Clutter, Chaos, and Empowerment. My Personal Journey & Mission
Cardboard from amazon packages, unopened mail on the dining table, laundry that is yet to be folded, toys everywhere…Is this familiar? This was me not too long ago.
As a single 20 something undergoing an extremely labor intensive residency in neurology, I barely kept my head above water. Call for 30 hours, overnights at the hospital, creating time to study…I barely survived each day, let alone prioritizing household chores and cleaning. I had no idea how to compartmentalize and organize my life. Time is precious and I only wanted to spend time doing things that brought me joy like wine with friends, exploring my city, going to yoga.
I started with the obvious step; I hired someone to clean my small 800 square foot condo. It was a step in the right direction but didn’t quite keep me on track as a high powered professional. The ultimate humiliation was when my next door neighbor handed me a giant stack of unopened mail, enough to fill up a cardboard box, and said to me “the mail man said your mailbox is overflowing and he was tired of leaving mail in the lobby for you”. I was a disaster. Clean house was not enough. I needed to streamline and organize daily routines. All things needed a time and place.
As a resident I was way too budget conscious to hire a personal organizer. I just told myself I was smart enough to take care of human lives. I can do this. I started with small spaces. With 800 square feet it wasn’t hard. I started with the least cluttered room first to get an easy win. Something I could finish in an hour. Chucking the stuff I never used like the never used CD collection, lets face it I didn’t own a CD player anymore. But what about the stuff I loved and used? There were moments of discomfort for sure. I leaned into every emotion I felt and reminded myself that I am a high powered female with a purpose in life. I cannot be a slave to junk.
I then moved from space to space dedicating one hour every weekend morning. Slowly but surely, I moved through the whole condo, my car, and desk to organize every item. That is when I came up with my own method of functionally organizing my home to serve me as a busy professional. My space didn’t need to look like someone else’s magazine worthy pictures. Instead, I needed spaces that integrated harmony, functionality, and creative solutions to make me the most productive and efficient person in life for work and play.
I was too busy and sleep deprived to pay attention to fancy concepts like minimalism and mindfulness. I just knew from personal experience, clutter invites chaos. Clutter forces people to begin their day stressed and remain stressed. It just was not how I wanted to live. Overtime, I got really good at maintaining my space the way I needed it to function.
Then, along came my husband. When we were dating, he spent a lot of time at my place. We had to reinvent the same spaces and repurpose in a different way. Then we moved for my fellowship, and then again after we got married. Before I knew it, I was an attending and had two babies, and moved again for my husband’s job. Each time, we had to reinvent and keep repurposing what we own to fit the needs of the family. All the while, curbing clutter and maintaining spaces that served to create harmony and function for the purposes that were needed for that conjecture in our lives, for all members of the family.
Even though I was quite happy with my career as an interventional neurologist, I definitely found myself struggling with time and effective functional organization of our home through each phase of our lives. In order to survive, I learned to delegate, outsource, and automate each component so our home and lives remained in order. I basically became the CEO of my home. Now I watch shows like Hoarders and Mari Kondo and I wonder, who else struggles like I did? I am a happy healthy person partly because my home sets me up each day to be productive and stress free when I start my day. I wake up to a clean and well prepped home so I can rise to the challenges of the day and perform optimally.
My personal struggles and my desire to help high powered women around me inspired me to create So Me Life School. We all have it in us to declutter, compartmentalize, and organize each space so it serves us to be successful in life. At So Me Life School, I break down each space and show every busy mom how to organize the home in a systematic way to achieve success in major aspects of life. I address major topics such as organized home, streamlined work space, functional and mindful kitchen, toy storage, and more. Small spaces add up to big results with impact! Most importantly I show every busy mom the path to empowerment by taking control of her time and space. By owning less, creating value, and truly orchestrating our home to serve us so we can be free to live, contribute, and shine. Why? Because we all deserve our best life.
#ThatIsSoMe #SoMeLifeSchool.
