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Establish Your Time

#30: Work-life balance for moms

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Work-Life Balance for Moms
In this episode you’ll learn the reasons why it’s so tough to balance out all the things related to motherhood, work, homelife and our own personal goals. First off, I’ll give you a glimpse of HOW to balance things out using the insight from an article I recently published. Then I’ll also talk about my secret strategy when trying to prioritize the ever-growing to-do list and gain some perspective on what’s eating most of your time. Finally, you’ll get access to a free resource I created to help you get super clear on what to do next.

Basically, I guess it’s fair to say this episode’s going to be like a free mini training for how to deal with the very challenging work-life balance. So you’ll want to grab a pen and a paper, my friend, to take notes. Or, you can save this episode, listen to the replay and get to work.
Work-life (im)balance
We all know as a mom we play many roles: chef, driver, counselor, referee, judge and jury, therapist, friend, builder and finder of toys, artist, teacher, etc. It’s constantly changing from one moment to the next, and often without notice.

Ironically, we have all the answers to problems, struggles and challenges. But at the same time, have no clue what to do, or what we’re even doing for that matter. Motherhood is a constant push-pull on our emotions, energy, patience… and it’s all worth it. Because this whole adventure is for the most beautiful and wonderful creatures on earth, our children!

For these reasons alone, there’s no doubt the toll on our mental load is quite heavy. Oftentimes, we get the short end of the stick. But we keep going and push through it all. In essence, it all comes from love. Now, if you ask any mom out there, anything short of a 100% effort on our part results in guilt and/or worry. This vicious cycle of selflessness, joy, love, guilt and worry is far from healthy and putting it out there like this, just raises the question, why? Undeniably, mothers would walk to the ends of the earth for those we love most.

With the joys of motherhood, come the challenges of having to balance everything out: all the things involving the kids, the house, our relationships with others, our passion projects, trying to fit in our own personal needs and then there’s our regular job!

How do moms get a better work-life balance?

Home organizing

#25: 17 Habits To Making Life Easier

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“…going from a cluttered home and feeling overwhelmed to being organized where the house is easy to maintain by everyone –  IS a journey…”

1) They’re inexpensive. 2) They come in a variety of sizes and functions. Like you can hang stuff that’s pretty light to really heavy things. They can also be stuff you put on a regular wall or in your shower stall! 3) You can get them anywhere from the dollar store to even the big box stores. And 4) and this is why they’re so awesome: if you don’t like the spot you initially put them in, you can always remove it without damaging your wall behind and put it someplace else.  They’re easy to remove regardless of how long that hook’s been there. 5 minutes or over 5 years. It won’t damage your wall so long as you follow the instructions on how to remove them!

[…]

When you walk in our bedroom, you’ll see the side of my husband’s tall dresser right away, and my long dresser is along the door on your right.  You won’t see this when you walk in but at the far end of these 2 pieces of furniture, are command hooks placed either on the wall or on the dresser itself.  

So often you won’t see clothes on our bed, the chair or dressers because they’re hanging in a hidden spot strategically placed at the height of the dresser so you don’t see them when you walk into our room.  It cuts the visual clutter that can often happen when your clothes are all over the place.

shows a child who organized crayons by color
Home organizing, Raise Responsible Kids

#24: Organizing School Supplies With Kids – An Easy Step By Step Plan

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This episode is like a mini training where I’m going to help guide you, step by step, into organizing school supplies, so that everything’s ready for the next school year. But here’s the thing, if you’ve been the one taking care of all the school supplies in the past, slowly organizing things over the summer, or nipping it in the bud at the start of summer, no no, not anymore. If you know me by now, follow me on social media and listen to a few episodes, you know I’m all about getting the kids involved when it comes to organizing our homes and lives.

So let’s go!

First off, if you’re wondering “Why do this now?” Let me paint a picture for you:

Say, we take the same scenario I just mentioned a minute ago where the school books and supplies are either still in your kids’ school bags somewhere in the house or scattered here and there in different piles. It’s clutter that’s not only taking up physical space but mental real estate too because, you know it needs to be dealt with. The thing is, it just keeps getting pushed to the bottom of your ever growing ‘to-do’ list and then sits in your mind all summer long.

And imagine it being close to another school year and you’re overwhelmed and scratching your head at all the extra supplies you need to get when you could have sworn you got new school supplies last year. So where is everything?

Or, it’s crunch time now and with the summer ending, fall activities to register for and plan your schedule around , along with doctors and dentist appointments to book….now you have to deal with organizing school supplies so they start the year off right: with everything they need. But time, as always, is running out!

I know there are so many more situations and scenarios similar to these in many households, but what do they all have in common? They all end up leaving parents frustrated, annoyed, not wanting to deal with it and then mentally depleted. ….. And the school year hasn’t even begun yet!

How can we avoid all those unnecessary feelings?

Nip it in the bud now.Today or give yourself a week to finish this simple and easy task and don’t do it alone. I know it could go a lot faster if it’s just you and it’s SOOO tempting to take it all and get it done and over with. I HEAR you! I’ve done this myself over the years. But now, I do things differently: I take every moment I could as a teaching moment . More importantly though, you’re here right now – following this podcast show – because deep down, you also don’t want things to always fall on you, right?

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it over and over again: Life stuff, household stuff, organizing it, maintaining it all and everything in between – doesn’t always have to fall all on you. It’s not why you’re here in this world. As parents, we are their first teachers so, teach what you know how to do. Your future self and your kids will thank you for it – I promise!

Now, could you imagine taking care of this task, EARLY in the summer: how much more good energy will be created from within you because you just ticked off another item off of your to-do list? And even MORE good feelings because you’re teaching and involving the kids to take care of their things! All the more reason to get started now with organizing school supplies!

Miscellaneous

#23: Getting Organized With Your Last Minute Teachers’ Gifts

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So back to the year end chaos. On top of the events, outings, shows, exams and final projects comes the time to say ‘thank you and enjoy your summer’ blurb we either say or write on a card, to the people who spend the most time with our kids. The ones who are tirelessly supporting them, guiding them and basically helping to raise our kids. These range from the very present teachers and aids to those supporting them in the background, the staff.

When you ask teachers point blank what they’d like as a gift, they naturally look at you wide eyed, nervously smiling and shaking their heads saying “I don’t know… anything…”! But what they can tell you in unison and certainty, without even blinking is what they DON’T want: another mug!

You can get ideas from ALL over: Pinterest, any Facebook group with moms and even doing a plain ol’ Google search. From ordering, to DIY the ideas are ENDLESS – If you have time…..

And this episode is about NOT having much time to do all of the searching, ordering or origami-ing. So what do you do to show your appreciation and thanks when you have VERY LITTLE TIME and it’s almost running out? Well I’m about to tell you what I do – because I’m going through it right now – I’ll give you some tips and ideas as well as provide you with a little template to help you out. Today’s podcast episode is about Getting Organized With Your Last Minute Teachers’ Gifts. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Home organizing

#22: To Decant Or Not To Decant?

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So if you still have to go out and get something for these amazing teachers and staff, I’m right there with you friend!

So the idea to talk about the topic of decanting food came up as I was organizing a client’s pantry.  I asked him if he ever considered decanting certain food items and he wasn’t sure what that meant or what it entailed.  So that got me thinking. This would be a GREAT topic to talk about on my podcast:  Decanting

Well I’m about to tell you all that in today’s episode. But before I do, don’t forget to hit subscribe and follow on my podcast show from whichever platform you’re listening from right now. If you don’t want to miss when the next one releases, just head to DianneJimenez.com and click on the words  “Be the First to know”.  You can’t miss it.  It drops down right underneath the fuchsia media player.

Alright back to our topic! Decanting: What is it? How do you do this? And Who should decant?

Home organizing, Raise Responsible Kids

#21: Teach Kids How To Store Their Papers

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Recently a mom friend sent me a message out of the blue asking me about a very popular issue most parents with pre-school and school-aged children struggle with, myself included – until I had a strategy and action plan.

What I liked about how she framed it is that it wasn’t your TYPICAL Google search question. This went deeper in thought even though the results were the same: containing the clutter and giving the items a home.

I absolutely LOVED this question because it was about nipping the issue at the bud and addressing the behavior as opposed to finding organizing solutions using physical things like better furniture or using separators like bins or file folders. These are all great solutions to contain the clutter and chaos but it DOESN’T solve the ultimate problem: how we go about dealing with our things.

I get it, we’re all looking for quick fixes and solutions to deal with the chaos and disorganization in our home. With free shipping and next-day delivery, it’s so easy now to get our hands on things that will help solve our situation. But, is it REALLY solving the underlying issue?

If we don’t have strategies and plans set beforehand when new items come into our home or when we see a sale or deep discounted items, we’re SOOO tempted to take advantage of these hot deals that we buy more than we really need, or have space for. Our home, our space feels cramped and our minds become cluttered too: having to deal with organizing and managing the excess.

Well, in this case, it’s not about deals or sales but it is about items that keep coming in from the creative minds of our little ones…and they produce some REALLY beautiful, heartwarming, almost magical things… WE want to keep them all. And why not? They came from the most wonderful beings in the world – our children!

And if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, well you better believe your kids will also want to keep every masterpiece that they’ve created.

So….how do we nip things at the bud, or address the root cause? Well, the title of this episode gives it all away: Teach Kids How To Store Their Papers

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