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, but not just any episode, the first episode of 2026. How's that possible? I don't know. I feel like it's still 2019 somehow, but here we are. So I hope you're having a happy new year. I hope it's off to a good start.

My kids are back to school this week, and we've had a great break as far as just being able to relax. We were all sick over Thanksgiving break, and so I was really worried about it for Christmas because we just missed everything, and my kids especially just really wanted to like be able to do things over this break, like they couldn't over Thanksgiving. And luckily, knock on wood, we were good through break and we spent a lot of time at home, which was really, really nice. We got a lot done around the house, we played a lot of games, we watched a lot of movies, we played a lot of foursquare randomly, and it was just nice.

A lot of reading, I had a lot of work, and then we also have three birthdays in our house in the first few weeks of January. So Christmas is always a crazy time in our house, and then I'm like ready to like take a deep breath and relax, and I'm like, Oh yeah, I can't. I have three birthdays, and we have our five-day decluttering challenge that's always January 1st, which is a lot of work for me and for everyone on my team. So there's no rest, there's no rest during this time of year, but that's okay because it's an exciting time of year.

And I like New Year's. I know I've talked about this on previous episodes. I'm not like a huge resolutions fan necessarily, but I just like the idea of a fresh start, and New Year's gives that to me, and so I roll with it.

So today I wanted to talk about something that I guess like I think we tend to overcomplicate, and that is transitions. I think that transitions are a time of the day that tend to make things fall apart. So if your house feels totally fine and then suddenly chaos hits at the same exact time every single day, this episode is for you.

So here's the thing with transitions, they tend to be predictable, they're not random. And if it's fallen, like if everything falls apart during transitions, like it doesn't mean you're bad at managing your home. It's just that naturally, as humans, when we're transitioning from one thing to another, especially when we are humans that are children and have a hard time regulating emotions, it can feel like frustrating and it can feel off and it can feel overwhelming, especially if you're being told to do like a bunch of things and it gets feels confusing and you're tired and you're hangry and like you just like you just got home from school and you just want to like hang out.

So for me, like what I'm thinking of with transitions is like like right after school, before dinner, after dinner, bedtime, um, like weekend mornings. So like just any time where you are literally transitioning from one activity or event or thing to another. And obviously, there's like probably way more than those in a day, but those tend to be the times where I notice it's easy for things to kind of just go off the rails, right? Most homes don't feel chaotic all day, like they it kind of like breaks at those transition points, right? And so that's what I wanted to talk about.

Because I think there are some simple things that we can do, even if you're like, I don't want to do like I don't want to like print anything out or have like visuals, or like I don't like I like if you're just like Diana, I don't have the energy. I don't have the energy, I just need I just need you to tell me what to do to make it easier. This is what that episode is for. So we're gonna keep it really simple, right?

When it comes to transitions, everyone involved arrives with stuff, they arrive with needs, they arrive with emotions, they arrive maybe with hunger, they arrive with like something bad happened at recess today, and I don't want to talk about it yet because I'm still really mad or I'm really sad or I'm really like I don't know how to feel, and something happened with my friend, and I don't even know like how I feel about it. Like all of those things are going on, and it's happening with multiple people, and all of the different like events are different for everyone, right?

And so, like, imagine you are a child and you're coming home from school and you're feeling all the things, and your parent is feeling all the things because they're overwhelmed and stressed with work, or you know, they had one of the your siblings got sick last night so they didn't get any sleep, and like just there's just so much going on. No one knows what happens next, and there's too many decisions that are hitting at once. So I think it's really about like friction that's happening versus like a failure, right?

Okay, so here's the thing we can simplify this, and it's not going to like magically, I'm not gonna give you a magic wand, it's gonna make everything feel perfect, and everyone's gonna be laughing and giggling and excited, but it is going to help. And the that one thing is to just pre-decide the transition.

So, again, we're not talking about every single transition that happens throughout the day, but we are gonna talk about um or we are gonna like think about the big transitions that feel really rough in our home, and it's probably different for everyone that's listening, right? So, if for you it's after school, then that's the transition that you are going to pre-decide what happens, or if bedtime is the transition for you, that's the time you are going to work on, or if before dinner or after dinner, like just think through what is the most frustrating or maybe overwhelming transition of the day in your home.

And that's what we can kind of work through. So, what I want you to do is I want you to decide beforehand what happens in the that like 15 to 30 minutes after the transition, and I want you to like have that same order every day. So, for example, shoes off into the closet, backpacks on the hook, eat your snack. Like that might be the order, right? Or change your clothes, unpack your backpack, do your homework, and then free time, right? Or you eat dinner, you clear plates, you do your chore of the day, and then you get screen time or quiet play or something like that, right?

So we're not like creating a routine for the entire day. You're just creating basically a habit slash routine for everyone involved in that transition for that short time period. It doesn't have to be complicated, it's really easy to overcomplicate it actually, and to have like a 20-point checklist and things like that. I've been guilty of that in the past, and I do think that you can add on as you go. But especially for younger kids, just having like I don't know if expectation is the right word, but I guess routine, like just having that routine of knowing, like when I get home, I take off my shoes, I put my backpack on the hook, I put my water bottle in the sink, and then I get to eat my snack.

It gives them a little bit of a like sense of grounding in an otherwise like free-for-all time. And we all know, like, I don't need to tell you this that kids thrive with routine, right? Like, honestly, everyone thrives with routine, but kids especially, they're gonna thrive with routine, and sometimes we just overcomplicate it. And so sometimes we just need to take that most frustrating part of the day, make a small routine that handles the things that frustrate you the most.

So, like for the shoes, backpacks, water bottle snack example, you're picking that because it drives you crazy that shoes are like all over the entryway, and that the backpacks get lost because one of your kids always brings it to their room and then they like forget to bring it down in the morning for school. And then the water bottles like are never clean in the morning for school because they forget to unpack them. So you're thinking through the things that like frustrate you and creating the routine from those frustration points, if that makes sense.

So, number one, you're gonna remove your decision fatigue doing this. You're not gonna be like constantly trying to decide what you're doing in that time period. Kids thrive in routine, they're gonna relax when they know what's next, when they know what to expect. And this way the house stabilizes without extra effort. It's not, you're not doing a lot more, right? You're just pre-deciding what happens because you're probably already telling them, put your shoes away. You're probably already telling them put your water bottle in the sink. But it's like in a more chaotic way, right?

And so with this way, we have that routine of like, this is what we are doing during this time period every time. And like I said, you can add to it later when they get used to it, but just identifying the worst transition, writing down the three or four steps that need to happen every day during that transition, just try it. Like, just try it, give it at least three days. I would prefer like seven days, so that you can like really build it into like a habit and see what happens.

You don't have to like optimize it, you just have to keep repeating it for a little bit and it will start to feel like an actual routine. And when you're fixing the hardest moment of the day like that, the whole rest of the day just feels easier, even if nothing else changes, and all we're doing is pre-deciding what we are going to do during that transition, telling our kids what we are doing during that transition and going for it, right?

So I hope this was helpful. Again, it's oversimplified on purpose because we tend to overcomplicate things, and that makes it hard to keep up with. So I want you to just pick that one transition and pick those three to four things that are going to happen.

Relay that to everyone involved. So if your partner is home during that time, relay that to them. All of your kids, relay that to them, make sure they understand it, and phrase it as like this is how it's going to go from now on during this time period. We're gonna give it a try, we're gonna see how it goes. I think it's gonna make everybody feel better during this time, and let's give it a shot.

If they're really young, you can always do like rewards and sticker charts and things like that, but again, overcomplicating. We are just going to simplify this little tiny routine into our day and see what happens.

So let me know in on Instagram DMs. I would love to hear from you. If you decide to do this, let me know how it goes. And we will see you on next week's 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 @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.