Get Organized Head First, with Claire Kellems – TPW263

Working mom Claire Kellems and I chat about how her own efforts to get organized led to a blog, a business, and more peace of mind. (Don't miss the link below for a discount on Claire's newly released ebook!)

Getting organized starts in our minds

Claire Kellems manages technology and data analytics in the financial services industry. She also blogs about productivity and organization and offers productivity coaching and organization services. Claire lives in Indiana with her husband and their two boys.

Claire is a long-time member of the TPW community. We met in person when I visited Indiana to help my son settle in for grad school. The more I learned about how she's working on managing her life and making a life that matters, the more I wanted to share it with the TPW community.

A typical day

A typical day for Claire is a workday/schoolday for kids. Her Google speaker wakes her up at about 6 a.m. each morning; she has to speak to it to turn it off. Not being a morning person, talking out loud helps her wake up.

The first thing she does once she's out of bed is make sure her kids are up and getting ready. (She lays everything out the night before to make things easier.)

Over breakfast, Claire does devotions with her kids and spends some time with them. If she has a little time before she has to head out, she soaks in nature on her back deck while journaling, enjoying a few minutes of peace before she heads off into a busy day. By 7:30 they're all out the door and Claire is on her one-hour commute to work, which is when she listens to podcasts or calls to check in with family and relatives.

After her workday is over, she drives back towards home, picks up her kids from various activities, and meets with clients of her organization business. By the time she gets home, her husband usually has dinner ready and they sit down to eat as a family.

After dinner, the children do homework while the adults tidy up the kitchen.

Her family abides by a "no screen-time school week" policy, which has made a huge difference for her family in behavior and expectations. She highly recommends this approach. After homework is done, they spend time as a family reading, playing board games, or hang out outside.

Once the kids are in bed, Claire has some me-time, reviews her calendar to see what she has going on the next day, sets reminders, and gets into bed.

Claire touched on so many interesting concepts during our discussion. I was particularly interested in finding out more about how she got her children to be self-sufficient, since this doesn't happen by accident.

Claire has always given her children chores, which are called "jobs" in her household. When they were old enough to not need constant supervision, she gave them morning jobs, which are written on a whiteboard on the refrigerator, so they know what they need to do. She's relied on alarms and timers, a lot of repetition, and visual lists to get this routine going.

Like anything else, her secret was to put time and thought and intentionality into building the habits so she could create her day closer to what she wants it to look like.

Claire has so many things going on in her life, so I was curious to know why she had chosen to take on a blog on top of everything. She explained that it was actually a byproduct of being overwhelmed. When she is stressed, she writes it all down. She found writing about the responsibilities and stress that came with family life and work to be therapeutic and realized she couldn't be alone in this struggle and stress.