Should you be “more organized?

Do you look at organized people & think there’s something wrong with you?

Meet Barbara Trapp, certified professional organizer & coach, helping people make SPACE - in easy, realistic ways that work FOR YOU.

If being organized has ever eluded you, listen in to this conversation!

Barbara shares 5 myths of organizing, and you’ll walk away with nuggets to put in place RIGHT NOW that will make ROOM to make whatever you want in 2021!

This interview will help motivate you to start creating more spae in your life, and feel lighter when tackling your goals. 

Barbara shares stories of her clients feeling overwhelmed like so many of us are feeling right now. 

But guess what? 

They are making time and space to take on the goals they had the back burner for so long! 

I hope this interview can help anyone that is feeling scattered, or overwhelmed. 

Be sure to let us know if any of these tips helped you or any other thoughts you'd like to share! 

Watch The Full Interview! 

Full Transcript: 

Jen: Hey, I am talking about how to let in whatever 2021 awesomeness is going to come and whatever it is you want the thing I know is that you need to make space for it needs to have time, space, and energy to bring it in.

But the problem with most of us is in our brains and our lives and our spaces space is something that we are really lacking. So I've invited Barbara Trapp a certified professional organizer and productivity coach to help talk to us about how to make space in our lives so that we can bring in the abundance, bringing in whatever we want so that 2021 can be a different kind of year for us.

So Barbara, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate your time.

Barbara: Thank you for having me on.

Jen: Tell us a little bit about what you do and who you help.

Barbara: Well, I help people get organized whether it's their physical stuff or their mental clutter helping them move forward and I have been working virtually. Totally virtually since mid-march. The funny thing is that that my goal for 2020 was to go 30 to 50% virtual by the end of the year. Guess what? I accomplished that in the first quarter.

Jen: Cross it off the list.

Barbara: I know!

Jen: So given that you help people with productivity and organization and basically becoming more organized. I'm really curious today because my audience are incredibly busy women their overachievers. They have a lot going on. They would describe themselves as frazzled or scattered, overwhelmed. My guess is that you work with people exactly like this too.

Barbara: Exactly that. In fact, my tagline is "Non-judgmental help for busy and overwhelmed people."

Jen: Oh my God. I love that. That's so perfect.

So, can you share with us some of your insights about these types of women who are...And I don't want to say like these types of women in a negative way, but like almost everybody I talked to in the people you talk to they are over-scheduled, overwhelmed. So can you tell me some insights you have about them and what holds them back from productivity?

Barbara: Oh sure, but first of all, I think everybody deserves to give themselves a big hug. Just making it this far through 2020 because one of the, I think the biggest things I know I've learned, was flexibility and adaptability.

I mean, I've always been flexible and pretty adaptable but man, I think we've all been told kicking and screaming to some of these changes and limitations and have had to learn to adapt so kudos to everybody.

Jen: High fives to everybody, yes.

Barbara: Yes. Yes, I think really one of the biggest things is women just try to do it all. Heard it before. I'm the same way. I've had to really cut things down and get some help. So I think trying to do it all and not delegating or getting help when it's offered or available is just a no. No, we've got to do that to survive because even really organized women because when all this craziness and chaos is going on, with you just kind of lose our way and feel scrambled.

Jen: So you're saying even the most organized among us are also feeling like our brains are scrambled at this point.

Barbara: Exactly exactly. I mean, I know I've talked and worked with a number of organized women who just you know, these are major life transitions we've gone through in any time. You've got a life transition can expect a few bumps in the road. But with this year in particular, it's just, you know, continuous. It's all over the place.

Jen: Yes, like I would say I'm an organized person like, I feel like I was born organized because some people will like, congratulate me for being organized and like this it's like congratulating me for having blue eyes. I was just born this way. So it's not a trait that I think is, you know better or worse. I do think we can learn coping skills to become more organized. But even this year being a born organized person, I have been very challenged to keep my shit together.

Barbara: That's a good way to put it and I tell people I said, yeah, it's really not how people appear to be, it's really if you can find everything you're organized. Even if your environment looks like it's messy. I love that people could be organized and really organized people are people who have a very uncluttered area could be really disorganized because a lot of other things can be tucked in closets and drawers and stuck away. Just out of sight out of mind, but I gotta see nothing. Which is perfectly fine, but it's really just your personal choices and what makes you comfortable. So I don't judge anybody on what their version of organization is. 

Jen:  I think that's an important powerful point to make. Tell me more about what are some of the other misinformation out there or myths about productivity and clutter? Like you just gave us that gem. Like is there any other thing that we're thinking about ourselves that we could just let ourselves off the hook part because it's a lie anyway? 

Barbara: Sure I think so. I actually wrote an article last year. Five myths and what was the exact title? About goals habits and willpower. So one of them is that you're more likely to achieve your goals if you tell people but the thing is they've also found that if you tell people you've already got this little feeling of accomplishment and you haven't even done anything yet. So for some people it might be better to not tell everybody your big goals. There are two different points of view on it.  So just think about how that works for you. If you tell people, is that motivate you to start or do you already feel like step one is done?

Jen: It's off my ches now. 

Barbara: Right! The second one is that you should start every day with the hardest task, but man, if you're looking at a big, you know task to do. You know, eat that frog. Get that big rock out of the jar first or whatever. It might take you a while to get started because you're just dreading it. I know I practice productive procrastination. I bet a lot of people do. That's why you get a lot of things done instead of the things that are really the priority. 

Jen:  I get what you're saying.

Barbara: I am really productive what I'm you know, avoiding something big.

Jen: Yes.

Barbara:  But sometimes if you start with the smallest task and break that big one down to smaller ones and get the first little step done, you get a feeling of accomplishment that kind of inspired you to move forward for the rest of the day.

Jen: That's a good one. I definitely have not used that term before productive procrastination, but it's like you'll do everything except the one thing you need to get done.

Barbara: Exactly. Yeah, my home will be sparkling...

Jen: But I still will not have gone to the post office.

Barbara: That's great.

Jen: Right?

Barbara: Yeah, there's three more. So one of them is that you know, 21 days to build a habit. And I can't quote everybody in here, but I'll just direct you to the website to look at the post but it really can take more time than that. So it could take anywhere from 18 to 254 days depending on what the habit is. This is from a study.

Sorry can't quote it here, but you might just start thinking about 21 days as a streak. Like an initial start. So if you can't get a habit to form within that 21 days don't beat yourself up about it. Just you know start the next 21 days.

Jen: These are so life-affirming and you are just speaking my language so much because I always say there's no one way to do anything and we hear from like these gurus that this is the formula and this is the way and this is the funnel. And what you're saying is you have to know yourself and time and test it out.  And you've already given us three myths that you're just busting and that we can like be kind to ourselves about.

Barbara: That's right.

Jen: So what's number four?

Barbara: Yeah, number four about limited willpower. That you know, we have a certain amount of willpower for during the day and then you know, once we've avoided eating two chocolate cupcakes before lunch, we're done. We can't say no to anything else but it's not necessarily the case. If you can kind of re-energize yourself if you start thinking of your reasons why and your goals and you can that can sometimes stir up some extra motivation to keep going.

Let's see.

The last one is I'm really guilty of this. Well, not guilty, but it's just different. Think only of positive outcomes.

I know we're supposed to think positive, but I have a CAPM that's a Certified Associate in Project Management. One thing I learned was about risk management. So I tend if I'm thinking really hoping for something to work out well, I actually think "Okay, It's not going to go well. What are they what would make it not go well?

Well, so I actually use the negativity to do some risk management so that I can fix things so that the thing goes well.

Jen: I think that's really smart because it's like unpacking all the possibilities not necessarily perseverating on them or focusing but like unpacking them and having contingency plans. What if-what if-what if-what if....

Barbara: Yeah exactly.

Jen: And that's not for everybody. Like not everybody could handle that but some people could.  

Barbara: I think positive most of the time anyway, but I also think okay, what could go wrong? What am I worried about? Okay, what can I do to fix that? That really works for me but you know, it's a little bit uncommon, but I think that can lead you to some good outcomes in the end.

Jen: Those are great strategies. So given the people that you work with when you help somebody overcome their clutter and I'm sensing that you help people in a really personalized way. You design something for them. How does that open up success possibilities for them? Because my clients like what are we talked about on this podcast is all about creating space for success. And so what happens to your clients when they start to do this work?

Barbara: Well, I have a number of clients who said, you know, "I just can't think I got to get this done. I've got to clear some space. I've got to take care of my parent's estate. They passed away a year and a half ago." That's very common.

That's actually a number of my clients are women who are kind of in the sandwich generation. They're helping still helping children to some degree. They've also got their parents or their parents have passed and now they've got a house to downsize and things to get rid of. I just lost my train of thought. What was your question? 

Jen: I wanted to know once people kind of clear out the clutter, what opens up for them success wise? 

Barbara: So once they finally get through and clear out, they actually give themselves permission to pursue a passion that they've been putting off. It's like I can't start that until I get this done.

Jen: Oh my God.

Barbara: But the thing they want to get done could take half a year, but it's just like magic. I've got one client now who had just a lot of things to work through and she's now at least halfway through a book. That was one of her ultimate goals and it's just so refreshing to see and just everything is changed in her demeanor.

Jen: I would imagine that once that starts to happen for your clients their sense of confidence just sores.

Barbara: Yeah. I had a client tell me that yesterday. Another type of client to help business owners who need to grow their business, but they've got to get everything out of their head and onto paper. So whether it's you know, figuring out the structure of their and who's going to do what. What positions they need job descriptions and all that and he said yesterday to me said, "You know, it's really boosted my confidence and getting through this." And I think that I loved hearing it and this is a very successful person but things behind the scenes may not be what it seems to be behind the curtain

Jen: A hundred percent. I have a client who has a very big company and she's the president and CEO of it and everything lives in her head. And so what we do is we pull everything out of her head and just like It into something that's like actionable and it completely has changed her life to just have somebody do that for her. So I know the value of it. It's so much fun to watch.

Barbara: Oh, yeah. I did a color chart of a weekly schedule for him. Once we decided, you know figured out what he needed to do every day or at least three times a week. How much time you need to put into different activities in this business. And we actually blocked out the time every day. That's not to say that every time as blocked. I mean, he's got some good free time and you know, he's got his boundary, which is great and he's got a family. So I made all the family time in yellow and it takes up a lot of space. It was kind of nice to see.

Jen: But people whose brains don't work like that are so appreciative to work with somebody whose brain does work like that. So it can have such a big impact to partner up with somebody whose brain works not the same way as ours does.

Barbara: Right I think in an organized way, but also flexibility because not everybody wants the same type of organization. 

Jen: Exactly

Barbara: I had somebody call me once and say "Now, I know about Marie Kondo. Are you going to come in my house and make me pile all my clothes on the bed and then leave me?" No. I mean all of the professional organizers I know are very grateful for her and others coming out and kind of bringing light to what we do. There are so many ways to accomplish things. And when I was working in person, we worked about four hours at a time and we only did one area where we can make a difference and never left chaos behind.

I wanted them to feel a good feeling of accomplishment. The start and an end. And four hours was good. Now working around two hours for each session, but more frequently. So they are keeping up the momentum and it's not as physically demanding that way too. Even though I'm not there in person. But those who say just can't physically do four hours they can do usually two. And a lot of them sit down anyway! 

Jen: It must just create a sense of lightness. Like we're talking about your client who she's in the middle of her book, like it just creates this lightness. But this all goes back to something you said at the very beginning which was "People need to ask for help."

Like if they have something that's been sitting on their list forever or sitting in their dreams forever and they've never beeen able to take action on it. It's time to admit that help is needed and it's not there's nothing to be ashamed of for it.

Barbara: Exactly and that's one of the terms is body doubling. So if you've ever noticed you were trying to clean up a space and it always works better if somebody's with you, even if they're not helping. They're just kind of just egging you on, you know. Encouraging you. That's body doubling!

That's what I do with people. We're sitting in front of each other at a computer and sometimes the person is just going through paperwork and is asking questions. Or trying to make out a plan for downsizing a house and getting rid of it. "And what do I need to do first? Call the realtor. Get a Stager." or how do I figure out what goes where? 

And so we're constantly working through those plans. And just having somebody to bounce ideas off and you know helps. 

Jen:  I wonder if your people think "I should know how to do this." Like they kind of should all over themselves. "I should be able to do this. I shouldn't have to..." Like do your people come to you with those preconceived ideas? Like there's something wrong because they are unable to do it by themselves?

Barbara: Oh, yeah, and it's usually them just totally frustrated and just can't do it anymore.  I had a client call me a few days ago and said, "You know I've been downsizing this house for a year. And I just walked in and I just can't do it anymore." And said "I'm so sorry for calling you out of the blue." 

Well, if people didn't call me out of the blue wouldn't have any clients.

Jen: So true because people really...When you get sick of your own bullshit that is when you are ready to make a change and I say that to my clients all the time.

I did a call with a woman who had just come out of life coaching school. She had not tried to start her business yet. She didn't have that frustration of like pulling the lawmower string 57 times before it'll start. Which is when most of the women that I meet that's where they are. They've been like "Rannununun" I don't know.

So this woman we were having a call and she hadn't experienced any of the frustration of trying to start a business yet and she didn't hire me because she wasn't frustrated. Like there was no like being sick of her own bullshit. And so I love the people apologize like, "I'm sorry. I'm such a mess by the time I speak to you." And I'm like "This is where I meet all my clients. Everybody's a mess because we're just really frustrated."

Barbara: Exactly and you know there was a time when I was married and raising a child and working full-time at a corporate job and then working in my husband's business that I would have hired a professional organizer. I didn't even know they existed. I mean, I heard I'd seen some books. So I'm like, I don't even know where to start. I mean just, you know, we only have so many hours in a day and some of them we have to use to sleep.

Jen: Yes, I do for the free time that you were talking about with your other client.

Barbara: Yeah. Yeah because we should be working to support our lives outside of work. Of course if your business owner, hopefully, you're doing something you love.

Anyway, yes, but I know many people who could have benefited from some help or support, you know at some point in their lives.

Jen: Yes. And so we want to tell you this exists. Go find somebody if you're struggling with something. Please. 

Barbara: Exactly.

Jen:  So question, my audience loves a really specific tool and I know you've already given us some gems about the myths, but do you have any like specific tool or strategy that is just a go-to for your client?

Barbara: Yes. Some people have talked about, you know, I don't even "How to get started my office is a mess. It's just where do I start?"

Jen: Like, it's so far gone.

Barbra: Yeah. "The problem is I get in there and get distracted and I just get fed up and I leave." I say "Okay open the door. It's and let's take a look at the floor if the floors must start there because that's kind of a safety hazard and you might as well get that stuff up so you can move around." If the floors clear but the whole place is, you know, the next place is the desk. If you can't figure out where to start, and the whole room is packed just take an area start go to scope clockwise and stay there and don't move to the next area until you've gone all the way around. Because then you can just hyper focus on one little area at a time.

Jen: Or one little drawer one.

Barbara: Yeah! So then, the key to not getting distracted is to put a processing box outside the door.

Jen: Okay. What is that?

Barbara: That is you put a box outside and let's say you find a coffee cup with a science project in it. You're like "Take it to the kitchen" and then you're like, "Oh there's dishes. I need to wash this and oh God. I just heard the timer go off in the dryer. I need to fold these clothes man. I haven't even made my bed yet. Now, let me hang up these clothes and make the bed and you know, it's lunchtime. And what was I doing?"

So it may sound gross but just put that coffee cup in the processing box or right outside the door. So then when you take a break you can take that box and distribute it. But you're going to plan your breaks. So just do not leave the room. I have clients running all over the place and it's like "Stop!" We have this box here and we're going to stay in the room

Jen: You really, you can tell that, you know, your ideal audience member deeply and I always say to my clients like that is the number one thing that you need to know about your audience is what are they thinking. And you know what your audience is thinking that's awesome.

I have a question. What was I going to ask you?

Oh, I was going to say if I didn't do business coaching, I think, because  I am so excited by what you're talking about and I'd be like, I think I would be doing this for a living because I think it's so what's on the other side of doing the actions of the decluttering and the organizing is so much ease and freedom. It's like a relief.  

Barbara: It is and you know, you're already starting at a great spot being a coach. And that's why I went through a two-year coaching program and it's called Coach Approach for Organizers Specifically Designed because we are constantly coaching. And you know, it's just such a vital part of what we do.

It's not therapy. It's coaching. It's a different thing. It's just helping move people forward and gain some new awareness.

Jen: Right, because there's a reason that things have gotten to the place where they are and as a coach a productivity coach you can help them move through that. That's awesome. I'm sure that there's one gem that I haven't asked you about. Like, where is there something else that you'd like to share with my audience that I haven't thought? We did cover a lot. 

Barbra: Virtual organizing some people say why? Would that even work? And I've had one client say, "You know, I love it because you see only what I want you to see."

Jen: That's fair.

Barbara: And we are hyper-focused. So it really can be ideal for people who are struggling with ADD, ADHD, OCD, to both hyper-focused on one area. And that's for that type of focus can really be helpful. And because if they leave I see that they've gone.

Jen: Come back! 

Barbara: Yeah, come on back! And especially with the shorter sessions, we can keep some momentum. And it's easy to coach them a long the way too.

Jen: Well, this is the perfect segue into my next question, which is how do people work with you? 

Barbara: They can reach me through my website https://zenyourden.com/  There's a link there where they can schedule a free consultation. They can also see some of my blog posts there and if they sign up for my newsletter on the site, they're going to be up to date with any activities or podcasts that are coming along articles specials. I have a Black Friday special coming up and this is a secret, but if you want to hear about it, you got to be on the okay.

Jen: So where can we find you on the socials?

Barbara: It's "Organizing with Barbara Trapp" on Facebook. And ZenYourDen on Instagram and Twitter and Linkedin Barbara Trapp.

Jen: Okay, LinkedIn. Yes. I never go on LinkedIn, but it's such a great place to connect with people. So thank you for including it.

Thank you so much for your expertise and all the gems you shared today because I think that whether your house has crap all over the floor. Or you simply have clutter inside your mind because it's very busy in there the things that you've shared with us today we can use for any kind of clutter in our life and open the space so that we can let in whatever 2021 is about to bring us

Barbara: Exactly.

Jen: Thank you, Barbara, so great to talk with you.

Okay, everyone.

Bye. I'll see you next week with another conversation about how to prepare for 2021 and making some space to allow it. Bye, everyone!