A life update - what season of life I am in right now!

A life update

Krista: [: 00:00:00

I'll be totally honest. I do not recommend that because my audio was so bad. I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew is that I had figured out a secret to making home life motherhood day-to-day life. Easier for moms and families. And so I just started talking about it. I didn't know how to, I didn't know what I was doing.

mments and then uploading it [: 00:01:00

And so the show has improved. It has improved over time. But when it started, it was totally just a passion project. Something that I was excited to share with, and that's what I'm excited to share with you today. It's less structured, it's less here's the steps, here's how you do it. Here's like the B I've got a basic outline of notes, and we're just gonna talk about what my life is like now versus what it was like five years ago, which is crazy when I started this.

ike, we have four kids and I [: 00:02:00

So he's with us part-time. So for parts of the stuff that I was sharing, in reality it was two big kids, a sometimes three big kids who were like seven, nine, and 11, I believe, and then a baby. So I would talk a lot in the Facebook group, which by the way, if you're not in the Motherhood Simplified Facebook group, you should go join that because that's the, like one of the best places to get hands on decluttering support from other moms who are kind and not, they're not judgmental.

Cause we don't allow that in the group. We remove it immediately. It hardly ever happens, to be honest. But come join the group and I would share things, like I've simplified so much that, we do, we're a family of. What is it, five or six? We do a load of dishes every day. I can do my nightly reset every single night.

of my life I, I would do my [: 00:03:00

That was like a less it was a pretty low workload for me compared to what I have now. Okay. I'm gonna talk about that too. But and at that point my kids weren't very into sports either. They did do sports, like for fun and sometimes it was like only one of 'em was in sports or maybe both of them were in sports, but it was like just a Saturday morning.

months [: 00:04:00

I feel like 18 months to three years old is. The hardest because they're so mobile and agile and like irrational. I don't know. I just find that age difficult. And that is when I got pregnant with our fifth child. So at that time too, I, when it was just the four kids, I, my kids did some of their chores, like they did their own laundry.

But. It wasn't very consistent, like it was like sometimes they would help out with sweeping or extra stuff that I needed, while I was dealing with the baby. But chores back then were not very consistent. Like a lot of it fell on me. And like I said, for my own threshold, that was fine and it worked.

rsonally. We move across the [: 00:05:00

If you've listened to the podcast before I talk a lot about the clutter threshold, like how much can you actually manage on a day-to-day basis? I was within my clutter threshold, but I was slowly getting out of like my life threshold, right of pregnancy, that being hard on my body. Just being exhausted, moving, adjusting everybody to a brand new area that honestly was not very family friendly and difficult to be in.

. That's one of the benefits [: 00:06:00

Once you start to get out of your like threshold, it's very noticeable cause you're like, oh my gosh, I remember this. I do not wanna go back to this. But the things that were going on in my life were not stuff that I could just get rid of, like you can with clutter. I knew that it was just going to be a season of my life that I was going to have to get through.

And I talk a lot on this podcast in my courses about seasons of your life and knowing that sometimes it's just a season of your life that you have to get through. And that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it. And it doesn't mean that it's not gonna be difficult, it just means that it's a season, it doesn't last forever, and some things are going to have to go.

u were around like the end of: 2019

Three big kids in a pandemic and a business and my husband doing, again, a high demand job now in a pandemic that has all of these additional requirements on us. And things changed and it was really difficult. Like my kids were legitimately lonely because we were in a new town, a new small town.

Which, small towns are great unless you're the new person and everybody's been here since they grew up and then schools are closed. And it was a lot. It was a lot. And I just continued to be in a season of life where I was outside of my threshold, right? My threshold of what I could comfortably manage, which meant that I had to take a lot of things off my list.

ness, like when I started my [: 00:08:00

Groups, like spinoff groups and doing house tours and facilitating house tours for other people. Just all of these things. And like the middle of 2020 is when I started pulling back and saying, Hey guys, like I can't do this every single day anymore. Which, of course I couldn't. That makes sense now.

I'm I'm gonna try to do it weekly. And then even that was like too much and I couldn't do it weekly anymore. And so I had to pull back even further and say, I'm gonna, I'm not doing weekly shows in the Facebook group live anymore. I'm only gonna be doing them on the podcast, so if you wanna listen to these, go follow the podcast and you'll get a new episode every week.

s that I can record them all [: 00:09:00

Was so much to handle. And so we've got the podcast and it's been great and I've simplified a lot of parts of my business. Like I used to do a free decluttering challenge every single month, and now I only do one once or twice a year. And it works because now we got through that, right? We got through 2020 and 2021.

think this the school year of: 2021

And then I had two toddlers and running a business, like it was just a lot. [00:10:00] And then we got 2022 to 2023 to where we are now, and I'm feeling. I'm feeling like I have space again especially when I like, reflect on how far we've come and how different things were back then. And so I wanted to share just some of the things that I've gone through over the last, like three years specifically, but I guess five years in total.

And what that looks like as far as like my home and the stuff that we have and what we decide to keep and not keep, especially in baby seasons. I'll point you to some places that you can go check out if you're, like, if you're pregnant or you are trying to figure out like what baby gear you need and all that.

ed motherhood simplified my, [: 00:11:00

Eating diapers. That's it. And that's what we did. And it was great cause my big kids had enough like stuffed animals and toys and extras to keep her entertained and to be totally honest, that was when I really got to practice what I preach and realized that babies don't need a lot, they don't need toys.

The house is their toy. The pillows, the towels, the clothes, the people, if you have pets, the pets, the dishes. The bathtub, the water, the outside. That's what I used to say this all the time in the motherhood simplified group, like the outside is the toy, right? I'm not, I don't need a bunch of outside toys because the outside is the toy.

how kids play. So don't take [: 00:12:00

They don't need baby toys. So I got to practice what I preach with that and share all of that with you instead of the Facebook group. If you go to the Motherhood Simplified Facebook group, it's linked in the show notes. You can search my name and search. You can even filter on Facebook like by most recent.

You can filter it by year and you can search, Kris Lockwood, baby Toys, crystal Lockwood, baby clothes, crystal Lockwood wardrobe change, and you'll find posts and even old live videos. Crystal Lockwood House Tour. I show you parts of my house and how it's set up. And we've lived in four different houses since I started this podcast, so enjoy that.

nd have like really curated. [: 00:13:00

And then they keep the things that are special to 'em, whether it's school projects or clothes that they like and they wanna keep, or letters from their friends. They curate their own memory boxes. And so that's another thing that I teach. You might be able to find some stuff on like sentiment. You will find some stuff on sentimental items in the Facebook group.

But when I teach like how to curate memory boxes, that's a part of my decluttering simplified course. Just as it's pretty advanced, you can't really do it until the rest of your house is squared away. But in addition to going through. Baby stages. I've also implemented a lot more responsibility with my older kids.

Now it's definitely at least [: 00:14:00

Being at home and we don't eat out. Like we just don't do it. Like I, I don't enjoy fast food and I don't really enjoy restaurants. So all of our food is at home. I don't know, I don't know if it's the food or I don't know if it's like taking five kids to a restaurant. It's just not fun to me.

So it's very rare that we do that. It's like a big deal if we do, and everybody's excited. So it's reserved for that. So we do. Lots of dishes, right? Lots of dishes. Same amount of dishes. Actually the same set of dishes. We have the same set of dishes as I had five years ago, so I know it's not because we have more dishes, it's because we have more people who are eating more, right?

week. They both do their own [: 00:15:00

They both do their own bedrooms. And then my little toddlers, they help me with random things. One of 'em is almost six, and she'll be in kindergarten in the fall. So I will probably try to find something that she can do every single day just to get her in the habit of it. But I don't know what it's gonna be yet.

So that changes things too because like I said, when we started this podcast and this group, and I would share photos of my home. I don't wanna say like I was a fraud because I wasn't a fraud, but that level of pristine, nightly reset that I was doing is not the season of life that I'm in right now because my kids are helping, right?

My kids are doing the dishes, so I can't control them having the dishes done at the exact same time every night like I used to do. There's so many people moving in so many directions all of the time that even if the house gets swept, at the end of the day, we might go to bed and the floor need to be swept again.

That's just the way that it [: 00:16:00

I can feel myself having more space again, and so part of me felt like I was not going to be. Relatable. I feel like I was very relatable when I was stuck in that like life is way too overwhelming for me right now mode in the Facebook group. I think when I first started it five years ago and I was doing those pristine lightly resets, it was like inspirational and aspirational and it felt very authentic to me.

These are my circumstances. [: 00:17:00

And so I'm like now I don't have anything, right? Like I don't have, like I'm not a total mess, just trying to survive. And I'm not also just totally crushing it. It's just this is, and maybe that's a good thing, right? That's why I wanna share this with you guys. This is just how our life is now.

ng on, but my house is still.[: 00:18:00

The thing that has stayed the same is that my house still feels easy to be in. So even when those seasons of life for me have been chaotic and difficult and overwhelming, and beyond my threshold of what I can manage without removing things from my life or my to-do list, or my expectations, my home. And managing it and keeping it, pretty clean most days.

Making sure that everybody's got, clean clothes, things are clean enough, sta sanitary, all of that. That's still been easy throughout all of these changes of my life. And that's what I wanted to share with you today is that, That's the power of decluttering. That's why I do this podcast.

, that is what's changed for [: 00:19:00

And I still deeply believe that the home is one of the best places that you can focus your attention and time and energy on. If it's cluttered, if it's overwhelming, if it's difficult for you to manage, if it's hard for you to be at your home. If you dream of just like getting rid of everything and running away, if you dream of just not having to have all of this stuff or have some kind of a catastrophe happen where you don't have your stuff anymore.

Just declutter it. Just declutter it. Okay. I've got free workshop for you. I've got all of these podcast episodes for you. The free workshop does have a free checklist to get started, as well as some other mini trainings within it. So go to the show notes, come join the Mother, hit Simplified Facebook group.

ing, this is a great episode [: 00:20:00

It's a story of how I wanna help you and help other moms who are in situations like you, you are in. And if you're listening and you've been around for a long time and you've been helped, share it in your stories. Tag me so I can see it. I love to see you over there. And get the word out to other moms so that if they are feeling overwhelmed in their home, they can listen in, get some support, and start getting rid of that access stuff in their life that is making it way more difficult than it needs to be.

All right. That is it for this episode, and I will see you on the next one.