EP 228 It's time to declutter with guest Caroline Thor
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, bold goal crushers. I'm super excited about this episode today because this is a topic that comes up a lot. So who better to discuss it than my guest, Carolyn Thor. She's originally from the UK and has been living in Germany for over 18 years with her husband, three children. And a small menagerie she trained as a KonMari consultant in 2021, following a career as a [00:01:00] teacher.
Sara Mayer: What a cool combo. And she now works with clients in person in Germany and internationally online and has a successful podcast living clutter free forever based on the KonMari method. Ooh, right in time for spring cleaning. She's also the founder of clutter free ever after an online group coaching program and clutter free collective and online membership.
Sara Mayer: She is passionate about helping busy people like yourself create a home that supports their ideal lifestyle so they can feel peace and calm. I am so excited to have you on the show today. This is a topic that comes up. All the time, right around the springtime. So let's jump in.
Caroline Thor: Hi. Yeah. Great to be here.
Caroline Thor: Thank you.
Sara Mayer: Cool. All right. So many people set resolutions in January, and now we're rolling into [00:02:00] March, and stuff has gotten in the way from them achieving them, and people start to try and slim down around this time. It's a topic that comes up a lot in March. I want to hear all about how you got into this.
Sara Mayer: I always like to know the backstory. So how did this come about?
Caroline Thor: It became about because I was an incredibly stressed and overwhelmed mum when my three kids were really little. My youngest was actually one at the time and I just felt like I was losing it every day. I couldn't find stuff. I was feeling overwhelmed.
Caroline Thor: And one day I was sitting reading a copy of Good Housekeeping magazine that someone had sent me from the UK. And there was an article about Marie Kondo and the KonMari method. And I read this article and thought, wow, this sounds great. Immediately ordered the book online. It arrived the next day and the rest is literally history.
Caroline Thor: I [00:03:00] went to. Decluttering and organizing the whole of our home. It took me a year with three young kids at home. It was quite an act. But as I went through the categories, cause the KonMari method is based on categories, not rooms. I just felt myself getting calmer and less overwhelmed.
Caroline Thor: I hadn't realized the impact my home was having on my mental well being. When my middle child one day said to me, Why are you a nicer mummy now? I was like, whoa. Okay, I must have been really, I don't think I'd realized quite how stressed I'd got and knowing where everything in the home was, that everything had a place to go back to, that I wasn't sitting playing with the kids thinking, Oh, I really should be doing some tidying, it looks a mess in here.
Caroline Thor: Actually being able to open the front door and invite people in rather than standing across the doorframe trying to block [00:04:00] them because I didn't want them coming in and seeing the chaos of my home. It was just such a relief. So at the time I was teaching, I'd set up a business in Germany, teaching little kids music in English, expats.
Caroline Thor: So it was great fun and I was loving it. And then COVID hit. And I couldn't teach. And I started thinking, what else could I do? And I happened to see online that they were advertising that you could train as a KonMari consultant. I didn't even know it was a thing. And they were doing online trainings because of the COVID situation.
Caroline Thor: And I said to my husband, I'm going to train. I want to help other women. No, that it does not have to be this vicious cycle of just tidying up and it's a mess again and feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed. And so I trained and I sold my other business six months later, and that's what I've been doing full time since then.
Sara Mayer: You hit so many points for me and I'm sure for the [00:05:00] listeners about just feeling that overwhelm and like the mental load that it is keeping track of everything. Somebody talked about on one of my other episodes that. Just your kid going to soccer practice. Where are their cleats? How do we wash their cleats?
Sara Mayer: Where do we find their thing? Where's their bag? Where's their uniform and how much drain that can have on the ability to do the other things that we really want to do, run our business, be productive, or just live a peaceful life. So I love that you fell into this yourself and discovered a new.
Sara Mayer: Actually, because now you've made this your business, but let's dive into the year that you spent reorganizing. What was that like? How did you go about doing that? Cause I think that has a lot to do with the method.
Caroline Thor: Yeah, I basically started at the beginning of the book and read my way through and because I could see every time I [00:06:00] took that next step that it was having a really positive effect, it motivated me to keep going.
Caroline Thor: And I started with clothes and I remember really vividly. I sat my two little girls on the end of my bed and I pulled all my clothes out of the closet. Every single item I went running around the house. Trying to find anything that belonged to me and I made this like heap on my bed, it was more like a mountain and I stood there holding each one going, okay, does it spark joy?
Caroline Thor: Which is what Marie Kondo says you need to ask, which is basically, does it make you feel happy? Do you feel great in it? Does it give you that sort of buzz that you think, yeah, I love this item. And my girls thought this was hilarious. They were five and three at the time and they got really into it as well.
Caroline Thor: And yeah, so I started with clothes and when I'd done my clothes, I then did all the children's clothes as well. And I'd made this classic mistake when my children were very little. Of if a [00:07:00] very kind friend offered me hand me downs and said, would you like these that my kids finished with? I would go, yeah, thanks.
Caroline Thor: Great. Because I didn't like to say no. And you end up with all this stuff in your house that you don't actually need. And my kids had so many clothes and at the end of the day, we wear five things. Yeah. Basically 20 percent of our clothes, 80 percent of the time. It's scary. And the kids we all know those of us that have kids, they've got their favorite t shirt.
Caroline Thor: You can have 10 t shirts in there. They'll always grab the same two, three or four because they love wearing those. And they're really into unicorns at the moment or whatever it happens to be. And the rest just gets left there. So I really reduced what they had. And oh my God, it was an aha moment because my laundry pile went down.
Caroline Thor: Less clothes, less laundry, that all became so much easier. [00:08:00] I was able to get into a really good laundry routine. So that was another layer of the overwhelm gone. Then I moved on to books, which was a hard one. Guilty. I love books. I ordered a book today, actually. I love books and this is what I love about the KonMari method.
Caroline Thor: There is this sort of myth in the media that it's minimalist, you're going to have to get rid of everything and that's not true. What she's saying is you keep things in your home. That serve your ideal lifestyle and that bring you joy. And if having a lot of books brings you joy, then great, then you get to keep them.
Caroline Thor: But you don't keep those on the shelf that have sat there for 10 years. You've never once looked at them. And if you're honest with yourself, you are never going to open the cover and even look at it. So that was an interesting one. Books. Then I moved on to papers. That took a long time. Cause we were in no, my husband wasn't, I was in chaos with papers.
Caroline Thor: And [00:09:00] from there we moved onto kimono, which is basically anything in the home that's a thing, like anything in the kitchen, the basement, the garage, the bathroom, kids toys, DVDs, if anyone's still got any that sort of stuff, and then finally at the very end, sentimental items. And the reason you do sentimental items last is because It's really hard making decisions about sentimental items.
Caroline Thor: So what I loved was that I trained my understanding of what bought me joy as I went through the other categories had put aside all sentimental items until the end, like in, in a massive box. And then going through those was actually really fun and really easy because I knew by then. What I wanted to keep and what was important for me.
Caroline Thor: So that was basically the process we went through. And by the end of it, everything had a home to go back to, which means you can keep it tidy because my [00:10:00] kids knew where the scissors are kept, where the wrapping papers kept, where everything for their school stuff is kept. If there's extra pens and like replacement stuff, so they don't need to come and ask me.
Caroline Thor: They became very independent as they have got older and they've got involved with being able to tidy up. We did it in such a fun way, and this is my secret sauce now, helping families understand how tidying up can be fun. And if we teach children from a very young age that this isn't a chore, that, oh, we have to tidy up.
Caroline Thor: But it's something we're all doing because we want our home to be nice for everyone to live in. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be at a level that we feel comfortable with as a family. Then you're setting them up with amazing life skills for
Sara Mayer: later. Wow. What a powerful story, but also such a tremendous lesson for your kids too.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I jotted down a few notes here, I, in [00:11:00] 2020, I sold my house, went through my entire house. So it was a little different scenario, but I went through my entire, everything I owned and really streamlined some of my belongings. But then my mom decided to sell her house that she had lived in for 47 years.
Sara Mayer: And there was a lot of stuff in there. And when my dad had passed in 2009, so this was like 2022, 2021, she just closed the basement door because it was so overwhelming. He was a collector and had like little cars that I would have thrown away that I then later, because I helped her with this process, found out where.
Sara Mayer: worth something. And so my joke was that year during Christmas, I told every one of my relatives that. You all need to get a little, I'm giving you all a label maker and you need to label your stuff because I would look at these, [00:12:00] like this base I almost threw out. And my mom's Oh no, that's from world war one, your great grandfather, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sara Mayer: And it had this whole story and how he brought it back and. I couldn't let it go at that point, but had I not known that, that would have just ended up maybe in the trash, not even goodwill for somebody else to find. So it was a really interesting process, but I did that without a system. So I can't imagine actually having a system to go through it because it was overwhelming, daunting.
Sara Mayer: But I had to do it because we're selling the house. So like I had a deadline, but if you don't have that deadline or you don't have that reason, like I can see where this would really well, even with a deadline, it would be really helpful.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. And it's, the P some of the people that have been in my group coaching program the last time it ran, there were a few women in there who knew they had a deadline [00:13:00] coming up for going back to work.
Caroline Thor: Yeah, having had their last child and what they wanted was for the home to be organized so they could go back to work and know that is dealt with. I'm going to come home at the end of each day and the kids will know where stuff goes and my husband knows where everything is and I know where everything goes and you have this 10 minute reset that I build in.
Caroline Thor: I've developed things a bit beyond the KonMari method to work for my clients, because what I want is that everyone has a home they can maintain at the end of it and that they learn how to maintain it. Because if we've been slightly in chaos and feeling overwhelmed by our homes, unless we change some habits, nothing is going to change in the long run.
Caroline Thor: Give it six months. You'll be back to square one. And I think that's so sad when you've taken the time and the energy to go through the decluttering and organizing process and then find yourself back to where you were six months later. So maintenance is a really important part of it. So that [00:14:00] every day you just do a 10 minute reset and it keeps on top of it.
Caroline Thor: And that's 70 minutes of tidying a week. I don't think many of us, if we were told we have to do 70 minutes of tidying, would want to do it, but 10 minutes a day sounds manageable.
Sara Mayer: Yeah, exactly. One of the things that somebody told me years ago, and I've been doing this ever since many people have this box of cords and they're, I don't even know where, and sometimes even remotes, I don't even know where this cord goes to.
Sara Mayer: And I was at some guy's house and he's he just gotten a new iPhone. So this was years ago, but. He took the cord and he put a label on it and he's iPhone five, whatever year it was, whatever phone it was cord. And then he rolled it up and had a little drawer for them. And I just was thinking about it.
Sara Mayer: I'm like, you know how many iPhones I've purchased in my life and I can never find the cord. I can never find the charger. I can never find the plug. It's somewhere. But that to [00:15:00] me. After that, I was like, I'm going to do that with everything I buy. And then when I get rid of that thing, I at least know that's the cord that goes with it, or that's the remote that goes with it.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. And having these systems is life changing. Yeah. Marie Kondo always says the life changing magic of tidying up. And I think people think, yeah, okay. That's a bit, that's a bit strong, but there really is a life changing magic to tidying up. And I've had clients who have found that due to the decluttering and organizing, they free up space.
Caroline Thor: base in their heads or realize that actually the clutter is a manifestation of something they were really struggling to deal with, have then been able to move on and have career changes, move house, which they hadn't even been able to consider before because they just found all this stuff too overwhelming.
Caroline Thor: Lose a ton of weight because suddenly they've got time and the head [00:16:00] capacity to actually be able to deal with things like that. They can
Sara Mayer: find their treadmill because it's not full of laundry maybe. Exactly.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. No, it is really freeing. And as you were saying with the cords, by developing a system, you then have a way of maintaining it so that.
Caroline Thor: You don't have to fall back into old patterns and find yourself in chaos again. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I loved one of the things that you mentioned and I've, I'm familiar with this method. I read her book. I didn't jump all the way in though. So maybe this is the time, but you mentioned like really looking at our stuff and determining if it makes us happy or gives us joy.
Sara Mayer: And there's a lot of commentary on the internet about that. But when you were talking about that and you were Talking about your kids getting involved in this and really deciding on the books. Like I have books that I don't even know why I have them. I knew within page two, I was never going to finish that book, but [00:17:00] I thought about your comment and does this bring me joy or am I ever going to read this book?
Sara Mayer: And then I thought about. Somebody else, this book actually would be something they'd be totally into or would bring them joy and make them happy. And it's almost like giving that gift to somebody else.
Caroline Thor: Yeah, absolutely. And I take every week items that my clients are donating to a thrift shop. So I bring out the shopping in English, we call it shopping trolley.
Caroline Thor: I guess you call it shopping cart. I bring it out to the car, I fill it up with all the stuff. And there's a place where you take it in and just stand it there. And all these people are like coming towards it and they're like, Oh, look at this. And they're getting really excited with stuff that somebody else has decided.
Caroline Thor: Doesn't spark joy for them anymore. So you are you're giving a gift to somebody else. You're giving a gift to yourself. And the whole premise of the KonMari method, which I think a lot of people aren't aware of is the whole [00:18:00] thing starts with you visualizing your ideal lifestyle. How can your home support you?
Caroline Thor: It's not a storage facility, which I think a lot of our homes are turned into. Your home needs to support your ideal lifestyle. What do you want to have time to be able to do? How do you want to feel when you get up in the morning or when you come home from work? When you walk through that front door, do you want to feel like, Oh, The kids have left everything on the floor again.
Caroline Thor: Mine still do that, but it's quickly reset. Or when you go to cook dinner in the evening, you can't find anything in the kitchen or the stuff's not being put away. And yeah, you don't know what stock you've got in your cupboards, all that sort of stuff. How do you want to feel? And then you go about decluttering and organizing to create a home that supports.
Caroline Thor: How you want to feel what you want to have time to do. And that's the joy in the method that at the end of the day, you have a space that you want to [00:19:00] come back to and that you enjoy being in.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I love that right now. The biggest culprit in my life is my dog. She pulls out all these toys and tosses them all up.
Sara Mayer: Like we have. Toys everywhere. And I read about a dog that was trained to, at the end of the night, pick up all its toys and put it in a bin. And they would obviously reinforce that with treats and it took a long time. So I have this app for my dog. And the other day I saw on there, train your dog to put their toys away.
Sara Mayer: Wow. How life changing would that be? Kids a little easier make it a game, but a dog that's going to take a commitment. So I downloaded that lesson. So hopefully, wish me luck with my dog because she has stuff everywhere.
Caroline Thor: That is so fun. And then you have to think about how many toys does she actually need?
Caroline Thor: Yes. Because very often we have Too many. I have one client, [00:20:00] bless her, I love going to hers, but she had one of these subscription boxes for dog toys. Cause she loves her dogs that arrived every month. And it was just like this never ending supply of dog toys arriving in the home. And then she wasn't getting rid of any.
Caroline Thor: So we stopped the subscription and we went through and look which ones they really love playing with. And most of them were still new. So she donated them all to the local animal rescue place. Fantastic. Her dogs are happy, the animal rescue place is happy, and she's saving a ton of money. So it's a win.
Sara Mayer: Yeah, that's great. So what were some of the things and maybe either in your journey or client's journey where they were a little more challenging to maybe get under control in a home? I think
Caroline Thor: it, it really is different for every single person. For me at the time that I did it, it was definitely kids stuff.
Caroline Thor: We just had too [00:21:00] much. Kids stuff in the house, toys and clothes and books. And I love books. So I'd been buying them all these books in English because I was living in Germany and it just got really out of control. So that for me was a difficult one. And the one that took the longest to get under control.
Caroline Thor: For some of my clients, it's definitely clothes. Because we spend a lot of money sometimes on an item of clothing and then to realize I'm not actually wearing this, but I'm going to choose to part with it. Not going to get any cheaper just because it's sitting in your closet. Or shoes. I have quite a lot of clients who have just had way, way too many pairs of shoes and they never wear them or perhaps their feet have changed size slightly because they've had three kids and they're never going to fit in them again, but they love these shoes.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. Because we have an emotional attachment to things. And I think that's probably for each person. [00:22:00] They have an emotional attachment to a category, and it's going to be different for everybody. And that's why I love the work I do, because when I start working with someone or when someone joins my course or my membership, it's always a challenge.
Caroline Thor: Because we have to find what works for them. And yes, I'm using the KonMari method as the basis, but I'm very much about looking at each individual person and what they actually need in order to be successful with their decluttering and organizing journey. I think probably for most women it's clothes.
Caroline Thor: And then another area that lots of people have difficulty with is actually the kitchen because they have too many appliances that they don't use. And quite a lot of these appliances take up a lot of space. If you think about your food mixer and your juicer and your, all the rest of it. So that can be quite a challenge because there's always this what if I might need it later and it's I perhaps I [00:23:00] should hang onto it just in case.
Caroline Thor: And these just in case things are what are really difficult for
Sara Mayer: people. Yeah. And the hardest part is when you just get rid of something and then a couple of weeks later you need that thing.
Caroline Thor: Yeah, but yeah, it's going to happen, isn't it? But I always encourage people if it's an item of value that we find a way for them to sell it.
Caroline Thor: And otherwise that we're donating so that other people can benefit from them, as you said before, and we're trying as much as possible not to put anything in the trash. It is rare that anything has to go in the trash. Most thrift shops will take things because someone else will find the joy
Sara Mayer: in them.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Yeah. What's really interesting is that I'm a part of the junior league of Phoenix and they have a really big rummage sale. It fills up an entire cattle barn at the fairgrounds. I don't know the square footage, but it's quite a [00:24:00] large space. If you just imagine one section is women's clothes and there's 28 foot tables.
Sara Mayer: and probably 30 racks of clothes. And then they have a section for books and toys and kids stuff and lamp lamps is an entire section. I used to chair holiday and so it's in February. So it was shortly after the holidays and we would get dozens, maybe even more than dozens of trees, which had some lights out.
Sara Mayer: And so people were donating these artificial trees. And so it's a huge sale, which is really cool, but what was really meaningful, probably the third or fourth year that I was chairing this department. My department was not as. Didn't have as many sales as women's clothes or toys, and I always was a little discouraged and somebody came up to me it was a lady and She we just got [00:25:00] to chatting and she said I've been shopping at this sale.
Sara Mayer: It's been going on for 85 years maybe 85 years or something, a lot of years. And she's I've been shopping at this sale since I first had my kids when I was 16. She had her first baby when she was 16. And she said, I save all my money up. And then I wrap these gifts for their birthdays. And this is how they get all their presents.
Sara Mayer: Cause this is what I can afford. And. She lines up to rush into the sale to buy all our stuff that we've donated as members. And she's I got a coach purse last year for my daughter who is now grown. She's I got a coach purse that almost looked new. I got these shoes, I got all these really cool things.
Sara Mayer: And my kids were so excited about that. She said, but I never shopped the holiday department because usually my money's run out. She said, but last year you had this beautiful Christmas tree. And so I saved a little more [00:26:00] money because I said, this year I'm going to put a tree up in my home. And. Our trees were like 20.
Sara Mayer: So when you think about the fact that she had to really save up for that, like this was really meaningful to her to be able to do that. And she picked out a tree and we have hundreds of bags of lights. And so no, all the lights weren't working, but she was able to string along some lights. And that's the first year since her daughter was 16 or since she had her daughter at 16 that she's actually put up a tree.
Sara Mayer: Wow. And. It was just the coolest experience to see, and all the stuff with it's not sold in case you're wondering, gets picked up by Goodwill and then they go and sell it in their shops. So it's just a really cool event, but to think about somebody who. She uses that sale to provide all, and I think she has four kids all their kids birthdays, all their kids Christmas [00:27:00] stuff.
Sara Mayer: And she's I hide them all over the place and my kids know that they're not to open that stuff, but she finds really cool
Caroline Thor: stuff there. That's so wonderful. And that's the life changing magic of tidying up at the other end. Yup.
Sara Mayer: Yeah, that many times we don't get to see because we donate the stuff and we're like, Oh, maybe that ended up in somebody's home.
Sara Mayer: But that big teddy bear that. I had at the rummage sale, there's this huge teddy bears, like life size, it's like a 200 teddy bear and then ends up at the rummage sale. That may be somebody's very exciting Christmas present.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. That's a really nice story.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. All right.
Sara Mayer: So I know that there are listeners here who are like, okay, I live a very busy life. I have a business. I work a nine to five job. I come home. I have three kids. I have my husband and I can go about doing this and make it a [00:28:00] game and all this stuff. But. How do I fit this into my already busy schedule?
Caroline Thor: That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think lots of people think they haven't got the time to do it and maybe we genuinely haven't got the time to do it, but if it's something that will be life changing for us. Then we need to find the time to do it. We need to prioritize that time.
Caroline Thor: And I love to encourage people and motivate them when they're working with me to learn time management skills as well. It's part of what I do. Like, how are we actually going to get around to doing this? So I have a really fun challenge actually this week in my membership where I said to them on Monday, okay, every day this week.
Caroline Thor: When you're cooking, when you're getting dressed, when you're in the bathroom. I want you just to spend one minute looking in the drawer, the [00:29:00] cupboard, wherever, and see if you can notice one thing that actually you haven't used in a very long time that you could donate. And every day they're posting in our Facebook group, and it's just so fun.
Caroline Thor: Like yesterday, someone had posted a skipping rope. Yeah. So by the end of the week, they'll have found seven things that they can let go. That they can donate. And I've been finding things as well, because we all hang on to things just in case. And then actually, if we're honest with ourselves, we realize we, we're not going to use them.
Caroline Thor: So there are I'm always bringing in ways that we can find the time. And I listened to your episode on digital decluttering and one of the things that. I thought it was a great episode, but the other side of digital decluttering is that we are put under pressure all the time for this perfectionism that we see on Instagram and Pinterest and we're scrolling through and it just makes us feel bad about our own lives.
Caroline Thor: Like my house doesn't look like that. Or [00:30:00] why can't my kitchen be that organized and tidy? And it demoralizes us, but also as we're scrolling through, and you talked about getting sucked into watching dog videos we're actually losing time where we could be doing something to improve our current situation in our life.
Caroline Thor: So doing a digital detox for an hour during the day will mean you free up your time to not be distracted. And actually do something productive that is going to improve your quality of life and your family's quality of life. And the other thing I think is really important to note is it's not just down to one person in the home to do this.
Caroline Thor: And this is where I think a lot of women are just like, it's, it's down to me. My husband doesn't see that it's a problem. The kids aren't interested. We need to make them interested. And there is this weird thing that happens when the woman in the home starts applying the KonMari method. [00:31:00] There is this ripple effect.
Caroline Thor: And I can say hand on heart, I have never had anyone in my course or a client where the rest of the family have not got on board. In fact, one client whose husband was so skeptical. He booked me last weekend to do his office and his paperwork with him. Wow. So it has this, it infects everybody in a really good way so that it's not just down to mom.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. Everyone has got a part to play in this and through you doing the method and learning about it, you can help them understand it and implement it as well. So I think that's how we find the time to do it. It's not a one woman job. And there are so many little tips and tricks that you can use to find the time if you really want to do something.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I love that you mentioned that it's not a one person job, because I think so often that's the mental load that women carry [00:32:00] or the head of the household or whoever's responsible for that carries. I want to go back to what you said at the beginning, how you made it a game and how fun that was for your kids in your initial year, but also how you've integrated that into their daily life and it's not a chore.
Caroline Thor: Yeah. Yeah. That has been the game changer. I don't put my kids laundry away. And I haven't done for years. I will do the washing. I get it out of the dryer. I dump it all on my bed. So all their rooms are nearby and I'll let them know their washing's there and they come and get it. They take it back to their room and then it's up to them if they want to fold it, if they want to hang it.
Caroline Thor: I'm not going to force them to file fold everything and put it into drawers. I have two kids that do that because they find it easier than to get organized during the week when they can see everything like that. And I have one kid that hangs everything. Up to them and my kids are now 16, 15 and 11, but we've been [00:33:00] doing this for years.
Caroline Thor: As soon as the, they were little and I'd started this actually before the KonMari method, because I think because of my teaching background, I'd already started with tidy up time every day to music and making it a fun game. So they were already in that sort of vein of, this is what we do. We help out.
Caroline Thor: It's not just one person's job to do all this. If I've played with my toys, I need to help tidy up. But I'm also very much, if a kid's in the middle of a game, and it's quite clear this is an amazing game, and maybe the game's going to carry on tomorrow, then give it another day. Don't make them tidy all away.
Caroline Thor: I think that's a bit soul destroying too. But our living rooms have become very much playrooms these days. I actually had a chat with my brother about this in my podcast this week and he was saying we were talking about our house when we were kids and it was an adult house. Everything on the ground floor was my parents stuff and the stuff for hanging, like the hooks for hanging your coats were all adult height.
Caroline Thor: Whereas now we know that kids need things [00:34:00] at their height so they can be independent and get involved and their kids are in, their toys are in the living room and all this sort of stuff. So there has been a big shift, which makes it harder. It makes it a lot harder, but it also gives you an amazing teaching opportunity each day in a fun way.
Caroline Thor: Can you help set the table? Can you help clear the table? If they know where everything goes, they can do that.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. And letting them do that. I talked to a mom, I'll have to figure out which episode it is and I'll link it in the show notes. But she talked about, she was a teacher too as well.
Sara Mayer: And she talked about gamifying chores a little bit. And she said her four year old actually does the laundry. And I had to like, pause. I'm like, wait, tell me more about that. And she said I talked to my four year old before they went to kindergarten, they need to know how to do colors. And so that's how it started.
Sara Mayer: They started by having, she did it with her. She's I could have done it a lot [00:35:00] quicker, but now. She does the laundry so she sorts the clothes and then she gets on her little stool and she goes up and it's a fun game to put the soap in and it's a fun game to hit start and it's a really fun game to almost crawl into the laundry obviously with supervision and dig it out and put it in the dryer and Yeah, that became the game.
Sara Mayer: And then when the clothes came out, the game was sorted by size. And then she made it a huge game for her older kids where she'd have everybody line up like on a kind of like a track, like a graduated start line. The older kids started further back, the younger kids started closer up and they had to grab their clothes, go upstairs, put it away.
Sara Mayer: And then whoever came back down first got to pick the movie of the night on a Friday night. Yeah. Like how cool is that? That they all became involved in this and that's what they do [00:36:00] now. But the four year old is literally the one pushing the button, sorting the laundry and doing all this stuff and loves it.
Sara Mayer: It's a great. Great time.
Caroline Thor: Yeah, I, they do, they love being involved. They love being given responsibility. Yeah. And I think what we very often forget is we'll say to kids, can you go and tidy your room? I'll come and check. And then you walk in later and you're like, whoa. If you're feeling overwhelmed, how are they feeling?
Caroline Thor: Yeah, they've got all this stuff. We have to teach them how to tidy. We're not all born with it. Or some people are naturally organized and tidy. What I haven't mentioned yet is I am naturally super disorganized, like really disorganized. Yeah. Yeah. I struggle. I really struggle. I think that's why I can relate to my clients so well, because I know where they're coming from, but I'm lucky I've learned a strategy now to help me keep it in place and keep it organized.
Caroline Thor: And in fact, two of my children in the last six months have had an ADHD [00:37:00] diagnosis and I've never had a diagnosis, but when I hear why they've been given theirs, my husband When we're sitting there going, you do that as well. So it's got to have come from somewhere. I highly suspect that I also have ADHD, but it means that you can teach kids.
Caroline Thor: You wouldn't ever say to your kids, you should go off and drive the car. Like they wouldn't know what to do and they don't know how to turn on a washing machine and they don't know how to tidy up. You have to, and what you said before is exactly right. It takes time at the start. If you're prepared to invest that time with whatever it is, then later you save yourself so much time because they're independent and they can do it without you.
Sara Mayer: And that's with anything, with kids, with new employees, with your spouse, any, you could probably do 90 percent of the things you're trying to ask somebody else to do or delegate [00:38:00] quicker, but in the long run, should you be the one doing it and how can you give people the opportunity, which is I think the cool part.
Sara Mayer: So I could talk to you all day if somebody's listening and they're in your area, how might they work with you? And then if they're not, how might they work with you?
Caroline Thor: Whichever the best place to come is to my website, because there you will find all the information for my in person and my online services and my courses.
Caroline Thor: That's Caroline hyphen Thor. And then if you would like weekly inspiration, you can listen to my podcast. So it's caroline thor. com forward slash podcast.
Sara Mayer: Ooh, I love it. And remind me your podcast name. Cause it was so clever. I love it.
Caroline Thor: Living clutter free forever.
Sara Mayer: That is like a life goal, but also a life skill.
Sara Mayer: Cool. Thank you so much for being on the show again. I could talk to you forever. If [00:39:00] you are listening today, please go check out her website so you can crush your goals and everything that goes in the way gets in the way, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed when you walk into your home, your office, or maybe even your car, because it's time to get rid of that clutter.
Sara Mayer: So you can have more peace, joy, and calm, which I think is a really cool thing. Thank you so much.
Caroline Thor: Thank you for having me. It's been lovely.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I always love to support my community
Sara Mayer: I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.
