Organize Your Life One Week at a Time

Welcome to episode 234 of the Pulling Curls Podcast, where host Hilary Erickson explores the transformative power of weekly organizing. Dive into practical tips for creating and maintaining organizational systems in your home, making the process manageable and stress-free. Whether you’re tackling clutter in your closet or sorting through paperwork, this episode offers guidance to refine your space little by little, every single day of the week. Join Hilary as she untangles the challenges of keeping a home organized, even in the busiest of times.

Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts

Big thanks to our sponsor my free weekly cleaning plan: https://www.pullingcurls.com/the-benefits-of-weekly-cleaning-schedule/

Timestamps:

00:00 Update and refine systems without feeling overwhelmed.
03:35 Refining cleaning system by assigning tasks weekly.

Keypoints:

1. Hilary Erickson introduces the topic of weekly organization plans on the Pulling Curls Podcast episode 234.
2. The episode is sponsored by Hilary’s free weekly cleaning plan, accessible in the show notes.
3. Hilary discusses the creation of organizational systems in the home and their need for adjustments due to changes and interactions with family members.
4. She emphasizes the importance of small, manageable updates to organizational systems rather than overwhelming revamps.
5. Daily and weekly routines are highlighted, assigning specific rooms to specific days for focused cleaning and organizing.
6. Practical examples include organizing a bedroom closet by sections and deciding what clothes to keep or donate.
7. Hilary shares her personal feelings about organizing difficult areas and her strategy for document management, especially during tax season.
8. The episode includes a structured weekly schedule assigning days to various household areas, improving consistency and focus.
9. Hilary reflects on the psychological benefits of having predetermined tasks, reducing the feeling of being overwhelmed.
10. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to review, share, and subscribe to the podcast for more insights on simplifying pregnancy and parenting challenges.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.890] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 234, we are talking about a weekly organization plan. So let’s untangle it.

[00:00:11.290] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and The Pregnancy Nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, the The Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:39.720] – Hilary Erickson

This episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by my Weekly Cleaning Plan. Come find it in the show notes where you can start getting on top of your weekly cleaning, and then we can add the organizing on top of that, like the cherry on top. It’s totally free. Come grab it.

[00:00:54.010] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, so when people join me in the Organized Homes, we are going to create systems that help them get their home organized. It’s nice to think that that system is going to last forever. Maybe it would if I lived alone, which I don’t know at this point in time. Sometimes I wonder if I lived alone, if I could keep those systems going for a long period of time.

[00:01:14.300] – Hilary Erickson

But because I live with other people who I maybe haven’t communicated it with or are lazy or abundant, who knows why. Those systems need tweaks and updates as we go through our lives.

[00:01:25.530] – Hilary Erickson

So today I want to share how I tweak and update those systems without getting super overwhelmed by feeling like I need to go through and update everything all at once, which is an initial feeling when you either can’t find something or it’s hard to put something away.

[00:01:38.980] – Hilary Erickson

And what I don’t want you to do is feel overwhelmed like you have to go in and do all the things. That is not a good feeling. The good thing about this system is it’s small bites every day, every week, where you’re making little changes to your systems and really just refining them and making them better and also getting rid of the stuff that you’re just not using anymore because that changes over time.

[00:01:59.140] – Hilary Erickson

Every day of the week, I have a room assigned to it. It is where we clean and where we get stuff done, but it is also the room which I organize during the week. I make the choice to go in a circle. Now, that doesn’t mean that if there is an area in that room that is not working, let’s say I’m working in my bedroom closet, but I have a drawer that is just overfilling or just not working as well as it should, I can jump to that area and then resume going around my room in a circle getting things done.

[00:02:28.330] – Hilary Erickson

Like I said, right now, in our bedroom, I am organizing our closet. Sometimes that means just taking out something small. I just had a couple of drawers that I pulled out last time. Honestly, nothing needed to be gone through, but it was nice to know what was in there. Then I just finished because the day was busy and I was over it.

[00:02:46.760] – Hilary Erickson

Some days I take out a whole section of clothes and organize that and go through what I don’t need. It just really depends on how I’m feeling and how much work I can take on that day.

[00:02:56.690] – Hilary Erickson

I have to admit that sometimes it’s hard to take the things out. I still recommend it, but sometimes I don’t pull everything out to engage a system. Sometimes I think that that’s useless. Like with these drawers, I didn’t pull everything out of it. I just pod through, made sure I knew what was in there, made sure the system was still working, and I left it as is.

[00:03:15.990] – Hilary Erickson

But next, I’m going to be headed to my dresses, and I need to pull all of them out and really go through them and decide what I really want to wear and what I don’t really want to wear anymore so that I can make… It’s just easier for me if I pull out things, look at them, they’re already out. At that point, half the work is done of pulling them out and sending them over to Goodwill. So that’s important to me is to try and pull everything out, especially when I know that a system could be refined pretty well.

[00:03:42.400] – Hilary Erickson

Also, really just giving each room an assignment a day during the week. On Mondays, we do the kitchen. Tuesdays, we do bathrooms. Wednesdays, we do bedrooms. Thursdays, I do my desk area and the living room if it needs it. Then Fridays, I do filing in the office, in our office area. Usually, it’s filing, but there are other areas that I should probably get to as well. But I feel like filing takes a lot of time, me going through the documents that we have in there and seeing what we need or don’t need or refining the system.

[00:04:09.360] – Hilary Erickson

I am doing that right now. We’re coming into tax time as I’m recording this, and it is a huge pain, and I hate doing it, but it feels so good to have those documents that we really don’t need in there anymore. So it’s so much easier to file the things that we actually do need.

[00:04:22.470] – Hilary Erickson

And again, I’m just the person who almost needs someone to assign me. This is what we need to do today. I think if I was just like, You shouldn’t something every day, I would be like, I don’t know what I should organize, and it wouldn’t get done. But where I know it’s Wednesday, I’m working in our bedroom, I’m going to work in my closet, I know that I’m to my dresses area, that’s what I’m going to do today. I already have that assignment done and in my head. And next week, I know that I’m going to go on to my sweaters and jackets because that’s what’s next to dresses.

[00:04:52.800] – Hilary Erickson

So it’s like somebody is assigning it to me. And because somebody, whoever that somebody, honestly, it’s me. I am the one assigning it. But because that is already done, I’m just able to cruise into the work, get it done really quickly instead of mulling over what really needed to be done, because then I tend to get overwhelmed by all the things that could need to be done. And then I’d spend a lot of time being overwhelmed instead of actually doing something.

[00:05:15.110] – Hilary Erickson

Those are my tips for staying on organization at your house. I hope that helped you out. Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you liked today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.

Keywords:

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