Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So shall we talk about easing in gently Hi their team.
I feel like I'm battling against the elements with this one,
so bear with me. We've also got a cat that's
hiding behind here, so she's trying to like sabotage all
the wires. But we must get on with it. Why
because January is here and the overwhelm might be looming.
Then maybe you've survived Christmas world, and how did it go?
By the way, did you have a lovely time? You've cooked,
(00:22):
you've cleaned, you've hosted, you've been your perfect hostess with
the mostess, and you've been on your feet NonStop and
now you've basically got zero battery. On top of that,
we're lumping in January, New Year, New me, new Year,
new goals. Let's do some resolutions. You haven't caught your
wrest from last year yet, So the first thing I
think we should all do is just take a nice
deep cleansing breadth. Like it's January. You're probably still burnt
(00:44):
out from Christmas. I want you to acknowledge that. I
want you to acknowledge the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the whirlwind
that might have been hosting your relatives that have flew
over from Australia, or if you're in Australia, the relatives
that flew over from the UK, and now your home
is yours again. Everyone is where they should be. Maybe
(01:06):
your kids are just about to start back at school
and you're looking forward to getting into a routine, but
the thought of getting back into a routine is also
filling you. You'd dread because you didn't have potentially the
RESTful festive period that you had envisaged. Maybe in your brain,
visions of sugar plums were dancing in your head and
you were going to go on festive walks and read
(01:28):
lots of books by the fire, drinking lots of hot chocolate.
The reality was very far from that. Maybe you had
your kids were squabbling, you burnt the turkey, you had
a power cut, our boiler went, our boiler went over Christmas,
so that was great, we had cold shots. But maybe
something happened and your Christmas wasn't as christmasy and as
relaxing as you want it to be. But you still
(01:50):
want to start twenty twenty five off on a positive note,
and it's perfectly doable. But there's a few things that
we need to come to terms with first, and that
is we know this, don't we that you can only
ever do the very best with the time and energy
that you have right now today, Start where you are at.
So think about it realistically on that continuum of one
(02:13):
being I'm absolutely exhausted, I want to go to bed
and cry, and ten being oh quite sprightly, actually, I
feel refreshed and raring to go. So work out whereabouts
you are sitting on that and cut your cloth accordingly,
because it is unrealistic and also unfair on you for
you to be going out at this one hundred miles
an hour if you just haven't got the energy to
(02:35):
sustain it. Because if you do that, two things are
going to happen. The first thing that's going to happen
is that you're going to feel frustrated and resentful. And
the second thing is you're going to burn yourself out
and give up and then not feeling frustrate, frustrated, and resentful.
So if one of your goals this year is to
nail the housework, to get into a good housekeeping routine,
(02:55):
and by that I mean a healthy routine, I don't
mean one that's like all or nothing, and that sees
cleaning for hours a day. That is not what we're
about here in tom It's about something that's realistic and
creating homes that you can live in and the housework
that works for you, not the other way around. So
if that is one of your goals this year and
you're thinking, but I don't know where to fit it
in because I go back to work on Monday. By
(03:17):
the time of pick the kids up from the child
miners and got home, it's half six. I need to
prep dinner. Here is your cheat sheet to make sure
that you can stay on track in twenty twenty five.
So number one, acknowledge the exhaustion. And even if you
just say right for the first few weeks, I'm going
to start off doing like ten minutes regularly every single day.
(03:38):
There's two things to remember here was there's one thing
to remember and a little anecdote from me. The first
thing is Nature's still asleep, babe. Right. It might be
New Year on the calendar, and it might be New
Year and all the adverts and on all your socials,
but the trees are still asleep. There's nothing flowering, and
everyone is still going slow. It's still dark. Nature is
(03:58):
still hibernating, and so it's okay for you to be
like I haven't. I can't feel like I'm not feeling it.
Start slow, start slower. Maybe look at this period from
January to spring. Oh, I just realized left that light on.
It's better. And maybe look at this period from like
January to spring as like a slow ramp, so a
(04:20):
slow builder, easing yourself in to nature's new year, which
is spring. So give yourself a mission, say, right, you know,
the first three months, I'm just gonna settle in. I'm
going to move in a slow way, just to ease
myself in gently. And this is my little anecdote that
I want to share with you because this is what
I've had to do. So over December, I sort of
said to myself, I'm going to take a break from
(04:41):
peloton tread, peloton bike. Normally i'd be in there every day,
Like we've had sort of periods of not being very
well and stressing that sort of thing, and I didn't
want to get to January and be burnt out. So
I said, I'm just gonna shelve that for December. It
was challenging, but I thought, I'm just going to do dogwalks,
gentle dogwalks, and then January, I'm going to ease myself
back into it. And what I mean by that is
(05:02):
I am not going to be and I started a
couple of days ago. I am not going to be
getting in now on the first workout that I do
is going to be an hour and then like twenty minutes.
Waits no, because my body's not used to it, my
brain's not used to it, and it's going to be
a shock to the system, and I'm not going to
really enjoy that. I want to finish my first workout
in the same way that you want to finish your
first housekeeping or tom session of the year. I've done something, accomplished,
(05:26):
happy and wanting to come back and do more tomorrow.
So I just did fifteen minutes. I did fifteen minutes
on the bike, a slow plod. I stopped, I went in,
made dinner. Next day, went back to twenty minutes, just
acknowledging the fact that I'm not at the same level
as I was when I stopped. My fitness has dropped.
You know, I used to need to ease myself back
in and your house will be the same like everyone's
(05:46):
houses now. Need a good de clutter and the kitchen
needs a good scrub, and Les Luck would have it
on Tom Rocks next week. We have got a kitchen
deeply and I'll talk you through a deep clean of
your kitchen. That's a forty five minute session. And we've
also got an out with the old in with the
new d clutter session that's also forty five minutes. So
if you want me to talk you through it, and
(06:07):
if you want me to keep your company, we can
start there. Because the second point that we're going to
move into is do is start somewhere that is going
to give you the biggest functional and visual difference in
your home. So for a lot of us, that will
be the kitchen. You've entertained, you've had a lot of
people coming in and out. That is the engine room
of your home. So it's a really good idea to
(06:29):
start there. Another really good idea start would be potentially
the living room. But the kitchen is when I work
with people, that's where I always usually like to start
because we're in there all the time. We use it.
It's functional, we're cooking and cleaning, we're cooking, we're preparing,
we might be eating in there. As well. So if
you have a blockage in there, if it's like he's
a good clean or if there's a lot of clutter,
(06:49):
it can practically be a block, but it can also
psychologically be a block if you're walking in there every
day and you're like, oh God, your heart sinks. So
start with that room, the one that's going to make
the biggest functional and visual difference. And you don't have
to do a forty five minute tom Rock session. Even
if it's just ten minutes in the morning in the kitchen,
(07:11):
ten minutes in the afternoon about lunchtime, and a ten
minute reset before you go to bed. You can do
a lot in those ten minutes, but just stick to
the priority jobs, the ones that when you walk back
in you'll be like, I am so glad that I
did that. Why Because that is going to give you
a hit of dopamine, which our brains love, and that
means your brain is going to want to come back
and do more to get more dopamine. So it's going
(07:33):
to encourage you to come back tomorrow. And doing this.
I know it's really frustrating because for a lot of us,
we might want to be like, right, I'm going to
do it and it's blood. It's going to be fantastic
and this is going to be new me and new me.
But realistically, has that ever worked for you before? Probably not,
So it's about resetting it, gradually easing your brain in
(07:54):
slowly building that habit up. So if it's ten minutes today,
fifteen minutes tomorrow, twenty minute, and it's the day after that,
slowly building on what you did the day before. And
the wonderful thing about tom is that it is a
rolling program. It's a rolling method, so you don't have
to do it all today. You just keep coming back
tomorrow and if you've got the app, you can roll
(08:14):
jobs over as well. It's gently encouraging you just to
be consistent and a really lovely a really lovely thing
that I like to talk about. And I don't know
who was the original person that spoke about this. I
didn't make it up, but I just think I'm such
a visual person that it really helps me and acknowledging
that things like decluttering and cleaning. It's cumulative, isn't it,
(08:35):
Because even if we know that if you clean for
ten hours a day, there'll be more to do tomorrow, right,
So it's not like one tick thing, I'm done. I
don't need to do anything for another month. Right. You
need to be consistent. So if you visualize a toilet
roll really glamorous, and you say to yourself, right, I'm
going to tear off one sheet of this toilet roll
every day, just one sheet. It's not a lot of effort,
(08:57):
it's it's just a little bit, a little bit of time.
But I'm going to commit to doing that daily. After
like seven days, after a week, you've got seven sheets
of paper. And you might not look at that toilet
roll and go oh, I can see it's definitely smaller
in size. And that sheet that those that pile of
seven sheets, it's not massive, but it's like there's a
(09:20):
tipping point where if you are persistent, and if you
are consistent, you will look at that toilet role it
will be smaller. Oh my gosh, I've actually made a
difference here, and that sheet, those sheets are starting to
stack up. And that's how it works with housework and
any habit really that you're trying to create. You've got
to show up on a regular basis to really make
(09:41):
a difference. So the key here as you're easing yourself
in to January is starts slow, start slowly, because that
is going to give you the biggest chance of coming
back again tomorrow. And the other thing that he wants
to talk about, because this goes hand in hand with
the cleaning as well, is me prep cooking and all
of that food January. There's a lot of pressure in
(10:06):
January to be like eating healthy and salads and everything else.
It's okay just to stick to the basics. Last night
we had a store cupboard. I call it a store
covered chili because I just get all we needed pulsies
and we needed vegetables. Essentially, we've been living off beige
food for weeks. So I had like kiddie beans, butter beans,
(10:28):
sweet corn, chickpeas. It stuck it all and made the
most really lovely chili actually, and I'm going to have
the rest of it for lunch today on jacket potatoes.
It took me probably about ten minutes less than that
five minutes to bom it all in the pan. Left
it on a simmer. Some of the kids had it
with rice, other people had it with jacket potatoes. Keep
it simple, beans on toes, jack of potato, beans and cheese.
(10:49):
One of my favorites jacket potatoes, tuna. I love jacket potatoes.
It is okay to keep it simple. You're tummy, if
you've over indulged, will probably thank you for it. And
also your wallet will probably thank you for it as well.
And if you're looking of ways to save money in
January and like meal planning and that sort of stuff,
see what you've got in your freezer. Start with your
proteins that you've already got in there, and like, what
(11:10):
can I build from what I already have. It might
not be like gourmet meals, but you can rustle up
some hearty and healthy meals in the first two or
three weeks in January. Whilst everyone is trying to find
their feet, don't forget your slow cooker. My slow cooker
is working over time. At the moment. In there right
now is a smoked gammon. Is a smoked gammon joint,
(11:32):
and I Am going to cook it all day as
it will put me really nice and it will pull,
so I'll pull that gammon and then we're going to
have like smoked gammon, rice bowls and veggies for dinner.
So as with the cleaning, as with your routine meal planning,
give yourself permission to keep it simple. Everyone on your
socials right now is going to be shouting at you
(11:52):
to go at this one hundred miles an hour. Seve
who are like this seventy five hard? No, thank you.
I am giving you permission. Ease yourself in because that's
kind of how we do it around here. And don't
forget to be kind to yourself as well. You've probably
worked so hard over the festive period. If you're doing
organized Christmas, then you will have been probably working on
(12:13):
Christmas since September. So just relax, know that you've done
your best. You've only got enough hours and energy to
spare in a day. Work out how much energy and
time you do have to spare, and then just think
do I really want to be doing spending all that
doing the housework or cooking and cleaning, or do I
want to do a little bit for me as well?
(12:33):
Don't forget yourself in this. Like I say, nature is hibernating,
ease yourself into twenty twenty five. I promise you your brain
and your body will thank you for it. And if
you want any slow, gentle, short sessions, there are loads
of guided sessions on the tom rock section of the
Organized Mom app. And if you are looking for just
a cleaning routine to get into and check out the
(12:56):
link in the description. There will be some free print
outs that I will send to your inbox to see
if Tom works for you and if you like it,
If you like the idea of just doing thirty minutes
a day and having housework free weekends, then you can
upgrade to the app. It's a one offee. You can
check your progress, you can roll over jobs, you can
share the logging with your people that you live with,
so it's not just you, it's a collaborative effort, and
(13:17):
you can also customize the routine to suit you nice
and slowly. You've got this and we'll chat in the
next episode. Bye.