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Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, diana renee, and in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show. Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Decluttered Mom podcast. You guys, I am really excited to record this. Let's back up to where we.

Diana Rene: 0:59

If you have been listening for a while, you probably have realized that we have been doing replays now for about five months. Did we plan to do that 100%? No, it just kind of happened. What happened was is that we were going to do just a couple weeks of replays while we had time to record new episodes, but then just so much has been going on in the business and it's good, right, it's good things, we're doing so many new things, but because of that, the podcast just kind of got put to the side, and I hate that because I love this podcast and I just like the people who listen to this podcast. You guys are amazing and you always DM me and we have conversations about the different episodes and the topics and, like, I just love this community and so I hate that it got put on the back burner and it's a learning lesson for us, right? Because we our team it's like almost like our team took on too much more than we could chew, so to say, for the team size to be able to continue the podcast at the way we were before, and so we took all of this time off. But we are back. We have all new episodes. We will have all new episodes. Like the replays will be more like how it used to be, where it's like there might be one replay every couple of months or something like that, but otherwise, like this, we're back. We're back and we have so many new topics, so many things to talk about this summer. We have some really great guests that I'm very excited about and just so many things to just help you.

Diana Rene: 2:38

I've received so much love from you in the DMs, like saying that you can't wait till we have new episodes that you listen while you're doing your PM pickup or you listen while you're decluttering. And that just makes me so happy, because sometimes with podcasts, you guys, it kind of feels like you're talking into the void. Like with social media, like with Instagram, for example, if I post something in my stories, I get almost immediate feedback in the form of DMs or comments, right, and so when I put something out there on social media or when I send something to my email list, I know right away like if it hits for you, if it's resonating, we can chat about it With the podcast. It's obviously not like that. I'm just like speaking in my recording in my closet and putting it out into the world, and unless someone like takes the time to reach out to me regarding it, it just is. It's just different, and so I don't even know where I was going with that. But that was just something, that's just something that I think maybe let it with that. But that was just something, that's just something that I think maybe let it. Maybe was like easier to kind of let the podcast go a little bit, so to say, because on Instagram and my email list and things like that, I like, saw people reacting immediately, and I was able to see that people liked it, people enjoyed it, people resonated with it, and so the podcast is work right.

Diana Rene: 4:06

It's a lot of work for me to come up with topics that are going to be helpful to you guys, to outline them, to record them for my team to then produce them and do all of the things to make them actually go live, and so it's easier with social media to just feel that immediate impact, knowing that it's like helping people With the podcast. Sometimes it's like hello, are you out there? Is this helping you? And so I say all of that for two reasons. Number one, anytime you feel like a topic resonates with you, please DM me on Instagram or send me an email and let me know. I'd love to chat with you about it. And number two, if this podcast has been at all helpful for you, I would love it if you would hit the follow button on Apple Podcasts for my podcast. That makes you technically a subscriber, but it just means that it shows up in your feed on the podcast app and the podcast algorithm is this like crazy thing? And right now they're really favoring people following the podcast and what that does is that then shows my podcast in a search, Like if someone searches decluttering or home management or anything like that, it's more likely to show up for them if I have people following me. So I would love it if you could do that. That would just mean the world to me.

Diana Rene: 5:31

And let's get into today's episode. So today I'm just going to talk about a few things that make summer easier in our household, and I know that, like the summer transition when your kids are in school all day and suddenly they're not anymore Right and you have to figure out what to do and for if you are a working out of the home mom, then that likely looks like different camps and things like that. If you are a stay at home mom, it might also mean camps, but it also might mean just trying to figure out how to manage their days at home when they're home with you all day long, when you are used to them being in school for the majority of the day, and so I don't know your specific situation and every single mom's situation is going to look a little bit different, and so if your kids are in camp all summer long, then some of these ideas are not going to be helpful for you, but some of them might be, and if your kids are home all day long, some of these ideas might be great for you and some of them might not be. So just take that with a grain of salt. This is what is helpful for our family this summer at the current ages of my kids. So my kids are currently 8 and 11, which I can't believe that I still get their ages wrong, because I just can't believe that they're so old.

Diana Rene: 6:50

My oldest is going to middle school in the fall, you guys, and I can't comprehend that because she's my tiny little baby and I don't understand how she's already going to middle school, right, okay? So the first thing that we have really, really been loving is something called OutSchool. Okay, so this is an online I'm putting in air quotes school. It's basically just an online platform for different classes and there are live classes, which is what we do, and I think there are prerecorded ones also. My kids don't love those. Your kids might, but my kids love the live classes because there is a teacher on Zoom, there's other kids in the class, so they're interacting, there are similar ages and it's really great.

Diana Rene: 7:40

So we actually found out school in 2020 because my youngest was supposed to be going to preschool the fall of 2020. And we all know what was going on then and her preschool was shut down. They were not going to be open that school year because of everything that was going on. So we had to figure something out, because my oldest was doing online school that year and I had had her in kindergarten the year before and I was like trying to figure out how to make sure she didn't quote unquote fall behind or like academically or socially. Like it was such a weird time, you guys. Honestly, sometimes I like sit and think like how did we? We went through a pandemic as parents of little kids Like how is that a thing? Anyway, so we found out school because of that. I remember one day I just typed in like online preschool and so she had a preschool class and it was the cutest thing ever and they had a teacher and it was just for one hour a day, monday through Friday. So one hour a day, monday through Friday. She got on my computer on Zoom and had a teacher and they did like music and like very basic learning things, and she had a class from like around the world, like kids from all over the world, which was really cool for her also and it was just a good experience At the time. There was not a ton of courses on there. I don't know when they began, but it was pretty limited, I would say.

Diana Rene: 9:22

But I had the idea a couple of weeks ago because I was trying to figure out what to do for the summer. Because I work right, I work from home and so the kids are in school all day and that's when I work, and then by the time I pick them up I'm mostly done and then sometimes I have to work for another hour or two in the evening. But I was trying to figure out what happened or what to do, because my kids are not big with, they don't love going to camps. They get really nervous about it. Not big with they don't love going to camps, they get really nervous about it. And I also. It was like freaking war to figure out how to get into camp. I was like what is happening? All the camps filled up by the time I was really paying attention to it. Okay, so all that to say. I knew they were going to be home with me. We have a babysitter that last summer she was here all the time and this summer, because of traveling, she's only going to be able to help me for three weeks, so I have to figure out the other nine weeks of summer.

Diana Rene: 10:21

So I looked up out school. I had them look at it. I was amazed at how many classes they have now. And the way it works is you buy like a pricing or you buy like a membership, so there's like different pricing levels and you get so many coins with like whatever level of membership you do and then like each class costs. Like this class costs 12 coin, this class costs 47 coins. So like you're able to kind of pick the classes based on the how many coins they cost that go into your membership and then if you do more coins than that, then you're able to just pay a little extra, whatever that is.

Diana Rene: 10:59

So I had them sit down, I had them go through all the classes. They have regular core academic classes for every grade, but then they also have all of these just for fun classes and there are thousands of them. I had my kids write down all of the ones they were interested in that were for their age, because you can like filter it by all these different things, and age is one of them and they each filled like front and back of sheet of paper. It was like tiny handwriting, and so they had so many ideas and we basically decided that Monday, tuesdays, wednesdays they're going to do out school classes. Does that mean that, like, from the moment they wake up until bed they're on the computer? No, but like, for example, I think on Mondays Miss 11 has like a class in the morning for an hour and then she doesn't have anything for two hours and then she has another half hour class, followed by another half hour class. So like it's not all day, but there's breaks in between for the ones that she chose schedule wise, but that way she's able to do that class.

Diana Rene: 12:08

A lot of times I'm finding that they'll do the class and then they want to like keep doing whatever they were doing, so they'll just like keep working on it. But it gives them something to be excited about, it gives them some social interaction while they're home, because there's other kids their ages on the class and they're all there for like a specific topic that they enjoy, right, and so it's like a really fun thing, it's been really great and it just feels like a little bit more like structured screen time versus like just giving them the iPad, which you guys, I am not, I'm no, there's no judging here because we do that probably more than we should, but it's cheaper than so many of the camps and obviously they're not like having childcare all day long. So it it might not be the same for, like, younger kids, but for my kids it works well because then I am able to just really focus on work while they're doing that and they're exploring their interests and they're furthering things that they really enjoy. So, again, probably works best for older kids and I yeah I don't know how it would work with younger kids without, like you, having to be there right with them, you know, but it's just a really great platform. They don't know me, I'm not affiliated with them at all, I don't get like a commission or anything like that, I just really like them Okay.

Diana Rene: 13:24

Number two is to just have simple themed days. So I don't do well if we have like a very structured routine in the summer where it's like 8 am, eat breakfast, 8.30, do chores, 9 o'clock outside time, like you know what I mean. I don't do well with like really structured days like that, and neither do my kids, and so what has worked well with us? We started doing this last summer and what we do is like themed days. So like every Thursday is library day, so every Monday, weather allowing is pool day, which we actually go to the pool, way more than that. But like we know that at least on Mond we go to the pool, like we have one day a week that is just no going anywhere day. So like they can just hang out chill, they don't have to worry about anything going anywhere, like that's just an at home chill day. We have a bowling day, which I'm going to explain that more in a minute. But the idea is that we and last summer we did like an outing day. So like every Tuesday last summer we like, did like we went to the zoo one time, we went to the museum one time, we went on this big hike one time. It was just like they always knew that Tuesday mornings we were going out of the house on like a big outing, always knew that Tuesday mornings we were going out of the house on like a big outing.

Diana Rene: 14:53

Okay, so the reason this helps me and my kids, it gives me kind of like a framework for the summer for the weeks and honestly, like the first I don't know four to six weeks of summer like everything still feels new and fun and everything. But for especially the second half of the summer it can feel hard. Honestly, I wish we did year-round school. We had school year-round and just more frequent, shorter breaks, because I think 12 weeks is just so long for kids and adults. They forget everything they were learning in school and then the teachers have to catch them up. Anyway, that's a side note, but this allows me to just not have to always be deciding what we're doing. It's the whole decision fatigue thing we're trying to avoid.

Diana Rene: 15:46

The kids also feel just kind of more secure knowing what's coming. It's not that rigid schedule and we know that kids do really well when they know what's happening and they do have a routine. So this just kind of gives them kind of that knowledge and the security and that knowledge. And then, like things like the library, it's helpful because then when we're at the library they know that they're getting books for a one week period. It helps them to figure out how many books to get, what types of books. And then also it helps because they are getting their books back on time, which doesn't always happen when we don't have like a set day that we're going to the library.

Diana Rene: 16:21

One side note for the library they each have a library bag which is, honestly, it's just a canvas bag from Sprouts, the grocery store. So they each have one and their library card lives in that bag, and then their library books. If they're not actively reading it, it lives in that bag. So if they're reading a chapter book, I don't care where it is, because they're going to have it in their bedroom, they're going to have it on the couch, they're going to have it other places because they're actively reading it, right. But when they're done with that book, it must go back into their library bag. That way we always know where they are when library day is here. And then when they check out their books at the library, they each have their own cart. So when they check out their books, they print the receipt that has the books and that goes in the bag too. That way, if there is a book missing, we know what the book's called. It's easier to look for it and it's easier to find it that way.

Diana Rene: 17:18

Okay, so number three is something called Kids Bowl Free, like bowling B-O-W-L. This is. I don't know about you, maybe it's like my Midwestern roots. I love bowling and my kids love bowling, and there is an organization called Kids Bowl Free. I'm pretty sure it's anywhere in the US, but don't quote me on that, but definitely check it out. What it is is you sign your children up for it and it's free, and they get two free games of bowling every day all summer long. So you do have to pay for the shoe rental. The shoes is going to depend on your specific bowling center, but they get two free games, which I don't know about you, but, like in the Metro Denver Boulder area is expensive to go bowling, um, and so this is like a huge money saver and it's like a fun thing and we have a specific day every week that we just go bowling and so it's just fun. It's like a fun, fun activity. And the other thing is you can add on like a family pass. You do have to pay for that, but if, like, you want to bowl or you and your partner want to bowl with them, you can do that. I think you can add anywhere from like two to six more people, but remember all of the kids in your family, I think as long as they're under age 18, they bowl for free. But I added just me, because we go during the day and I don't remember I think it was like $40 or something like that for the whole month. Like $40 would not have even paid for our whole family to go bowling one time like on a normal basis, and we get to go every week. So if you hate bowling and you think that's crazy, like that's fine. Again, this might not be for you. If you love bowling, definitely check it out.

Diana Rene: 19:07

I just discovered this last summer towards the end of the summer, so we didn't do it, but I'm really, really excited about this one. Okay, and then the last one is a bucket list. So we have in my office at home I have like these huge whiteboards that cover the whole wall and there's one part of the whiteboard that we reserve for summertime, called the bucket, summer bucket list, and we start this usually around the time they start getting antsy for school to be over and for summer to be here, so usually like right around a month before school gets out. I realize you might be passed out already, that's okay, you can start this anytime, but just for next year, start it right when they get antsy, because then it gives them something to look forward to and it gives them kind of incentive to like finish the year strong.

Diana Rene: 19:58

So we just call it summer bucket list and what we do is, anytime any of us think of something we really want to do this summer, we just go in there, grab the marker, write it down and leave it at that. That way each Sunday I take a look at that and I'm like, hmm, what could we do from the bucket list this week? And I try to do at least one thing from the bucket list. I can't do everything because, like my eight-year-old wrote down Paris, she wants to go to Paris this summer. So I'm going to have to break the news to her that that is not in the plans for the summer. But they put so many like very basic. Like they put do a lemonade stand. They said they wanted to plant flowers in the backyard, so like they have all sorts of little things that they want to do and then they also have bigger like things that they would like to do. So it's just fun throughout the summer.

Diana Rene: 20:50

This is our third summer doing the bucket list Throughout the summer. When we do one of the things we go in and we cross it off. So then by the end of the summer they can look back at all of the fun things that we did and it's just kind of like a fun tradition and also gives you a way to never run out of ideas of things to do throughout, especially in that second half of summer where things start to feel a little harder. So those are my big things that I've just been thinking about. A lot that have been helpful for us. We've been this is we're in our second week of summer, so it's not like you know, it's just something that's been or some things that have been helpful.

Diana Rene: 21:27

And you may not, you may already be out. You may not be out for a couple more weeks. I totally get that. It's so weird how regional school dates are anyway. But again, maybe these things will be helpful for you. Maybe none of them are helpful for you in your current season but will be in a couple years. I hope this was helpful.

Diana Rene: 21:45

But most of all, I'm just really excited to be back and I'm so happy you are here and listening and stuck with me, or, if you're new to the podcast, welcome. You're here at a great time because we have so much coming for you this summer. Again, please shoot me a DM and please follow me on Apple Podcasts at The Decluttered Mom Podcast. And yeah, we will be back next week with another all new episode. Thanks for hanging out and listening to The Decluttered Mom Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.