You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 105.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

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Hi, my strong friends. Yeah, I just got back from a great weekend up in Sacramento. Went to go visit some friends. Got to see my eldest son and my mom, and I got to pick up some new jackets that are freshly embroidered with My Freedom Grove logo. I'm so excited.

I've definitely reached a milestone in my business where I'm wearing my own logoed clothing. I hope that you get to have that pleasure in your business too. It feels amazing.

Anyway, I was so impressed with how I was able to schedule in all of the different activities. I was only gone 36 hours. But this is where organization comes in so that you can actually have everything that you want in your life. I get really organized with my schedule.

So to be able to drive that far away, it's like four and a half hours each way, schedule in I think I had like 10 different activities that I did within this 36 hours and drive back. Everything was smooth. I was calm. I was relaxed. I got to enjoy everybody's presence. It was such a great time.

Now I'm great at organizing schedules, but then when I get home and I look at my office! Oh my gosh, you guys, you don't get to see all of the mess that's on the other side of my camera. Eventually I will have all of my stuff really organized, but it made me wonder, do you guys also have that challenge of having too much stuff and not having it organized? Do you have it start to weigh down on you feel a little bit overwhelmed when you look at all of your stuff or maybe even you start to feel a little defeated.

This has been one of the things I've been working on trying to get better at how I organize all of my stuff at home and in my business. And I've had a couple clients express this need too. So I invited on Tracy Hoth, as my guest today. Tracy is an organizing coach. She helps you to organize all of your stuff and also take care of all of the mindset obstacles that pop up as you're going through the process.

She's going to share some tips with you on how you can get organized in your life and in your business. Things that you can use right away. So let's get started.

Meet Tracy Hoth from Simply Squared Away

Gretchen Hernandez:

Tracy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Tracy Hoth:

I'm excited to be here. This is gonna be fun.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh yeah. I can't wait. So can you introduce yourself please?

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. I am an organizing coach. My business name is Simply Squared Away. And I help people simplify and organize their life, their home, their business, and have fun while we're at it. I live in Kansas City and I've been married 26 years. We have four kids ages 17 to 23. So just a little wrap-up of me.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. I bet that organization was really important having four kids.

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. And that's why I think I started because I could see being organized was so helpful. And it gave me a lot of freedom to have less stuff and to have some organizational principles or ideas in place, and then be able to go do what you wanted to do instead of always being burdened with the need to clean or organize or go through stuff or whatever.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. The go through stuff. I can definitely identify with that. I think I spent way too many hours of my life searching for things.

Tracy Hoth:

Yeah.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And then I had five kids and so they'd have a lot of stuff. And even with birthday parties and stuff over the years, the sheer volume of gifts or whatever, they're so much!

Tracy Hoth:

It keeps coming in. Right? So that makes us have to have something in place or be diligent about making sure it keeps going out because it doesn't stop coming in.

Gretchen Hernandez:

That's true. That's very true. You started into a career of organization quite a while ago. Can you tell me how that started? Why did you decide to go into that as a career?

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. It was back before anything was popular except for closets. And I remember seeing closets in magazines and cutting the pictures out and putting them in this folder. So I kind of knew that I wanted to help people. And like I said, I was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years with my kids. And when my youngest started preschool, I thought, this is what I want to do. I want to help people get more organized, simplify their life, feel more confident. And so that's what I started doing.

Fueled By Low Clutter Tolerance

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. So how did you start to learn the skills of how to organize things?

Tracy Hoth:

I feel like some of it, I just have a low clutter tolerance. So I...

Gretchen Hernandez:

I like that terminology!

Tracy Hoth:

I do better if things are cleared off. I think because I like that I would make an effort to do that. Maybe too much of an effort to do that at times, you know? Then I would read books and there was an audiobook back then that I listened to and just learned how different people did it. And then I made up my own system and how to help people. And what I used myself. And so it's kind of a combo of, some of it was my brain just sees categories. I think that's helpful, but a lot of it was practiced and learning.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Nice. I know I needed to develop those skills a long time ago. So something just popped up for me, a memory. When I was getting ready to marry my first husband, my mom said, I really think you guys should go through pre-marriage counseling. Just, you know, to just cover your bases. Right. And the thing that came up in that session was that my fiance was frustrated at my amount of clutter.

Tracy Hoth:

Ooh.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And I didn't know what to do with that. And it was true though because my dining room table would always have stacks and stacks of all of the junk mail or the craft things that I was doing. And here it was, I didn't know that he was so bothered by it that that could actually affect our marriage.

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. I have people that have called that said, I can't take this anymore one or the other of them really. And sometimes it's that the other one thinks they should be able to handle it on their own. So they don't allow them to get help. And sometimes they force them to get help because they can't take it. So yeah, it is a big thing.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And even when I was working in the corporate environment, we all had our cubicles in our offices. And there'd be some people that you'd walk in and everything's orderly and their desks are all cleared off. And then other people where it was just piles and piles of papers everywhere. And they're searching for everything, they can't find it. And it started to affect their work performance.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And then, for me, once I got into a coaching group that I was working for in corporate, they decided to do an experiment on shared workspace. Instead of each of us having our own office, they said, we're gonna take this large conference room. And this is now going to be the one office for all of you. And you'll just have a desk in there. Because they figured you're hardly at your desk. You're always gonna be off coaching people. You don't need much space anyway. And this promotes a team environment.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Well, some of us had more stuff on our desk than others. Some of us really needed the big office space with lots of surfaces. And I remember, or one of my teammates, he was a laptop guy. That's all he ever had. He didn't like paper or anything. He could not handle being in the room with the rest of us because we had so much stuff everywhere. That we must have some kind of mental problems. Like he said that. And I, and to a certain point, I was like, oh, that hurts. But it's kind of, because for me it was true because I have so many different things going on at one time, I keep them documented, but there's many of them going on at the same time.

Tracy Hoth:

Right!

 

Where Do You Start Organizing Clutter?

Gretchen Hernandez:

I don't know if you've encountered any clients that either they have a lot of things going on or maybe there's some ADHD that's in there where they have a bunch of things started and they need everything there. But how would they organize any of that?

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. I think, I think that goes to how you start. Like where do you start when you feel like that? And I think to me, the first step is always to sort. So if that client has all these projects going on, let's sort them out and put one project here, one there, one there and get all the rest of the stuff sorted into those projects.

Tracy Hoth:

Once you have it in categories, then you kind of know what you have. You'd go through and then purge each category. But then, you know, okay, where could this live? How could I organize it? Where could I store it? What size folder does it need? And then you can talk through some of the storage solutions and organizing solutions that you could use.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I like that. About what size folder? Yeah. I hadn't really thought about the size of the folder, but yeah, I've had somewhere I'll just have like your regular paper folders and then somewhere it's the accordion style with like the flap, the goes over it. Because there's just so much of it and I did need to purge, but yeah. Put it all in one spot. That's that's great.

Tracy Hoth:

It's interesting because people always wanna start. They just think if I go buy containers, if I buy stuff, that'll help me get organized. But I say no, no, no. Don't buy anything until you to that fourth step where you decide what container it's gonna live in.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, okay. I just had like a big aha moment. Like what? No, I I've been one of those that goes and buys the containers first.

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. All of us. Cause they're so beautiful and fun and yeah. Ooh. Yeah.

Gretchen Hernandez:

How can that get us in trouble if we by the containers first?

Tracy Hoth:

Well like you just said, you don't know what size you need. You haven't purged, you don't know where it's gonna live. So if the container is gonna live on your desk versus in a file cabinet you have to base what you need on where it's gonna be. And how you're gonna use it. And so I always like to.

1. Sort.
2. Purge.
3. Assign homes, which is deciding where it's gonna live. And then, you know, okay, I need to get some bookshelves. I need to get this size box. I need to get these folders because I have this amount of stuff and this is where it's gonna live.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, that's just brilliant. I'm like now my mind is just turning. I'm like visioning how I would do a bunch of stuff because I still have parts that are not organized that I could definitely use some help. Going back to your career development, so you started to learn on your own, you started to, I think you said read some books and things too, and then you worked for a company doing it, right?

Tracy Hoth:

Nope. I started my own company.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh you right from the get go.

Tracy Hoth:

Right. And I started helping people.

New Speaker:

Wow.

New Speaker:

From that, I made up my steps, which are SPASM: Source, Purge, Assigned Homes, Set Limits and Maintain.

Gretchen Hernandez:

That's a funny acronym.

Tracy Hoth:

I use that couldn't I have thought of something cooler than that word, but I always think our office having a spasm because it has too much stuff in it. Or you get your little muscle spasm and you can think about me and think about the steps to organize.

 

Launching the Organizing Business

Gretchen Hernandez:

I love it. So good. Okay. So how did you get started creating your own business? Doing this?

Tracy Hoth:

I made a website. Just what I knew. I think it was on GoDaddy like website in a day, which did not take a day. But that was kinda fun. And then I tried my best with the limited knowledge that I had to make it SEO searchable. And I think that helped. And then I made business cards and I just told people what I did.

Tracy Hoth:

And word got out, people found me with a search on the internet. And then I started speaking. I started getting in front of groups and then grew my list. People started hiring me. And referrals and searches were the biggest way people found me.

 

Three Different Ways Tracy Works With Clients

Gretchen Hernandez:

We got to talk before we sat down to do this interview and I learned that you help people in three different ways. You'll do some in-home visits. You also do some one-on-ones and you do some group. Tell me first about the in-home visits. What does that look like?

Tracy Hoth:

I started doing that back in 2008. That's when I started my business. I've been in people's homes and offices for 14 years since starting. I don't do that as much, but I still do a little bit. People have me come because they wanna go through every part of their house or they want to downsize and move. Or I visit a business in person, and they just have so much clutter they can't get their mind wrapped around the process and what they're doing.

Tracy Hoth:

I've helped all sorts of different people. But we go in, we decide what their goals are and then we schedule sessions to work together. And it's just what you would imagine. You go in, you start sorting with them. You walk through helping them make decisions to purge. You look at what you have, and you decide where things are gonna live.

Tracy Hoth:

And you really work with them, so it's where they would think to look for something. Where they use it. And then you find containers. If it's in a house, I always shop the house first because they probably have a bunch of organizing containers that they've purchased. So let's just shop at the house.

Gretchen Hernandez:

That's a good point.

Tracy Hoth:

And then use those. And if there's something else we need, I can make recommendations around that. And then maintain. How are we going to maintain it? What can we put in place to help it stay that way?

Gretchen Hernandez:

And I think that is such a critical piece because I know that I've gone through some of the organizing efforts and I get everything that's so perfect. And I sit down and it's just, ah, I can breathe. And then two, three weeks later, it doesn't look the same anymore.

Tracy Hoth:

Well, I think that's part of it too. We think that it's a destination. We're gonna get organized and then life's going to be great. And if we think about it just like laundry or a garden. I like thinking of a garden because you're always weeding the garden. You never have. You never stop doing that. And then you have the produce that comes from it.

Tracy Hoth:

So same with organizing. We have to set up things that we do regularly. And I like to think of a preschool. A preschool has little kids everywhere, yet you walk in and it's perfectly neat. Everything's in its home. They're all assigned. Everything's labeled. But think of their process. They do cleanup time every day before break, before lunch, before nap time, before they leave. They're always in the process of maintaining,

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh my gosh, you are so right. I learned one of the best lessons from my daughter when she went to a Montessori preschool. And they had this concept of activities being called a job. And so they could go and pull out their job bucket. Whatever it was that, you know, all of the materials. And they had the rule that you have to clean up one job before you start the next one.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And so learning that language at that preschool, then I was able to come home and try to help my daughter do the same thing at home. I need to get a little bit more disciplined with that process. But it's a great process. And one to also use on me.

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. It's always the parent that's the one that's not following through because teachers are there. That's their job. They follow through. They help them, you know, the students do it. But it's at home. Our follow-through.

 

Respecting the Vulnerability of Helping People in Their Homes

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. Do you ever have people that are worried about being judged when you come to their home and they have clutter everywhere?

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. And I think for all of us, right? We think about our weakness. Some area that we've struggled in, and being able to be open and vulnerable in front of somebody else. It's challenging! And that's what it takes to open up and ask for help. I love that. I see that as such a gift that they're giving themself. And I mean, I don't care how messy it is or how bad it is. I expect it to be that that's why someone would call.

Tracy Hoth:

I've seen it all. I've seen everything you could imagine. So nothing surprises me and I look at what's possible. So I walk in, I'm not gonna judge them. I just think, wow, look at what's possible here. Look at the journey that we're gonna go through and what is the outcome? The transformation that's gonna happen. And that's exciting.

 

Virtual One-on-One Organizing Sessions

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. So you also do one-on-one. Is that over zoom?

Tracy Hoth:

Yes, I do it actually. Some clients choose just the phone.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Really?

Tracy Hoth:

And they have me on the phone, too. So either one, I let them choose. The majority of us are on zoom. But, I do have a couple clients that have really enjoyed. I think you can just be relaxed. You don't have to worry about what you're looking like. And so we work on zoom, but I also use Voxer with my clients so they can send pictures. They can process things audibly or with text.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And so for anyone that doesn't know what Voxer is, can you explain what that is?

Tracy Hoth:

It's an app on the phone. I just try to keep it out of my text, but it's just like a text. But it's an app, a walkie-talkie app is what it's called and you can voice message each other, but you can also send videos and pictures and text.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Great. So when you work with people, one-on-one like that, is it similar to the same process that you use when you're there in their house?

Tracy Hoth:

I think one-on-one, we work a lot more on mindset. So, yes. In the beginning, we're making a goal, we're breaking down their project. We're really making it simple. We're timelining it out to see. And then we have a plan. We can even look at obstacles that might come up and what they're gonna do about them.

Tracy Hoth:

So the really practical part and teaching them the steps and how they're gonna carry it out in the time. That's the organizing part, but we really go into the mindset part. So what are they believing now? What is their identity now? Do they believe it's possible? We kind of dig that stuff up.

Tracy Hoth:

The other thing once a week goes by and they see they accomplished what they planned or they don't, then we have a whole nother thing to look at. So, why do we think that didn't happen? What were you believing and thinking in that? Or was it just a schedule? What do you call it?

Gretchen Hernandez:

A schedule crash.

Tracy Hoth:

Yeah. Or was it something like that? And let's look at it and learn from it and keep going. And then other areas of their life come up. I mean, how we do one area of our life a lot of times shows up in other areas. With the one-on-one coaching, we coach a lot more life stuff, but then we keep going with the organizing part of it.

 

Overcoming Waste Shame and Letting it Go

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that. Mindset is amazing how much that touches our life everywhere. And even when you mentioned making the decision of keeping something versus not keeping something, some of the things that have kept me to hold on to things are "well, but it might be useful someday."

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh my gosh. So many different bridge thoughts I had to do to get over to being excited about purging something.

Tracy Hoth:

Yeah.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Where I started off with, no, this might be useful someday, but also there's like the shame of, well, I'm wasteful if I get rid of this because there's still life in this, it's still usable. So how would you help someone through that?

Tracy Hoth:

Oh, all sorts of ideas came to my mind when you were talking, but that's what we're talking about this month in Organized Life Academy. It's the membership part of my business. But we're talking about letting go. And so a lot of it is what are you trusting? One of my favorite thoughts is I trust that I will have everything I need when I need it. When I think about it, you know, I might need this later, can I trust that I'll have what I need when I need it?

Tracy Hoth:

And the other thing is just thinking about our emotions. Like, is it fear-based? Is it scarcity-based? Where are we making the decision from? So we can dive into that a little bit. How do we make a decision from the abundant, organized person that we want to be? How do we make that decision now? And what's keeping us from that?

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. One of them that I had brought up was around shame, a feeling of shame, of being wasteful. So we hear a lot about recycling for the planet and to not be wasteful. I have messages coming in from those different campaigns in the media, but also how I was raised on keeping things. And then my husband and his family they've always been collectors. You collect things because they may be valuable someday and you could sell them and make tons of money.

Gretchen Hernandez:

The number of things that we have in bins, holding on as investments, we don't necessarily see eye to eye on that one. So things about shame or about investment, how would you help people with that? Especially if it's something that might affect somebody's marriage?

Tracy Hoth:

Yeah. I like to go to, is it true? Is it true that we're being wasteful? And we can think maybe we were wasteful when we bought it because we didn't end up using it. We wasted the money when we purchased it, but now we have the choice to waste it in our homes. Which causes lots more grief. And it takes up real estate and takes up maybe even time moving it from place to place. Or can we waste it by donating it, which really isn't wasting it.

Tracy Hoth:

So are we wasting it by letting it go when it could bless somebody else? Could it be that we are generous right now by letting go of this item versus wasteful? Now, if it goes into the landfill, it's either gonna go into the landfill or it's gonna stay at our house and create a landfill in our own house.

Gretchen Hernandez:

A landfill in our own house, that one is gonna stay with me.

Tracy Hoth:

Yeah. What do you want, do you want it in your own house or do you want it where it's supposed to go?

Organizing Digital Clutter

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah, no kidding. It also made me start thinking when you were talking about, were you wasteful when you bought it that maybe you bought something that you didn't need or too much of what you needed. And it made me think about online courses, too.

Gretchen Hernandez:

We have so many online courses, especially as entrepreneurs learning, how to start a or any new skill that we're trying to do. And we decide, oh, online courses is the thing. And then we might start it and we don't finish it. And then we have a collection of a whole bunch of things that are not finished. And we still feel like that tug of war to go and do it because we bought it. But at the same time, is that a valuable use of our time or a waste of our time, but we're thinking, well, wait, we're wasting that money if we don't actually do it.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I'm really curious in the organizing life and business and everything. Do you touch on anything with online courses or electronic files or anything like that?

Tracy Hoth:

Yeah. We'll go into organizing the files and it's amazing. You use the same steps to organize digitally as you would physically. So you sort everything. And then you go through and purge. And then you decide where it's gonna live. Is it gonna live on the cloud, on your computer? And then what is the limit? Setting a limit for what you have?

Tracy Hoth:

And that's so interesting because online courses and freebies and things you see, it's just like, oh, but it's such a good deal. Oh. But I really wanted to learn that anyway. And you can see it's just like spending. You do the same thing and then you have it there staring at you or in the back of your mind, waiting for you to use it. What would happen if we just took all of those and purged them out?

Tracy Hoth:

We had the chop too. Even if we did that enough folder because digitally, it's easier to keep things and not see them. But if we put old programs in a folder and we limit them. Like I can have two programs in this folder at one time and that's it. And I cannot purchase anything else unless I'm gonna throw one of those away. So the same with your physical space. One in one out. Thinking through before you're buying. because what are you doing? Just putting more weight on you of things that you should do that you want to do that you could do?

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh my gosh. I love that concept. It's like, you can only have two. So once you finish one, then that one moves out of the folder. Now you can have the next one. Oh, that one's really good. Or if you see something that you really like, it's like, okay, well then you have to give up something. One of these other things, ah, it makes you really, really decide what is the most important thing at that exact moment. That is so good.

Tracy Hoth:

Hesitating and pausing before you spend some more. Yeah. Or even if it's free, it's the free stuff. But I struggle in this area too. And I'm noticing it with myself needing to set some limits, but then it so relates to all my clients who may be purchasing things. Or maybe have bought things that were valuable and now what should they do with them? They're not using them. And like you were saying storage space and storing all that stuff. What is that costing you in mental energy, in shame or guilt, or even the physical space? What is it costing you to have that? And is it worth what it could be worth to have it there?

Gretchen Hernandez:

I think about online cloud space and we have to keep buying bigger and bigger packages to maintain all of that. And I can relate that to remember, I mentioned that my husband and also his mom collectors of stuff. And so they had spent so much money on storage units. There's a monthly fee and it's racking up every single month.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And I remember asking him how much have you spent since he got that storage unit to hold onto the things that are gonna be worth something someday? Calculating how much that was. And it was thousands of dollars. And I said, okay, so when you sell this, hopefully for thousands of dollars, what will have been your profit? It was one of those eye-opening moments, so good and bad. They got rid of the storage locker, but then all this stuff came to my garage and like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not quite what I was after, but it was something to think about.

Tracy Hoth:

Well, and there's where you could set a date like okay, in six months or three months, whatever it is. And maybe write out an inventory and say, okay, if this isn't sold by this date are gonna donate it. And try to put, again, those limits on it, where you can make progress.

Organized Life Academy Membership

Gretchen Hernandez:

Mm that's a really good idea. So you mentioned that you have a membership also. Can you tell me about that?

Tracy Hoth:

Yep. My membership is Organized Life Academy. And I started this because so any of us are overwhelmed by what we need to organize. And one of the keys is to constrain and focus on one thing at a time. And so what we do in the membership is focus on one area of our home or life each month. And then we work on creating a plan for ourselves based in our own calendar and what we want to accomplish.

And then practicing the skill of organizing and the topic of mindset. And so we have a mindset topic and an organizing topic each month. Organizing space that we're focusing on. And so for example, this month we're organizing our living room and our focus mindset focus is letting go.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Mm.

Tracy Hoth:

I've been doing it for a year. We had our one-year birthday last month. It was so fun. And then this year we're adding in a book. We have a book club discussion each month. So the book for this month is letting go. And, or Let It Go by Peter Walsh. We kinda do our topic and then we're adding the book in this year for fun.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, so nice. If people have a specific thing in their mindset that they get stuck on, do they have access to be able to talk with you about it directly?

Tracy Hoth:

Oh yeah. I didn't even mention we have coaching calls every week.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Okay.

Tracy Hoth:

And then we have a community. We are posting pictures in there before and after we're posting questions. We have all the calls recorded and there are replays. We have the organizing and mindset foundations of videos that I have. And then all the stuff I teach and all the bonuses are in sections in there also. So they have access to all of that.

Tracy Hoth:

But yes, on our calls, we discuss questions and we watch each other get coached on the mindset part of it. What's been so helpful is one of the ladies had, we talked about our plans and we walked through, we like drew a picture of her room. Or we've done it with a cabinet before and really talked through, how do we do this? With photos, we've done digital, we've done every area of our house. We'll have gone through by June. And then we're gonna start over.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Nice. Yeah. I like this start over because as we mentioned, the maintenance part of it.

Tracy Hoth:

And it's like a layer of an onion, too. Once you get one layer, you know, peeled off, then the next time you go through it, you're like, oh, I can do a little bit deeper, and then a little bit deeper to get it exactly how you want it. Maybe in the beginning, you're focused on decluttering. And then after that, you're really focused on where the storage is best for it and how you're gonna store it.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And things start to grow back.

Gretchen Hernandez:

When I first moved out into my new home, it was half the size of my last home, but it has a much better view overlooking the ocean. So it's like, okay, it's a good trade-off. But we had to purge so much all the way down to like our silverware drawer. And the number of ladles and spatulas because we only had one drawer for all of it. Where before we had, I don't know, like 10 drawers. I didn't realize how much stuff we had. We got it all the way down. We only had so many and same things with coffee cups. We got it down to like four or maybe we had six coffee cups.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And then over the last two and a half years, they had babies or something. I don't know where all this comes from? But it's back. It's like, wait didn't we already do this. I love that it's like going back because my focus got turned to a different place to try to purge. And meanwhile, this one starts growing and having babies and it's like, wait, okay, gotta come back over to this. What is this?

Tracy Hoth:

And I think by having that constrain in knowing that you're going to be circling around, it's just that like I think about my own house. I would say our organizing levels are a spectrum. If I compare myself to someone whose house looks like Pinterest or Instagram then I would say I'm not organized. If I compare myself to a hoarder then of course I'm super organized. But having gone through my house each area over the last year, it's been really amazing. I keep getting rid of stuff and I continually have stuff going out. And it really makes it a nice opportunity for you to keep maintaining.

The Impact Of Organizing on Mental Health

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. My mom would always tease me about when I would clean my room as a kid. And she said, you could always tell when Gretchen was cleaning a room, because she'd come out with trash bags. And taking out the trash is one of the best feelings for me. I love doing that, that purging feeling. And so I'm all about mental health and always trying to find what are the things that make me feel better, bring a lot of joy into my life? And I can only imagine what you're doing for your clients and their mental health. What are some examples that people have shared with you of the impact of this work on them and their mental health?

Tracy Hoth:

Well, I just think of my most recent one-on-one client. And we've been working together three weeks and she sent me pictures before our last call. It was amazing her progress, but she said, Tracy, I walked in from getting home from work and I can look down my house. And the line of vision is clear. She goes, it's the first time I've walked into my house in six years where I don't feel defeated.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Wow. Oh, I got chills on that one.

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. And you think, when she came to me, she said, I don't have time. I have a full-time job. I have a teenager and I have a husband who I'm the caretaker. I'm like, oh my gosh, how are we gonna get anything done? She didn't have any time. She believed that with all her heart and her energy level was low. So when she sent me those pictures, I'm like, wait a minute. How do you even have time? You didn't have any time? Remember?

Tracy Hoth:

And she said it's amazing. One of the things she said was putting it on my calendar really helped. And then I said, but how did you find the time to do that? And she's like, I think I just did it in between my other tasks. Like maybe she did her other tasks faster. And I thought, and the time you spent that you were being discouraged and feeling down and rehashing all the stuff that you have to do, you spent organizing and purging instead of feeling bad and spinning in that overwhelm.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes, because it really does do that. I've sat down to try to organize and instead I'd get triggered by everything that I would see. And I could sit there in a chair just in overwhelm, not doing anything, but it's taking up the time. And meanwhile, I don't feel any better at the end, you know, worrying about it or beating myself up over it didn't do anything. But yeah, spending that half-hour to actually do the thing, all of a sudden it's like, oh, okay, that feels a little bit better.

Tracy Hoth:

And then that creates momentum. Right? And so she has momentum and now if she has a free moment, she knows like she can accomplish stuff. And so she'll go and do that. The other thing she shared, which affects your mental health is she said her daughter was so inspired. She has a freshman in high school. That she went in and organized her stuff for two hours one Saturday afternoon or something. Maybe it was on a Sunday. But just think like she inspired someone else to organize, too, based on what she was doing. So she is on cloud nine right now.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that idea because that's been a struggle that I've had with my 12-year-old. Her room, is not good. Definitely not good, but I'm not the best role model for my bedroom either. Like our common spaces are very clean and organized, but the bedroom is not. And so I'm not role modeling for her. I'm not inspiring her. And then if I go in and I'm like, okay, go clean your room. And she's like, eh, then I have to try all of these other techniques.

Gretchen Hernandez:

But by your client, she took care of herself. She was doing her own thing. And that's what inspired her daughter to do it. It's like what? Instead of going and trying all these things to try to change somebody else, take care of yourself, feel good. And all of a sudden they're inspired and they're doing it. Like how does that work?

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. And the other thing with that too is to ask for help. I have many clients who are saying they may not feel like they're the best example or they have the skills. And so they'll hire me and I'll work with their teenager. And so I've done that a lot. And that's always interesting, just to learn. For the mom to learn too, as we go or I'll help her and help the teenager. But a lot of times I'll work with the teenager by themself, and teach them some of those skills too.

Connect with Tracy Hoth

Gretchen Hernandez:

Okay. I just like, feel like rays of sunshine coming off of you. It's like you help with teenagers, too. Oh my gosh. All right. I'll be signing up with you soon. So how can people learn more about you?

Tracy Hoth:

They can go to my website simplysquaredaway.com. And on there I have a freebie where they can sign up to get a quick start guide to an organized life. And they can sign up for a call with me if they want discuss where they should start? Where should they go from here? What's their next step? They can sign up with a call and all that's on my website.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Okay, great. And do you also have a Facebook or Instagram?

Tracy Hoth:

I do. I have Instagram, which I'm most active, I'd say on there. But then it gets put on Facebook too. My Instagram is @TracyHoth and then my Facebook is @SimplySquaredAway.

 

Entrepreneurs Commit to This Strategy To Avoid Being Overwhelmed By Clutter

Gretchen Hernandez:

Nice. And I'll include all of those links on the webpage for this episode. And so one final question for you. We have a bunch of entrepreneurs and especially in the startup phase that listen to this podcast and starting up a new business, there's so many different ideas. They might get captured on post-it notes or in journals. And some are still developing their skillset on the craft that they do, too. They're trying to keep all of that going.

Gretchen Hernandez:

How can they do a simple daily routine that's gonna help them that might not take a huge amount of time to keep that organized in some way so that they don't add to their overwhelm?

Tracy Hoth:

Whenever I'm overwhelmed, which I am just as overwhelmed as anybody else. I think that's a common thing. I always say to myself, Tracy, one step at a time. The first step to organizing is to sort. And I literally only say those sentences in my head. And so that person should just get a piece of paper or stand at their desk and sort, whenever you feel overwhelmed. That's what I would recommend.

Tracy Hoth:

Once you sort, at least now you know, what are the categories. Are all the pieces of paper and apps ideas? And you want to start by the power of one: You want to have one location that you set for your ideas. Maybe that's a Google doc or it's one notebook or something that you have one place. So from now on, when you're about to write down a note or an idea, you go to that one spot and make sure it goes there. Or at the end of the day, you see all your notes of ideas and you put it in that one spot.

Tracy Hoth:

So with all of it, try to think of the one location, the one place you're gonna keep that, because that has such power. Then it's not all over and you always can go to that one spot.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Mm. I love that idea. And then we make sure that we're not losing our ideas because the ideas are so good.

Tracy Hoth:

Yep.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Tracy, I wanna thank you for coming on today and sharing so much. This is gonna be so helpful to so many people. And I really, I enjoy spending time with you. So don't be surprised if I come knocking on your door soon.

Tracy Hoth:

Yes. I'd love it. It's been fun to get to know you and your podcast is great. I've been listening to episodes and it's really good.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, thank you so much. And for anybody else that's listening to this. Tracy's got a ton of blog posts on her website too. I think I estimated about 260. Like you have been at this for a long time. There's so much gold there, so go check that out, Tracy. Thank you so much.

Tracy Hoth:

Thanks Gretchen. I'm glad I could share.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Organizing your stuff can be quite triggering. I'm so grateful that Tracy helps with all of it so that we can actually get through it. How much better will you feel when your home and business are clutter-free and organized? Doors to Tracy's Organized Life Academy are open. Now, if you wanna follow a proven plan, learn how to organize step-by-step, be in a community and learn how mindset makes all the difference, you'll want to join.

The link to more information about the Organized Life Academy can be found on the webpage of this episode. That's at myfreedomgrove.com/podcast-105.

My friends. I hope you got some inspiration to create a great space for yourself. You deserve to feel good. I hope you have a great week. I'll talk with you soon. Bye-bye.

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove Podcast. I can't wait to work with you directly. I'll help you to be your authentic self, to have amazing relationships, and to live your purpose. I invite you to check out Unshakable Men and Unshakable Women. The unshakable programs will give you all of the tools, coaching, and the community to help you rise in life, relationships, and business. To learn more, go to my MyFreedomGrove.com/workwithme. I can't wait to see you there.