited for listeners to go check out. And really, all your work is just wonderful. But tell us a little bit more about you, where you live, how old your kids are, a little bit more about your motherhood story and why you’re so passionate about what you do.
0:02:40 – (Rachel): Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for all those kind words about my show. I love doing it. So for anybody listening, it’s 3 takeaways in 30 minutes. That’s why it’s called 3 in 30. And Wendy, your episode was a hit. I think we must have a lot of parents in my audience who have strong willed kids, which makes sense because I think they’re drawn to me because I have strong willed kids. So I’ve talked a lot about the ups and downs and what that’s like to have these, as you call them, cactus kids, one in particular for me.
0:03:10 – (Rachel): And so I think my audience is really hungry for that. So I’m so glad that they came over and got to know more of your work. So I live a little bit about me. I live in the mountains of Idaho with my two miracle babies and my husband. And they’re not babies anymore, but they’ll always be babies to me. My son Noah is adopted, and my daughter Sally was conceived through ivf. So it was a journey to become a mom.
0:03:35 – (Rachel): And I was a high school english teacher prior to having my babies and absolutely loved teaching. Felt really like I felt very competent. At the end of the day, I knew that I did that job well, that I was passionate. And not just passionate, I was skilled and I was making a difference. But I happily put it aside because I thought after I fought so hard for these babies, I’m just going to love every minute of being a stay at home mom.
0:04:07 – (Rachel): So I quit my teaching job and started staying home and was totally blindsided by how difficult motherhood is. Particularly for me anyway, stay at home motherhood. And that I was not prepared for. And to have gone from feeling so competent at the end of every day to feeling like I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t manage my daily routines. This baby will never stop crying. I waited so long and fought so hard. Why am I not loving every minute of this?
0:04:41 – (Rachel): So on top of what I think is already a difficult transition anyway, becoming a mom for the first time, I was piling on all of the shoulds that were making it so much worse. I was adding to my own suffering by all of the shame of, you should be better at this. You should be more grateful. If anybody knew how much you were struggling, they would judge you. Just all of this really toxic, negative self talk and went to a lot of therapy, thank goodness. And I’m so grateful for therapy and really came to a place of.
0:05:16 – (Rachel): I wouldn’t say that I’m like, no longer feel shoulds, because I do. But thanks to therapy, I have a lot more tools to be able to recognize, like, oh, that is like an expectation that’s coming from outside of me and do I want to take it on? Do I not want to take it on? What feels right to me and my gut about my motherhood and really have found a much happier place as a mom. And it was really through the journey of doing my own work that I decided to start my show.
0:05:49 – (Rachel): I missed teaching so much but didn’t want to go back full time, especially because with high school English, there’s so much grading. I knew it was just going to be. I wanted more time with my family than that, but I still miss teaching and so I started my show. And so now I get to teach and be home with my kids, kind of do them both at the same time, and have really come to a much more peaceful place in my parenting over the last eleven years.
0:06:16 – (Rachel): My son’s eleven, so it’s been a decade.
0:06:20 – (Wendy): So cool. And I love it because our little guys are almost the same age. So my little guy is going to be 13 in October and yours will be twelve this year. Or do you just turn eleven?
0:06:31 – (Rachel): I’ll be twelve in August.
0:06:32 – (Wendy): Yeah. And I know I’ve watched you lately, been sharing about the struggles to remain confident in being different, especially around technology and video games and those type of things. And I am just so right there with you, by the way. That’s like just so strong right now. And I went through it with my daughter and the cell phones and social media and having her wait till high school, but we’re just back in the thick of it right now with Karen. And I’m like, man, this is intense and just so many emotions to move through as you hold to that beautiful, strong boundary that is so good for them and the whole family. So I’ve been connecting a lot with you about that lately.
0:07:13 – (Wendy): Yeah, well, awesome. And I love your story is so cool and unique and I love how openly you share about it. And I just love your story about how with Noah, you’ve done an open adoption, right? Where you stay in touch with his birth.
0:07:31 – (Rachel): Yeah, his birth family. And it’s been a tremendous blessing, I think. Before he was born, I knew I wanted open adoption, if that’s what the birth families wanted. But I think I mostly thought because it would be good for Noah, I could see how good it would be for him. I didn’t realize then how incredibly powerful it would be for me to have that experience of sharing love so fully and having these other people who deeply love my son and to be able to share the highs and lows with them and have a relationship with them. And we’re so fortunate that we’re close to both his birth mother’s family and his birth father’s family. So it’s been incredibly special and a huge blessing. And I know that it can’t be that way for all situations with adoption, but I’m just so grateful that it’s been that way in our situation.
0:08:27 – (Wendy): Wow. So cool. And you mentioned babies crying. Did you have colicky babies like I did by chance?
0:08:34 – (Rachel): Just Noah. Noah was incredibly colicky, and he was my know, so it just really rocked my world. And then when my second came along and was like, I thought she was an angel baby. And all of my friends are like, no, this is what? A normal baby? I think you just really had a hard first. Yeah, we do the same thing.
0:09:01 – (Wendy): I just had a baby shower in Arizona, and I was holding my little cousin’s baby all weekend. She was hosting the shower, and I just came home, and I’m like, terry, this normal baby, it was so easy. You just hold it and it stops, or you sit it down and it sits.
0:09:20 – (Rachel): She just would fall asleep in her chair without me needing to. And it was so foreign to me after my first.
0:09:27 – (Wendy): Yeah.
0:09:28 – (Rachel): Yeah.
0:09:29 – (Wendy): Both of mine had colic. Rachel. How crazy is that?
0:09:32 – (Rachel): Lucky you.
0:09:34 – (Wendy): Yeah. I’m like, man, it’s okay. We made it through. But, yeah, I always think it’d be fascinating to, like, I’m always like, I’m going to go back and get my master’s in something, and every week it’s something different. But I would love to do some type of study around the relationship between strong wills and colic and see if there’s any relationship between more kids that are strong willed have colic or not.
0:09:59 – (Wendy): I just think it’s interesting because Stella definitely came into the world. That’s how our relationship started. And she was my firstborn, and then she was gifted with that beautiful, strong will also. And, holy smokes, it rocks you to your core. And then you hit toddlerhood, and you’re like, oh, wow, this continues to be a. It’s.
0:10:22 – (Rachel): I’ve often wondered that, too. So if you ever find the studies or yourself, I want to know, because I do often think, like, Noah came out with a strong say. Like, he smashed my delusions of having control from the very first day. And I say that kind of lovingly, but in jest, but also in a loving way, where I am grateful because I never had. After parenting him, I didn’t have delusions that I was a perfect parent or that if I just parented this exact way, my kids would turn out a certain way or that I could sort of compel them to be obedient. Because from the very beginning he showed me that that wasn’t true.
0:11:05 – (Rachel): And so I’m a better parent because I had to humble myself and search for answers and pray a lot and love this child just as he was, instead of thinking that I could cookie cutter him into who I wanted him to be. And it’s made me a better parent for my more easy going daughter because I had that stronger willed first.
0:11:28 – (Wendy): I completely agree with all of that. Amen. Amen. Amen. And when you’re in the thick of it, it’s tough to see it. And then you pull back by a decade or Stella’s almost 16 now. We found it when she was 13 and it is just. You can see it so clearly once you zoom out and you realize they’re just such a gift to the world. And holy smokes, are they intense. So having shows like yours and the fresh start family show, of course, are just so important.
0:11:58 – (Wendy): Right. We just need that consistent encouragement that we’re doing a great job and there’s lots of education to be had and as long as we keep learning and growing and being open and all the things, then we’re going to be it. Rachel and I must say that I’ve enjoyed following you this winter because holy smokes, the amount of snow that you have lived in this year, how is that possible?
0:12:26 – (Rachel): You were like living in an know. It was. It’s always snowy here because it’s the mountains of Idaho. But this winter was epic. It was one of our biggest in years. So, yeah, we had like 4ft of snow in our yard until like a week ago. And it’s the beginning of May, so there’s no snow on the ground anymore. It all melted pretty quick once we hit 60s, but it hadn’t been 60 since September so it was like an eight month long, very cold, very snowy winter. So we’re all very happy now.
0:13:01 – (Wendy): Yes, I bet Idaho is beautiful. It’s one of the places that Terry and I were actually just saying the other night because we know quite a few people who have moved there. You guys probably. That’s probably a joke, all the Californians that have come to Idaho, but it is breathtakingly beautiful. And I always say, if I couldn’t be by the ocean, I would need to be by a mountain. There’s something about the peaks that bring me comfort like, the intensity of God’s creation that is so peaceful and soothing. That’s really cool.
0:13:33 – (Wendy): Awesome. Okay, well, let’s hop into our subject of the day, which is all about decluttering our parenthood or a motherhood journey. And so talk to us a little bit about this and what has caused you to really just speak life into moms about this? Give us a little tee up, and then we’ll get into some of our subtopics about this.
0:13:57 – (Rachel): Yeah. So I really had this epiphany a few years ago when my friend, who’s a professional organizer, came and helped me deeply declutter my home. I know, it was incredible. And as we did this project, I realized that so many of my physical objects held internal shoulds and shame with them. So I’m holding this salad spinner that I don’t use, and I’m having a hard time parting with it because in my head I’m like, you should feed your kids more vegetables. You should be eating more salad.
0:14:36 – (Rachel): You can’t get rid of that because good moms have salad spinners. So it was this internal process of, like, am I going to accept who I really am, or am I going to hold on to this idea of who I thought I would be or who I think I should be? Am I going to accept that it’s perfectly fine if my kids don’t eat salad anyway? So I’m making the salads, putting it on their plate, and they’re wasting it, and then I’m mad at them.
0:15:01 – (Rachel): Can we figure out a different way for them to get vegetables? Does it have to look a certain way? And so all of these physical items brought so much internal chatter for me that I thought, there’s something here. I need to unpack this and turn it into a workshop or something for the women that I serve with 3 in 30. So I really built out this metaphor of, like, we all have an internal closet we’re not even necessarily aware of, that we’re carrying around with us. That if we were to peek in there, we would see shelves full of shoulds and heavy with the mental load, and we would see our dreams stuffed back in a corner like, dusty and forgotten behind baskets of our commitments at work and home and church.
0:15:51 – (Rachel): And there’s, like, this little dusting of shame over everything of what you think you should be doing and you’re not. And I just thought, if only we could get in there and declutter that, like, we can with our literal closets. If only we could pay a professional organizer to come and help us go through that stuff and say, why are you holding this should for yourself? Where did this expectation come from?
0:16:15 – (Rachel): Does it actually fit you? Does it actually spark joy for you? Or are you ready to let this go? And so I developed this process or these takeaways. I can’t come and professionally organize your inner motherhood closet for you, but you can do that, work yourself with a little bit of guidance. And that’s what I put together in my declutter, your motherhood workshop. And what we’re going to talk about a little bit today, some of the takeaways that I teach there of how to declutter your motherhood and get rid of some of those shoulds.
0:16:47 – (Wendy): Such a great analogy. Yeah. In the freshwater experience, one of the things I coach on most commonly is that simple shift from I should to I want to really getting in touch with, like, I don’t have to do this. I could keep living life just like I am right now. But here’s what I want. Here’s the effects that I want, or here’s the long term results or the relationship or the intrinsic control muscles or the motivation, and I want to do this, but shoulds really do jack you up. And this is a beautiful analogy, Rachel.
0:17:28 – (Rachel): And I love that you pointed that out, because sometimes simply realizing that it’s your choice, like, you leave a lot of the stuff in your closet, but you choose it instead of it being like, well, I have to do this because it was given to me by my family of origin or my religion or whatever. And so I have to do this to be a good mom. It’s like, no, you don’t look at it and decide if you want it. An example for me is I really had to sort out that I told you it was really difficult for me to be a stay at home mom, but I had always been really encouraged by my religious culture, my upbringing, that to be a good woman, to be a righteous mother, you want to stay home with your children.
0:18:11 – (Rachel): And I had to unpack that and realize that there’s lots of different ways to be a good mother and that God wanted me to be happy in my motherhood. And if I was miserable doing it, that one way that I could explore a different way. And interestingly, ultimately, once I gave myself that permission, I decided that I didn’t want to go back to teaching full time, but I was choosing it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t or I shouldn’t. It’s because I looked into myself and thought, I do want to be home. More, but I don’t have to be a total full time stay at home mom if that doesn’t fit me. I can also start my show, and there can be, like, an in between here that works for me.
0:18:51 – (Rachel): That isn’t just what outside factors have handed me. It’s my choice, if that makes sense.
0:18:58 – (Wendy): Yeah. And it really takes you out of that victim mindset state and puts you into that empowered state, because feeling like you have no say. And that’s where so much of the overwhelm comes from. I think especially, I still have overwhelm, and I have worked in a lot of overwhelm in my life, but I still battle it regularly and especially in my business. So I’m going to be taking this conversation today as we’re talking about parenting. I’m also going to be applying it to my business because I know that there are things that we can talk about here that are going to apply.
0:19:32 – (Wendy): Because anywhere that you feel overwhelm or things are so cluttered that sometimes you can’t breathe or you feel like you have to or you should be doing all these things, there is such an opportunity to step into more of an empowered state and really decide, because it’s just an illusion, like, most of the time, right? Most of the time, our hands are not tied behind our backs, and we do have an ability to create the life and the legacy that we want. But, man, it sure feels like you don’t often.
0:20:03 – (Wendy): And being stuck in that victim mindset is tough to escape. And it’s possible. It is.
0:20:13 – (Rachel): Yeah. I completely agree.
0:20:16 – (Wendy): Awesome. Well, let’s hop right into number one, which is inventory your overwhelm.
0:20:21 – (Rachel): Oh, gosh.
0:20:22 – (Wendy): I got a big list. Talk to us about this.
0:20:26 – (Rachel): So I have three steps to decluttering your motherhood. And within those steps, there’s a lot of layers. But the first step that I always tell moms is inventory your overwhelm, just like you would in a closet. So if you’ve done the process of having a professionally organized closet, or even just if you’ve watched the home edit and then you went and did it yourself to your own closet, or Marie Kondo, a lot of these professional organizers will tell you, take it all out of the closet.
0:20:55 – (Rachel): So you pull everything out and you organize it into categories, and then, only then, do you start making decisions about it. When my friend professionally organized for me, I was like, why would we take it all out? Let’s just leave it in there and just thumb through it and decide, because it just seemed like a lot of work to pull it all out and then put it back in. And she said, no, you’re going to see an entirely new level of consciousness around what you put back in the closet.
0:21:24 – (Rachel): If you take it all out, stuff will have to deserve to be there for you to want to put it back in. And she was so right. Once we took it all out and I made the decisions about it, it was just much easier for me to say no, doesn’t fit me well, getting rid of that once it was out of the closet. So with your motherhood, obviously it’s not as simple as just chucking stuff in piles on your bed. But you can do something similar.
0:21:51 – (Rachel): But you have to give yourself some space to do this work where you reflect and you think about and you write and you journal. What is actually in my motherhood closet telling me that I should be doing? What is my definition of a good mom? Have I ever actually sat down and written that out and thought about it? And is it reasonable, my definition of a good mom? Does it actually fit me? Do I like this definition of a good mom?
0:22:17 – (Rachel): Are there things that I am currently saying is part of being a good mom that I actually don’t believe? But I’m still holding myself to that standard. So it takes a lot of really deep reflection to figure out what do I believe and what do I want to believe that may be different from what’s currently in my closet?
0:22:38 – (Wendy): Yeah. Things that come to mind are, like, just two things that I was thinking as you were speaking about was like, the idea of instant obedience and then also children sitting still at the dinner table. Yes. Is that something, it’s like, on all of our list, of something that makes a good family and a respectful family. And a lot of us have this cultural conditioning, not so much with the instant obedience, but with the sitting still at the dinner table. It might sound like a silly example, but I would have put that on my list, especially if my kids were younger, of like, that’s an expectation that I get to choose if that becomes like a stickler for me, or I get to take it off and give myself some grace and maybe allow the kids to have more books or even drawing stuff or toys at the dinner table instead of the strict idea that might have been in my head before I actually had real humans who I was expecting to sit still at a dinner table when they’re three.
0:23:39 – (Rachel): Yes, totally. And what’s so interesting about when you unpack, when you ask yourself, what is my definition of a good mom? Or sometimes I’ll ask myself, like, I’ll notice myself feeling guilt or shame about something, and I try to go backwards and think, where did this feeling come from? What happened that caused it? So maybe we had a really unruly family dinner. And I walk away from that feeling like I’m the worst, my kids are the worst. And I’m feeling that shame. And I go back and I think this is because my kids were so wild and they weren’t sitting still at dinner.
0:24:12 – (Rachel): So obviously I have something with that in my motherhood closet. So you kind of write it out and ask yourself, do I actually believe that to be a good mom, my kids have to sit still at dinner? And sometimes just, like, writing it out like that, you’re like, no, that is ridiculous. I don’t actually believe that. And yet I’m holding myself to that, and I’m feeling bad every night, and it’s time to release that or figure out how we can work on it.
0:24:42 – (Rachel): If I want that outcome, we can work on it, but not with so much shame and guilt for myself or my kids around this expectation.
0:24:51 – (Wendy): Yeah, I love that idea of when you put it back. It’s just with a different hanging method. Totally, than just cluttered in like a million things. Maybe that we’re going to get to that. Maybe I’m jumping ahead, but, yeah, the idea of just inventory, the overwhelm. And I’m going to tell Terry about this conversation, by the way, that, like, justified in my method. When I clean out my closet, Rachel, I literally take everything, put it on the bed. I do it with everything, whether it’s drawers, and it kind of drives them nuts. And I’m like, this is smart because I need to see the clarity and peace of the empty.
0:25:34 – (Wendy): It’s this blank slate. I get to make it whatever I want. And so picturing that in our parenthood journey, and really, obviously it makes sense because I named my company fresh shirt family, but I get so excited when I think about a fresh start, like a totally clean slate. And I’m only one person with two arms, one mouth. I can’t do all the things. So the idea of the blank journal page with getting everything off on one page, like inventory, but then also the blank page of what is it that I want out of these things, what do I want to put back? And I can just feel the piece of that and then the clarity to be able to focus on it instead of. Because I see clients all the time who are, they get so overwhelmed by all the problems and they want to solve it all at once.
0:26:28 – (Wendy): And it can be challenging to take one thing at a time, whether it’s the kids fighting or not being able to sit still at the dinner table or the rough housing or not cleaning up toys or cleaning up the room or whatever. So I think there becomes clarity when you take it all away and then you start to add it back. But not all of it.
0:26:51 – (Rachel): Yes, not all of it. Yeah. So you can really get. And this happened during the pandemic for a lot of us where all of the activities were wiped from our schedules. And so we had this clean slate. And I think a lot of people were a lot more intentional about what they put back into their life after they’d experienced that clean slate of, like, we actually didn’t miss soccer at all and we’re not going to do soccer anymore, or I didn’t miss being on the PTA, so I’m not going to do that anymore. But that was such a unique experience for life and the world to wipe our slates clean for us.
0:27:29 – (Rachel): Hopefully, that will not happen again in our lifetime. And so we have to be the ones to, every once in a while, give ourselves a fresh start, a clean slate. Like, if I could just start over, what would I actually put back into my schedule, to my busy days, to my expectations for myself? And it takes time and space to do this work. So you have to set aside some time to do this kind of journaling, but it’s really worthwhile.
0:27:54 – (Wendy): Yeah, I love that. Okay, number two, edit your expectations. Talk to us about this.
0:28:02 – (Rachel): Yeah. So after you inventory and you have it all out on your bed or whatever, in all the different categories is when you get to do those edits and decide what’s going to stay and what’s going to. And.
0:28:15 – (Wendy): Sorry, before we go on. Real quick, Rachel. Sorry, before we go on to that, tell me again. So there’s all these different categories. Do you mean like obligations, like volunteer obligations or commitments or expectations of children would be another category, or shoulds, I’m sure, through your course or through your mentorship program. Is there like a template maybe?
0:28:40 – (Rachel): Yeah, definitely. So the way that I teach people to categorize is I love the way you just described it. And a mom could totally do that and just make some categories and list out different things. One way that I do it with people is to have them look at the influences in their life as a category. So I’ll ask them, like, okay, what did you learn about motherhood from your family of origin? And there’s going to be some positives, and there’s going to be some negatives that you have brought, you have brought with you into your current.
0:29:14 – (Rachel): What you are expecting of yourself is influenced by your family of origin. What about from your religious upbringing, if you had one? What about from difficult experiences from your life? How did that impact you? For me, infertility made me feel like I should be grateful for every single minute and I should be a stay at home mom because I fought so hard for these babies. It’s like maybe, or maybe you could still be really grateful for your babies and be working outside the home.
0:29:41 – (Rachel): I had to look deeply at where does this should come from and is it really what I want? You could have a category for helps your education or your career. What has that taught you about motherhood or the type of mom you need to be or social media? So you’re kind of just like thinking about all of these influences, what all of them have told you about motherhood, and then you’re deciding, but what do I believe about motherhood? And for sure, you’re going to pull stuff from those influences and you’re going to say, I really love that my mom taught me this and I want to do that like her, but I don’t have to do this like she did.
0:30:19 – (Rachel): Or I really love that my religion taught me that God really values mothers, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be a stay at home mom to have God’s approval. So you kind of just have to do this sorting to figure out what works and what doesn’t for you. And that’s really what the second step, edit your expectations, is all about. We’re familiar with Marie Kondo, a lot of us, that she says that the physical items that you have in your closet or in your home should spark joy for you, that you should feel almost like a little energetic connection, that when you hold it, she says you should feel a little king.
0:30:56 – (Rachel): And I say something similar to moms, that the things that you have in your motherhood, in your daily life as a mom, should spark joy for you. Now, does that mean that it’s all going to be fun and no, changing my baby’s diaper is probably not going to spark joy for me a lot of the time, unless my baby is like giggling and adorable while I do.
0:31:20 – (Wendy): It, unless they don’t have colic and they there.
0:31:23 – (Rachel): Exactly. But I’m going to choose to do that anyway because the value underneath it sparks joy for me, which is having a healthy baby that feels bonded to me and knows that they’re safe with me, that sparks joy for me. So it can seem kind of like a Pollyanna concept to be like, everything in your motherhood should spark joy. But I do believe that even if the activity itself doesn’t, if the value or the outcome does, then it’s worth keeping in your motherhood closet. But there’s going to be a lot of stuff that you realize, like, really, this doesn’t spark joy for me. It doesn’t fit me. It’s not unnecessary.
0:32:02 – (Rachel): I can stop doing this, or I can get rid of this, because I’m not that kind of mom. And that’s okay.
0:32:09 – (Wendy): I love that.
0:32:10 – (Rachel): Yeah.
0:32:10 – (Wendy): And I was just thinking about.
0:32:14 – (Rachel): Some.
0:32:14 – (Wendy): Of the things when it comes to my community and what I teach and discipline versus punishment, I can see so many, as they go through this process, realizing that a lot of people think, well, you just have to punish. That’s just something you have to be. The whole idea of you’re not your kids friends. Pain is part of teaching all the things. And then to be able to put that on a list and clearly see, is that sparking me joy and hell no.
0:32:42 – (Wendy): It’s like when you discipline with compassion and when you teach and when you feel the true power of what it feels like when you show a child compassion, grace, forgiveness, and hold, affirm kind boundaries and teach an important life lesson that empowers them to make a different decision tomorrow. The power that you feel inside yourself and the connection that you have with your kid is so beautiful that absolutely sparks joy, even though it is exhausting at times.
0:33:13 – (Wendy): But it’s such a different concept than punishment, right? It’s hard to say that sparks joy in me. When you think about hitting, harming, humiliating, shaming a child, which is so traditionally put in a package of like, well, that’s just what has to happen. In order to make a child behave better, you must first make them feel worse. And it doesn’t make sense, but it’s always what culture has done. But there’s not many people who would be able to find joy in that 100%. Even though the outcome is supposedly that they’re going to learn this lesson.
0:33:46 – (Wendy): It would have to be a very twisted way to get there. That wouldn’t be easy to get there.
0:33:50 – (Rachel): Yes. And I think accepting that the way that you mother. So for me, I am naturally extremely compassionate, and I probably leaned if on the spectrum, I probably leaned towards permissive. And I know that about myself. And there’s times when I sort of should myself or shame myself of like, I should be firmer. I’m never going to go to authoritative. I’m never, like, spank and all that.
0:34:19 – (Wendy): Authoritarian.
0:34:19 – (Rachel): Yeah, but I get those two mixed.
0:34:22 – (Wendy): I know, it’s very confusing. So dumb. It’s similar words, authoritative, like healthy. Authoritarian is not autocratic, is unhealthy. It’s like, so weird.
0:34:31 – (Rachel): I know. Yes. I’m not going to go to that full extreme, but I do sometimes sort of shame myself that I should go farther to the left, that I should be more consistent, I should be sterner, I should be firmer. But when it comes down to it, that doesn’t spark joy for me. And I’ve just had to learn, like, being softer and more compassionate is what sparks joy for me. And that’s how I’m going to parent my kids.
0:34:54 – (Rachel): That does not mean that my friends, who are wonderfully consistent and a little firmer and sterner than I am, they’re probably that perfect balance that they’re doing anything wrong because everyone else is perfect. Right, exactly. That works for them. It sparks joy for them, whereas my way sparks joy for me. And that’s okay. And so letting go of a lot of the prescriptions around what even discipline can look like, because to me, there’s black and white things that are not okay with discipline.
0:35:27 – (Rachel): But on the spectrum of positive parenting and gentle parenting, there’s still a lot of different ways to do that. And you can do that in a way that sparks joy for you.
0:35:37 – (Wendy): Absolutely. I love that. And you had put also in our notes for today that once we edit our expectations, it puts you in a place where you can figure out creative ways to modify or even delegate the harder tasks so motherhood feels less heavy. So what would be an example of delegating the harder task in a motherhood journey or parenthood journey? I mean, obviously getting a house cleaner, but from a more emotional, I don’t know, what does it look like?
0:36:09 – (Rachel): I’m thinking more things like those tasks like the house cleaning or the cooking. And I’m not only talking about things you have to hire out, because I know not everybody can do that, but you can get creative and you can say, in my mind, I always thought that a good mom had a hot meal on the table and fed the family around the table every night. I’m going to release that because that doesn’t fit me. And I have no talent, skill set, or desire to do that every night.
0:36:39 – (Rachel): So I may not be able to hire a personal chef, but we can modify this, and we can have pizza Friday, where we order pizza every single Friday, or we can have cereal day once a week where we all eat cereal, or I can delegate to my partner or to some of my older children to take on dinner. So you’re just getting creative and thinking outside the box of, like, I have to. I have to be the one to do it. I’m stuck.
0:37:07 – (Rachel): And you’re letting go of some of those expectations and getting more creative. And as far as you asked, more about the more emotional ones, like, how could you delegate those? There was a woman in one of my workshops who admitted sheepishly, she felt really bad. I used to teach this content live to in person groups, which is really fun for me because I got to hear women processing in real time. The pandemic shut down my in person workshops, but this mom talked about how she didn’t like reading to her kids, and she felt a lot of guilt and shame around that because good moms should like that, and this is so important for them.
0:37:44 – (Rachel): And I said, let’s drop the guilt and let’s just figure out some other ways that you could delegate this. You could get this done in a different way. If it’s important to you that they get reading done that they get read to, what else could we do? So we brainstorm together and things like, you could have, like a neighbor who’s ten years old, like a mother’s helper type, come over and read to your child once a week for an hour. And you could pay them a low amount because they’re ten years old and they would be thrilled to make $5 to do that.
0:38:19 – (Rachel): Or you could delegate this to audible or the Yoda player or something where it doesn’t have to be you doing all of the reading. So that’s an example of just getting creative about how can we still get this need met? And I don’t have to be the one doing all of the meeting of the needs.
0:38:39 – (Wendy): That is such a great example. And, yeah, the idea of audible or just when you go to the library, making sure you have that membership that gets you all the electronic ones and then just having it play and you sit there and relax and turn the pages. Because I’ve connected to that when you just said that, because I get headaches really easily. And I remember back in the day having a little bit of feelings of like, I don’t want to read this aloud. This is a lot. Like, I feel like I’m going to get achy.
0:39:10 – (Rachel): Yes. That’s so interesting.
0:39:11 – (Wendy): I never thought about that. But that’s what happens, right when you start to release the shame and the shoulds and the like. I have to. It then unlocks that part of your brain, the rational thinking part, where you then can access the creativity to think about, the free app at the library that you could access and put onto your phone and put to the side so you’re not on an electronic device, but you’re still reading together.
0:39:36 – (Wendy): That only gets unlocked if you’re not in your amygdala and you’re scared of judgment or you’re judging yourself. It’s just beautiful.
0:39:43 – (Rachel): We need that creativity totally. Yes. And the creativity comes from permission and lack of shame. Shame stifles creativity. And so when you can let go of that, you’re going to start coming up with more solutions.
0:39:59 – (Wendy): Yes. Which is so much easier in community, too. Right? I’m sure with your program. With my program, when you’re around other people who are doing the same thing, releasing shame and just looking to get creative and problem solve with respect and dignity and empowerment, all of a sudden, ideas get unlocked so much faster, and then you’re like, cool, let’s just do this now instead of thinking like, there’s no way out.
0:40:27 – (Rachel): Yes.
0:40:28 – (Wendy): I love it. Okay. And our last point is, when we are trying to declutter our motherhood or our parenthood, we want to make room for more joy.
0:40:39 – (Rachel): Talk to us about that. Yeah. So that’s the whole purpose. Right? I feel like once you’ve cleared out some of these expectations of yourself that are heavy, you will all of a sudden see that you have space to add things. I feel like a lot of times, professional organizers don’t talk about adding to your closet. They only talk about taking away. But my experience when I did my declutter was that I had, like, one pair of pants and five shirts left after we went through my closet.
0:41:09 – (Rachel): And so I could see, like, oh, my gosh, there’s some major holes in my wardrobe. And I looked at it and I was like, this is all, like, gray, brown, and black. There was no joy in my closet, in my wardrobe. And it would have been fine if I loved those colors, but I actually love a lot of bright, fun colors, but I hadn’t been incorporating them into my wardrobe because I couldn’t even see what was lacking because there had been so many clothes that I wasn’t wearing that didn’t fit me well, that once we got rid of all that junk and I could look in there and see like, oh, I want to start looking for clothes. I really love to add to this wardrobe. And it’s similar with motherhood.
0:41:50 – (Rachel): After you get rid of some of the stuff you don’t want to be doing anymore or you don’t want to be believing anymore, you’ll recognize that you have more space to explore new things that would bring you joy. And I ask women in my classes, what would you feel out of control, excited to do with your kids? And for some women, they’re dumbfounded by the question. They’re like, what is that even available to me as a mom?
0:42:20 – (Rachel): And it’s like, I want you to start dreaming. If you made space in your motherhood to do something that would be really fun for you, with your kids or without your kids, what would it be? And you can start to make room for that joy and that happiness because you’ve gotten rid of the other clutter in your life that wasn’t really adding to your life.
0:42:41 – (Wendy): Yeah, that is so interesting. That is a big question, because I’m sitting here thinking about it, and almost everything I thought of, I was like, well, we can’t do that. We can’t do that. I’m like, I would love to travel the world more with my kids or go to more concerts or, I don’t know, maybe as they get older, there’s so many personalities, and teens and tweens naturally are on their own developmental phase of independence.
0:43:08 – (Rachel): Right.
0:43:08 – (Wendy): But it is fun to be in that dreaming place and just allow yourself to go there and then ask yourself, okay, well, how could I make room for more of those things if we weren’t spending so much time doing x, y, and z? Yeah, that’s interesting.
0:43:25 – (Rachel): If we weren’t spending time and if we weren’t spending money, if we weren’t spending money on these extracurriculars that my kids don’t even really like, could we use that money to go on a really cool family adventure once a year, or to just going outside of what’s expected or kind of socially normal to think like, but what do we really want? And this can be big stuff or small stuff. I’ve had women in my workshop say, what did one mom say?
0:43:57 – (Rachel): Hatch butterflies, like, get caterpillars and watch them.
0:44:02 – (Wendy): I loved that. I want to do that more. That just reminded me, seriously, that’s one of the most fun things on the planet, is to get those kits.
0:44:11 – (Rachel): Yes. And that’s not like, I want to travel the world with my family, which, that’s fine if that’s your dream, to travel the world with your family, and you can make it happen with enough planning, foresight, saving all those things. But let’s start with hatching butterflies, because you can do that tomorrow you can go get one of those kits and start. So I do really encourage moms to brainstorm big and small, like, just things that excite them and to think outside the box on what that might look like for them. And for a lot of women, it’s been a long time since they’ve dreamed or since they’ve sort of allowed themselves to go there.
0:44:47 – (Wendy): Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that’s so interesting to think about, Rachel. I love it. I’m going to be thinking more about that. My mind’s already, like, getting creative with, oh, what a good conversation. Rachel, you are such a gift and a light to the world. Will you tell listeners where they can come learn more with you? Tell us all about your programs and your podcast and all the things so we can make sure we get listeners over to you.
0:45:16 – (Rachel): Yeah. So my podcast is 3 in 30 takeaways for moms. And my declutteryourmotherhood course is at 3in30podcast.com/declutter/. And you can use the code fresh start ten to get 10% off as a listener of this podcast. And I really think the great thing about this course is it’s pretty compact. So if you’re just wanting to get started learning, it’s not a long, drawn out thing. It’s an audio course. So it’s all available on a private podcast feed. So if you really enjoy podcasts, you’ll love this course.
0:45:53 – (Rachel): You just listen. There’s ten lessons you listen through. There’s a workbook for you to actually do the internal work, but it’s pretty accessible for even a busy mom to jump in and to learn how to do this declutter, your motherhood process. So that’s 3in30podcast.com/declutter. And the code is freshstart10.
0:46:12 – (Wendy): I love it. And you are at 3 in 30 on Instagram too, right? Is that correct?
0:46:17 – (Rachel): 3 in 30 podcasts?
0:46:18 – (Wendy): Yes, 3 in 30 podcasts. Okay, well, listeners, go make sure you find Rachel. Check out her program, follow her on Instagram, listen to her podcast. Make sure you are following along specifically for the episode that we did together. Once again, episode 266. I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes for us, too. And then as you’re listening, you guys, if you’ve loved this episode, screenshot and hop on over to Instagram and tag both Rachel at 3 in 30 podcast and myself @FreshstartWendy. And then tell us what you loved and what inspired you, and we’d love to connect with you in the DM so, Rachel, thank you for being here today and for all the work that you are doing in the world and for the inspiration and the motivation. By the way, you are leading your family, and we just appreciate you and are grateful for the conversation today.
0:47:10 – (Rachel): Thank you so, so much for having me. It was an honor and a delight.
0:47:15 – (Wendy): All right, families, we’ll see you next time. Bye.
