Teachers in Transition - Episode193: How Much Does Clutter Weigh You Down?

In this episode, Vanessa talks about how clutter can affect us emotionally and a call to action to deal with our accumulated teacher stuff.  We talk about why it’s important to rest and what it might mean to you to Sharpen the Saw

A link to our Facebook Page! Join us!
 
Books by Peter Walsh: 

It’s all too much!  (and the workbook)
Does this Clutter make my Butt Look Big?
Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight

Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin

The Home Edit – Stay Organized and The Ultimate Guide to Making Systems Stick 

*Disclaimer – these links take you to Amazon where I can make a few cents if you buy through the link.  

All About Filmstrips brought to you by Wikipedia

And remember to send your comments, stories, and random thoughts to me at TeachersinTransitionCoaching@gmail.com!  I look forward to reading them.  Would you like to hear a specific topic on the pod?  Send those questions to me and I’ll answer them. 

The transcript of this podcast can be found on the podcasts’ homepage at Buzzsprout. 

Transcript

Are you a teacher who is feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout - or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing something different or a new job or perhaps pursuing an entirely different career - but you don't know what else you're qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search and you just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you are not alone. my name is Vanessa Jackson; and I am a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal with the overwhelmingly stressful nature of your day-to-day job and to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. You might ask yourself, What tools do I need to find a new career?  Are my skills valuable outside the classroom?  How and where do I even get started?  These are all questions you deserve answers to, and I can help you find them.  I’m Vanessa Jackson. Come and join me for Teachers in Transition.  

***Hi!  And Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition. I am your host, Vanessa Jackson – I’m a compassionate career transition and job search coach. I am here to help you reach your goals and dig into what you really want. I provide tips and suggestions to help with stress and mental health, hacks to help your day, and job-hunting tips.  If you are frustrated with your current teaching position – you are burnt out and overwhelmed, I am here for you.  Today on the pod we are talk about how we are literally weighed down with the stuff in our teaching life, we’ll learn the story behind “Sharpen the Saw” if you don’t already know, and we’ll talk about using periods of rest to help us get ahead.  

 To start the show today, we’re going to touch on a little spring cleaning. We are wandering into spring and with spring comes thoughts of spring cleaning. In today's mental health segment, we're going to talk about how clutter weighs us down. There are a lot of books that speak to the topic. Peter Walsh is a famous organizer who came to fame in the show Clean Sweep, and he's written several books.  The framework for the Clean Sweep show was as follows: 
 
 They would be taken into a room that was just cluttered to high heaven.  In the first act of the show, they took everything out.  Everything.  And the owner – or owners – were forced to make first pass decisions on everything – keep, trash, or sell.  And in that first pass, they never got rid of much.  In the second pass, Peter would come out and challenge them to reduce this shoe collection by 50% or to only keep 1 in 3 of a purse collection. This is where people stall out. The shows are all on a time schedule, they don’t have a lot of time for people to come to these decisions on their own.  At some point, he would compassionately but firmly force the owner to face the root cause of why they had accumulated all this stuff and just couldn’t let it go.  There was also an emotional reason for it.  And once they’d addressed the emotional reason, it was almost always easier for the owner to make better decisions.  It never failed to stun me how many belongings and how much STUFF there was.  And these people weren’t considered hoarders.
 
 In part two of the show, they would stage a large garage sale of all the extra things to fund the renovation that was going on in the room they’d just emptied.  It was not uncommon for one of the owners to melt down and waver in their decisions because they had trouble watching their things be sold. 

 And just because I’ve brought you all the way – the show ties up neatly in its third act with any unsold items going to charity and the owner being brought into see how their space was renovated and made functional and lovingly decorated with the items that the owner kept all while the trials and tribulations of sorting and selling were going on outside. 
 
 I loved this show when it was on.  Peter was not the only organizer, but he was one of my favorites.  So after the show was gone, I followed him by reading his books.  The first one I read was called “It’s All too Much.”  As I was looking up some info for the podcast, I see that there’s a workbook for this now.  And a book came out shortly after that called “Does this clutter make my butt look big” I have links to all of this in the show notes in case you are interested in exploring that further.  Peter noticed anecdotally that many of his clients also lost weight after going through and divesting themselves of clutter. And while this observation isn’t a cure-all – there are a lot of medical reasons for an inability to lose weight- Emotional states can be linked to both holding on to everything and behaviors that make it hard to lose weight if you want to. 
 
 The author, Gretchen Rubin, who is one of my favorites, has a book called Outer Order, Inner Calm she talks about the research behind the title and all these tips to create order in your life and organize items so that you can feel an inner sense of calm. And then of course, we have all been entranced by Marie Kondo and do these items spark joy, and chances are we have all chased down an organizational guru or two in our time. These days, I am fascinated with The Home Edit with their system of organizing by color. I find it to be true that the more disordered my environment, the more out of control I feel internally.  One of my favorite places on earth is The Container Store because of the limitless possibilities for organization.  Unfortunately, you can’t organize clutter.  

 This brings me to my primary point:  I want to talk about classroom clutter. It is stunning the things we acquire AND HANG ON TO in the course of a teaching career.  And we keep everything because we never know exactly what may be useful later.  Think about that – we innately understand at the BEGINNING that we cannot trust our schools and districts to supply us with what we need.  So we keep all sorts of things, we stock up during school-shopping sales to get the biggest bang for our buck when it’s time.  My bulletin board supplies are a great allegory for all of it.  I started with a small box and a few borders.  Then I got more borders for seasonal things.  THEN I added fun fabrics because fabrics don’t fade like butcher paper.  And I would laminate the decorations – keep letters in envelopes to make things easier for next time.  I had to upgrade to a larger tubby.  As I moved from room to room and district to district, I learned that bulletin boards aren’t standard size.  So I was constantly having to tweak things to make it work. (Bonus hack – write the dimensions of the bulletin board ON the bulletin board itself in sharpie to make your life or the next teacher’s life easier)
 
 On the bright side, Bulletin Board supplies were and are useful. I gave them away. A very dear friend of mine taught 30 years and retired in 2016.  One of the things that she did was she took all of her materials - all of her poster boards, everything that she had acquired that she used in teaching – and she brought them to give away to newer teachers who might need them. And in that pile of stuff very nicely organized pile of stuff were film strips. I don't even know if you could come up with a way to see filmstrips anymore. When I was a student, film strip day was a happy day where the teachers used technology to occupy us and used US to run the technology. I am putting a link to filmstrips in the show notes just in case you want to learn more.  
 
 How many items will you really want from your classroom if you are leaving teaching? The most useful part of all my accumulated stuff were the desk items I used to set up my home office.  Many of the things I took out of the classroom were less so. I am clearing out some of my books from my teaching past, and I wanted initially to offer it up to younger teachers that might like it. My Facebook network didn’t take me up on it. I realized some of these materials are just out of date now and their best use is probably fire-starter for the burn pile. Those things were important to me, and they represented a time when I was happy as a teaching. And they represent money that I spent, and time that I spent making a comfortable learning environment. It is another piece of letting go in a grieving process. Letting your items go is a part of the grieving process of leaving teaching. What will help you greatly in this process is to consider a Clean Sweep of your own with your teaching supplies. Whether you do this over spring break (please don’t… rest and have fun…), whether you tackle it a little at a time like one drawer or tub at a time over the next several weeks, or if you wait until the end of the year clean out, I want you to think about what is serving you and what is just weighing you down. If you are looking to leave teaching, this will help you to begin that process of letting go. It will be easier to find people who might want them in the spring than it will be as everyone is running out the door in May or June.  If you are looking to stay in teaching, it will help keep you from being overly weighed down with…stuff. When you let those items go. You can be free to move on or to grow in new directions. When those items are taking up space in your home or your classroom, they just make you feel sadder. You deserve to be happy. 
 
 

And moving on to our next segment - our teacher hack, which is designed to help you save time and brain space so that you can spend it on you getting ready for that job hunt.  Whether you're up skilling for a new career or applying to jobs, these hacks are designed to make your life easier.  And I know that we’re hitting Spring Break season.  Some of you are starting that right now.  Some of you have that coming up next week or in a few weeks.  Sure, that’s a GREAT time to work on your Everything Resume Template or apply to a couple of jobs, 

Teaching is an exhausting profession. And your body and your soul will have to go through periods of recharge and we exhibit this in different ways. Sometimes we sleep it off. Sometimes we have to go back and binge watch, our favorite television show (again!). We go into a bit of a cocoon which is almost protective in nature because our soul needs to recharge. Please do not be hard on yourself if you need this. If you spot this pattern, tell yourself. “Aha, I need something”. And Tune In with yourself to get a handle on what's going on, and if your soul needs rest, you have to rest. The Franklin Covey: 7 habits of highly successful people book tells us that Step 7 is to Sharpen the Saw. 
 
 If you have not read this book, it’s a great book, and I’ll link it below.  Some schools are 7 Habits schools, and its been out a long time. In Step 7, we hear the story of a young fellow who came to the lumber camp and got a job. He was just absolutely the best. He was sawing those trees and limbs, and he was getting more work done than anybody else. 
 
 For a while. 
 
 And he noticed that he was losing ground. So he came in a little earlier and he stayed a little later to compensate.  But he kept losing more and more ground. And finally he was falling behind all of the other lumberjacks.  And he evntually gets called into the office, and the boss says “we gotta let you go”. And our guy says. “But I work hard. I'm the hardest worker you have. I am the first one here. I am the last one to go. I work more hours than ANYone else! I've even worked through my lunch sometimes! How can you possibly let me go?!?”
 
 The boss stopped and said, “Wait, You never take a break. You never stop. Have you ever stopped to sharpen your saw?”
 
 And that is the moral of the lesson. It is a job in and of itself to hunt for a job, but you have to take time to recharge when you need to recharge.  Saws must be sharpened, cars must stop and fill their tanks (or recharge). You have to feed your soul. You have to rest. Otherwise, you just move slower and slower; and it's harder to get the same amount of work done. 
 
 So if it will make you happy to go see Jason Momoa in the latest Aquaman movie on HBOMax, (bonus you can see that in your PJ's!). Or if you want to go somewhere and connect with nature, or if you want to have lunch or hike with a friend - Don't feel bad about doing it. While I'm thinking about it, I believe it’s time for me to watch Firefly again. For the bazillionth time. Shiny, y’all! 
 
 And because I so strongly believe in habit 7 up there, our job-hunting segment will be very short this week: 
 Spend time thinking about what’s important to you. If you have done the Petal Exercises from episodes 179-186, then review those notes and daydream about and manifest the future that awaits you.  Bonus points if you can do this on a beach, a porch swing, or any other place that makes you happy.  Reconnect with YOU. 

If you feel like you ABSOLUTELY need to do something – go set an alert on LinkedIn to tell you of jobs in your interest area. And if you aren’t very familiar with LinkedIn yet, we’ll cover that in a future episode VERY soon!

I am shamelessly asking you to help me grow my little podcast by telling others and sharing it with anyone you think might benefit from it!  Those recommendations are a really big help to me and I appreciate every one of them.  Also – rate and review the podcast on Apple or wherever you get the chance! That also bumps it up in the algorithms, and helps people find it. It really does help. And if you know of other teachers who are stressed and overwhelmed, invite them to listen. Unfortunately we’re a large club.  

And come join me on Facebook! The Teachers in Transition Podcast Club is a place where you are welcome and wanted. You can ask me specific questions and I’m happy to answer. Just search for Teachers in Transition Podcast Club and it will come right up, but I also have a link in the show notes. 

If you are stuck in your job search, or are having trouble getting started, please feel free to reach out to me to schedule a complimentary discovery call to see how Teachers in Transition can help you pivot careers and find the job of your dreams. And one last quick word of caution – don’t wait until school is out to get started.  It takes longer than you think. So rest up and get ready! 

That’s the podcast for today! If you liked this podcast, tell a friend, and don’t forget to rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tune in weekly to Teachers in Transition where we discuss Job Search strategies as well as stress management techniques.  And I want to hear from you!  Please reach out and leave me a message at Teacher in transition coaching at gmail dot com.  You can also leave a voicemail or text at 512-640-9099. 

I’ll see you here again next week and remember – YOU are amazing!