A photograph of a woman, Regina Lark, wearing glasses and looking into the camera - guest on organisation and time
Episode 120 – Guest Regina Lark talks about organisation and time

In this episode, Ingrid is talking to Dr. Regina Lark. Regina founded her professional organising company, A Clear Path: Professional Organising and Productivity in 2008. Regina specializes in working with chronic disorganisation, ADHD, and hoarding and she is an Accredited Senior Move Manager.
Episode 385 – Life Skills for Kids with Katie Kimball
Episode 384 – The Reality of House Clearance
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter of podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your hosts professional organisers, Ingrid Johnson and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:31  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 120 of the declutter hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid. In today's episode, I'm talking to Dr. Regina Lark, Regina founded her professional organising company a clear path in 2008. Regina is a certified professional organiser, and a certified professional organiser in chronic disorganisation. And she specialises in working with chronic disorganisation, ADHD and hoarding. And she's an Accredited Senior move manager. Regina has written three books. One is called psychic debris, crowded closets, the relationship between the stuff of your head and what's under your beds. Her second book is before the big big before the big Oh professional organisers talk about life before organising. And her current book project emotional labour, why women's work is never done, what to do about it and how to talk about it will be released in the spring of 2021. Regina is a speaker and trainer on issues ranging from hoarding time management and productivity, women's leadership and the power of positive thinking. And she was named one of the top 10 organisers in Los Angeles. Oh my word Regina, what an intro. What a bio. Thank you for being on the show.

Regina  1:53  
oh, thank you for asking me, I'm such a fan of yours. I feel that the work that you've done in your part of the world has just has just brought our industry into the eyes of folks that would have never ever known. So I I know I've been asked this a little longer than you. But oh, my gosh, what you have done.

Ingrid  2:18  
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it is an honour to have you on our podcast and that you are our first guest in 2021. Like, oh, what a great way to start the year for the podcast. So thank you for being I appreciate your time. And I be lucky enough to meet you in person. I mean, I know we can see each other on Zoom. Now we're recording this on Zoom. But I've met you in person at the Napl organisers conference. I think it was back in 2016 in Atlanta, if I recall correctly. Yes. And I'll raise then was already in all of your knowledge and your dedication to our industry because you are not wanting to sit idly and wait behind your desk. You make stuff happen, don't you? So my first question to you is probably why chronic disorganisation. Why do you find that interesting,

Regina  3:10  
Ingrid. When I started my business 12 years ago, I thought I was just going to make garages look pretty. What I discovered very quickly, in the first few jobs that I had, were a couple of things. One, my pretty may not be your pretty. I also discovered that when I met with a client. So the story that's coming to mind right now, I met with a client for the first time, and we had a four or five hour session. And toward the end of our session, we identified a pile of mail. And I said, All right, before I come back next week, why don't you go, you know, go through the pile of mail before I come back next week, because we had worked in other hotspots. Like we were at her clothing closet and something on her desk or bookshelf. And then toward the end of our session, there was this pile of mail. So she says yes, yes, yes, I will go through it. Well, I come back the next week. And not only was that pile of mail not gone through, but there were other piles of mail and there were piles on top of that pile. And when I walked in there, you know, I'm not someone who's going to judge or label or I just observed there was more a male there. The first pile hadn't been gone through. And I was very curious about that. I thought it was very interesting, because when I left her the week before, she sounded as though she had every intention of following through. The other part that stands out to me was meeting a client for the first time and in about 20 or 30 Min. units were starting to declutter, and she holds up a, like a glasses case, you know that her and the case belong to her mom who had died about five or seven years before. And the classes were in the case. And she identified the glasses and the case with her mother. And there was a lot of stuff that we needed to tackle, but I remember her holding up the glasses case, and she said to me, is it okay if I let this go. And I thought this is so interesting, because she just met me. And she's asking my permission to deal with an item that had been in her possession for a long time, and had a lot of tender feelings toward. So those two incidents, her asking permission to let go of an item, and noticing that the other client hadn't been able to get to work on that pile of mail. I did a little bit of research, talk to other organisers, and I discovered the Institute for challenging disorganisation, ICD, when I found ICD, I was open to a whole world of learning about how the brain works in relationship to our relationship to our stuff. And that was a huge breakthrough for me, because it helped me understand that not only is my pretty not necessarily, you're pretty, but it really helped me understand why someone may have clutter in the first place because I'm not a cluttered person. In my family of origin, there are six of us, four of us are just like me, two of us need us. So the ICD courses and then I earned the certifications to go along with it really helped me to understand how time management, emotional management, linear thinking, sequencing processing, one to the next to the next to the next, how all of that, if that part of your brain is compromised in any way. That part of the brain we refer to as the executive function, the executive function keeps us on task on time getting our to do list becomes done. If our executive function is tweaked or compromised, I guarantee that person is going to have clutter. Because in order to not have clutter, you have to possess a really good internal clock. So you know how long it takes you to do stuff. You have to be emotionally managed, so that a glasses case becomes a glasses case and not a memory. So that's why I looked at the chronic disorganisation as being outside of how I would usually operate, but needing to know more about how others operate. And I'll finish with this. When my team goes into a crowded space, and we're in a residential home, one of the first things we declutter are all the books that our clients have on how to get organised. Because I think those books were written for people like you and me, Ingrid. As we have we have the executive function thing happening. They were not written for the people who need us. Yeah, that's, that's just my take on that. Except for my book, of course.

Ingrid  8:49  
No, but it's interesting, because I see indeed, decluttering books all the time. And it's exactly what the people in our memberships say they say, but I've read all the books, and I'm still in a house full of gas.

Regina  9:02  
Yes. Because the books were written for people who think the way the author thinks, and if the author thinks if you just fold it this way, but the author doesn't put into consideration Well, if you have lousy time management skills, if you don't know how long it takes you to fold a load of laundry, you're going to fail yourself miserably. And so there's a there's a reason why people read the books. But the books don't. They don't they're not able to apply what they've learned to the situation, because it's so much more internal.

Ingrid  9:43  
It's interesting because we indeed, in our membership have a whole course about day by day routines. And because we talk about like, how long does it take you to load the dishwasher? or unloaded dishwasher? How long does it take you to hang up a load of laundry? How long does it take you to do your ironing? If you want to do that? How long does it take you to set the table? Because when you get a far better idea about those tasks, then it's, you get much better prepared, like, oh, actually, no, I want to load the dishwasher now, but I can't because I actually have to leave the door in five minutes. And this alone is going to take me 10. So I can't do that now, or I have to leave later. So the grasp of time is very interesting, isn't it? It's, it's so significant,

Regina  10:39  
because look at all in in the English language, we have all we have, you know, I think of I've run out of time, I don't have time I wasted time times getting away from me, time doesn't stand still I we have all of these metaphors for how for our relationship with time, and none of them are very positive. You know, we rarely hear people say I've got plenty of time for this project. We may hear somebody with ADHD say they have plenty of time for the project. Because they don't possess what Ari Tuckman would call a time horizon. Meaning that they don't see time out there. So here we are, you and I are talking toward the end of December. And if if I had a project do like my book, my third book that I want to put out, April, well, if I had work to do for that book, April would feel very, very close. Yeah. But if all my work was done, and now I was just waiting for it to get printed. April's far away. So it really depends on your relationship with the finished product, and your relationship with what you have on your desk right now.

Ingrid  12:07  
In the end, we all have the same 24 hours today in the day. It's not like, it makes me it gives me the giggles sometimes, because people say to me, but you get so much done is that? Well, partly because I'm probably an organised person. And I'm hopefully quite efficient. But we have the same amount of minutes and seconds and hours in the day as everybody else.

Regina  12:30  
Well, and plus what I think you you have children, right,

Ingrid  12:34  
yeah. Well,

Regina  12:38  
that that can make or break somebody in terms of their ability to get things done. Because kids often mean, distractions, disruptions. And so you know, people whose brains are wired in a very linear way, are able to meet the distraction, because what they have on their desk is manageable. And if there's a distraction, it's still manageable. But it's how we're wired. And if one isn't wired that way, my goal is to help clients just to think differently about their stuff, their space, their time. You know, in grid, there's no such thing as time management, but we can do is manage our relationship to time.

Ingrid  13:32  
Maybe the goal. The question is, how do you do that, then Regina?

Regina  13:37  
Don't know I. It's managing your relationship with time. And it's also to your point. In fact, I gave a workshop yesterday. And I called on somebody random. I said, Sylvia, how long does it take you to take a shower? And she goes two minutes. I said time yourself. She sent me a text this morning saying it took her seven minutes. And for forever. She told herself. My showers take two minutes, I'll be done in two minutes. And it was a huge revelation that it was seven. Now the five minute difference isn't that much. So if you have a day where you're shortchanging yourself, or overestimating or underestimating how long it's taking you to do anything. So again, Ingrid, you're you're, you're really right on when you say start timing yourself, do it without judgement. I encourage our clients make a list of everything that you do in a typical week. Anything if they're we in a typical week, we're all doing laundry, we're all shopping. I don't cook but somebody brings me food so because I don't like to cook I hate to cook I'm not good at it. But we all have we all clean we all take a shower we all get dressed So we have these particular tasks that we do regularly without thinking of it. Here's what I would encourage your listeners to do. Make a list of all those tasks, just go crazy. Just list it out. If you want, write down what days of the week you do it just to give it some form. And then without thinking about it, write down how long you think it takes you to do all of it. Don't even think about it. Don't censor yourself don't question well, if I do it on just laundry, five steps, or wash, dry fold to put away How long does it take you. Then, if you still have in you start writing down the actual time, time yourself, put the timer on when you start the laundry, and turn the timer off when you finish the laundry. And if you've found that this week's laundry actually took four hours, then this is a really good opportunity to examine the distractions, because often, two loads of laundry can take hour and a half, two hours, right. And that includes to the end. So it includes the beginning, sorting, washing, drying, folding, putting away average can take two hours. But if you're finding it's taking longer, then then it's such a great opportunity to not judge yourself. But to become curious about why this task took that long. And it can happen on the other side, too. You think an email is going to take you an hour because the subject matter is challenging or difficult. And you can you find that you're doing it in a much shorter period of time. So I really encourage people to become curious about what the hell they're doing at home, how long it takes them to do it, don't judge yourself, don't label yourself. Just be curious. And I think you will see a lot of stuff revealed to you as you're going through this exercise.

Ingrid  17:07  
And I think it also really depends on how big your family is. I mean, I know I've got a husband and two kids, I do all the laundry because we have a division of tasks in his house. So I do probably about five or six loads of laundry a week with, you know, putting it in and hanging it up and then do at least half an hour of folding on a Sunday, every other two weeks, two hours of ironing, because it's important to me, I like to have stuff ironed. That's just me. So I know when I need to carve those timings. But because of course for years I've kind of, I have an awareness, it's exactly what you say I have an awareness of time. So that makes I think it much easier than to go when is the right time to build this in your schedule. But if you're constantly either under estimating or over estimating, I did the same with my clients. I said, Okay, she's like, Okay, I want to change the beds give me 10 minutes, I'm like, how many beds do you need to do? Well, all for 10 minutes, there's never going to be enough time. Because you need to strip the beds, get the stuff, put it on, put it you know, so that I think really helps.

Regina  18:17  
Everything we do is a project. Everything has a beginning, a middle and an end, I don't care what it is. Brushing your teeth, the beginning is your having your toothpaste in your toothbrush in your hand, the middle is doing the act, the end is putting those items away. Everything we do is a project, getting dressed, taking a shower, doing laundry, grocery shopping. And if we can see life through the lens of a project, meaning that every single thing we do has steps to get you to the next thing to get you to the end. Life is a project and what that means for me, is these are the things there's there's in everything that we do as a project that all projects need to be managed. And so managing a project is gonna require being curious about your distractions, understanding that things may take a bit longer. So building that into your schedule, getting clarity about how long it does take you to do things. I can't tell you how many people will say and you know it too, and your listeners know it too. Give me a sec. I don't think we can do anything meaningful in a second. Except maybe say I love you. What, and again, so for me when we say give me a sec. It's a colloquialism. It's a shortcut I get that. But if that is language that comes out of our mouth all the time then we don't really have Have a clear understanding of how time is operating in our lives, which is fine. You know, unless we're late all the time,

Ingrid  20:08  
listeners, does this resonate with you? Are you are you? Do you catch yourself saying that all the time as well? Or are you thinking to yourself? Ah, this is so interesting, I need to tie myself, asked you let me ask you another question, Regina, what does it take to be an organised person?

Regina  20:27  
Ingrid, I think it's all of this. I think it's it's paying attention to how our brain operates. I truly believe that most clutter is a result of our brain based conditions. And when I say that, I think of not only ADHD, which impacts the executive function ADHD should probably be called executive function dysfunction. But if you've got depression, if you've got anxiety, if you are dealing with a lot of life transitions, even the most organised person will become disorganised. So I think overall, in order to be an organised person, it's becoming curious about how you're wired, taking the time to understand your habits and your behaviours. I tell our clients all the time, my I have 12 employees, we call them the ninja organisers. And I'll say the ninjas can transform the external. In a matter of hours or days, we can completely transform. In order to maintain a transformed external, one has to completely change every habit behaviour and relationship to stuff in space on the internal. It's not easy, it doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. So when the space is clear, so if your listeners brought in on a professional organiser to clear the space, wow, what a great relief. What I encourage my client, what I do, I do two things. I put my client on my calendar to check in in a month. But I give the client the this instruction. Over the next two or three weeks, I want you to pretend that you're a drone. And you're going to start observing you. You're going to hover above you and around you. And you're going to be asking, What the hell am I doing here? Why did I put this here? Because the organiser said maybe I should put it here. Again, it's be curious about your actions. Be curious about you know, maybe Ingrid said to put it here, but you're finding it's not the best place for you. Which is fine. It's it's it's taking it's it's just observing yourself. Because it's the very it's those very habits that brought it to clutter are the very habits that you have to change. I don't know how many clients have said to me, I cleared it up. But it all came back. I'm like, well, it doesn't have legs. When we say it only takes a second when we say it came back it I think it removes us from what's actually happening. It came back does not say my I didn't change my habits. I continued my habits. And that's why it's here. It's like this we disassociate from it. And so clarity, curiosity, I'm sure that you have had people come on your your podcast that are helping with, you know, specific ways to tackle greeting cards or your linen closet or those types of things. Mostly where I come from is thinking of it more from how we're wired. I think of emotional mismanagement in the United States, the the public storage industry, people who have storage units off property, yeah, $36 billion. It's a $36 billion industry and I call it the land of indecision. Yeah, I call it the land of emotional mismanagement, because in those storage units are two items that which we think we may need someday. But we don't know what Sunday has to look like. And we don't know that if we let it go. Oh, and Sunday arrives, something not good is going to happen. So we err on the side of holding on to it. So we hold on to things we may need someday. And we also have stuff in our storage or on our garage or in our closets, of the items that somebody gave us. Or it's, it's an accomplishment that we had in the past, we have identified these things from our past as telling stories about who we are, we have identified the things in the future as being crucial to things we may need some day. And if we don't let go, if we're not letting go of Sunday, because we're afraid of letting it go. And we're not letting go of the past, because we're afraid of who we're going to be without it. And from where I sit, and the many years and hundreds of clients, I think we operate without really recognising it from a place of fear. There's fear of letting go of the future, there's fear of letting go of the past. And then we sit in a present, that's just a cluster of clutter. And we're letting those fears dictate how we're living today. And it's nothing to label judge or resent. But I want your listeners to be curious about what that means, and why we may be doing it.

Ingrid  26:28  
We talk a lot about emotions in the declutter hub, both in our challenges in our membership, you know, that feeling of guilt that's feeling of needing to hang on to it? What if items, the presence from other people, all of the things that you describe? And we talk about that a lot? Clutter is never just the stuff? It's all the stuff in the heart and in the head? Right? Yeah, yes. That's connected to it isn't it's?

Regina  26:57  
Yeah. And it's what's on the surface, is often you know, my book, the relationship between the stuff in your head and what's under your bed. It's I you know, you're, you're so right on, it's, it's really never about the stuff. I think it's about our relationship. I think it's all about theirs. I think so much of it is about relationships, to ourselves, to our stuff, to our space, to our hopes, to our dreams, to the things that we feel that we didn't accomplish, to the projects that we have lying all over our space, thinking this is the thing that's going to put me on the map. This is the thing that's going to make my children happy. Once I get this done, how many how many mothers? Have you spoken with that still don't have their baby albums put together? Yeah, that you know that still, they still haven't. And because they use the language of I still haven't done it. It's it's like an indictment on them.

Ingrid  28:02  
I was recording a podcast with another guest. And she said something she said, you really have to look at the language that people use. And that's exactly what you're saying. I haven't done it. And she said, if you just put the little word yet behind it, you haven't done it yet. It's already so much kinder instead of and I used it with a client. She's like, Oh, you didn't do it. And I said, you haven't done it yet. And she would. I love that. And it really made her feel a bit like, oh, a weight was lifted from her shoulder. I said, we need to ask ourselves if you really want to do it, it's worth your time.

Regina  28:39  
But if you're the right person for the job, yeah. Because sometimes we're not the right person. So part of success is the art and practice of delegation. A whole new topic.

Ingrid  28:55  
That's that's a whole other podcast. Okay, so then let me ask you a final question. Because we've spoken a lot about time we've spoken about language and emotions and stuff. So what's then the difference between having stuff and being chronically disorganised

Regina  29:16  
again we you know, earlier before we started recording, we were talking about Judith Kohlberg. And Judith Kohlberg is a, a icon in our industry. Yeah. And is the person who coined the term chronic disorganisation. You have a long history of needing to get your shit together. You are the kid that your mother said Go to your room and clean your room, and you just kind of hang out and you do other things and, and going to your room to clean it is like so boring, tedious, painful or otherwise sometimes your mom had to just sit there with you while you put things away. So if you're chronically disabled organise, you've kind of been dealing with not being able to find your keys or your bra. Or you don't have, you don't have milk, because you've got terrible time management skills, and you did not get to the grocery store in time. It's a persistence of severe disorganisation over a long period of time. It undermines your daily life, it causes anxiety. You know, people are always calling you out, she's always late. So it undermines the quality of your life. And again, it's you've always known this in your life. So people who are chronically disorganised, they're the ones with all the books on how to get organised on their shelves. From what I've seen, the language that they use to describe their situation, can be very depressed, it can be sad, you know, failure, loser, lazy. I'm just not good at it. You know, these are the ways in which we look at ourselves, we look inward to describe what we're not able to do outward. Folks who just are unorganised and clutter, don't have that history. Pretty much their desk is pretty neat, unless they're working on a project and they put a lot of clutter on their desk. But people without cluttered generally have good relationship with time. So they want to have the desk cleared by five they kind of know okay, well at 430 I'm going to start putting things away and, and you know, it's kind of an easy flow, but chronically disorganised tend to not have that easy flow when it comes to stuff and clutter.

Ingrid  31:41  
This half an hour. Just absolutely flown by I'm now thinking, Oh, my words. I want to ask so many questions, but I can't because I want to ask you one more question. Is there anything that you'd like to share with our listeners? Maybe you've got something you think, Okay, there's one more important thought I would like to share or

Regina  32:03  
I guess it would be, too, give yourself the gift of curiosity. Give yourself the gift of no judgement. Give yourself the gift of not labelling yourself. Because these are all internal jobs. And I don't think any one of us were born to tear ourselves down. We are culturally conditioned for that. I'm not an advocate of tearing myself down. So I just encourage to develop a language to uplift and elevate yourself. Versus tearing it down. i i tell you silly, quick story I got out of the shower one day. And I think when we get out of the shower, we are our most raw. There's just nothing between you and the mirror. It's just that I remember looking in front of the mirror and I started tearing myself apart the lines on my face. And I was looking older. And I had this moment of clarity. And I stood there and I stared at myself in the mirror and I said Regina, how come you can't stand here and go nice shoulders and just walk away? Why is it as soon as I get in front of the mirror? It's a look at that new line. How unattractive instead of like, Wow, your shoulders look great, and just move on. So again, it's I think that's how I would love for your listeners to approach life from an uplift and elevate yourself from a sense of curiosity to to remember to add yet, you know, to their conversations about themselves for sure.

Ingrid  33:51  
Thank you Dr. Regina Lark for this wonderful podcast.

Regina  33:56  
This is great. Thanks. So glad you called me email me.

Ingrid  33:59  
Very, very welcome. Pleasure. So listeners. That's it for this episode. I will put all of Regina has details about her website or Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, I put that all in the show notes. I will put the links to her books in the show notes as well in case you're interested. If you would like to know more, please go ahead and check her out. I don't have the link yet for the upcoming book. But you know

Regina  34:24  
what they can go to one thing that would be fun is I have I have a speaker's website. It's called speaking of clutter.com

Ingrid  34:34  
I'm making notes listeners in case you're wondering what is she doing? I'm writing it down.

Regina  34:38  
I can I can testify to that I see her very concentrated writing as well. Speaking of clutter, calm and on the home page, I have what is called the emotional labour survey. And I'm asking people to take the survey, answer questions about who's doing Weighing the load of work at home. Okay? 

Ingrid  35:05  
Yeah, okay, I'm gonna fill that in to I'm interested in now. Have you do that. So I will add that in the show notes to listeners. So thank you for listening today. I hope this podcast has given you food for thought and that you baby are inspired to take action and actually be kinder to yourself. And when you look in the mirror go, not bad. Not bad at all. Oh, look at my great eyes or think of something positive. I love that. So thank you for listening today. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with others. Maybe your friends or family would love our show too. And on our show notes page. On our website, you can find all the sharing buttons. If you want more handy tips and advice from Lesley and now you can find this in lots of places. Of course, you can find us on Facebook, we have a Facebook group called the declutter hub community, and we are on Instagram too. If you want to know more about our membership, take a look at members go to declutter hub.com. Of course, if you don't want to miss the next podcast, subscribe to it and it will pop into your notifications each Friday. And thank you. So thanks to everyone who's been writing us reviews and leaving reviews for us because we appreciate you taking the time to do that for us. And we love that. Thank you so much. So thanks so much for listening. Thanks, Regina, and we'll see you next time.

Outro  36:38  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com for more inspiration, and don't forget to tune in next week.
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