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 Rene. 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 another episode of the Decluttered Mom podcast.

My name is Diana Rene. I'm your host, and I am excited to be here. I am always excited to talk to you here on the podcast because it gives me a chance to just go a little deeper with you guys, especially with how much Instagram has changed this year. Oh my goodness.

It's wild. It's so different even from last year at this time. But compared to 2018 through 2023-ish, I felt like it was a place that I could really connect with you guys, and I felt like I could talk in stories for five minutes at a time, and I could engage with you.

Oh my gosh. It has changed so much, and I think it's a reflection of our society. Let's get real philosophical here right off the bat. I just think we don't have the attention span on social media, and social media understands that, and so it's constantly trying to feed us our dopamine hits and giving us those hits every 1.7 seconds or whatever.

So it's hard. Basically, what I'm trying to say is in 2020... Again, 2020-18 to 2023, I could put multiple, multiple stories. I could put 17 stories up in one day, and they could all be 30 seconds long. It would reach a large part of my audience every single time.

And you guys could DM me, and I could DM you back, and it was just great. Now, if I post anything more than one story, yes, one 15 to 30-second story, it doesn't show it to anyone, like anyone, for context. So I have, I think, just over 400,000 followers on Instagram right now.

And if I post more than one story, I will get 5,000 or less views, which yes, I get that 5,000 is a lot, like that's a big number. However, in context or comparison to the number of followers, it's very, very small, like very, very small. If I post one story that has a call to action, so it's asking you to reply with a word so that I can send you one of my free resources, which is great.

I love getting those out to you, but if I do that, then it will show it to 50, 60, 70,000 people. So obviously, I have to play the algorithm game, and I do know that being able to give you access to those freebies, they're super valuable resources, so that's great. And then also, you're on my list, so I can email you.

And I send a lot more really valuable, actionable, motivational types of things to the list also. So it's not altogether a terrible thing, it's just, it's frustrating because Instagram feels more like an ad versus connection. I wasn't even planning on talking about this today, but here we are. So all that to say, that's why I love the podcast.

Even though the podcast is hard because I can't see you, I can't chat back and forth with you on the podcast. And so sometimes it feels like I'm recording into a sea of emptiness. The only reason I know that's not true is because we get our download numbers every week. And so I know people are listening.

And I get DMs sometimes talking about the podcast, but it's a different feeling or vibe for me. However, it's nice because I can go so much more in depth. I can tell you stories, I can give you reasons why I recommend certain things. And so it is really nice to have it.

And I know that we had an interim where I had to do a lot of replays because the business just was so busy and crazy. And we've been really good about not doing replays. And so going into 2026, I'm really excited about the podcast and growing the podcast and getting it out to more people.

So as always, if you could share my podcast with a few friends, it just means the world to me. Word of mouth with podcasts is just so, so huge. And it shows up in the podcast algorithm. Speaking of algorithms, right?

Okay. So today, what I wanted to talk to you about was the holidays and we celebrate Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, that's okay. You can apply this to any holiday situation. Today, I'm talking specifically about Christmas just because it's a few days before Christmas.

If you're listening to this when it comes out. And I remember when I, when my kids were younger, like they're, I mean, they're young now, but like when they were babies and toddlers, I put a lot of pressure on myself on, um, like making it perfect. And like having all of the traditions and making it magical and memorable.

And if anything went wrong, which spoiler alert, something always went wrong because that's life. And, you know, there's other humans involved and there's high stress and a lot of moving parts and like things will go wrong. Right. So anytime something did go wrong, I let it like ruin my day.

And I let it ruin the, the, honestly the season, because it would just like make me so upset because I really wanted things to, to go right. I wanted things to work. Um, I wanted my kids to just really enjoy and have fun. And like, I didn't want any tension or issues or mishaps or anything.

And when, when that happened, like I just, I would let it ruin my day and I would do this every year. And this is not just Christmas. This is like most holidays. And I don't know when this shift happened, happened for me, but it was several years ago.

And I was, I want to tell you, okay, I want to tell you a story about when I was a kid. So I was reflecting on like my own childhood and holidays and again, Christmas specifically in my own childhood. And we had like, I just, oh my gosh, I loved our Christmases growing up.

And my mom was a host like through and through, like she loved hosting. That is not me. I did not get that, that, that genetic string did that fall through me. She loved hosting. And so every Christmas her, all of her siblings, um, except one would sometimes come.

But they lived in, they lived in out of state. So it was harder, but she was one of four. Um, so her siblings and her parents would, and then all their kids would come over on Christmas day. So like Christmas morning, Christmas Eve was ours. Christmas morning was ours.

And then like starting around like two or three o'clock in the afternoon, the extended family would start rolling in. And, um, it was a big family because all the families had, you know, several kids. And, um, what made it extra special is that they would spend the night.

So they would come in Christmas afternoon and they would stay until like late morning, sometimes afternoon, the day after Christmas. And it was just with all my cousins, it was a blast. Like it was so much fun every year. Um, we had all these traditions.

My dad made candy bacon and pancakes the day after the morning after Christmas. Just, we did like this big gift swap where like we all would draw a name. And then like, we would sit around this big circle and we would just take turns opening all the guests. And it was just like, I just loved it.

Everything. I loved it. But I was thinking about like, what do I remember from my childhood Christmases? And like the first memory that popped into my mind was when, so my mom made this roast every year for Christmas dinner. Like that was the main dish.

Was this roast that she only made on Christmas day. She didn't make it any other day of the year. Um, everybody loved it. Like all the kids, all the adults, everybody loved it. And she would cook it like all day.

Like she would start it in the morning. It would be in the oven pretty much all day. And we would normally eat like around anywhere between five and like 7 PM. Well, one year we had just moved and it was after my dad had passed away.

And she was using a newer oven and it was miscalculated. The roast that she got was a little bit bigger than normal because they didn't have the size that she needed. And it took forever to cook. And I'm like, like, I think we ended up eating at like 10 30, 11 o'clock at night.

And I just remember like how funny it was. Um, I'm sure she didn't think it was very funny. And the other adults, cause they were stressing about it. Um, but like all the kids were, we all thought it was so funny.

Because like, we would be like taunting them, like, go, go check, see if it's done. And it was just never done. It wasn't done until really, really late in the evening. And I know in that moment, my mom was probably so stressed out.

And felt like she ruined Christmas and probably thought everybody was upset with her. And in the meantime, like that was one of the first memories I remember as an adult looking back at Christmas, like how ironic. Right. And so once I realized that I was like, hold on.

Why am I being so hard on myself? Why am I letting myself ruin the day and ruin the season for me? And probably for everybody else, because they get grumpy. Like, why don't I just embrace it? And no, like go into the season knowing there will be mess ups.

There will be mishaps. There will be things that go wrong. There will be things that will like not happen how I want them to. And that's okay. And that's just part of the experience. And I don't have to be upset about it.

And I don't like, I can take a moment and be upset about it to myself. I'm not saying like suppress your emotions, but I can take a moment. I can let it be frustrating for a minute, and then I can move on.

Because we never know what the things are that are going to be memories for us. And we never know, like, just we never know how the season is going to go. How the day is going to go. And what if we just let it be?

What if we just go into the day with like, hey, I hope everything goes great. But I'm sure there will be things that don't go great. And that's okay, too. And we can roll with it. And we can make jokes about it.

And everything will be okay. We will all survive and we'll be okay. So I just wanted to share that with you. Because it's just something that I like, I'm not kidding, I would let it ruin the holidays for me. And I choose not to do that anymore.

And yes, ever since I made that decision, things still have gone wrong. But I've been able to take it in stride. I've been able to remember like, the silly things that happened as a Christmas when I was a kid. And everything was okay.

So I just wanted to leave you with that little tidbit. And I just really hope you have whatever you celebrate. I hope you have a great holiday season. And I have just really, this has been a tough year for me, I'm going to lie.

One day I'll be able to share it all. But I just going into 2026, I have a renewed sense of just gratitude and purpose in being present. And like, just enjoying life no matter what it presents you with. And I hope that you can have some of that as well.

All right, I think we only have one more episode of the year. I think I might be misquoting that I don't have a calendar in front of me. But either way, I would really love it if you would share either this episode or your favorite episode with a friend.

Or let me know and DM me on Instagram. Let me know anything that you took away from the podcast this year or things that you would like to see in 2026. Are there people that you would like me to interview for the podcast? Are there topics that you would like me to cover that I've never covered before?

Or maybe I've covered it, but you'd like me to go deeper on? Just let me know. You can DM me or you can shoot me an email also. And as always, you can always leave a, what? Oh gosh, I can't think of the name, the voice note.

We'll put the link in the show notes. You can always leave me a voice note with a question. Like if you have a specific question, you can go ahead and do that there as well. And I can answer it in one of those episodes.

So happy holidays and we will see you next week. 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 @the.decluttered.mom 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.