Rebecca (00:01.506)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Champagne Lounge podcast. Today I'm joined by the rather fabulous Bridget Jones. Welcome to the show, Bridget. I am super excited by this episode for several reasons, but mostly because I love the fact that you're a space and time organizer and optimizer. And I just know that through the conversations we're having inside the Champagne Lounge, inside our free Facebook group,
Bridget Johns (00:09.553)
Thanks for having me.
Rebecca (00:28.182)
inside the conversations I'm having with friends and family outside of work live, that everyone struggles with this. So I know we're going to deep dive into some good ones. So before we do that, how did you get to being into that environment? Like give us a bit of a rundown of who you are, where you're from and what got you to where you are today.
Bridget Johns (00:47.827)
Yes, I never expected to be here. I spent 16 years working in state government, but I suppose I've always had that element of trying to optimize my time and make things simpler in my home and work life. But particularly for me, when I came back from maternity leave with my second child, I was over committing all of my time and burning myself out realistically. And what happened was
I was at a work meeting talking about RUIK Day and at that stage I was working in the education department helping kids understand resilience and wellbeing and recognise I wasn't doing anything to look after myself. And after I left that community meeting, I jumped into the car and burst into tears. I'm grateful that I had a supportive boss who let me express how I was feeling and we were able to declutter.
my work life and strip back the expectations I put on myself to do a full -time workload in part -time pay and time and really work out where my level of genius was and what the best use of my time in those paid hours was and what we could outsource to some of the other admin team in my work life and then came home to my husband and burst into tears to him as well and explained that I was just doing too much looking after
Rebecca (01:48.042)
yes.
Bridget Johns (02:09.095)
the kids and expecting myself to have a perfect home and I'd taken on extra responsibilities when I was home on maternity leave doing more things around the home. I was the one that was with the kids more so I could do lots of the kids tasks quicker and I took on more and more and more until sleep and my mental health was the thing that suffered. But my husband's always been a great team player but he wasn't aware of how I was feeling so being able to communicate with him what was happening we were able to take baby steps to
make the changes that work for our family. And then it was actually a knee injury when I hurt my ACL that I was sharing some tips because I was less active and being able to move around our home. on Instagram, I was sharing what was working in our home to free up my time. And people really resonated with that. And back then it was an anonymous account called Farmer's Wife Minimus Life because we live here in South Australia on a broadacre cropping farm.
And that was probably a little bit of a eye -opener that some of the strategies that I did naturally back in July 2018 were things people hadn't thought about or weren't implementing in their home. So slowly over time and some change in my work life meant that I was looking for different opportunities, which led me to thinking if time and money were no object, what would I do? And that was to be a professional organizer.
And over just over a year, I took baby steps to bring my business to life while I was working full time. And then two weeks before the pandemic started in March, 2020, Be Simply Free was born. And yeah, it's been a ride, but I'm very grateful for being able to support women to not only declutter their spaces, but it's really saving money, freeing up time.
reducing the waste, including the stuff they're getting rid of, even food waste when it comes to getting organized in the kitchen. So we can really free up our mental load and get the whole family involved to do the tasks it takes to run a household because I truly believe mums aren't maids and our job is to raise capable adults. So we can teach all family members to do the tasks so we can all have more time to collect moments, not things.
Rebecca (04:18.414)
I love the collecting moments, not things. That's one of my favorite taglines of yours, which I think is beautiful because I think we do all go around without realizing collecting all of the things. Just yesterday, I was looking at an Instagram reel of what if everyone, what if we showed all the things we collected as we went through our every day? So the reel had someone like running on a treadmill with all the trainers behind them. It's like, you only really need one or two pairs. You don't need 20, you know, or all the hats that you've got or all the ties that you've got in the cupboard. And it was quite an interesting
Bridget Johns (04:39.601)
Yes.
Rebecca (04:47.788)
real that got me thinking of you and decluttering the space. So you went through a few things that I want to unpack. And I think one of the key things at the beginning, you mentioned you were trying to pack in full -time hours into part -time employment. How did you navigate that? Because I know there will be a lot of people who are downgrading from full -time employment to part -time to follow a side hustle or start a business or go back into the workforce after having kids.
Bridget Johns (05:02.589)
Mm
Rebecca (05:16.082)
And it's really easy to switch that thing onto, well, it's got to get done. I've got to get it done and add all the things up and put in all the extra hours. And how did, yeah, how did you navigate that particularly with your boss? It must've been a semi hard transition or did they know you were over committing and over delivering?
Bridget Johns (05:35.955)
Yeah. And when I try and think back, this was the fit that, bursting into tears to my boss was back in 2015. So there's probably still some hormones running through being, having a one year old there as well. I think my style is I want to give my best to everything care, bit of a type A personality. and I want to do everything to the best that I can, but it was a realization that in my previous life, I literally had double the amount of time.
And while I am a time optimist and I can optimize my time, I can't make more time. There's literally 1 ,440 minutes in every day. And I talk about trying to find 1 % of your day, which is 14 .4 minutes. But I think I went too much into trying to do everything. And it was a shock to my system and literally a breakdown in tears to realize I can't do it all. I think we're shown that
super, I think I grew up in that generation where it was the superwoman, we can do it all. And I do believe we can have it all, but we don't need to do it all. And that's probably where it came to. And I'm very grateful I did have that supportive boss. I think there are a lot of people out there in the environments where they wouldn't have had a good reception from a boss like I did. But I do think my boss did understand I was over delivering and maybe they did appreciate that, but it wasn't realistic and I couldn't keep doing that. think I'd been back.
from maternity leave for about five or six months and it wasn't gonna be sustainable for my mental health as well. it was really stop focus notice, stop doing the same thing over and over again, focus on what the issue was and notice what solutions I had and sharing and communicating how I was feeling was the biggest gift I could give myself and the people around me. So we could be aware of what's happening and make plans for.
using the time we have in the best way for everyone, for my work life, for my personal life and to look after me.
Rebecca (07:35.756)
Hmm. I think, you know, you hit it on the head there with the conversation and the communication piece. You know, I think a lot of us do internalize a lot of things. I will, I know, although you had to speak to your boss, he also had your husband to talk to us as well and get him on board with understanding how you're feeling. Like what I know, well, particularly if you're in your own head and struggling with getting out those emotions, what kind of language were you using to get, or to guide your husband through the process to have you,
expressing those emotions and those stresses because that will also lead me into what will come later in terms of getting him along for the ride, right? In terms of organizing your house because there's a lot there. But what were the kind of languages you were using with both your boss and your husband to go, no, this is how I'm feeling, like the feeling bit and the emotions bit for them to really understand it.
Bridget Johns (08:25.255)
And it was literally using this is how I'm feeling because no one can argue with how you're feeling. But I think we've been taught what you hear my terminology in the way that I think, I think a lot. So for me to verbalize how I'm feeling is a big change to me. And I'm probably grateful I was working in a government department talking about wellbeing and resilience. And that was the theory I knew to support my wellbeing, but my body was probably fighting that, that I want to do all the analytical and thinking side of things.
Rebecca (08:36.936)
You
Bridget Johns (08:54.301)
So expressing how I was feeling, trying to make it in, the work conversation was a little more stressful because it was tears to my boss. But when I got home to my husband, it was trying to have a calm conversation. So saying, hey, this is how I'm feeling. And then it turned into the tears, but having both people coming in, calm, not frazzled, not straight after he walked in from work. It was after the kids had gone to bed and we were able to have.
a one -on -one chat without those distractions around us as well. And we could both share how we were feeling. And he wasn't aware of how I was feeling, even though we lived in the same house and all those things, but the change in our life from being a couple to having one kid, then two, and me being back at work, there'd been a lot of change, which I hadn't verbalized. It was going round and round in my head, and that can build up and become a lot of our mental load. And the resentment builds towards the people around us if we're not.
getting it out of our head and communicating how we're feeling. And still now sometimes there's yelling between my husband and I, but it's trying to stop focus, notice and do it in a calm environment. No one's doing anything perfectly. And regardless of what you see on Instagram, we all need to be real. And I try and share quite often, let's be real moments because whatever we're doing to declutter our life, nothing's going to happen perfectly, but we can take baby steps to make sustainable changes for us in whatever season of life we're in.
Rebecca (10:00.459)
You
Rebecca (10:19.35)
100%. It's all about those micro changes, right? Those micro things that you're doing and those habits and they can change, you know, so you've been doing this now a number, a number of years. And, you know, I when I started doing elements of putting boundaries in place or making sure I meal prep and do all of the things and, know, my husband would go, why are you worried about dinner on Wednesday? It's Saturday. Yeah, but I'm already thinking about it to take it off. And it took a long time to get that conversation.
Bridget Johns (10:26.109)
They need to.
Rebecca (10:45.57)
Like for him to fully understand that, that that's how my brain works. And if I leave dinner to you and you ask me at six o 'clock at night, what do you want for dinner? You've literally raised my stress levels to the next level because I'm hungry and want it in half an hour. you know, all those things. What were the elements that you started to put into place that you, if you have a client walking through the door now that goes, I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what to do. Where do I grab more time? What are the sort of baby steps that you start them on?
Bridget Johns (11:12.539)
Yes, it's having that communication with the people in their life as well to be clear on what needs to happen for yourself, your husband and your kids and doing a map of how time is currently being spent. We under anticipate the parenting responsibilities, particularly for rural families, the travel time to get to and from work, sport.
school even, getting kids on and off buses or into town. And if we're not aware of how time is being used by, if you're in a partnered situation by both partners, it's unsure of what other people are doing. So it's really about taking time to talk to the people in your life and then look at what small tweaks can be made.
I am not a fan of doing the meal planning, but I'm a great fan of the benefits of meal planning because it's taking the time and doing the thinking altogether for what you're going to eat for the week ahead. We tend to do it on a Sunday, sitting down with my husband, looking at our time for the next seven days and then how we can meal plan meals around it. So we've got, maybe you're just grabbing something from the freezer on those nights that it's footie or netball training and we're getting home late.
But when we're aware of what's happening, what meals need to be done, we can bundle some of the planning in a half an hour, so 2 % of your day that saves hours over the week ahead. So everyone knows what to expect on those days. And then as your kids get older, you can bring them on board as well with doing some of the cooking tasks. I don't cook five days a week. We look and see who has time commitments. And now with a 10 and 12 year old.
they actually rotate cooking every second Tuesday. So once a week, the kids are doing it. Sometimes we're going out to the footy club and sometimes my husband's cooking and sometimes we're just reheating something that we've pulled out of the freezer. So I would highly encourage people to look at their time and then look at what we can strip back from our commitments, potentially saying no to some extra sport commitments. I've got friends that are out seven days a week taking kids to and from training and that.
Rebecca (13:19.49)
Wow.
Bridget Johns (13:20.081)
doesn't work for our family in this season of our life. So we choose one summer sport and one winter sport, which definitely frees up a lot of our time. And then we look at decluttering physical spaces because the less stuff we have in our home, the quicker it is to keep organized and tidy.
Rebecca (13:36.492)
my gosh, I love that so much. I don't go back to that sport thing. actually, as someone that doesn't have children, I have no idea how you parents navigate all these sporting activities and running around and doing all the things and the carnivals and mind blowing. So yeah, I like that idea of one summer sport, winter sport. and the decluttering when we moved into our, house here in Mudgy, we don't have any cupboards because we're in a, or no built in wardrobes, no built in cupboards because we're in a heritage house.
And that wasn't a thing back then. And so it's been really nice to not have too much stuff. I can't say the same for the garage. The three bay garage has filled up very quickly, but I can't see it out of sight, out of mind right now, but everything else, makes a huge difference to how you're feeling in doing that. So, you know, when we're talking about like decluttering that space, what are the things that you love to do? Do you have like a little routine where you put music on and you're like, I'm going to...
Bridget Johns (14:07.773)
Yep.
Rebecca (14:32.984)
clear out the Tupperware drawer today and it's just gonna feel like I'm gonna feel really good that I did that one. Like what kind of things do you enjoy doing and have you made it into something fun?
Bridget Johns (14:41.555)
Well, I truly believe that the whole family can be part of this process as well. Mums aren't maids, mums haven't brought all the clutter into the home. So it needs to be a team approach to tackling it. And particularly for kids, toys and clothes and things like that. We don't want to set up a feeling that when the kids leave their house, they might be coming home to no clothes. So I'm a big advocate for involving family in choosing what stays or goes. it's taking some time to talk through
focusing on the favorite things, the things that kids love in their room, and then going through the things they're not playing with as much. And if they let go of one thing, that's a big success. And we're building the habit of choosing what stays and goes. And then over time, we can have less and less and less. And we can use our door as a force field for stopping more stuff coming in unconsciously as well. But little habits that really work well for our family is having our kitchen tidy within a 24 hour period.
For us, that's in the evening. So sometimes it's myself on my own. Sometimes it's my husband on his own or us two, the kids on their own, or all four of us. But just as a family, it works well for us that the kitchen bench and everything's tidy, the dishwashers on, and we can go to bed with a clean kitchen. No one likes doing it, but everyone future us next morning, us is grateful for when it's cleared off. And the other great tip is on a Sunday night, we'll pop on three or four songs on Spotify.
everyone, the four of us will race around the house for 15 minutes and everything can go back in its home. That's not a deep tidy, but everything's back in its place and that's everyone spending 15 minutes their own time. So it's not the mom spending an hour doing the same amount of tasks. So it just gives everyone some responsibility for getting things reset. So the start of our week can start off with a clean slate.
Rebecca (16:31.758)
Yeah, I like that. We had Donna McGeorge on the podcast a few weeks ago and she was talking about doing the things now that your future self will thank you for. And I think that is one of those key things there, right? It's that taking 15 minutes or just clearing the kitchen before you start. So it is getting up in the morning going, I can just start the day. don't have a whole list of to -dos from yesterday to keep going on with. We've talked a lot about home life and family life.
but I know that the stuff that you do translates into business life as well. So, what are the things that you have in your business that has helped you over the years in optimizing that time and staying focused? Are you a time batcher? Are you a, you know, content creator that batches things together? Do you not check your emails for until like lunchtime? Like what are the little hacks that you've developed over the years or indeed some of the ones that you've tried and failed and reinvented?
Bridget Johns (17:26.387)
And I do believe there's different seasons and you can chop and change and workouts what's right at this time. But my calendar is my life. If it's not in the calendar, it doesn't exist. And that is the accurate reflection of those 1 ,440 minutes. My calendar includes my personal life and my work life in one Google calendar. So I can actually see where I'm moving and what days are more family focused and what days are more work focused. So I will use that.
and a color coordination in there to show when I've got my personal time and work time. And work time is actually shown in two colors. So on Google, there's a light blue, a light green and a dark green. And for me in Be Simply Free, my light green shows when I'm paid per hour to do my work and the dark green shows my admin time. So I can get a bit of a guide to how long things are taking and am I valuing my time well. So I use some time blocking in that calendar to see what I'm doing.
Something that I hope more people do and we don't naturally do it is on a Friday morning, it's more that admin time of seeing those little tasks that I need to do, but also celebrating success, taking some time to think of five ta -da moments. So I got that one from Michelle Broadbent. She's a big fan of, yeah, some ta -da moments because we can rush through and not celebrate what's happening in our life. And if you can just take some time every Friday to...
to look at what you've been able to achieve. And that maybe could even cross over into some things that are being ta -da moments in your personal life as well. So I would highly encourage people to do that. And the other one is I run a Xero inbox across my multiple inboxes and have a triage system where I have some dues, some delegates, some dollars for invoices and digest. So having a Xero inbox doesn't mean I don't have any emails to action.
but it just means that I've triaged and work out what my priority is and they are separate into my work life email, my personal life email and a separate junk email to get those 10 % discounts. But it just means I can confidently delete everything in that junk mail email without worrying that something will be lost because.
Bridget Johns (19:40.627)
I think I deleted 10 ,000 emails from that junk mail that I'd got over two years and I don't even subscribe to many. So if all those were coming into my work or personal email, I would feel that overwhelm. So the separation of inboxes is a strategy that works well for me and many of my clients.
Rebecca (19:53.283)
Mm.
Rebecca (19:58.562)
That's massive. And do you set it up with, what are they called? The rules and the functions so that it automatically goes in or do you manually move them across to those folders? Yeah.
Bridget Johns (20:07.955)
I manually move them across. So I've had a look at them and I use the two minute rule. If I can respond to it straight away without needing any extra time, I will do that. I don't have any notifications going off on my phone for calendars. So I'm making a conscious choice to go into my inbox and action things to avoid that duplication as well. And I don't have the junk mail email on my phone. So that one I have to
log on to a computer because I think I'd feel overwhelmed if I saw a large number of unread emails on my phone.
Rebecca (20:35.916)
I like that.
I did trial for a while, having them all ruled across. So everything sort of went into different folders and I could come back to them and I missed a couple of really important emails and I was devastated, absolutely mortified. And I think it came down to a lot of people use their support or their hello emails for their newsletters, but it's also an email that comes from their assistant or something like that. And so if you're putting them all as a rule into a folder, you miss the ones from an assistant. So
Bridget Johns (20:59.325)
Mm -hmm.
Rebecca (21:08.226)
That's something I like to share with people that you want a different email for your assistant to your newsletter or to you, because if people are setting up the rules, that stuff's going to get lost, which.
Bridget Johns (21:17.203)
Yep. And regardless, if you're setting up a do folder or rules, you still need to have time in your calendar to action the things that you're planning to do, because there's only so much time in a day. If we can have other people, we can pay other people to do things, but your physical time is 1 ,440 minutes.
Rebecca (21:24.973)
Yes.
Rebecca (21:37.11)
That's a really scary number when you say that. Like it's not a lot. It's not a lot in a day and time batching it. You still got to sleep and you've got to put that in and you've got to go for your exercise and spend time with the family. And so, yeah, when you can color code out and block it out, mine's very similar. My calendar with all the different colors. And so, yeah, if you're not doing that, give it a crack, like try it. And I do, I love Michelle Braubin and her. We've known each other for a very long time.
Bridget Johns (21:41.511)
and you still gotta sleep.
Rebecca (22:01.656)
with our aha moments, you know, the champagne lounge is all about the celebrating and that's why the champagne is in the name of the organization. Because we don't celebrate enough and we don't do those things of, you know, high -fiving ourselves or giving ourselves a pat on the back or just being happy and giving ourselves half an hour of just enjoyment when we get a task done that we've been trying to do for a while. So I absolutely adore.
Bridget Johns (22:23.723)
Yeah, that's probably what I love about being in the Champagne Lounge as well. It is that group of dedicated women, rural women in business that when you want to go to a group of like -minded people that are going to get it and you can celebrate what you've achieved with people that are going to cheer you on regardless. So that's been a beautiful thing being part of the Champagne Lounge and be able to talk over Zoom and also use that Facebook group to share things that are happening as well.
Rebecca (22:50.048)
I love that. I love that that's there. I'm, love that you're part of the community and you just jumped in and answered my last question that I asked everyone before I even got to answer it, which I love. So no, I love it. You've, why are you part of the community and what do you love about it? And for us, you know, we've just shared, it's that celebrating, it's to be able to share, it's the like -mindedness, it's to be able to ask questions. And I think that's the beauty of why we share our members stories on this podcast. It's because everyone's got their own levels of expertise, but they're all
Bridget Johns (22:56.825)
sorry.
Rebecca (23:16.448)
navigating the same or similar challenges of family and work life. And I think if you can have those conversations and share your experiences, you can have much, more of a bigger impact than you could possibly even imagine, which I think is pretty amazing.
Bridget Johns (23:28.689)
Yeah. And it's a group of rural women that will share your name in an opportunity when it comes up. And that's been what I've really found being able to jump on any of those. Yeah. Any of those sessions about us, say, Hey, this is what's happening. Anyone got any ideas of how to handle that? Or has anyone got a connection in this place that we can link into? So I've been so grateful to be part of it and cross over. There's many new faces and some faces I've seen in other communities as well. And a great opportunity.
to be sitting here on my broad acre cropping farm, almost two and a half hours from a metropolitan city and be able to connect with women all across Australia with multiple different time slots to work out the best time for me. I don't think I've consistently picked one that works for me. I look at my calendar for the week ahead and go, okay, I can't make Monday. I might be able to do Wednesday and then going forward, I think Friday might be a good one for me when I'm in my wrap up of the week stage. So yeah, there's lots of opportunities to find a time that works for you.
Rebecca (24:27.446)
Yeah, I love that you just said it, whatever works for you. It is that it is literally come when you can for as long as you can, however you can. Like it's the no pressure scenario. We've all got enough on the to do list already, which is beautiful. So Bridget, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing this. I think we've shared a lot of golden nuggets and a lot of actionable tips here, which I know a lot of our listeners will go away and think, I'll just give that one thing a try. So I encourage you to go try something new and put something in place that makes
you have more time and you know more time to collect moments not things I think is amazing. I'm gonna put Bridget's contact details in the show notes. Of course she's in the Champagne Lounge if you want to have a chat with her come join us she'll have have a wonderful conversation with us at any of those meetups and we've had a wonderful conversation today so thank you so much Bridget.
Bridget Johns (25:14.077)
Thanks for having me.
