Feeling Disorganized? Create Space With The KonMari Method for Imperfect Tidying Up with Caroline Thor

Feeling disorganized? Or like the lack of order in your home or business is cramping your creativity and progress? I FEEL YOU! 

While I LOVE to tidy up as a Virgo-rising (though cleaning can be a way I procrastinate!) my digital organization is a real weakness for me.

While we can definitely come a LONG way without sweating the small stuff, when day to day operations become more challenging because of a lack of organization— it's an issue that serves us well to address! 

Which is why I was so thrilled to interview the amazing Caroline Thor on the Creative Magic Club podcast—she helps moms to reclaim their time by reducing chaos and organizing your home using Marie Kondo's KonMari method.

In this conversation you'll learn:

How striving for perfection is a waste of time and energy and having a structured approach that makes it easy to maintain being organized ENOUGH is KEY. 

How you can apply the KonMari method to find simple solutions to declutter any area of your life and business—including digital spaces.

How becoming clutter free is a powerful practice to create space for more opportunity, abundance and money to flow into your life + what has been working for both myself and Caroline. 

You're going to love it! 

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Chapters

• 0:12 Discovering Peace Through Organized Living
• 4:53 Simplifying Life Through Strategic Organization
• 20:54 Small Steps to Organized Living

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:12

What's up, this is Sarah Mack, and welcome to Creative Magic Club. Together, we'll discover inspirational stories of creative entrepreneurs living out their dreams, doing the work they are most passionate about and building wealth in magical and fun ways, while building a six-figure income. As a writer and coach, helping other women to launch their dream businesses, I've connected with so many incredible people and seen it proven again and again that you can thrive financially doing whatever it is you are passionate about. I'm here to share life-changing strategies for mindset, making money and reaching more people with your work in a business and life filled with creativity, freedom and fun. Hi everyone, welcome. I'm so excited to introduce to you my guest today. We have with us Caroline Thor, who is a professional organiser, konmari consultant, wife and mother of three and proud pet mum With a passion for helping others. Caroline has made it her mission to help people declutter and organise their homes. Hi Caroline, thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Hi, thanks very much for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Yeah. So, as someone who has immensely struggled with organisation, I'm excited to talk to you and I'm curious, before we dive in to all of your wisdom on the topic how did you get to doing this work in the first place?

Speaker 1: 1:39

Well, strangely it's because I am also someone who struggles with organization, which people find really weird to hear, but I was a very overwhelmed mom when my kids were little. I was permanently stressed. I just was meeting myself coming around the next corner and I happened to read one day about the KonMari method, which Marie Kondo had developed as a way of decluttering and organizing our homes, in a magazine, ordered her book the life-changing magic of tidying up, and that was basically. That was exactly 10 years ago, and it started this movement within me of oh, it doesn't have to be this hard. And I started organizing our home using her method, using the category system, and I could just feel myself getting calmer and calmer as it.

Speaker 1: 2:28

It went through to the point that one day, as I was getting ready to get my three kids out of the house, my middle daughter turned to me and she said why are you a nicer mummy now? Well, I was like, oh my goodness. So even the kids were picking up on the fact I was calmer. Things weren't stressy, it was, you know. And then fast forward seven years and we were in the pandemic and I suddenly saw that online you could train to become a KonMari consultant. And I just knew I had to do it. I knew I had to help other women find this peace and this ease that I had, and the rest, as they say, is history. That's what I've been doing for the last three years now.

Speaker 2: 3:12

That's amazing. I'm curious, like you know, what was the first major win for you when you started applying it. Is there like a particular area of your home that you started with? Or, like you know, when you started applying it, what would you say was your first kind of breakthrough moment of like oh, this is like real change that's happening for me.

Speaker 1: 3:31

I think it was really that when I had someone visiting the house and I didn't have a mad panic tidy up before they came, I realized I just needed to vacuum around and I was done. And I was like wow, because before it literally was a case of gathering things up in washing baskets and hiding it in my bedroom or opening drawers and stuffing it all in and hoping no one opened anything. Um, so that for me was the real aha moment when I suddenly realized I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not doing panic tidying because I'm on top of it, I'm in control of it. It and it didn't look perfect and it still doesn't by any stretch of the imagination, but it's good enough for me, and that's something else that I've learned.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I have a standard at which I feel calm and happy. That is not going to be the same for somebody else. You might say, oh no, I couldn't live with it, that cluttered, still or disorganized or untidy. But everyone has their own level and when you find that level, then you're fine, it's gold. You can live with it like that. You don't have to be striving for it to be better all the time. So I think that was my biggest takeaway.

Speaker 2: 4:36

Right. It's like you found a place where you can live in flow. An organization is just kind of like naturally integrated into way, into the way that you're living, without these like it all going one way and then all having to swing back in the other direction and it kind of taking a lot of energy yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 4:53

I was like my sister-in-law came to stay last weekend and I thought I'll do a bit of tidying up. Before she came and walked into the living room, thought, actually, today there isn't anything to put away because we we did our 10 minute tidy up yesterday evening and it's, this is fine, this is good enough. So I just vacuumed and that was it yeah, I love these philosophies.

Speaker 2: 5:10

I'm a big fan of the good enough philosophy of like being the C student instead of trying to be the A student, because you know, especially as women, especially when you have little ones, especially when you're running a business, like the to-do list is never going to be done.

Speaker 2: 5:24

You know, like there's always going to be new things, there's an endless list of possibilities and things that you desire to take action on. And you know, as someone who suffered from burnout, you know, I think that like that drive to try and be the best at all of the things and to, yeah, like you know, I've paid the price firsthand of not paying attention to what's truly important, which is always how we feel and taking care of our body and prioritizing those things. And you know relationships, and so I'm curious, how's that process been for you? And kind of you know knowing your priorities and like how have have that? How's that shifted over the years? I'm sure that's shifted, obviously once you have children, and where does like being organized and staying clutter free kind of fit in your level of priorities?

Speaker 1: 6:20

I love the KonMari method for the fact that you start with visualizing your ideal lifestyle. You don't start tidying and then worry about what the outcome is going to be. Later you start with what do I want the outcome to be? How do I want to live, how do I want to feel, as you said. I love that when people talk about how they feel it's so, so important and we don't pay enough attention to that and we don't pay enough attention to that. So I had already decided before I even started that for me, in my ideal lifestyle, it would be super easy to clean my house, because I hate cleaning like with a passion. It needed to be quick and it needed to be simple, which meant not much stuff out on the surfaces. I decided and I sort of then built everything around that that I wanted to have time with my kids, that I didn't want to be sitting on the floor in the living room playing with them, thinking, oh, I should be tidying up, that I just wanted to get it to a point where it was good enough and I was happy with that. And it has become sort of so ingrained now that everything has a place to go back to. The whole family knows where that is, so that the kids aren't needing to ask me where stuff is and they do put it back when they've used it, so I'm not having to permanently nag them or go around after them tidying up after them.

Speaker 1: 7:37

But, as you said, it hasn't just been the decluttering and organizing, because part of my visualizing my ideal lifestyle was I don't want to be so busy, I don't want to be doing all the things just because there is an expectation that I do all the things. And this was the mistake I had made as a mom when my kids were little that I need to bake if people come over, that if someone comes to stay for the weekend, I need to be creating these amazing meals. The house needs to be super tidy and super clean and I need to be calm and chilled and the perfect hostess and all of all of that sort of stuff. Plus, I need to be volunteering at kindergarten and at school and I need to be baking cakes for the handball team and you know, just pulled in all the directions as we do as women and feeling guilty when we don't do it. So I also decluttered my calendar.

Speaker 1: 8:28

I looked at what sparks joy for me. We talk in the KonMari method about what sparks joy, what makes you happy, what makes you feel great, and things that I was involved in, like being on school boards and involved with all the baking I'd like. That doesn't spark joy for me, that's not fun, and I'm trying to doesn't spark joy for me. That's not fun and I'm trying to quickly get this stuff done on top of everything else. So I cut those things out and, interestingly, another thing that got cut out, which hadn't been my intention, but I started to realize that certain relationships also were not necessary, that there were friendships that were pulling me down, that there was a lot of negativity coming from the other person or people, and therefore I can still be friends with you, but I don't need to be spending as much time with you because it doesn't actually do me any favours in the long run.

Speaker 1: 9:21

So it became like the whole package. I mean it changed my career Eventually. I had been teaching before. It changed how my calendar looks, it changed whether I say yes to things. So, for example, last weekend we'd been invited out for dinner and I was really tired and we'd had a really busy week and I just said to my husband you know what. I think this is one thing too much. I'm just going to end up not enjoying it because I'm so tired. So I'd rather cancel and reschedule. And our friends were fine with that, because if they're proper friends, they're going to understand it.

Speaker 1: 9:54

So that's sort of how it's developed, and our home life is a little complicated in that we have one child who has autism and social anxiety and really struggles with life, and so I have no predictability about what I can do. When I don't know whether they're going to function in the morning, whether they're going to get need to be picked up from school early, I can't plan anything, and so I've actually now created a life that means I can be there for them, but I also get time to do the things I want to do. So you've got your podcast, I've got my podcast. I love it, because when they're having a day where they're struggling and they just want to be on screens and like decompressing, I can go record podcast episodes. I'm still doing something for my business. I'm still, you know, I've created this ideal lifestyle that works for me and works for my family, and that is just such a joy yeah, that's so beautiful.

Speaker 2: 10:51

I love this conversation so much and I think that was partly the gift for me.

Speaker 2: 10:56

And going through a burnout is kind of going through that really uncomfortable phase of starting to say no to things, whereas maybe I wouldn't have said no before because, you know, it's like my body didn't give me the choice.

Speaker 2: 11:09

I was like, well, if I say yes to this, like I know, I'm gonna feel so awful that it's not even gonna be worth it. So you know, and I think that really paved the way for my business like starting my business, um, during a burnout kind of set me up in very similar ways to to what you're talking about, to really that you know, I needed flexibility to be able to take care of my health, to be able to take naps and not be working millions of hours because I didn't have the capacity. And it just goes to show how so much more is possible than we often imagine because we're so busy in these patterns of like saying yes to things that we're just saying yes to kind of unconsciously, without necessarily intentionally choosing them, because it's what we desire, because it's what, it's what brings us joy. Um, so I love this so much and I'm also curious to hear, presumably, these principles of the KonMari um approach they will also apply to, like digital organization, like you know, the way that you use your technology and the way you organize your business and things like that behind the scenes. I'm curious how you've kind of applied it in those ways.

Speaker 1: 12:20

Yeah, definitely. I mean organization, as I said at the start, is something I really struggle with. I have to be very systematic about how I'm going to do things to stay on top of stuff and for it not to unravel back into chaos, and the KonMari method has sort of given me that system to be able to hold it all together and know how it works. So for my business, I have like really structured ways now of doing things that work for my brain, and I think this is the important thing to work out what works for you. Too often I think we're just listening to stuff on Instagram or on YouTube and someone's going yeah, yeah, if you do this, it's really great, it works well. It might not do for you, but you've got to maybe try it and see. So I have my digital stuff set up in folders in ways that I know I can quickly find things. I try to keep my inbox at zero so that when something new comes in, it's obvious to me and doesn't get lost in all the noise of everything else I used to. When I first started it, I had thousands in my inbox, as I think a lot of people do and I have.

Speaker 1: 13:30

I'm very much a paper and pen person, I love to write things down.

Speaker 1: 13:34

That, for me, is my best method of organization.

Speaker 1: 13:37

So I have a book that I write everything in and I set myself three goals for each day that I have to achieve, and some of them are business, some of them are personal, but it means that I know I've got to get these three things done.

Speaker 1: 13:52

And then on my other that would be nice list, I can tick those off, but they're not that urgent on that day, so I don't put myself under pressure that it all has to be done. There's three things that are going to move the needle, that mean that I'm going to meet deadlines, and then the other things are nice to have, as if I have time, and maybe the next day one of those will move up onto the has to be done. Otherwise we're going to miss the deadline. So it's basically been a case of finding a way that makes me feel relaxed about it and in control, that I have some joy in my work because I know where everything is. That, for me, is what organisation is. It just brings me joy because it makes me feel calm, and that has been sort of the way I've gone about setting everything up.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Yeah, I love this. First of all, you're my heroine for having inbox zero, like that's one of those, those like I'll get to that when I have time items on my to do list, but no, that's very inspiring to me. And yeah, I work in a similar way with the, you know, top three priorities and then, and having a written planner that I then copy things, I schedule everything in my Google calendar and then I copy it down sort of day by day, week by week, because I love being able to cross it off. And yeah, so, you know, part of the reason why I was excited to have you come on and talk about this today is because decluttering is often one of the first steps that, when I'm running programs, especially around like money or, you know, stepping into creating new income streams in your business, it's one of those steps that I think is really important to set us up for success when we want to invite something new in, whether that's just more money, more clients, or when we're pivoting and transitioning and we want to build a new income stream or we want to move away from, you know, certain ways of doing things or old patterns. And yeah, for those reasons, I think, because it clear, it clears up your bandwidth. You know it's like it's actually a very kind of like rewarding and straightforward thing that you can do in your immediate environment. That can create a little bit of emotional space for you, but particularly with the calendar too, because, also acknowledging that often transitions they do take up extra bandwidth. You know, when you're doing that deep work, when you're looking at the things that you want to get rid of, you know I'm sure it's the same with the decluttering process as it is with any other type of stepping into a new phase is there's just a lot of decisions to make and obviously, you know that's why it's so supportive to work with a mentor in whatever it is that you're doing, that you haven't done before, that's new to you, because they can help guide a lot of those decisions.

Speaker 2: 18:16

Because this is one thing I learned from my first job, as you know, in the entrepreneurship world. I was working with my friend who was a doctor and I learned that decision fatigue is a real thing. Like we, actually you would have a finite number of decisions our brain is capable of making in a day and obviously, like she was a doctor and she was making a lot of decisions around patient prescriptions, diagnoses. So at the end of the day, she was incapable of, you know, deciding what we're going to have for dinner and she outsourced that to her husband, and so that was really.

Speaker 2: 18:48

I think it's really valuable to know that and, you know, often as entrepreneurs, we're invited to do like the hard things at the top of the day, because that's when we have our, like, highest level of decision making power, our highest level of creativity.

Speaker 2: 19:03

You know, obviously it's a little bit different for everybody, but so when we have, we create these systems of living, it kind of removes some unnecessary decisions, which ultimately gives us more creative bandwidth to, you know, take those leaps or try something new, or make a decision to build something new that we want to experience in our life, whether that's a relationship or a lifestyle habit or, you know, an income stream.

Speaker 2: 19:32

Yeah, I love that we're having this conversation and at the same time, it can very easily feel overwhelming too right, because we're like, oh well, I'm, I want to move into this new phase, I want to invite new clients, and like my desk is a whole mess and my office feels really cluttered, or my closets are completely full and I wouldn't even know where to put this stuff. I need some storage solutions. Like you know, what would you say to people who are feeling like there's just so much to do that I feel it feels kind of overwhelming, and how do I, how do I start? And, like you know, how do I not let this become an overwhelming thing on my to-do list?

Speaker 1: 20:15

no, you're totally right. I think overwhelm is the biggest reason why people don't ever start in the first place. We almost get comfortable feeling overwhelmed and it gets slightly uncomfortable to think we're going to change things. But I think as entrepreneurs, especially when you're sitting at your desk and you know that there is chaos in the other rooms around you, it's super distracting, let alone your desk that you're sitting at and you start to feel guilty like oh, I should be putting some laundry on, or I should be starting to prep the meal for later, and all this sort of stuff. So I think the best thing to do is take it in tiny steps.

Speaker 1: 20:54

I think people are under the impression that if you're going to declutter and organize your space, you need like hours in one go. I think especially if you've watched the Netflix series with Marie Kondo where she helps families and they get everything from one category out. Well, that's lovely if you've got five, six, seven hours at a stretch, but most of us don't have that. Five, six, seven hours at a stretch, but most of us don't have that. So I always advocate trying to see what you can do in 10 to 15 minute bursts, because when we really really focus for 10 to 15 minutes. It is amazing what we can get done when we say to ourselves we'll have an hour. We get distracted by other things, end up procrastinating, scrolling through Instagram, wasting time and before you know it, the hour's gone and we've hardly got anything done. We've probably got as much done as if we'd spent 10 minutes doing it.

Speaker 1: 21:42

So to find those little pockets of time which most people also think they haven't got, I haven't got the time to declutter and organize. I haven't got time to organize my desk. I've got too much to do. I just need to get on with the work. So I'm just going to ignore the fact my desk is in chaos and what I love to do is to try and build things in while I'm doing something else. So, for example, if I'm cooking dinner in the kitchen and the pasta's boiling and everything else is sorted, I could stand there and scroll through Instagram while I'm waiting for the pasta to boil, or I could open a drawer and just organize it a bit. And this is what I do now.

Speaker 1: 22:21

I grab those little moments when I've got like dead time it's not down time, it's dead time which I then try to fill with something which, inevitably, is something to do with screens, and the same is true if you're sitting at your desk. Maybe you've got a training to watch or you've got something that you wanted to watch, like a webinar or something, but you don't really need to focus all that much on it. You were slightly interested in what it was all about. During that time you could put everything on your desk into categories, sort it while you're watching so that, while you're watching, so that you've at least made a start, and then you can declutter and organise each category as you find. You've got another bit of time, so there are ways of sort of building it into your day without necessarily saying right, everything's got to stop. Now. I'm going to declutter and organise for hours, so I think if you're feeling overwhelmed, that's the best thing to do.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Start small, find a tiny drawer that you could do, or one little area of your desks, even if it's just gathering all the papers together and putting them in a box. We've all got boxes, because Amazon's delivering stuff all the time. Collect them all together and put them in a box so you know where they are and they're safe, but they're off the desk. And then at some point, when you get a few minutes. You can get them out gradually and start organizing the papers, but at least they're safe and somewhere else other than on your desk and you've cleared a bit of space. And it's just finding little tricks like that to to get yourself over the first hump.

Speaker 1: 23:54

And in my membership, which I have, we always project plan each month. So we we will take the big picture like what is it we want to do? Are they wanting to do their living room or their kitchen or whatever it happens to be? And then we break it down into little tiny steps so that they don't feel overwhelmed and they know the first thing they have to do is perhaps get a donation box ready, and when they've done that, that's a tick. Maybe that's all they do on one day. The next day they can open the drawer and have a look what's in there and just take the overwhelm out of it. There's no pressure, there's no rush. It's been cluttered for ages. Let's just take our time and do it at a pace that feels good to us.

Speaker 2: 24:34

I love these tips so much I have have another one, especially for the entrepreneurs out there. I've coined it procrastinate cleaning.

Speaker 2: 24:41

So now it's like positive procrastination, like when you have resistance over writing that email or that sales page or you know, hitting publish on that emotionally vulnerable post or whatever it is that we're resisting putting our prices up, you know, and you start to go a bit crazy and you just can't sit down to take action on that thing. Like that's when I procrastinate and I'm like, okay, well, if I'm, I'm gonna like get into the zone by by taking action on things that have like immediate benefit to me, and I don't know whether it's my Virgo rising, but I get like my issue is I get addicted to it. Like I struggle to get in it and then, once I'm in it, I'm like, oh, this feels so good, I'm like making so much progress, everything's getting so tidy, and then it's like getting myself to stop and like pull myself out of it before I get sucked into the wormhole. So, yeah, I love that so much. I feel like I need that for my, my digital back-end organization. I love that project management little guide that you just shared with us of actually breaking it down into the small steps and, yeah, just taking one a day or finding those like repetitive pockets of time, like you say, like I always do the dishes while I'm in the middle of cooking and that's just something you know. I do it like along the way.

Speaker 2: 26:01

I bet there's so many things like that that you're not really seeing that when you integrate them into your lifestyle, suddenly that will remove like an entire pocket of time that you were dedicating just to that thing, and then that's time you have back.

Speaker 2: 26:14

And this is another reason why I love staying with friends when I travel, because whenever you live with other people, you pick up on these little things that people never talk about and you, you know it's like I don't know, cleaning tips or organizational tips or some random shelf organizer thing that you never knew existed. That you see, when you stay with other people and you pick up these these little that you know can feel so life-changing when you implement them and you're like, oh, suddenly I was able to fit this whole other thing in my closet that you know was like taking up so much space outside of it before. So, yeah, I love this conversation so much. Will you? You know, is there any any other message for people out there? You know what is like one thing that you really want them to take away, or like a tip or something that you know would just be a great place for people to take this conversation.

Speaker 1: 27:10

I think the thing that I feel so, so passionately about is it does not have to be perfect. Whether it's our businesses or our homes or our relationships, whatever it is, it does not have to be perfect. So, when it comes to feeling in control of our spaces and creating a lifestyle that we love, really work out what it is that you want, not what you see being promoted on instagram and in the films. It doesn't have to be like that, and it's very often not the reality. And I have so many clients who say to me oh, but when I go around to my friends houses, it's always so tidy. And I say to them yeah, that's what my friends used to think about me.

Speaker 1: 27:55

I had a friend that when my kids were little, every friday she would come over for dinner with her kids and we would cook together. And she said to me a while ago I had no idea that you were running around like a complete idiot trying to tram everything into drawers before I came every Friday. She had no clue. She thought I got it all under control. So don't, don't believe what you see from other people. They're probably struggling with something as well and they're not necessarily being honest about it and as long as you feel comfortable in your space and you feel in control of it and you feel happy in it, that is the most important thing yeah, I love that and I've actually been dabbling in feng shui, which has been really cool, like there's a lot to learn and I've implemented, you know, so, such small little things.

Speaker 2: 28:48

But my partner, who's pretty skeptic, like he doesn't he's not into astrology, he hates it when I talk about it, but he, he's fully bought into the feng shui just from, like the small shifts I've made. He's like, oh, my god, it feels so much better in here, it's like I'm obsessed with this room. It's so much different just from these minor tweaks. So, yeah, I think it's like it's fun, you know, I think bringing that approach of what's one small change that can just brighten up my space or make me feel good about what I've done and where I'm going and how I'm living and, and you know, to, just instead of feeling overwhelmed by there's so many things that we need to do, just being like, well, what's the next thing? You know, what would be fun to tackle next? Because it's it's never going to end you know, you're always going to buy new things.

Speaker 2: 29:33

You're always going to get rid of things like that's human life. And yeah, and to just know that, the more you create a space that you feel good in as the number one priority, the more inspired you're going to be. You know that's going to influence your relationships. It's going to influence your business. It's going to influence how much money you make. It's going to influence your business. It's going to influence how much money you make. It's going to influence the choices that you make with your money. And I think it's such a such an empowering place to focus to number one, feel a sense of control, you know is something that we do have control over in our immediate environment. That can shift our state and our mood and our focus and our creativity and our inspiration, and even those really small ways can make a really big difference. So thank you so much for bringing this conversation today and can you tell everybody, like, what have you got going on at the moment? Where can people find you if they want to learn more?

Speaker 1: 30:31

yeah, the best place is my podcast, which is called living clutter free forever, and you can find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 2: 30:40

Amazing. Thank you so much, caroline. Thank you everybody for listening, and please share this episode with anyone who you know it would benefit and we'll see you next week. Bye. For more inspirational content, head over to my website withsarahmackcom, and please support the show by liking, commenting and subscribing.