Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast will go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Welcome to Episode 74, “Good Intentions.” Hey y’all! I’d like to share that my monthly public workshops are on hold for the summer, as I actively practice having more fun and less strict scheduling. That’s what summer is for, right? That being said, I am partnering with my colleague Catherine Bailey of Think or Blue to explore Eve Rodsky’s second book, Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World. We’ll be hosting a small group book club and workshop series during July and August 2024 to talk about what it means to be unavailable, how to burn the guilt and shame around taking time for yourself and outlining practical strategies about how to have more fun each week. Both Catherine and I believe in supportive friendships, laughing a lot, and spending time doing things that light us up inside. Head to my website, apleasantsolution.com/workshops to learn more. We’d love to have you.
And while you’re there, on my website, try not to click on the resource page titled “Blog.” Don’t click on it, please. One reason I don’t want you to click on it is because you might see evidence of today’s topic while you’re there. You might just stumble upon my good intention to publish a weekly blog post where I was to break down each of the 100 Cards of Fair Play, one Friday at a time. You might just see that I started off strong – I published a dozen – and then I stopped. Or paused. Or took a break. What I didn’t do was keep publishing a weekly blog post each Friday. Most likely I’ll get back to it at some point, but not today.
So, in today’s episode, I’d love to chat about our good intentions. You know the ones. They’re on our to-do list. They bubble to the surface of our minds as a good idea. Perhaps it’s a new habit you want to start or an old habit you’re planning to go back to. It’s an idea that seems to be deeply rooted but turns out not to be deeply rooted enough. For me, good intentions sit in the space between a moderate amount of desire for something and the firm motivation that turns it into a priority.
Sometimes you and I, we follow through on our good intentions. This leads us to feeling successful and using our intention as evidence as how we’re capable, organized, productive, reliable, etc. For example, I’ve hosted a free public workshop on a monthly basis for nearly 18 months. The workshops began as an experiment to improve my teaching skills, to build relationships with my audience, and to offer free, accessible content to anyone who was interested in the topic of the month. My intention was to meet folks and be a resource that they could count on. I decided up front not to hold one in July, and experience taught me that December is also another month where folks are experiencing information overload and are less likely to make time for an online workshop. I’ve followed through and learned alongside my audience.
Writing a weekly blog post on the 100 Cards of Fair Play began in a similar way. My intention was to give my perspective and humanize the storytelling behind why these individual tasks matter in our household. It’s helpful to have a resource like the 100 Cards, yet if you’re unsure how folks use them in real life, you may be less likely to implement the system in your home.
Yet, in this case, not following through beyond a dozen blog posts created a different response inside of me. Instead of creating the feeling of being capable, organized, productive, and reliable, my internal critic whispered the opposite at me. My critic took my good intention and used it as a measuring stick by which to shame me. It tried to say that I’d failed. People were noticing. Readers were disappointed. That there was public evidence that I wasn’t reliable on my website, as the last post was dated mid-April (or over 2 months ago). Basically, my good intention had turned sour.
So, I’d love for you to start by listening in and identifying whether something like this has happened to you at any point. Perhaps you’ve meant to reach out to a friend or family member and check in on them, yet you now feel like too much time has passed. Perhaps you had the idea to teach your kids how to cook a few simple meals or how to notice it was time to tidy their room, yet you feel like you’ve been inconsistent in the follow up. Or perhaps you’ve been thinking about tackling that pile of papers in the corner for months and have now shifted into telling yourself that this summer it will happen.
When I moved my mother from her home in West Virginia to live near me in Michigan, I scheduled new patient appointments at the variety of healthcare providers that I use. I like to keep it simple. We got our hair cut at the same salon. We visited the same dentist. Because I know the providers, the billing and appointment making became streamlined. For her dementia she sees a geriatric specialist, but other than that, waiting together in the waiting room is one way we pass time together.
Three years ago, the optometrist shared with me that my mother was ready for cataract surgery. Cataracts occur in 100% of human beings, therefore at some point, we’ll all most likely need cataract surgery. For three annual visits in a row, I sat there while he told me that when the cataracts began to disrupt my mother’s daily life, I should call and schedule surgery. With good intentions, I let two summers pass. Each summer I told myself I’d call to schedule the surgery. The cataracts didn’t seem to be bothering my mother. She didn’t complain. She hadn’t bumped into things or fallen. She was no longer driving and didn’t spend a ton of time outside in the sun, so all seemed well on a daily basis.
I intended to schedule her surgery. Yet, good intentions don’t always lead to getting things done. Lead to making progress. Naturally, we wait until there’s a nudge – or some outside force – that makes a task switch from being a good intention to a priority. Now, therein lies the stickiness of a good intention. With her dementia, my mother isn’t capable of telling me that her vision is becoming increasingly blurry or problematic. So, what was the nudge I was waiting for? Recently, I was sitting in the waiting room with her at another doctor’s visit, and I noticed that she was angling her magazine to different directions in order to read the words. Bam! That was the sign. She was struggling to see the letters easily.
In a few weeks, my mother is scheduled for cataract surgery. As each of the last two summers passed, I heard my inner critic tell me some version of how I wasn’t living up to my role as a supportive caretaker. Because I have the inner tools of coaching, I was able to understand that my critic wasn’t right. She was just being critical. Yet, the voice stings nonetheless.
So, the second thing I want you to consider and reflect upon is how you treat yourself when it comes to your good intentions. Self-compassion is a practice, and it takes conscious effort to redirect our inner voices from beating ourselves up to noticing that having a good intention doesn’t translate directly into action. You have to decide to treat yourself kindly, and you have to decide to shift a task from being a good intention into being a priority for it to get done.
Clutter is a classic example. I love to say that clutter will wait for you - just like the cataract surgery was waiting for me to decide that now was the time. Here are a few small examples of items that have languished as clutter due to good intentions: the whirl of plastic bags you’re collecting with the intention of recycling, the sauce packets, disposable chopsticks, and plastic utensils in your drawer, containers that don’t quite have a place or a purpose, or the tangle of cords that no longer work or match your electronics. Think specifically about the items in your home that you’ve saved for good reason, yet… you can’t remember what that reason was now.
For many years, I had clothing items in my closet that fell into the category of “good intentions.” I had purchased items that were on sale, were end of season, or overly dressy but then didn’t actually use them. My reasoning was there at the moment of purchase but then seemed to fade as time passed. In my mind I could predict the scenario in which I’d used them, yet when it came time the thrill of the item had faded.
One of the most common areas I see folks beat themselves up over is around their time and weekly commitments. You see, we’re great at overestimating how much we can accomplish in one day. For example, you may find yourself saying ‘yes’ to attend an event, only to get the day of then struggle internally because you no longer want to go. You may sign up for a volunteer position, then realize that it will take more hours or more capacity than you have at the moment. For my pro organizing colleagues that often looks like taking on a client because of their need or their specific story, then discovering that the client is actually less motivated to make change or stick to a schedule than initially stated.
It’s because they’re in the land of good intentions. And, in the land of good intentions – the grass is green and plush, the picnic blanket is laid, there are no bugs bothering you, and the sun doesn’t seem to be going down – until it does. When you’re there, in that space of having a good idea or plan, all is well. Going to a soccer game, then a birthday party, then to see grandma seems like a good idea, until you have to manage the logistics and moods of everyone involved. Volunteering for a local committee sounds straightforward until they nominate you as the Chair. Taking on an organizing client that’s a referral seems like a good idea until you realize they need therapy or coaching to be ready for your services.
I want to wrap today by sharing that good intentions are what they are. You don’t need to outsmart them or see them as a problem to be solved. I think each of us can simply benefit by recognizing them when they occur. I invite you to get curious. Are there any categories of items or areas of your life in which you have more routine good intentions than others? Again, to recap, these are the bright and meaningful ideas you have that don’t quite make it onto your priority list. They turn out not to be as urgent or important as they seemed at first. They linger, then perhaps they languish, and you may eventually judge yourself for having the idea in the first place.
Once you recognize a good intention, it’s best to decide then and there: Am I really going to follow through? Do I intend to commit? To make this a priority? To recycle the plastic bags, to use the disposable utensils, to untangle the cords and find their match? Sometimes the best decision at this moment is to give yourself complete and utter permission to drop the good intention all together. That’s a perfectly acceptable response. You’re more organized than you think, and instead of beating yourself up for not getting started on the project or not wearing the item you bought on sale, take the kind and loving path instead. Call it what it was - a good intention – and move on with life. Talk to y’all soon.
Outro: Hey y'all, let's connect and chat on socials. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook @apleasantsolution. I'm also on LinkedIn at Amelia Pleasant Kennedy. Feel free to send me a quick note and let me know what you'd like to hear more about, or what home life organizational challenges are top of mind for you. Talk to y'all soon.
